This post started out as a women in the workplace post: Lean In! The Confidence Code! (I’ve only read the Atlantic article, but I did download the book to my Nook – yes, I said Nook). But… recently news, Jill Abramson aside, suggests women’s issues are globally still lower on the hierarchy of needs. We are still on the physical safety rung. Some of us are fortunate to be upset at being called a bitch at work (let it be said: Bitch is a badge of honor at work. ‘Bitches’ get shit done. I’m not one bit sorry that men have issues with it).
This post started last week when I noticed that the topics on This Week with George Stephanopoulos were:

– Nigerian kidnapped girls (how dare they want an education)
– Sexual assaults on campus and the lack of response (not noted was the similar problems recently exposed on sexual assault in military. I would bet this issue is not new, just newly exposed.)
– Jill Abramson and being pushy. (I have no inside information on how she worked at the NY Times, but I know what it’s like to be called pushy and bitchy at work in situations where a man would not be called out)

Then came this shooting. Someone who is going to kill females because they don’t meet his needs. How dare they? I know he must have been trouble, perhaps mentally ill, and his family seems to have done what they could to address it, but.. it happened. And women feel unsafe every day in ways that most men do not understand. I highly recommend reading the #YesAllWomen twitter tag. Actually I don’t recommend it, I demand it. Immerse yourself in those stories. Women live like this every single day in the richest, most evolved culture on earth. And it’s worse other places. I’m not proud to tell you that though I put Jimmy Carter’s latest book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power on my reading list, but haven’t picked it up because I frankly couldn’t face quotes like (and I am not proud to tell you that):

UNICEF reports that more than 95 percent of all the women and girls in Egypt have been sexually mutilated. Well, this is a horrible affliction that is in more than 90 percent of Djibouti and all the women in Sudan, all the women in Somalia, all the women in Egypt and more than 50 percent in more than a dozen other countries.

http://www.wbur.org/npr/292429202/jimmy-carter-issues-call-to-action-against-subjugation-of-women

I could’t face it, but we need to because it’s not acceptable.

I hope This Week covers this shooting appropriately, though it is rapidly changing from a serious news program to a variety show, appealing to the lowest common denominator. An earlier tweet from them says they will be covering NFL lawsuits. Sure, it’s not right that the NFL doesn’t help with medical bills after making so much money off of the players, but they chose to play football. Women don’t chose to be women and the certain don’t chose to be targeted because they are women.

This topic is so large, it’s difficult to know where to start. I’m tired of: what if it were your mother, sister, daughter? What if it were a fellow human being?

Watch more with Jimmy Carter:
http://video.pbs.org/viralplayer/2365243875