“Help! Help! I’m being repressed”

by Tara Sheldon

I originally intended my first guest post to be about empowerment – what it means, and what it truly looks like in this day and age, vs what society tells us it is. But, I’m going to shelve it for the moment in favor of something else that has been weighing on my heart. Let’s get down to it, shall we?

P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney

The average person aged 15 and older has an attention span of about 20 minutes. The percentage read of posts containing 111 words or less is 49%, while posts containing 593 words is only 28%. Users only spend 4.4 seconds for each additional 100 words written. Average watched video length is only about 2.7 minutes, I believe.

That doesn’t give me a lot to work with because I can be pretty verbose. I blame our instant gratification society, (5 whole minutes for this microwave meal? UGH!) and I blame the internet. It’s all snippets of information organized into little, bite sized lists. We don’t even have to work hard to find answers anymore. Encyclopedias, libraries, books? What are those?! We just need to point, click and, voila! Everything imaginable is available at our fingertips, so our brains aren’t used to working anymore. We lack the discipline even, to force ourselves to focus on something for longer than 20 minutes at a time.

Which Disney Princess are you?

I know everyone likes those quizzes on Facebook. You know, the ones that tell you which Disney Princess you are, or what flavor potato chip you are, or how you drink your coffee can reveal your true personality…the ones that we like to do when we’re procrastinating? They’re fun. I know I’m definitely guilty of taking a fair few.

So I thought it would be fun to make the rest of my blog post into one of those neat quizzes. I’m positive it will make the contents very simple to read. But this one is just for the ladies. Sorry fellas. No room for any mansplaining in here! But you are free to take it as well gentlemen, if you’re ready to be “woke”. Ready? Let’s begin.

Like Cosmo but not…

1.   Have you, your daughters, or any female relative or friend ever experienced female circumcision? (more links )
2 .  Have you, your daughters or any female relative or friend been forced into prostitution? (more links)
3.   Have you, your daughters, or any female relative or friend ever been forced to get an abortion? (more links)(more links)(more links)
4.   Have you, your daughters, or any female relative or friend ever been trafficked? (more links)(more links)
5.   Have you, your daughters, or any female relative or friend ever been a child bride, or forced into marrying anyone? (more links)
6.   Are you, your daughters, or any female relative or friend not allowed to receive an education be it elementary, secondary, and college/graduate school? (more links)(more links)(more links)
7.   Is it considered treason to have beliefs differing from your government, having opposing beliefs to the actions of your government, and are you allowed to march and protest without fear of being jailed and tortured as well as your entire family, for those “crimes”? ( more links)(more links)(more links)
8.    Is it illegal for you, a woman, to vote?
9.    Is it illegal for you, a woman, to drive?
10.  Is it a crime for you to be gay (male or female)?
11.   Is the penalty for you to have extra-marital sex, (an affair or sex while unmarried) death by stoning, or to receive a minimum of 100 hundred lashes with a whip, all in public? Rape is also included, for the record.
12.  If you were raped, is it illegal for you to testify against your rapist?
13.  If you were raped, is the testimony of four men required to prove that it occurred?
14.  Are you required to have your husband’s permission to divorce him?
15.  When you divorce your husband, do you lose custody of any children that are age 6, or when they reach the age of 6?
16.  Is your husband allowed to beat you for insubordination?
17.  Is it illegal for you to be in public without a male relative as escort?
18.  Is it illegal for you to speak to a man that is not your husband or relative alone?
19.  Are you considered property?
20. Can you own property?
21. Can you make your own choices?
22. Can you purchase birth control?
23. Can you wear what you want?
24. Is it your choice to have as many or as little children as you want?
25. Can you even become a man if you wanted to?
If you answered “No” to the first nineteen questions, and “Yes” to the last six, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! YOU ARE NOT OPPRESSED!!!

Time for some girl talk…

Now, how about we all sit down and try to figure out how to help and empower the women who have the opposite answers than we did to those same questions. While I was researching this, I had to stop because I was weeping so hard, at all the atrocities going on around the world. Did you look at the age ranges of when little girls get “circumcised”, and at the large percentages that occur from 0-4? ZERO TO FOUR. BABIES. If you have a daughter LOOK AT HER and try for your heart to not break thinking of those poor babies, and be grateful that hasn’t happened to her. But by all means, go put on your stupid pink hats, and march because you want the government to pay for your abortions and your birth control, because you think your rights are being taken away, because you say you make less than men, and because you feel you are less than a man, and because Trump is a pig.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear- this is NOT ABOUT TRUMP. Is he a despicable human being? Yes. I don’t argue with that. And be grateful that you and I are free to say things like that about him without fear of retribution. But if you really want to do something helpful, get down on your knees and PRAY FOR THE MAN and PRAY FOR YOUR COUNTRY. Do what you can to help those in need, and I don’t mean “helping” by buying Starbucks, supporting Lyft, or becoming an airbnb. I’m talking about helping to feed the hungry, the needy and OUR homeless.

So, I’m going to let Madea restate my point…