Women

J.K.Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series

How can anyone act against, have a demeaning thought about or insult women, as a group, in 2012? It boggles my mind beyond belief.

The only reason I can think of, for doing something so irrational and illogical, is terrifying fear. Anyone who attacks women must be so scared of them that they resort to the only defense of the weak man, violence. Be it violent behavior or violent speech.

(Making jokes about why men are scared of women would be so easy I’m just not going to do it. It’d feel like “an eye for an eye”, a philosophy that, as everyone knows, accomplishes only the result of getting everyone blind.)

‘Male chauvinism’… Just writing these words feels to me like using long disappeared characters, from a dead alphabet, of a civilization that got swallowed by the eruption of a volcano and burned up in smoke in its crater.

Male chauvinism is so the past, it’s not even funny, literally. It’s not funny. It’s not even last millennium, it’s two millenniums ago. And it wasn’t funny then, either.

I had a hard time watching the first two seasons of Mad Men because of how we disrespected women in those days, imagine what happens to me when I read of the unbelievably sad behavior of men like (just to pick on the obvious) Chevy Chase,  Mel Gibson and super sad Adam Carolla (I mean, how can anyone say women aren’t funny, unless they don’t live on earth? Here, I’ll just name the first few that come to mind in the next 5 seconds: Lucille Ball, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Marta Kauffman, Nora Ephron, Ellen DeGeneres, Lily Tomlin, Betty White, Annie Wood and the list goes on for hours – here’s a Vanity Fair’s Article on the subject).

Rosa Parks

Discrimination (against anything or anyone, really, be it sex, color, race, weight, height, religion or anything) is one of the most insidious diseases of human kind. It atrophies our brain and shrinks our minds. It’s what wars are based on. It’s what misery is founded on. It’s the antithesis of compassion. It’s the sign of a very fearful and fogged mind and, most of all, it doesn’t make anyone happy.

So, why?

And in particular, why have it against women?
Really?

First of all, we all come from women. So if you’re angry at women, you must be pissed off about being alive. That can’t be good. But the funny thing is, it’s not women’s fault. A woman can’t make you by herself. So, by the same logic, you must be angry at men, too, which makes you a sad person, angry at everyone, unhappy about being alive and fearful of everyone. And that can’t be good, either.

That’s a whole lot of sad, trust me.

Or maybe, those who belittle women are stuck in the dark ages? Well, let me assure you that, if you let go of your judgment anchor and come sail with us into the new millennium, it’ll be good and you’ll have a blast.

One of the things I can’t stand about religions (Catholicism, Judaism or any similar one) is that they depict and refer to God as a man. How short-sighted is that? I can’t stand it because it lessens my mind.

Whenever I hear a “spiritual master” (never mind a priest or a rabbi) talk about God and say, “Because he… Ask him… He is… His will…” I immediately want to walk away and say, “Are you for real? HE? He, who, Bob? Jimmy? God’s a man? In 2012?” (It’d be enough to say God, instead of he or him, and God’s instead of his, every time we refer to God, and that’s that. Simple. At least my mind wouldn’t convulse when I listen.)

Why do we have to give God a sex? (I podcast about this) Because we’re not ready to comprehend that God’s everything? But isn’t that the very definition of God?

Mother Teresa

God is everything, right? So why choose to physicalize God as a man? Doesn’t it limit the totality of God? Doesn’t it confuse the heck out of everyone? Yes, it does. In fact, people are so confused that they hate and kill one another, they discriminate, insult and denigrate others, they live in fear and anger.

So why do it?

Please, don’t get me wrong, anything that opens our mind, betters our behavior, puts a smile on our face and a loving thought in our heart, is great. If religion does this for you, fantastic. I’d just like to point out a little detail. I was born and raised Catholic, in Italy (the Pope’s home), and I also found myself in the midst of the Jewish culture from an early age. I had a very direct exposure to and experience of the Bible, until I discovered something that made me take a closer look at things. What we read and believe in, now, what we base “our” judgement on, one of the kernels in the collective consciousness that still makes a lot of us say nasty (and untrue) things against women,
is a book
which is a translation
of a translation
of a translation
of a translation
of bits and pieces of written material
written by men (not women)
collected by men (not women),
and heavily edited by men (not women)
most of which happened in a glorious period of human history called
The DARK Ages.

Lucille Ball

I just wanted to point this out in case it sparks a glimmer of new awareness for you, like it did for me.

And if we can’t abstain from giving God a sex, I say, let’s make God a woman and hope that we’ll fix at least some of the chaos we’ve created in the last 2000 years.

Anyway, I digress.

But, I mean, seriously.

Imagine life without women… there would be none. Let alone the magnificent beauty of mind, body and spirit women have and bring to everything.

Tina Fey

And women are brilliant and hysterically funny!