The South Needs a Revolution.

This is completely similiar to all my other posts but for any oppressed female in the south, you understand my frustration.

I had lunch with a coworker last night, it was fantastic. She’s not from Alabama which explains why I get along with her. Now that I think about it, the girls I get along with most aren’t from Alabama but anyways, she is as confused as I am about the issue of politics in the south.

It’s almost like an epidemic, really. Ever since I was seventeen I thought that I was a bad person for being a democrat in the south. I’m tired of it.  I don’t think people realize how big of an issue this is. In the south, women are literally taught from the time they are born that they are to get married and bear children. This mostly results in girls that get married the second they get out of high school and start pushing out babies. This thought horrifies me, of course if I had a child now I would hardly be considered a very young mother  but still the thought of being a mother at (nearly) 22-years-old scares me.

Mind you that I, myself, was not raised to believe that I should be a good wife and a mother. My mom taught me the opposite actually, she always said to never put myself in the situation where I would be dependent on a man. I took her advice and the older I get the happier I am about that decision. I am now  in a relationship with a man that knows 100% that I do not NEED him for financial and emotional survival and that I am merely with him out of genuine love. It relieves me because our relationship is in a position to where if we got married it would not be based on financial benefits it would honestly be based on true love for each other and the desire to spend the rest of our lives together.

But back to oppression, women are also shoved in churches lead by pastors that preach that being a republican is the only way to salvation. It’s completely bizarre to me. These aren’t all churches, just a certain denomination that I would rather not name so if you are a preacher, please don’t get offended I don’t mean that all preachers preach this I know several that don’t. Some of these preachers also preach in a judgmental way towards people, most popularly homosexuals and pro-choice people. I was never raised to think this way. It is beyond me that people think that republican Christians are the only ones going to heaven. I’ve never met a northern republican so I don’t know the difference in varying regions, all I know is the republicans in the south, and they can be scary.

I recently got into a heated discussion with someone I went to high school with. She pretty much said that Barack Obama could not be a Christian because he was progay marriage and pro abortion. This upset me, the most common misconception about democrats is that we run around promoting gay marriage and telling girls to have abortions. What we mean by prochoice is we don’t think it’s OUR right to tell someone what to do with her body and we don’t think it’s OUR right to judge someone based on a decision she made. As for progay marriage, we want everyone to have equal rights. How is that bad? Not necessarily Chrisitian wedding ceremonies that are seen as completely equal to a heterosexual marriage, but a union between a homosexual couple. The only reason I am against a Christian wedding ceremony for a homosexual couple is because the bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman. I see nothing wrong with a civil marriage in homosexual couples. No one, no one deserves unequal treatment.

The older I get, the more I realize that I am the ultimate nightmare for a republican male Alabamian. Apparently I am a bit of a radical. I don’t see it, all I see is that I will NEVER deny who I am. I will never say I am something I am not and if I see someone being mistreated I won’t keep my mouth shut. I stand up for myself and for others as well. For this, I am often called a feminist. I think this is funny because what oppressive men really mean by “feminist” is “she has an opinion.”
I don’t understand women that sacrifice their happiness for a man. Happiness is one of the most precious things a person can possess. I have always seen it more valuable than love. One can be in a relationship and “love”  someone but be completely miserable. Nothing is more cumbersome than depression.

So why all this oppression in the south? I have no idea. Women are shoved in churches that preach to them that the only way they will live God’s will is by voting republican and submitting completely to their husband. I understand the union of a marriage but no where does it say that the wife must be so submissive that she is stomped all over by her husband. This message of “the submissive wife” has been completely warped. It is to the point where it appears that some men are almost afraid of women, especially the women that speak their minds. The submissive wife the bible speaks of, in my eyes, is a woman that loves her husband and sees him as the head of the house and takes care of him.  Yes she answers to him, but she does not allow herself to be his personal doormat or emotional punching bag. In return he is to care for her and see her as his companion.

My favorite writer in the bible is Paul. He always writes in a way that treats men and women equal. What is often overlooked about the bible is the fact that in the time it was written, women were seen as material posessions. Just because one writer may have written in a way that makes women appear inferior to men DOES NOT mean that God views women this way. It simply means the writer did and these views are reflected in the society he lived in.

The longer I stay here, the more I see I don’t fit. I become disgusted whenever a girl tells me she just wants to get married and have babies. I understand that procreation is important but I don’t think it is the reason why women exist. I’m sorry I don’t believe the ONLY reason God put me here was to get married and have children. I don’t even like kids. At the bear minimum he put me here to rescue a handful of rats from being snake food.

My heart really goes out to any girl or woman reading this that thinks her only purpose in life is to be some guy’s doormat. It’s not. No one should ever feel financially dependent on someone else. Just remember you don’t NEED about 3/4 of the things society makes us think we do but what you do NEED is happiness. It’s ok to be selfish sometimes and it’s a lot better than waking up when you’re in your fifties and realizing that you’ve spent the past thirty years with someone that makes you miserable, doesn’t understand and would never want you to branch out past his arm’s length. So stand up for yourself, my mother always taught me than a man will only treat you the way you LET him. Afraid of being alone? Forget about it, take it from someone who was in an emotionally abusive relationship for 2 years, being alone in GREAT compared to being unhappy. The feeling of moping around in depression trying to make the best of a horrid situation is no way to live. Thinking you are STUCK in an unhappy situation is no way to live either. There is always a way out and it is never as bad as you think it is. It took every ounce of strength in me to get out of that oppressive relationship but I dug inside of me and found gumption, something that I consider to be the result of self-respect and pride. Sometimes you have to play the role of your own best friend. Lord knows I’ve done that for years. If you saw one of your friends being completely miserable you would be there for her right? You would do everything you could to keep her happy and you would want her to eliminate herself from the source of her unhappiness. You can do that for yourself. I was so afraid of the pain I would feel by ending that relationship until one day when I realized I was so miserable that if I ended it with that guy worst case scenario–I would be miserable. Well I already was and the latter form of misery is temporary. If I kept myself away from him the pain would go away, well if I stayed with him he would continue to plague my happiness.

There is nothing, NOTHING, worst than someone surrendering his or her happiness, freedom, life to allowing someone to make him or her unhappy and I would bet that 1 in 3 people do that.