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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Not Every Free Thing is a Gift (Indeed, Very Few Things Are)

The past couple days saw yet another story of a career politician (a gop, natch) making a pro-rape comment. And naturally, those days also saw many people expressing outrage online. The question I gotta ask is this: how are these people allowed into politics in the first place? I'm not convinced that they're all beamed down from some supernatural, misogynist, bigoted mothership. I believe that they are created and installed by us — the people.

Ladies of the U.S., I hate to tell you this, but here it is: The people of this country are firmly primitive and regressive, and there is no possible short-term "change" that will reverse this and so quickly make us a females' utopia.

The prevailing idea in much of the country seems to be that the future is inexorably bleak — in all respects — and that the "old days" were better. Somewhere in people's minds, we were at our highest quality of life in the days when men had complete and utter control, and that slight majority of us known as women were essentially considered commodities — not even human. It was only a little less than a hundred years ago when that slight majority was first granted the right to vote. I wasn't there at the time, but I expect that the women's vote was granted with tremendous reluctance. That reluctance has not faded in the least; indubitably, it is increasing with the presence of all these "regressives" — people who seem to see a long-established religion as permitting and encouraging rape. (I stumbled upon this on a humor site compiling "Unintentionally Sexual Church Signs", and I honestly cannot fathom another way to interpret it. "To forgive is divine! Be a deity! Do what we goddam tell you to!")

No. Do not be sub-human deities. Be humans. Stand tall for yourselves — for ourselves. We got a lot of work to do yet. We may not see positive results in our lifetimes yet. But we have to try.

Teach peace. Teach equality. If you can, teach all the people how to recognize and avoid these. (A reputable-enough source, yes?) And, if you must be religious, at least be very careful with how you interpret your sacred texts. It may take a generation or three for us to come to the point where we aren't electing people and then getting faux-outraged when one of them claims that rape is a gift (basically, paraphrased). And, who knows? Maybe by then we'll have shifted out of reverse as a people and actually rendered our future brighter than it seems now.

Meanwhile, we have to hang in there and work/vote for what is available, while it seems we still can.

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