Just Like a Girl

I think about those insidious statements and institutions and countries and ideas that have limited girls and women. I think about my own daughter, and how both her mother, Tessin Bozard, and I refuse to place those limitations on her.

I think about the religious environment that I was a part of for many years, and how girls and women were/are told to act; how too often many of these girls grow up to be women who define their success or status based on "what their husbands do".

I think about the world wide abuse that girls and women take. Daily. And sometimes hourly. Because they are girls. Because they are women.

I think about countries where men perform gender mutilation on girls and women to "control" their sex drives, and thus, control them.

I think about growing up in a home where my father would say to my sister, Michele, "If you get pregnant, I will throw you out of this house, and you'll have to find some place to live!" And how my father would turn to us boys and say, "If you get somebody pregnant...then you will have to find a job to continue living here."

I think about how I am part of the problem if I don't speak up.

My daughter will never be raised to believe that she is less than a man; if my daughter is heterosexual, and chooses to marry a man, she will not be raised to think, not for one minute, that any man is the "head" of her or her family.

I think about my voice, and how I can help empower girls to take back the insult and turn it into their weapon; how I can confront boys to question their words, their thoughts, their limited viewpoints.

I think about all of this, and so I share it with you, my friends. Watch it! Pass it on. It brings me to tears.


http://youtu.be/XjJQBjWYDTs