In a list I belong to, a post was made about suffragettes, and the truth about women getting the "right" to vote. Many people (myself included until fairly recently) did not know the full extent of abuse and suffering those women endured for the women of their time period, as well as all of us to follow. The history of the vote has been sanitized and made to look a certain way in my opinion to keep men from looking bad. (And yes, this includes the African American "right" to vote, this is a complex issue and all facets cannot be addressed in this one post, but that is not to say that the other components of this issue are not important for they surely are.)


I do not believe in an us vs. them thought process, so this is not going to be a male bashing post at all, but the truth will be spoken, good and ugly.

Anyhow, I found it ironic what I stumbled upon after I read the post. I read it, I had the usual thoughts, thankful for what they did, sad that they suffered as they did, more sad that other humans felt the need to cause so much suffering over something that should have never been an issue, and such. These feelings are so common as a woman, that they came, and then moved on rather quickly for the familiarity of it all.

Later in the morning I was visiting a blog about relationships, there was a link to a poem, which took me to another blog. The poem was interesting and the blog was unique so I wandered a bit and found a section of links to other blogs, which led me to another blog, both of which I will give the links to at the end of my post so if desired one can check it out for oneself.

The first link is regarding a current ad campaign here in America. The next is a blog in which the company of the ad campaign is discussed as well as many other companies and their track record of how they esteem women, and examples of that esteem.

As the saying goes "we have come a long way baby", and yes we have, to be sure, but not as far as many seem to think. Much of it is an illusion IMHO. And the worse part to me is that we should have never had to "come a long way", there was no way to come, we have always been equal, we should not have to fight for what IS ours to begin with.

Again, this is not an us vs. them issue, women are just as culpable at devaluing as men are. No blame here, no pointing fingers, but I do hope to draw awareness of both women and men alike to this. The subtle inequities in our society are so deeply ingrained that they are unquestioningly just accepted as fact/reality. Many men do not see it in themselves, may men consider themselves very evolved, very supportive of women and women's right, but deep down there are subtleties that they act out on, or show in their speech, which shows other wise.
Even at the supreme court level it happens, with the supposed most evolved/enlightened men of our society, the ones that are a representation of our desires of equitable , just and fair decisions. I tried to find the article that was on Comcast news about a month ago, but cannot find it, which gives examples of the subtle slights that are just norm in our society.

I find it interesting in the second blog link that the parent company for Dove, the personal product brand that has gotten many High 5's for its campaign to build girl's self esteem, and to celebrate "real" beauty, not air brushed, is the same parent company for Axe, men's/boys body spray. If you have seen any of their commercials, you will see the value of women as touted as one thing for a Dove commercial and the value of them as another for Axe.

Take time to peruse and such if you so desire.

http://about-face.org/blog/archives/category/sexualization

http://www.oneangrygirl.net/girlcotts.html#clothing



As stated prior, this is a very complex, multi-faceted issue, that touches many areas of humanity, it really is not a woman/man issue, it goes into so much more and is so much more far reaching.