Response to:
“Suburban Women: The New Vanguard of a Cosmopolitan Uprising?”
Larry,
For many women, it is simple. We are fed up.
Sadly, suburban or not, our community & Country has reached a level of violent threats that include hate crimes towards women, against our friends, and ourselves. People now openly threaten to beat women over customer service dilemmas. It has reached a level where oppositional critics rally for aggression while dismissing the request for assistance in preventing further violence.
The current public attitude is “that’s your problem.” Instilling violence against women in our community is not productive, and using social media posts to inflame a derogatory & savage retaliation is vulgar. Wearily, I realized that I was able to disrupt the progressive narrative about women, but I had done nothing to secure its prosperous growth.
And that is the problem; women between the ages of 35-55 have done very little to maintain the equality milestones our predecessors created. In 1919, women stood outside the White House and demanded that they are allowed to vote. New laws in the 1920s would promote women’s health and education. In the 1960s and 70s, feminists guaranteed, under the law, limited equal rights in the workplaces of universities and colleges and secured the use of contraception, along with abortions rights.
Now we are mad, fed up, screaming “me too”, your “times up”. It is that simple. Suburban, urban, rural or exurban are inconsequential factors.
As a businesswoman, I seek out and maintain sustainable practices in the multiple businesses I run. Sustainability rests on the principle that we must meet the needs of the present without compromising the abilities or opportunities of future generations. Therefore, if we are given a chance to influence other people, we should not influence their hate, jealousy, or anger.
We have wasted almost a half century, and things have not become better. Women were slipping. But now, we are fed up. We need to get back up and push ourselves, push our pain to where we need to be. Our pain will move us from where we are today to where we want to be in the future.
Women have an opportunity of a lifetime.
Women, if you want this to be your decade, you must give up the trivial. Stretch, work day and night, and reach for your unfolding future. We are inches away from losing all those rights the women and men before us had struggled to achieve. You don’t want it bad enough if you’re going to relax on the weekends. You can’t relax, you must get up and decide how you are going to fix this it. We need to teach valuable skills and life-long lessons emphasizing that Women’s Rights are invaluable to our society. Teach young girls that poise and grace can exist with grit and passion. Because this is a long hard fight, do you have the skill and determination to stay in the game? I do; challenge me, be stronger than me, make us all reach towards a better future for Women.
I’m fed up.
Jenneffer Pulapaka
#womeninspirechange
