Traffic Musings
and the reality of being a woman.
We were driving to a new beach, still unaware how long miles were in LA County. It was 2017 the first year of a new life, a new home, and a new government; all of it painful.
The babies were still babies, my husband drove, and I stared out the window, longing for something: traffic to move, time to pass, a reality I could accept.
“Life is going to be so hard for our girls,” I said apropo of nothing, breaking the silence.
My husband tried to reassure me, giving an answer he thought would be helpful and reassuring. He told me the world was changing, women are getting ahead, women are seen as equal, women can be anything they want to be.
That sweet summer child.
He told me the same thing my parents told me in the nineties, almost thirty years ago.
I laughed. I yelled. I said, “Somewhere, some man is teaching his son that it doesn’t matter if culture is changing: women are less than men, women must be submissive, he can do whatever he wants because women are only here to birth babies and his son will believe him.”
Over the past ten years, women, have had wounds long thought scarred over, reopened, barely able to fuse back together with the onslaught of breaking news:
You can grab them by the pussy, they let you.
Me Too, me too, me too.
Kavanaugh doesn’t hurt women but he loves beer.
Roe V. Wade overturned, along with our bodily autonomy, and the reality that our lives can be spared.
The Epstein Files released, proving what we knew all along: Powerful men think we are a joke; women trying to chase clout think that they can be in on the joke too. Everyone knew, everyone laughed, everyone looked away.
Woman after woman after woman comes forward needing a jury of her peers to believe her when she says, “This man hurt me.”
Elevated, talented women laughed at for saying, “This is hard.”
Unsupported from every angle even though we have more medals in soccer, more medals in hockey, and overall work harder as athletes, parents, and humans. Thank God for Flava Flav.
Women know this reality exists. We carry ourselves shielded in armor, hoping to grow something again, only for the weakest link to give out, knowing, that some man out there is raising his son, just as I said, and we have to rise up in all of our passion, shut it down, shouting, in hopes that we can be heard over the voices saying, “she’s too emotional.”
xoxo
Melissa
January Books:
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Cory Doctorow (5/5 Stars): Put this into your eyeballs. If you have been trying to quit Facebook, Google, Amazon, this will make it easier and will also save you money as you realize you don’t need any of the bullshit the world is trying to sell you.
Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte, (3/5): There are some real laugh out loud moments in this book, some real WTF am I reading, and some real insight into the rejection from those around us for simply not understanding what it means to be human in this world.
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, David W. Blight, (3/5): Just another non-fiction book to remind you that it’s always been bad, it will always be bad, and yet we still hold on to hope because it can’t always be this bad, can it? I actually did enjoy this because I fear I have forgotten everything I ever knew about Frederick Douglass, and this was a lovely reminder. However, it is long, it is disheartening, and time and time again, progressive ideas fold so that we can appease the other side and work together, when really we should just push forward and do the right thing.
Patsy, Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn, (5/5): I wasn’t sure how this book was going to land. I put it off for a while because I could not handle another trauma story after reading well—everything. Every single trigger warning is needed for this book, but I beg you to stay until the end and see how it plays out. Is it reality? Doubt it, is it human? Yes. Is it what I needed in a moment of how bad is it? Yes.
Being Jewish After the Destruction Gaza: A Reckoning, Peter Beinart, (4/5): If you haven’t read A 100 year war on Palestine, I encourage you to read this. A very moving piece, only a little over 100 pages, on what it means to be Jewish while grappling with the reality of what Israel is doing. Peter does a beautiful job of weaving history, and making sure we do not forget the truth about Palestine, and how we live in this era of genocide.