After reading this article, It made me think about my daughter. She is probably the strongest woman I know. From the time she was in the womb until now she has always been strong, confident, independent, a go getter, and not afraid to take chances. And, she want take anything from a man. She is 24 years old has a degree in Math and is teaching high school. She just bought a brand new car and home she purchased on her own. She is planning to return to college and pursue a  master’s degree so she can teach at the college level, someday. She even has plans to start her own business. There is no limit to what she will do.  I believe she is the true epitome of what a feminist stands for.

Reading this article about military culture got me to thinking about the other day when I got in a heated debate with my husband about his poor choice of words and how he acted out in public.  While out in public, one day, he got very angry at a store clerk and stormed out of the store using profanity with every word of his breath. I was just mortified, I felt like crawling under a rock. I told him later he was totally out of line and he had no right talking to that person that way or in front of me for that matter. His excuse was that when he was in the military that is how all his buddies talked and that he was not going to change and that I might as well get use to it. I told him that was “hogwash” and that he had the ability to cleanup his mouth. I told him that using profanity just showed his lack of intelligence. What I said must have insulted him. Well, needless to say, I have not heard another cuss word come out of his mouth in while. Hopefully, it will stay that way.    

I just shuttered when I read this essay about the author’s rape account. It made me recall a person I thought was nice and decent, but turned out not to be that way at all.  A  year ago, I discovered a boy I had dated when I was sixteen turned out to be a sadistic person. I was watching on the news one evening that this boy now a man was arrested for stalking,  kidnapping, raping, and sadistically torturing his girlfriend. It turned out he had abuse several of his other girlfriends.  When I dated this boy years ago, he appeared very nice and charming to me he never was out of line with me, so as it appeared. However,  now thinking back on the situation there were a few red flags, I just did not take notice. He was a bit possessive at times and temperamental. I thank God for my mother’s intuition. She did not like him from the start, she said there was something sinister about him. Nevertheless, she broke our relationship off after about four months. She refused to let me date him. I was upset with her for the longest, but I got over it. If it were not for my mom’s insight about his personality, I could have very well ended up like those other women, one of his victims.

After reading the article “A Black Women Took My Job, it made me come to the conclusion that my husband and son alike clearly fit into the category of men with that ”traditional masculinity” train of thought. Recently, just for one day, I tried, I begged, and pleaded to get my husband and son to help out with some of the household chores. Since we have two bathrooms in my house, I asked them nicely if they would be willing for each to clean a bathroom. You should have seen the grimace look on their faces, you would have thought they were going to the dentist to get a tooth pulled. Well, they agreed, after much deliberation, but the entire time they bickered and complained especially when it came to cleaning the toliet bowl. They even had the nerve, to tell me it was “a woman’s job to clean toliets.” And, they did not even try to do a good job.  I got so tired of hearing them gripe, that I gave in and finished the job.  Well, that day they succeeded in maintaining there role that men are not suppose to clean house and that it is a women’s job.

After reading Riverbend’s posts about her life in Iraq, it made me have a deep appreciation for my life here in the United States. I was amazed at the horrible ways that her and her family and so many other countless Iraq families have to go through on a daily basis. The things I take for granted and view as trivial such as having a home that is safe, having water and electricity, and knowing my life will be allright the following day; but for Riverbend and other Iraq families those are things they have to fight for each day in order to survive.  It sadden me to see that she and her family had to flee her home , the home she was raised in, in order for her and her family to have somewhat of a better life. I notice in one of her post some similarites between Iraq and US Families in regard to the status of Men. Basically, Men there just as Men in the US, are treated with higher regard then Women. I also notice  in one of her post about her describing one of the elderly family members and how they are treated with high regard and respect, given more authority in the family. That unfortunetly isn’t the case most of  the time in the US. Most of our elderly, are treated with indignity and disrespect. They are basically tossed aside. And, that needs to drastically change. Well, in conclusion to this blog, I am still happy to be a US citizen and I would not want to live anywhere else on this planet earth.   

It is true for women, when it comes to health care issues. We just don’t get taken seriously. My Mom went for years suffering from Lupus. When she first got sick, she went to her doctor and was told she was suffering from a flu virus and that all she needed to do was go home and take some aspirin that in a couple of days she would be fine. Well, she did not get better, weeks went by and she returned to her doctor, but she still did not get help. He told her it was just all in her head. “Psychosomatic” as he called it.  What he said discouraged her so that she finally decided just to weather through it on her own. For five years, she suffered from all kinds of problems, from mouth infections, chronic tiredness, skin rashes, hair loss, debilitating joint pain, urinary tract infections, and yeast infections. It was finally after she had a severe bladder and kidney infection that landed her in the hospital ER, that something was done. My mom is just an example of how women  just are not taken seriously. Sadly, many women have died because they were not taken seriously. And, their deaths probably could have been prevented if someone had just listen.

After reading this chapter it made me realize I too have been caught up in the “beauty ideals” mention in this chapter. As a teenager,  I worked while in High School, and any money I made always went towards beauty items and clothes. I tried to save money for a car, but inevitably I could never save. And, when I got my paycheck I would end up at the local Mall sometimes all day just buying things to make me look glamourous. I even went on crash diets. I even resorted to diet pills just to be thin. By doing these things it did not get me anywhere, I did not get to save for a car, I even ended up physically sick from the diet pills and crash diets.  And, ironically I did this all in the name of beauty.  

After reading Judith Lober’s, “The Social Construction of Gender”, it occurred to me that women as well as men are still  entangled in that “gender Construction” mentality today as they were years ago. It seems that much has not changed and if it is it is moving very slowly. It appears that men and women are still seeking occupations that society dictates as feminine and masculine. In my LVN Nursing Class there are only five males out of Sixty- five enrolled. I find that kind of sad because males  as well as females could make great nurses. They could make great contributions to the nursing profession.   

These last couple of weeks since school started have been horrible. Anything and everything that could happen has happen to me. Well, mabe I am over exagerating a bit. However, I have had one family crisis after another. This past week, I received some bad news about a family member of mine.  After hearing the news, I just broke down and sobbed. I even missed an entire day of classes because I just could not function at school the following day after hearing the bad news. It hurt me when my husband told me by crying I was acting like a baby, he told me I was weak, and that I needed to get some backbone. It occurred to me that he was the weak one. He was taught you should not cry it shows weakness. I think it shows incredible strength in someone when they cry especially for a man. 

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