I Am Sick With Rage And Sorrow

From Reuters:  Girls Assualted by 'Soldiers' During Conflict.  Children as young as 8 have been sexually assaulted during the conflict between rebels trying to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and forces loyal to him, a British charity (Save The Children) said.

I am weeping.

I am raging from the bottom of my heart.

 

What lies dormant in our DNA that makes men take out their rage and frustration on women and girls in the form of systematic rape?

It's happening in Libya.

  It's happening in the Congo and Haiti.

CBS reporter, Lara Logan, was grabbed off the street, in front of her camera crew in Egypt and assaulted last month.  Scores of other women in the Mideast are coming forward with their stories of rape by I'm-so-pissed-at-the-system-men.

W        T         F

What Happens If You Are Both The Turtle And The Hare?

If you look at my archives you will see that I went dark for a number of months.  I was very busy negotiating our local teacher's union contract and producing a big fashion show for one of my clients.  I wasn't inspired to write here, but even more puzzling, I was not interested in reading any of the blogs that I normally follow.  I was having trouble focusing on another business idea that I had.  Other than emailing and/or researching things on the internet, I wasn't even really online.

So I seriously began to wonder, because I am of a certain age, if I was starting to become more luddite and less Steve Jobs-like.    Would my tiny bit of Twittering and blogging really keep me plugged into social media, from a job hunting perspective?  Would my use of a 2nd generation smartphone hold me back in a significant way? Because Heather, the Queen of all Working Mother Bloggers was twittering and blogging from any Foursquared location she liked.

Oh, I haven't dropped the big one on you.

I am one of the 2 people on the planet, above the age of 13, that isn't gaga over Facebook.

In fact, one of the most popular phrases in my lexicon, is "F*ck Facebook!"

But....I couldn't help wonder if FB was fcking me (over) as it, and Twitter, are the Google and Amazon of this era of the Internet.  And, if I wasn't the doyenne of social media, who would hire me?  Heather has the social media world by the tail.  Why was I so much like Tippy when I'm usually the Roadrunner?

I was vexed.  Very vexed.

But then things turned around.  The contract was settled. The Guru is making progress.

And you are reading this now.

RIP Gerry Ferraro - You Helped Make Me a Feminist

Read this and then come back.  I had to marinate a bit on why Gerry Ferraro resonated with me.  She was the first woman, named to a national ticket in 1984.  I was 1 year out of college and making my way in the business world.  I hadn't made any choices, yet, (except maybe 1 - but that needs to stay under wraps for another decade or so) that might label me a feminist.

It hasn't been until about the last 15 years or so that I've been comfortable with that label.  And, especially when I read another woman that I really like, Gloria Steinem, talk about feminism and what the definition really is, I think - of course I'm a feminist.

To effect change, somebody has to be the first.  I was the first girl to play golf on my high school boy's golf team (thank you, Title IX) because we didn't have a girl's team.  A number of girls followed in my foot steps, although the school was/is so small, that they never had enough girls to field a separate team - but any girl that wanted to play golf could.  (And it was my dad who suggested I ask if I could play on the boy's team - he also wanted me to take auto shop instead of cooking/sewing in jr. high when we went up to the high school for those classes so I would know my way around the insides of a car!)

Hillary could have been the first - but instead Barack is.

I'm probably the first working mom from the suburbs that has ever said that she has more in common with what the Log Cabin Republicans stand for than any other political party.

The NYTimes article at the opening of my post says, "Ms. Ferraro could effectively charm powerful men, but she did not back down on substance."  I was once talking to my dad and felt very strongly about whatever it was we were talking about and he said, "Tocqueville, don't be so strident."  And, of course, with about 30% of his vocabulary, I needed to look up the word.  And then I understand that I wasn't being effective in making my point.

So I hope that I instill in my children how to effect change and, in the case of my daughter, that she's not afraid to embrace her feminism.