Today is International Women’s Day and also Blog against Sexism Day!

For International Women’s Day I started a new section on my site about women’s history and issues.

I decided to participate in the Blog against Sexism Day a while back – so now is the time for to do my blog post against sexism.

But what should I write about? I’ve been pondering this all day. Some news stories I saw about International Women’s Day discussed all the progress women have made so far. I don’t feel like making some positive things-are-all-better now posts. I’d rather be more negative, as there is still a long ways to go.

I see where Chantel is doing a ‘how have I experience sexism in my personal life’ type of post. I don’t really feel like examining my life at the moment and reliving any sexism that I’ve experienced.
I spent quite a few hours today reading news stories about International Women’s Day as well as other blog posts about the current state of women.

I now finally and clearly understand that we in the US are living in an ‘oppressive misogynist theocracy’. (Thanks for Twisty for this realization.

The current story in the US that illustrates this point so very convincingly is that South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds signed legislation this past Monday to make forced pregnancies legal. (Otherwise known as making it illegal to have an abortion in that state unless the woman’s life is in danger.)

Which means that a woman raped through incest would be forced t o give birth to her sister, niece, etc.

And worse yet was the comments made by SD state senator Bill Napoli on NewsHour discussing the only circumstances in which he thinks an exception should be made:
“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

So apparently to him if a woman is not a virgin or religious she’s not been traumatized enough to be able to avoid a forced pregnancy. Once again any woman who is not a virgin is a slut who deserves whatever happens to her.

He also seems to be saying that its her loss of virginity that is really an issue, not her well being.While in the US we live in country with forced pregnancies and state-owned uteruses – we also have a so called ‘religious leader’ like Pat Robertson who calls feminism a “socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Elsewhere in the world 583 million women are illiterate – 66.7% of the 876 million worldwide who are illiterate.In Afghanistan, as an example, the literacy rate among women is 14 percent and more than half of young women there are married before they are 16.

In Libya women who are raped get sent to prison indefinitely.

An average of 5 women in India are killed each day in ‘accidental’ kitchen fires because dowry payments have not been met or considered good enough.

Female genital mutilation, honor killings – the list goes on.

When will it end? Or will it?