How else can I say it? Not in a male way, but in a female way. We must tap into our own way of being and bring our power to bear to win this fight. In order to do this, we must put away our all-forgiving nature and call a crime, a crime. We must stop giving in and allowing our own discomfort to be put aside.
We don’t need weapons to win this war, we are smarter than that. We don’t need male configurations for an argument, we are smarter than that also. Women have powerful tools at their disposal, tools that only need to be used to be effective.
Number one, women, we need each other. Going in to testify against a boss in a sexual harassment case, or a stranger in a rape case, is hard work. We need each other to gain the support to get this kind of work done.
Let’s face it! Our cultural training is a lie! No one is going to help us with this. Men are not going to allow the loss of their own advantage without a fight. This is where we women will have to be mean. I don’t say women need to be strong or tough, and I’ll tell you why: Women are the strongest and toughest humans I’ve met, they don’t need more of that. Women need to stop forgiving and stop changing perceptions to fit the white male power structure.
We can do this. We can do this by refusing to sign off on the lies that men in power try to perpetrate. Think about the Catholic church, is it over? Is it all okay now because the priests say so? Of course not! There is still hell to pay, and I mean that literally. The church must pay for the sins of their leaders, and they must pay well! At least as well as they themselves take for their own use.
Think about the half million rape kits that were never processed here in America. While a male TV producer reassures all of America’s women that rapists are caught by the SVU (Special Victims Unit). The facts don’t bear any of that TV story out. Not only are rapists not caught, in a half million cases, rapists are not even pursued. How did this happen? Women, are we asleep at the wheel, are we buying this rapist culture and (pardon the pun) lying down and taking it?
What is keeping us from stopping this pervasive abuse that lives in the American culture? We have not done enough to stop this from going on.
We can stop this power hungry, elitist, white male, rapist culture by seeing ourselves clearly and consciously. We must do this. We must stop this culture that disempowers us and tries to keep us down.
The first thing that we must do is to ban together. Any woman who is being attacked or hurt by men or by male institutions deserves the support of other women. We must do everything in our power to put women into power. We must count on each other to make predominately male institutions better and kinder for both men and women. We should be supporting each other in the here and now. We all (each and every one of us) knows what it is like to be pushed around by male power. So let’s defend each other, right here and right now.
We aren’t out to “get men”. That is not what this is about. We are out to take our own power back. We don’t have to punish our own family members to demonstrate our own power, we just have to tell the truth about what is happening at any point in time.
The last thing on the list is this: think long and hard about your decisions as it relates to your own power and to the power of other women. Don’t try to hurt other women who are smarter, prettier, luckier, kinder than you. Stand back and let them have their power. Think about your own power, do you give it away? Do you hand your power over on a silver platter? If you aren’t wired to be powerful, there is nothing wrong with that, just don’t take from others to justify yourself.
We have the power. Let’s do what needs to be done and turn this world into a kinder, gentler place. Let’s make sure that this new world is not threatened by destruction from our male counterparts. We can do this, we do have the power.