Friday's Kos has been righteous rant day for us ladies. Pissed off, tired of being subjugated and marginalized, and ready to take the fight to those who keep bringing it to us.
To our bodies.
To our rights.
To our individualism.
To our ability to control our own lives.
To the very essence of who we are.
Women.
And that word, for this diary, has a very large meaning.
(I'm not leaving you lovely men out of this fight - but this is very personal. Like we can't possibly understand what it feels like to get kicked in the balls - you just can't truly understand what it's like to be, basically, persecuted for somehow being lesser than.)
First, a hat tip to the incredible diaries posted on Friday (just Friday mind you, these are just the tip of a great iceberg of diaries on the subject of women and our rights, freedoms and liberties over the last month since Komengate):
Vetgrl's righteous rant.
gilas girl's righteous rant.
Angry Nurse's righteous rant.
teacherken's thoughtful male perspective.
The common thread is that we must band together and become the force we are capable of being - A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH. THE TIME IS NOW. RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
We are a major voting bloc. MAJOR. WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? How much more misogynistic, patriarchal, xenophobic bullshit are we going to take?
Cuz this ain't just about the pill. It's about the very essence of our inalienable right to be who we are. We're women. We're NOT a minority, we're not something to be bargained about, subjected to debate, scrutinized for being sexual, or single, or homosexual, or ANYTHING! I mean, what the fuck?
Why do I have to defend or justify my existence or any part thereof? Or my decisions? My choices?
My question is - who's with me? And Vetgrl, and gilas girl, etc. etc. etc.?
It was floated in several comments in the aforementioned diaries and others, that it's time for a march. A march on DC (mother's day perhaps) that will show women across the country that we will NOT go back to being barefoot, pregnant, and chattel to be lorded over and decided for.
I'll tell you this, I sure as fuck won't.
Need more firing up? Read this awesome article by Sara Robinson. She sums it up in a way that my writing skills cannot.
But the march has to be just the start - NOW, among other organizations, including Planned Parenthood, have been fighting for us for a long time. Many of us are members, but we let THEM do the bulk of the heavy lifting. It's time we joined in - REALLY joined in - and fought too. Visibly. And with brute force.
Ladies, it's time.
Hell hath no fury ... and I for one am FURIOUS.
So, who's in? Suggestions in the comments.
This is a movement not just for those who have gone before, and those who are here now, but for those daughters we have yet to give birth to.
1:32 PM PT: UPDATE: Great suggestions in the comments - one of which - to help centralize the effort to unify on Kos, is to create a FB page ("Iron Jaweed Women" or something to that effect) as a central repository for our attempt to unify. Any suggestions, strategery, thoughts are most welcome. This is how movements start ... with one, then a few, then a few more... until we are too big, too powerful to ignore...