Hey Mr. Maybelline - Why Are Women Hated, Neglected, Exploited and Oppressed?
Inspired by the Lindsay Clancy Trial
The Lindsay Clancy trial has brought up a lot for me. Some of which I put on the back burner sometime ago after writing my 7th book, Normalizing Abuse, about the exploitation and abuse we normalize in society, but my anger is renewed and moving back up to the front burner these days! What’s wrong with Americans, particularly in their relationship with women? You might say this is a patriarchal issue and this rant might have been more aptly titled Why Does Patriarchy Hate Women? but it seems to me for all the talk of American Exceptionalism we Americans are last on way too many lists. Ten years ago Time Magazine raised the alarm with a piece titled Why America is Falling Behind the Rest of the World, and under Trump, global metrics have gotten worse and widened significantly. When compared to other Western countries, the US consistently ranks at or near the bottom across several critical quality of life health and social metrics despite its immense wealth, and world-leading GDP: Life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, income inequality, child poverty, racial inequity and discrimination, gun violence, incarceration rates, voter turn-out, press freedom, political polarization, happiness and social connection, public transit and basic infrastructure, a threadbare social safety net – and women’s health is neglected! How’s that working for you Republican supporters? Are you even paying attention or are you too busy praying away the Trans or waiting for that $5000 bribe?
We all tend to notice these things most when they affect us. Well, I had hemorrhaging fibroids for years and I was amazed the medical profession didn’t have a good understanding of this condition. Bleeding into the toilet like you’ve turned on your uterine blood faucet is apparently normalized. Solution: Cut it out. Later when I started teaching women’s empowerment circles it came to light how only recently we learned about the pleasure powerhouse of the clitoris – thanks to a female urologist - despite tons of previous research having been done on the penis. Now, because of the Lindsay Clancy case, where a mother killed her three children, what’s come to light for many of us is how little we know about post partum depression and psychosis – minimized for too long as just the baby blues.
I’m mad as hell. I’m so tired of women being neglected, exploited and abused. We bring life into this world and that concept has been taken for granted way too long. We have the perfect storm of misogynist men who know and care nothing about how women’s bodies function taking away women’s rights to their bodies, complaining because not enough white teen agers are getting pregnant, trying to sell the Trad-wife lifestyle to unsuspecting young women before they’re fully cooked and know anything about who they are or what they actually want for their life – and their hypocritical female enablers and influencers are guilty, too. You have people romanticizing marriage and having children, taboos around our bodies and sexuality keeping both genders ignorant, and now Christian Nationalists want to go back to the days when women couldn’t even vote for their economic interests. Young women, do you know your mother and grandmother couldn’t get a credit card on their own? You were basically men’s property!
I interviewed women in that Evangelical Quiverfull Movement. They were told their role in life was determined by their biology and you were to continue to have babies until you couldn’t and if you went one pregnancy too far for your body to survive, well, you can feel happy that you were a martyr for Jesus! And where’s the next young thing standing in line for the widower to marry? You have women carrying 71-73% of the cognitive labor required to run a household and mediocre and ignorant men with the emotional maturity equivalent to a gerbil whining about how some women are choosing not to marry them or have sex with them. Why the hell would they? No wonder we’re staying home with our cats and are happy and content to do so JD Vance, or whatever your name is, Mr. Maybelline!
People in what we’d call third countries have a healthier respect for childbirth than we do in our so called “advanced” culture. A woman from Senegal, West Africa spoke on Oprah Winfrey’s podcast about how when women give birth in her country, the family or the community steps up. (Remember when Hillary Clinton was mocked for saying it takes a village?) The mother is only to rest and bond with the baby. Birth mothers aren’t supposed to figure out how to do it all, carry the entire emotional and physical load for their family while they’re sleep deprived, their body is raging with hormones, they’re trying to recover from being split open – and get back to work in 6 weeks! If they have any maternity leave! My friend from the Netherlands informs mothers in Scandinavian countries get professional in-home post partum care. A maternity nurse visits your home daily to monitor the baby and mother. They give breastfeeding guidance, look after other kids and do household chores. This helps mothers heal and rest and bond with their babies. In other western countries, both parents get 16 weeks maternity leave so both parents share in the challenges and joys of the new arrival. You know, that Democratic Socialism so many are busy rejecting!
Thanks goes to Judy Hiscox and Chris Balke for their deep dives providing me with the following research to share ….
As for American mothers murdering their babies because of psychosis, heaven help you if you’re poor, a single mother, marginalized in society and not white. You’re probably sitting in a jail incarcerated rather experiencing part of the country rallying round you. An article from the National Library of Medicine found that, "The mothers (who killed their babies) were often poor, socially isolated, full-time caregivers, who were victims of domestic violence or had other relationship problems. Disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and primary responsibility for the children were common".
According to a law review paper on the legal system regarding these kinds of situations these women “are at sea; at the whim of whichever jurisdiction they happened to live in and the recent tides that shaped that jurisdiction's current legal conception of insanity.” Law Professor Daniel Maier Katkin did a study of twenty-four such cases in which women asserted postpartum psychosis as a legal defense. His results emphasize the discrepancy in treatment these women receive:
"Of those cases, eight women were acquitted, four were given probation, ten were sentenced to between three and twenty years, and two were sentenced to life in prison. " The fates of these women were inexorably tied to the caprice of misunderstanding and ignorance regarding the severe and devastating condition that is postpartum psychosis. Such incongruous treatment is indicative of an anachronistic reaction to repugnant tragedy and reveals a pervasive ignorance of this disorder on the part of legal and medical professionals. “
But other places are not living in the Dark Ages.
In the UK judges are more merciful and have discretion when sentencing women who have snapped. Not here. It’s too often ignorance and cruelty that reigns - an eye for an eye. To hell with the concept the woman was literally out of her mind, on over-load and cracked wide open. Women are expected to do it all, figure it out. Carry all the weight mostly alone.
Men should have some equivalent experience but I don’t know of any in our society.
This opinion of mine surely isn’t the end all and be all on this topic. I’m ranting off the top of my head here but I think we have to ask ourselves what’s wrong with Americans? How have we become so ignorant and cruel? Why are we still so racist, xenophobic and misogynistic? Are too many of us trying to get to heaven by emulating Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice on the cross? Are we watching too much Fox News? If you’re a woman were you not taught self worth and to have boundaries. Please tune in to the documentary Shiny Happy People! Where the hell is our critical thinking and why aren’t more of us demanding our tax dollars go to a better quality of life for US instead of billionaires and con-men?
Nothing changes unless we demand it. Remember that. No one is going to roll over and give up their privilege, their access to power, their tax breaks, their domination and control unless we use our sacred roar and whatever strategies are available to us – including voting! Just thinking about a golden future won’t manifest it.
Women are rising. The Divine Feminine is rising. We’re not going to take this much longer. Enough of us are educated and know better – which is exactly why some want to suppress the vote, ban books, destroy integrity in journalism and democracy and condition us to submit to male authority.
Hell No! Gilead be gone!
“To blame feminism for the decline of the traditional family is to admit that the old way relied on women’s oppression to sustain it” == she inspires strength on Amazon Warrior Goddess Facebook page.
AMEN SISTERS!
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