Women and Children Last

The similarities I observed.

     Most of the people in the Middle East were still going on a tangent about how bad Western ways are. The uneducated were preaching to the uneducated. They sure acted like Westerners. All I saw were drive by shootings on a highway. We have drive by shootings here. People were being killed because they did not follow Islamic ways. We had a witch hunt here and lynched the Latter Day Saints. So, tell me again why the West is so evil?

     Why are you killing children? What kind of future are you trying to create? You are murdering innocent people in the name of your faith. You are killing off children and making them upset because they are losing friends and family members. A world cannot be run by children. Just look at Malawi. I thought shooting children and destroying schools was a very Western idea.

     My new hero had emerged from Pakistan in the form of a teenager. Malala could very well be the reincarnation of Mother Teresa or Joan of Arc. I realized that Americans took for granted more than we thought. 

     At school in America, children face violence. They face violence in the streets. Nobody knows when they are going to get shot by any Joe Schmo. People bring guns to school for whatever reason and kill everyone. Children get shot on the street by some wacko who is stalking them and the wacko gets away with murder in self-defense. Shooting children is very much a Western idea.

     Malala was denied this and she stood up. She spoke up. The Taliban, who was threatened by this child, got onto her bus and shot her in front of her friends. She survived and she started speaking up again.

     She showed her friends and that extremists cannot stop you from getting educated. She showed the world that even a child can tell extremists who is in charge. This is a reminder of how important rights are to children and women.

     Around the world, girls struggle to get an education. Their lives are threatened. Lives at schools are threatened. This is all for wanting an education. During ancient times, women were educated. Why is this being changed and why is this being blamed on Western civilization?

     When our mothers and fathers arrived to this continent, rich people had control of everything. The wealthy were the ones who had the right to vote. The white, wealthy men were the only ones who had a voice. 

      Poor white men could not vote. African Americans and Native Americans could not vote. Women could not vote. Democracy was born and voting rights were slowly given to more people. People thought of Democracy as giving equality to Americans.

     If you were black or a woman, the equality did not apply to you. What did it mean exactly? Democracy meant that the status of poor white men were equal to those who were wealthy white men. Eventually, everyone had the right to vote. Inequality still exists when Democracy should be about equality.

     For a time, women would get arrested and tortured in America. Women faced much hardship fighting for the right to vote. Women got arrested for smoking. Women fought their way through history for the rights that we have today. This includes rights at work and rights for birth control. 

     People had to fight for their rights to get where we are today. Today most women take their rights for granted.  American women can drive cars, vote, go to the movies, and go to school. We can choose who we can sleep with or marry. We can smoke. 

         Both men and women are attacked over religion and sexual orientation. I think that women take more of the crap. We went through torture to earn our rights to vote. We have taken plenty of guff for wanting to wear pants or smoke a cigarette. 

     I find it amusing when Saudi Arabia states that women cannot drive because it is harmful to their ovaries. Really, I would like to see who wrote that rule and prove that as a scientific fact. Would this individual like to come to America and see how many women drive and have a ton of children? So, what happens to the testicles when the man is driving? Well, nobody should be driving then.

     For some reason, society has created a rape culture. Why is rape even a culture? This is something that applies to every single continent. Men and women alike should be concerned when it comes to sexual safety. In most countries, if a woman is out at night, it gives a man an excuse to rape. In America, if a woman dresses a certain way or is drunk, it gives a man an excuse to rape her.

     I do not see how people do not get this. Whether you are straight or gay, both genders are in danger. Not only does it damage you physically, it damages you psychologically. Sexually transmitted diseases come from this. All of the above can kill you.

     In India, a woman went to see a family movie. Her and her friend went, so she was not by herself. Obviously, she was not a woman of the evening because she was out watching a family movie. They got onto a bus after the show and the people on the bus attacked her friend and violently raped her. They made one excuse after another trying to justify killing a human being. Their excuse was that she was a woman who was out at night. 

     If you think about it, behavior like this makes your country look really bad. It is bad for economy. This causes a decrease in tourism. It is bad for how other cultures look at you. This act caused India to look bad. Nobody likes being sexually harassed. We especially dislike you when you come to our country and do it here.

     A rash of rape and sexual harassment cases made it to the public eye. This happened around the globe. We hear nothing, but idiots speaking. "It's natural." "It's God's gift." "Rape kits make it go away." All I hear and read is one excuse after another.

     Rape knows no gender, race, or clothing. If you rape a child, doesn't that make you a pedophile? I watched an interview where this old Muslim man was saying that an infant must be dressed with modesty. If you are looking at a child in a sexual manner, that makes you a child molester. I can understand if we are talking about maybe children in a bikini and in a pageant. Yeah, I totally agree in that sense. Otherwise, you are a sick, sick puppy.

     I met one of Ahmed's friends and I could not get his age for the life of me. Ahmed began asking me if it was wrong for his friend to be dating a 17 year old. At the time, I thought his friend was 21. According to Ahmed, the friend was 17.

     The difference dawned on me. They don't have any laws against marrying off children. I explained to him that it is illegal to be with someone under 18 if you are over 18. Why? I read that when it happens in Idaho, you get life in prison.

     That is a slight difference between our culture and other cultures. Children are being married off...wait, what about the polygamists in America? We do not want to get ahead of ourselves here because even Catholics have been accused of raping little boys. Where is the line we drew that makes us primarily focus on Muslims?

     Marriage seems to be a concern overseas. While polygamist colonies marry off children to their uncles, children are being married off in other countries. 

     Cousins were already being married off to each other in places such as Iraq. This practice causes birth defects. Arab Nations has the highest number of birth defects in the world. I do not know how this is so considering how many reports come from India about babies who are born with deformities that make them look like Hindu deities. 

     It makes one wonder if it really does has something to do with the environment. These cultures seem to be the ones that glorify deformities. In Islamic culture, a birth defect is a blessing. In India, people flock to worship a baby when it clearly needs medical attention. It makes them look bad when it is a girl. They are abusing or taking advantage of a girl one way or another.  

     It seems that terrorist groups have taken advantage of this culture. Terrorist have been kidnapping girls. They sell them off into prostitution or marriage. If they are not doing that, they are strapping explosives on her and sending her into the city. For some reason, this makes the girl look like she had a choice. I have seen comments stating, "Why would a child do this?" 

     Have you not been paying attention? Boko Haram kidnapped 200 girls; it has been confirmed that they were murdered. ISIS kidnapped girls. They set the older women free and kept the rest. What is wrong with everyone? Why is everyone trying to make the woman look like the bad guy? This world is a mess.

     While this is happening in other countries, Americans are posting comments accusing the girls as though they are at fault. For some reason we completely ignore what is really happening. Somehow we forgot.

     We forgot the girls who have been kidnapped and married off against their will or sold off as sex slaves. We forgot the struggles that we went through here to be able to do the things we can do today. We still struggle. It was as though we are given rights under certain conditions.   

     I think that we let differences in cultures get in the way. There are some things that are acceptable in other countries, but not here. I do not believe it gives us a reason to act out on these people especially when we do not understand them and they do not understand us.

          The lives of women are in grave danger.  A man will even attack a woman with acid if she does not like him. Women are attacked in America because of pregnancy and politics.

     A woman was beheaded in the streets of Saudi Arabia. She was accused of molesting her niece; I think it may have been a step daughter. The hands of women are being chopped off because they were using a cell phone. A woman was beaten to death because she was accused of burning the Quran. 

     In America, we are lucky that we do not have to put up with that. Women still have to put up with politics. Politics are against us in America especially, when it comes to reproduction. Everyone thinks that they have a right to tell a woman what to do and this is not limited to Arab Nations. It is not limited to India or Africa. 

     In Colorado, a woman attacked someone who was pregnant. She cut the baby out of the mother's womb and tried to make it look like her own. The attacker is being protected because the baby was not breathing after it was removed from the mother. There is not enough protection for women no matter what country you are in. 

     I had no idea how my rights were in jeopardy until President Obama was running for president. I never realized how many chauvinists were in our office. The chauvinists were both male and female. Even females; can you imagine?  

     Politicians have the gumption to put regulations on a clinic that provides women's health care. They regulate the clinic to the point where it has to shut down. They will say there is not enough space and if the clinic cannot change they must close. This places the lives of women in danger who need to terminate their pregnancy. 

     Not only that, women cannot get the health care they need for anything else. Women will not have easy access to their annual exam. Women will have to travel for cancer screening and treatment. They will have to travel to get tested for any health problems. 

     It is not like we are going to a clinic to have an abortion. Someone had the brass to tell me that pregnancy is not a health problem. So, I asked him if I went to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion every year. People act like women are breeding machines and that is the only thing our body is capable of doing. Nobody looks at the fact that relationships are not monogamous anymore and diseases are created from this. 

     It could be worse. In India, the practice of using ultra sounds is being banned because women are using them to see if they are having a girl. If she is having a girl, she might seek having an abortion. She may or may not have a choice in the matter because typically the father and family want her to give birth to a boy. In most cases, family members try to murder her if she is going to give birth to a girl. 

    Even though dowries are prohibited, people still practice this. When a woman is getting married to a man, they must provide expensive gifts. The man gets rich and this is why people continue to do this. 

     I do not know what this world has come to or if it even had changed. It feels as though nobody is moving forward even though I have many rights. If only we could look at each other as an equal. How else are we going to teach children how to get along with each other?