Raising Girls & Boys To Know They Are Equal

Raising Girls And Boys To Know They Are Equal

In this day and age, I am still seeing the view that girls are not equal to boys. We do it at home. We do it at school. It’s shown on TV and in the papers. But we are doing an injustice to the children.

We, as women have come a long way in the United States in our status as equals. But we are only just beginning in our status of being equal for the first time in thousands of years. Women have not always been lower class citizens. Lately, I have been reading a book called “When God Was A Woman” by Merlin Stone, and it has made me think.

Ms. Stone discusses, for example, how women in Libya were once in charge. It was forty-nine years before Jesus of Nazareth was born. Women would have the children and then turn them over to the men to raise in a communal type setting. Women made the decisions. They were in charge, they had the war parties. Men weren’t allowed to even hold any position of power. But look at women today. Women are lowly, and are considered to be property in that very same country.

How did the change of Goddess to God bring down such a destruction of life?

You can still see these type of thoughts in the United States today in the rural areas, and even in some cities.

We need to start as parents the minute our children are born; to raise them with the thoughts that we are equal in all ways. But this is hard to do when everywhere they go, they are shown different.

When boys and girls see on TV how another woman was raped, it conflicts with what we teach them ourselves. It is shown in the news each day. Rape is another form of control and a way of showing women that they are not equal.

We have to have shelters for women and kids to run too, because they are being beaten in their own homes. You read about it in the papers and see it on TV. How do we teach children our own values, in light of these things our children see?

We send them to school where the football and baseball teams are still segregated and if a girl goes out for the teams, she is made fun of and she is not considered feminine and is considered a threat. But on the other side of the coin, if a man is cooking, cleaning and taking care of his family or a boy is learning these things, they are considered feminine and/or that the his wife has left him, and how could a woman do that to her children and husband?

We need to teach our children there isn’t anything they can't do, based on their gender. Boys and girls are essentially alike. We need to get into the school systems and insist that they quit showing gender bias.

We need to help the women being beaten, and their children need to know that they are equal and count and that the cycle can be stopped. Men can take care of babies, cook and clean and that they are not to soft because of it.

Women can go into sports and jobs and they are not lesbian or dykes, (well maybe they are, but its not because of their profession).

I hope some day, that we all will be viewed as equals.