Even though we are human beings and have populated this planet for countless ages, we still seem to misunderstand ourselves. Sometimes we do so at our peril, when we make or break rules that are trying to keep us all safe.
At the moment of birth, we begin the process of setting our lives in stone by designating names, or titles, or conditions. A boy born too early and too pudgy, or a girl born past her scheduled due date and too skinny. We put the newborn in a blue blanket or a pink one; we clothe them in cute outfits with patterns on them of animals, constellations or the local sports team.
We take endless photos of them passively surrounded by baseball-themed toys or princess tiaras. Recently a woman had her infant’s ears pierced prior to discharge from the maternity ward. Perhaps infant tattooing will be next?
We raise our children on our beliefs, or let them make their way blindly with no sense of order. Sometimes they are well-rounded, but at other times our children develop autism, anxiety, depression or behavioral issues. Still we plod on with the program of setting up who the kids are going to be. Our rules; their pain.
At a certain age, we start establishing that the human body needs some parts to be hidden, particularly in the lower torso region. Females have the added burden of concealing their chest areas. And so the divide in the genders begins in earnest, at least for the children. Nobody reviews a thing with the adults, which is a separate problem we won’t discuss here.
Schools receive mixed messages about what to teach children about their bodies. In my time, the girls were huddled into the auditorium, the windows blocked with paper shields, and we saw a few special films geared toward exposing us to the wonders of female maturity. As far as I know, the boys never received such an initiation about themselves. Women enter into a world of monthly scheduling, hiding and controlling body regions which must be kept hidden, and how to suddenly adapt to when boys enter into it all. And this happens in a vacuum, when puberty does not.
Some parents are so against sex education, they send their children to schools in which it isn’t taught. And some people are so set against letting women learn anything, some never attend school at all. A body of water can separate the free from the oppressed in many parts of the world: in the United States, it’s sometimes just a state border. It is a tragedy that human ignorance is set by a wooden gavel hitting a wooden slab after robed, designated individuals decide an argument is settled one way or another.
Throughout history, women have been given freedoms and had them taken away; we have been lesser citizens and then revered in cycles. It used to be women were offered courtesy; men would stand when we entered a room, or doors were held for us. Now it’s everybody (formerly man) for themselves.
We were allowed to own property in some early cultures, but shunned from public view in others. We covered our faces with scarves or full-on hoods and robes. We did “let it all hang out” for a short while, which wasn’t such a good idea, but we did gain the right to vote.
Knowledge is a vital part of what makes us human, regardless of gender. The freedom to become who we are meant to be is often stifled by the blind routines under which some people conduct their lives and raise their children, and it can differ from household to household. What is a crime in the house on the corner may not be in the prettiest home on the block. You are sharing your daily lives with both of them.
Eventually, all the people take sides on what they want the world to be like. Sometimes the decisions we make are detrimental to certain groups. What we don’t need is to set up one gender or the other to be less than what they are the moment they enter this world; that is when the real damage begins.
If a human being is now considered less because of being female, we’re all in big trouble.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 