.

In a time when we see Iran hold an Iranian-American prisoner and charge her with being a spy,
when our "entertainments" offer up the likes of Observe and Report of date rape,
when the Republicans choose as the metaphor for their tax protest events "teabagging"—which is known in some quarters as a sexual assault,
when Afghanistan passes then retracts a law permitting spousal rape,
when the Fargo diocese does its Stations of the Cross in front of the Women's Health Clinic and turns a blind eye to their own hypocrisies,
when an Afghani teenage girl is whipped by Taliban for the gory eyes of Youtube,
when Bristol and Sarah Palin are iconized by the rightwing as paragons of redeemed motherhood,
when...well, fill in the blank for yourself.....

But first consider that women are not sexual objects—drools for Limbaugh, tools for WWE and fools for FOX.

Women are toilers at the side of men, and during the recent flooding time in Fargo—and that which may still be to come—they labored to fill sandbags and build dikes and save our communities and still have time to feed and nourish our spirits.

Remember who it was that Jesus showed himself to after the doubting Thomases and thrice betraying cocks had their say.

Sojourner Truth says it best:

"But what's all this here talking 'bout? That man ober there says that women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and have the best place everywhar. Nobody every helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I borne 13 children and seen most of them sold off to slavery, and when I cried out my mother's grief none by Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

"Then that little man in black there he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! What did your Christ come from? War did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all 'lone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it—the men better let 'em. Obliged to you for hearing me. And now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say."*

For the rest of us, much remains to be done, civil rights and civil liberties have both been under the whip for too long, for too many. We can't sit back and expect someone else to make sure we see Employee Free Choice pass, or single payer healthcare, or gay marriage, or well-regulated banks and guns and ....

When the call comes for you to help made change happen, remember, you and me...we got more to say.

.

h/t The Gadfly, Ed Raymond
crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette