Thursday

Women's Lib -

Well, I sort of do believe in women's lib. I'm not a 'heavy duty' women's libber, but I am for women to have rights. Of course voting is a given. The right to stay home or work. The right to serve in the armed forces. Equal pay for equal work.

I'm not a dead serious one that will attend protests or things like that, but I think and see if you can follow me here - that sometimes there has to be a person or two that is willing to stand out and make a scene, so the rules can be changed.

One of those I'm not, but I'd help in the background. I'm a light weight women's libber. At least I enjoy some of the benefits of it.

I am against abortion personally, but this is what I think - Why does it have to be legal or illegal via governmental laws? It is a person's decision. How can we judge that - we don't know the whole story. I'm not a judge nor do I want to be. I'll do what is right for me and what I believe in - and other's should have that same right too.

I like some things in women's lib, but not all the things.

I'm also a child advocate.

I think if you look at people who are advocates - a lot of time their passion comes from a source. I worked with special needs kids for years, my daughter does too, and we have some in our own family. Mix that with my personality and you have a staunch fighter for kids rights.

Now women's rights - why do I fight for them? I've mentioned it before and I'll say it quickly. My childhood was less then perfect. Back then there were no rights or places for a child to go like now, or a women!

If women brought charges against their husbands - the judges looked at them as their husbands property. They believed that men owned them and a whack or two wasn't bad in the whole scheme of things.

So what choice did the women have but to stay and be abused? And what about kids rights - their being abused? It wasn't until women's lib came a long and we got some women judges in there that said, "No this is not okay!" No one deserves abuse.

Enough about my soapbox. This is just my opinion. What do you think about women's liberation?



Happy birthday to Gloria Steinem - women's libber - Wikipedia

Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, on March 25, 1934. Her mother, Ruth, was of part German descent. Her Jewish father, Leo Steinem, was a traveling antiques dealer (with trailer and family in tow) and the son of immigrants from Germany and Poland. The family split in 1944, when he went to California to find work while Gloria lived with her mother in Toledo.

Years later, Steinem described her relationship to her mother as pivotal to understanding of social injustices. At 34, Ruth Steinem had a "nervous breakdown" that left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that occasionally turned violent. She changed "from an energetic, fun-loving, book-loving" woman into "someone who was afraid to be alone, who could not hang on to reality long enough to hold a job, and who could rarely concentrate long enough to read a book." Ruth spent months in and out of sanatoriums for the mentally disabled. Before her illness, Ruth had graduated with honors from Oberlin College, worked her way up to newspaper editor, and even taught a year of calculus at the college level.

While her parents did divorce as a result of her mother's illness, it was not a result of chauvinism on the father's part and Gloria "understood and never blamed him for the breakup." The subsequent apathy of doctors, along with the social punishments for career-driven women, convinced Steinem women badly needed social and political equality.



Just thinking today. What is your opinion?