I Am Woman

When I was the women’s platform chairperson I wrote a letter to the club’s Board of Governors exposing the fact that the manager at that time had made billing decisions outside his scope of authority.

The letter was not well received. Not because I had made fallacious accusations —my message was absolutely spot on correct. It was because as a woman it was not my place to be the messenger.

I am smitten with the show Shameless Sunday nights on Showtime. It chronicles the dysfunction of a large Irish Catholic lower middle class family in Chicago’s Southside.  There is raw truth in the storyline.  Yet despite the portrayed dysfunction, there remains a loving cohesion among the characters.

On a recent episode of the show, one of the teenage female characters pulls down her panties and pisses on her father’s grave and gravestone. She had been the victim of her father’s verbal abuse for many years. And while the scene was seemingly vulgar, it was appropriate. And I embraced the rawness of the scene not just because the act of urination was symbolic, but because on a different level it demonstrated that a woman is as capable of the physical act as a man. Females are equally adept at pissing with intent and precision as males.  In fact an argument can be made that because women can control the quantity, and start and stop time of their flow, they are in fact superior.

And because I am of the Helen Reddy I Am Woman generation and understand like the aforementioned fictional character that there is nothing my gender cannot do as well (if not better) than men I forget that in male dominated domains my voice is expected to remain silent. I am expected to mind my place. Glass ceilings and fraternal oligarchies still exist. Discrimination lurks often times in plain sight—and sometimes from the unexpected. And while I, and the writers of Shameless have been to the mountaintop, the reality is that we are still not all treated as equals—but maybe one day. I have a dream.