So, I was wasting time in statistics listening to Soul Position and this song really struck me. He talks about the difficulties the black community is having in adjusting to their new status in society. Particularly the strange fact that older people who were deeply involved in the civil rights movement are juxtaposed with young kids trying to be thugs.
It occurs to me that this is a similar phenomenon to what is occuring in the female sphere. I know that the civil rights struggles are very different for race and gender. It’s a strange fact that both groups are coming mainstream at about the same time, and in the area of assimilation they have similar challenges.
As far as the gender struggle goes, it is amazing to me that 1950’s housewives, women executives who are pressed against the glass ceiling, and Paris Hilton are all in the same group. The same group I belong to.
What is so frustrating is that women of my generation have forgotten that we couldn’t have the lives we enjoy now without the people who fought for it AND WHO ARE STILL ALIVE! No wonder the feminist organizations are worried about their futures; young people think the fight is over.
Clearly it isn’t. The game has changed. Along with changing rights and roles for women came changes in family, corporate America, and homosexual politics. We don;t have the counter culture that African Americans have developed, simply because we can’t really withdraw from society. The only people who can are lesbians, to a certain extent. For the most part, women need men, and men need women
Enough time hasn’t elaplsed for us to take our rights for granted. Despite the sucess of Hillary Clinton, the wage gap has increased. Women have a much higher risk of contracting AIDS. Poverty is quickly becoming feminized. Definitions of homosexuals are almost always exercises in defining masculinity and its corrolary. I’m sick of it.
Don’t wear your skirts so short. Don’t let yourself become a sexualized thing and lose your humanity. It’s not liberating to reduce yourself to tits and ass. Don’t define yourself by the man in your life. Don’t rely on a free ride. Someone will love you for who you actually are.
God it’s just so frustrating.
