“I was told ‘This is sinful’,” said rural birth control saleswoman Samina Khaskheli. “In our village, there was no information about family planning. Many women died during childbirth.”
“Before the culture was rigid, but now they’ve gradually accepted family planning,” says Samina, the Marvi worker, motioning to the group huddled around her. “I am proud I can teach women about both the Qur’an and birth control.”
Though not directly related to Pakistan, the content of this article is relevant to how significant female participation in the public space is; to how many dimensions there are to women’s right… how women’s rights and representation is legitimately important not just for women but for everyone.
It may help everyone understand how important it is to support women’s presence in the public space with campaigns such as #WhyLoiter and #GirlsAtDhabas.
Ask me what kind of porn I’m into,
and I will take you on a magical journey to
fanfiction.com/harrypotter/nc17–
What turns me on
is Ginny Weasley in the Restricted Section with her skirt hiked up,
Sirius Black in a secret passageway
solemnly swearing he is up to no good,
and Draco Malfoy
in the Room of Requirement
Slytherin in to my Chamber of Secrets,
I am an unapologetic consumer of
all things Potterotica,
and the sexiest part
is not the way
Cho Chang rides that broomstick,
or the sound of Myrtle moaning,
the sexiest part
is knowing they are part of a bigger story,
that they exist beyond eight minutes in
“Titty Titty Gang Bang,”
that their kegels
are not the strongest thing about them,
and still,
I am told that my porn is unrealistic.
Not quite as erotic
as flashing ads that say “JUST TURNED 18!”
so you can fantasize about fucking
the youngest girl you won’t go to jail for;
I’m told that my porn isn’t quite as lifelike
as a room full of lesbians begging for cock,
told that this
is what is supposed to turn me on,
Don’t you give me raw meat
and tell me it is nourishment,
I know a slaughterhouse when I see one.
It looks like 24/7 live streaming
reminding me
that men are going to fuck me
whether I like it or not,
that there is one use for my mouth
and it is not speaking,
that a man is his most powerful
when he’s got a woman by the hair;
The first time a man I loved
held me by the wrists and called me a whore,
I did not think, “RUN.”
I thought, “This is just like the movies,”
I know a slaughterhouse when I see one.
It looks like websites and seminars
teaching you how to fuck more bitches;
Looks like 15-year-old boys
bullied for being virgins;
It looks like the man who did not flinch
when I said “Stop,”
and he heard, “try harder,”
If you play-act at butchery long enough
you grow used to
the sounds of the screaming.
It is just a side effect of industry;
Everything gets cut
into small, marketable pieces,
you can almost forget
they were ever real bodies.
I will not practice bloody hands.
I will not make-believe dissected women.
My sex cannot be packaged,
my sex is magic,
it is part of a bigger story;
I am whole.
I exist when you are not fucking me,
and I will not be cut into pieces
anymore.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,
You can let them look at you.
But do not mistake eyes for hands,
Or windows for mirrors.
Let them see what a woman looks like.
They may not have ever seen one before.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,
You can let them touch you.
Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for.
Sometimes it is a bottle, a door, a sandwich, a Pulitzer, another woman –
But their hands found you first.
Do not mistake yourself for a guardian, or a muse, or a promise, or a victim or a snack.
You are a woman –
Skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweat
You are not made of metaphors,
Not apologies, not excuses.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,
You can let them hold you.
All day they practice keeping their bodies upright.
Even after all this evolving it still feels unnatural,
Still strains the muscles, holds firm the arms and spine.
Only some men will want to learn what it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you,
Admit they don’t have the answers they thought they would by now.
Some men will want to hold you like the answer.
You are not the answer.
You are not the problem.
You are not the poem, or the punchline, or the riddle, or the joke.
Woman, if you grow up the type of woman men want to love,
You can let them love you.
Being loved is not the same thing as loving.
When you fall in love,
It is discovering the ocean after years of puddle jumping.
It is realising you have hands.
It is reaching for the tightrope after the crowds have all gone home.
Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman men will hurt.
If he leaves you with a car alarm heart.
You learn to sing along.
It is hard to stop loving the ocean,
Even after it’s left you gasping, salty.
So forgive yourself for the decisions you’ve made,
The ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night,
And know this.
Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours.
Let the statues crumble.
You have always been the place.
You are a woman who can build it yourself.
You are born to build.
– Sarah Kay
Painting by George Owen Wynne Apperley
”The U.S. Treasury hasn’t changed the faces on the bills since 1929, when Andrew Jackson elbowed out Grover Cleveland on the $20. Why, you may be asking yourself, did they pick Jackson? And why was Grover Cleveland there to begin with? Nobody seems to know.”
“”Women on 20s” picked Jackson to depose mainly because of his horrific history with Native Americans, although there’s also the rather blissful note that Jackson disapproved of paper currency.“
“The Native American issue looms large when it comes to replacing Jackson, who sent the Cherokee Nation on the Trail of Tears. Lately, [Women on 20s] have decided that when they announce their three top vote-getters and ask people to pick a winner, they’re going to add a fourth option: Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation. (“People felt it would be poetic justice.”)
If I could add a nominee it might be Angelina Grimke, the great abolitionist orator. Or Sybil Ludington, who rode through New York one night in 1777 warning her countrymen the British were coming. (Just like Paul Revere, except Sybil was 16, and rode twice as far.) Or Margaret Brent, who used her business acumen to save the colony of Maryland from being destroyed by mercenary soldiers in 1647.
Or maybe Elizabeth Jennings, the black New Yorker who sued the trolley company that tossed her off a whites-only car in 1854 — a court action that led to the desegregation of mass transit in the city 100 years before Rosa Parks.
But then, of course, you don’t want to pass up Rosa Parks. There are thousands of possibilities. Nominate among yourselves.“
“No matter what I wear, or where I go, Yes means Yes, and NO means NO”—this is the iconic slogan that women’s rights activists have chanted since the early 80’s against rape. And as much as I love this catch slogan, I’m not exactly all for it. Though, yes, its true, the rapist is to blame, you can’t keep denying the fact that sometimes we provoke it with the way-too-low neck-lines, and way-too-short skirts. But I’m not going to write about fashion, I’m going to write about passion, and the lack of it in women.
Psychologists have time and again proven that such a risqué (and cheap) way of dressing is linked with a woman’s weak will, and that shows her submission to a man and her willingness to please him, and no matter how you try to say it, you dress like a whore because you feel good? Yes? And why do you feel good? Because men give you short-lived sexual attention when you do so, and that’s it.
This is an issue, and to ignore it is to ignore an integral part of human rights, or more specifically, women’s rights! The core of women’s rights is not just respect, equality and appreciation from others, but also self-respect and boldness and valor. The way you dress reflects not just your personality, but your mentality; a woman who focuses more what others (read: men) think shows a huge lack of self-respect and security. Women show never have to worry about how we dress and what’ll men about it, what we should worry about is how we can contribute to the world, and elevate our status, in the world. Its this insecure and submissive behavior that’s landed us in this mess to begin with, to continue it is to poison ourselves, and our daughters; a mother supposed to be a strong figure of dedication and motivation to her daughter, someone who leads by example, because its only by leading by example that our daughters will understand that its ok to forget about peer-pressure and boys.
So what if you don’t have a companion in your life? You’re telling me that you have a life, and this world to explore, and fame waiting to be gained, and history waiting to be made, and people waiting to be inspired, and all you care about is sexual intercourse??!!!!! Now that’s a depressing life—now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a world waiting for me.”