I THINK YOU ARE AT THE BEGINNING OF A VERY FASCINATING JOURNEY
“Sister one friend wrote on FB about how she and her husband celebrated their first anniversary, are having a baby and just bought a house and she got over 75 likes. I’m about to publish my first book, but have no husband or baby, and I’ll probably get 5 likes for that. I’m failing as a woman and a human being apparently.”
This was the exact text message I sent to my sister, before I had a complete emotional breakdown in which I was initially sad, followed by feeling very very angry.
Here I am in the midst of accomplishing something that I have poured my heart and soul into, and have sacrificed a lot for, only to have this thing that has haunted me my whole life staring at me right in the face. Her post is what has been beaten into me every second of my life, as to what it means to be a woman and to be a woman in our society and our world. If you don’t have a husband, and don’t end up with children you are considered worthless, and any accomplishment you may achieve is somehow invalid, unless of course you also have a husband and children hiding somewhere in the background, and you become one of those women who do it all.
By the time I was 23 my body was so incredibly sick from a lifetime of abuse, violence, misogyny, discrimination, oppression and racism that I was as close as you can get to death without actually dying. I was never able to express how I was feeling, because my voice had been completely silenced as a result of the constant female conditioning in which you are beaten into submission. Those times I did fight back, it was always dismissed as me being crazy or emotional. With that being said, it took me almost five years to get diagnosed with my illness in the first place, because I was dismissed time and time again as an overly emotional hysterical woman. Who was clearly crazy, not sick. (And no that was not just a shameless plug for my book!)
I want to make it very clear, I have nothing against women who want children or marriage, but this should not in any way shape or form be what defines you as a woman. It also shouldn't be forced upon women ever, and there shouldn't be constant pressure to adhere to this through society, cultures, family, religion, the media, the government, etc. We should also spend more time and energy as a society celebrating all the accomplishments that women have achieved outside of marriage and children and less time talking and focusing on what is apparently my one and only "special fucking day". In which I'm quite literally traded from the hands of one man (my father) into the hands of another man (my soon to be husband) (just for safe keeping!!!). Little girls should be taught to be independent, strong, confident and happy and that their identity is their own. It does not have anything to do with the man in your life or with having a man to begin with. I'm all for celebrating love, but lets find a way that supports women and our equality and doesn't do so at the exclusion of others (the LGBT community).
I feel as though I know a lot of intelligent, creative, beautiful women (myself included) who have or are throwing it all away to conform to these asinine gender roles, and not because we necessarily want to, but simply because the amount of discrimination we face makes it almost impossible for us to achieve our dreams. And it quite simply just becomes easier to be a housewife than to be out in the work force, and in actuality is one of the few roles that our society is weirdly set-up to support for women, even though you don't get paid for it (although you should) and it's considered unimportant (just like women!). Work environments can be incredibly hostile to women, or are so drenched in dude-bro energy that women prefer to be in an environment that is more conducive to our own energy. There are a multitude of ways other than just direct sexual harassment and the wage gap (although these are clearly a huge part of the problem), to make work environments so uncomfortable that a person is quite literally pushed out of it. Which include things like not allowing us to have Maternity leave, and centering entire companies around men and their lifestyles, and not around the needs of women, families, or children.
Than there is that pesky glass ceiling. When I graduated from college with my film/tv media major degree I knew exactly what I was going up against. My ultimate dream is to have my own production company to make film/television/commercials, and to have the entire company saturated with women and minorities so that we can actually make media that reflects us and our likes and shows us in a positive light. While I still have that same dream, graduating from college with the goal of being a director and working in mainstream Hollywood was something that I honestly knew would be impossible.
In 2011 women made up 5% of directors in Hollywood , 4% of cinematographers, 14% of writers, and 25% of producers. It’s not like there isn’t a plethora of women who are incredibly talented in all these arenas. You wouldn’t need to look any further than the indie circuit to find women who are clearly very talented and excelling at every production role that exists. So why does that not translate over into the mainstream? For the same reason that we make up only 17 % of Congress, or that our numbers in every other industry especially when you get to the top levels are so sparse, just blatant sexism and discrimination. You have to intentionally work very hard to maintain a status quo at these levels. It requires lots of men to participate to keep constant hatred and abuse alive and directed at certain individuals to ensure that they will eventually just give up and become barefoot and pregnant like we were designed to do.
I knew that on top of that I had even extra issues added, being part of what I feel is the most hated racial group in this country. Being a woman of color in our society has made it so that I’ve always had to be a million times better than everyone just to achieve maybe 10% of my full potential. The people who run and reinforce the status quo have to go way out of their way to ensure that certain groups will never succeed at something, because otherwise these numbers in every industry would instantly change overnight and what is really sad is that they do.
At the base of my rage, which lasted for a good 36 hours straight (although its still ongoing as I write this) was this thought. We have 3.5 billion people on this planet who are not able to achieve their full potential. Each and every woman was put on this planet to advance the human species vastly forward. You want to know why there is no “cure” for Cancer, AIDS, (fill in the blank), because the little African-American girl who was put on this planet with that missing puzzle piece, became a victim of human trafficking. She was than forced into a brothel in which she is being raped by up to 10, 20 or even 30 men every single day. The little Mexican girl who was put on this planet to bring into fruition the next generation of sustainable energy dreamed of the day in which she would get to go college and work for the only country she knew. Unfortunately, she became a victim of domestic violence and when she went to the police to get help, they realized she was undocumented so they sent her back to Mexico, a country she doesn’t even know. Or the little white girl who was put on this planet to lead us all to peace, became pregnant at the age of 19 and was unable to afford the $950 required to obtain an abortion and ended up keeping the child which thrust her immediately into a vicious cycle of poverty that she can’t escape.
This is happening in EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. EVERY SINGLE DAY. The creativity, the love, the compassion, the intelligence of my entire gender is being thrown away, purposefully excluded, degraded, and destroyed. No little girl has been or will ever be put on this planet to someday grow up to become a bride. Every little girl was put on this planet, because she holds a key to this puzzle that desperately needs to be solved, and she isn’t even being given a chance to achieve any of it.
OUR VOICES WILL BE HEARD BECAUSE I SAY ENOUGH!
http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/what-bigelow-effect-number-of-women-directors-in-hollywood-falls-to-5-percent#
http://www.care2.com/causes/wall-street-wage-gaps-give-women-yet-another-reason-to-occupy.html
(***As a side note I want to make it very clear that my intention of this article was not to judge my friend, or to say that in any way shape or form that she is submissive, but rather to talk about how this status quo of what it means to be a woman is not only pushed upon those who clearly don't want it (like myself) in a variety of ways, but is also so encouraged and/or expected that it does so at the detriment of all of the accomplishments we've achieved on our own that make us so incredible and remarkable as women. Our accomplishments should be celebrated and encouraged first and foremost, rather than everything coming back to always revolving around men or other people.)
This was the exact text message I sent to my sister, before I had a complete emotional breakdown in which I was initially sad, followed by feeling very very angry.
Here I am in the midst of accomplishing something that I have poured my heart and soul into, and have sacrificed a lot for, only to have this thing that has haunted me my whole life staring at me right in the face. Her post is what has been beaten into me every second of my life, as to what it means to be a woman and to be a woman in our society and our world. If you don’t have a husband, and don’t end up with children you are considered worthless, and any accomplishment you may achieve is somehow invalid, unless of course you also have a husband and children hiding somewhere in the background, and you become one of those women who do it all.
By the time I was 23 my body was so incredibly sick from a lifetime of abuse, violence, misogyny, discrimination, oppression and racism that I was as close as you can get to death without actually dying. I was never able to express how I was feeling, because my voice had been completely silenced as a result of the constant female conditioning in which you are beaten into submission. Those times I did fight back, it was always dismissed as me being crazy or emotional. With that being said, it took me almost five years to get diagnosed with my illness in the first place, because I was dismissed time and time again as an overly emotional hysterical woman. Who was clearly crazy, not sick. (And no that was not just a shameless plug for my book!)
I want to make it very clear, I have nothing against women who want children or marriage, but this should not in any way shape or form be what defines you as a woman. It also shouldn't be forced upon women ever, and there shouldn't be constant pressure to adhere to this through society, cultures, family, religion, the media, the government, etc. We should also spend more time and energy as a society celebrating all the accomplishments that women have achieved outside of marriage and children and less time talking and focusing on what is apparently my one and only "special fucking day". In which I'm quite literally traded from the hands of one man (my father) into the hands of another man (my soon to be husband) (just for safe keeping!!!). Little girls should be taught to be independent, strong, confident and happy and that their identity is their own. It does not have anything to do with the man in your life or with having a man to begin with. I'm all for celebrating love, but lets find a way that supports women and our equality and doesn't do so at the exclusion of others (the LGBT community).
I feel as though I know a lot of intelligent, creative, beautiful women (myself included) who have or are throwing it all away to conform to these asinine gender roles, and not because we necessarily want to, but simply because the amount of discrimination we face makes it almost impossible for us to achieve our dreams. And it quite simply just becomes easier to be a housewife than to be out in the work force, and in actuality is one of the few roles that our society is weirdly set-up to support for women, even though you don't get paid for it (although you should) and it's considered unimportant (just like women!). Work environments can be incredibly hostile to women, or are so drenched in dude-bro energy that women prefer to be in an environment that is more conducive to our own energy. There are a multitude of ways other than just direct sexual harassment and the wage gap (although these are clearly a huge part of the problem), to make work environments so uncomfortable that a person is quite literally pushed out of it. Which include things like not allowing us to have Maternity leave, and centering entire companies around men and their lifestyles, and not around the needs of women, families, or children.
Than there is that pesky glass ceiling. When I graduated from college with my film/tv media major degree I knew exactly what I was going up against. My ultimate dream is to have my own production company to make film/television/commercials, and to have the entire company saturated with women and minorities so that we can actually make media that reflects us and our likes and shows us in a positive light. While I still have that same dream, graduating from college with the goal of being a director and working in mainstream Hollywood was something that I honestly knew would be impossible.
In 2011 women made up 5% of directors in Hollywood , 4% of cinematographers, 14% of writers, and 25% of producers. It’s not like there isn’t a plethora of women who are incredibly talented in all these arenas. You wouldn’t need to look any further than the indie circuit to find women who are clearly very talented and excelling at every production role that exists. So why does that not translate over into the mainstream? For the same reason that we make up only 17 % of Congress, or that our numbers in every other industry especially when you get to the top levels are so sparse, just blatant sexism and discrimination. You have to intentionally work very hard to maintain a status quo at these levels. It requires lots of men to participate to keep constant hatred and abuse alive and directed at certain individuals to ensure that they will eventually just give up and become barefoot and pregnant like we were designed to do.
I knew that on top of that I had even extra issues added, being part of what I feel is the most hated racial group in this country. Being a woman of color in our society has made it so that I’ve always had to be a million times better than everyone just to achieve maybe 10% of my full potential. The people who run and reinforce the status quo have to go way out of their way to ensure that certain groups will never succeed at something, because otherwise these numbers in every industry would instantly change overnight and what is really sad is that they do.
At the base of my rage, which lasted for a good 36 hours straight (although its still ongoing as I write this) was this thought. We have 3.5 billion people on this planet who are not able to achieve their full potential. Each and every woman was put on this planet to advance the human species vastly forward. You want to know why there is no “cure” for Cancer, AIDS, (fill in the blank), because the little African-American girl who was put on this planet with that missing puzzle piece, became a victim of human trafficking. She was than forced into a brothel in which she is being raped by up to 10, 20 or even 30 men every single day. The little Mexican girl who was put on this planet to bring into fruition the next generation of sustainable energy dreamed of the day in which she would get to go college and work for the only country she knew. Unfortunately, she became a victim of domestic violence and when she went to the police to get help, they realized she was undocumented so they sent her back to Mexico, a country she doesn’t even know. Or the little white girl who was put on this planet to lead us all to peace, became pregnant at the age of 19 and was unable to afford the $950 required to obtain an abortion and ended up keeping the child which thrust her immediately into a vicious cycle of poverty that she can’t escape.
This is happening in EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. EVERY SINGLE DAY. The creativity, the love, the compassion, the intelligence of my entire gender is being thrown away, purposefully excluded, degraded, and destroyed. No little girl has been or will ever be put on this planet to someday grow up to become a bride. Every little girl was put on this planet, because she holds a key to this puzzle that desperately needs to be solved, and she isn’t even being given a chance to achieve any of it.
OUR VOICES WILL BE HEARD BECAUSE I SAY ENOUGH!
http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/what-bigelow-effect-number-of-women-directors-in-hollywood-falls-to-5-percent#
http://www.care2.com/causes/wall-street-wage-gaps-give-women-yet-another-reason-to-occupy.html
(***As a side note I want to make it very clear that my intention of this article was not to judge my friend, or to say that in any way shape or form that she is submissive, but rather to talk about how this status quo of what it means to be a woman is not only pushed upon those who clearly don't want it (like myself) in a variety of ways, but is also so encouraged and/or expected that it does so at the detriment of all of the accomplishments we've achieved on our own that make us so incredible and remarkable as women. Our accomplishments should be celebrated and encouraged first and foremost, rather than everything coming back to always revolving around men or other people.)
