Why I watch

A really smart person surprised me by asking about my last posting.  Why do I care what people say about my rights?  After all, this is America.  It’s 2012!

I care because I’m a student of history. Ninety-two years ago, women in the United States were still fighting for the right to vote. We didn’t achieve that until ratification by three-fourths of the states of the Nineteenth Amendment, August 18, 1920, when women finally gained the right to vote in a federal election. 


Mississippi did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1984.

Not until 1965 (Griswold v. Connecticut) was it legal in every U.S. state for a married couple to use birth control. 

Most people know that extremist factions in Afghanistan prohibited women from attending school, working, driving, going out in public without a male relative, or even appearing in public without being covered, head-to-toe. But it wasn’t always like that.

“Before 1996… nearly half the doctors, university students and teachers in Kabul were women.” (see citations 1 and 2, below*)

Did you know that? Extremism can happen.  Even in America. After all, a lawmaker in our country recently had this to say: 

NPR article – “Girl Scouts destroying ‘American Family Values’.”

I have no printable words to sufficiently express my thoughts on his comments, except: are you #&@! kidding me?!?**  This person was elected to make laws in our country.

I have a niece in third grade. I watch. I care. I also laugh:

Big Train (satirical) Sexism Debate

*1: Read more: Time on Women in Afghanistan

*2:  PBS on Women in Afghanistan
** Standard disclaimer: Swearing like…? I am, literally, a sailor.  ðŸ˜€