Today, while catching up on my Feministing, I read this article about how young women do not get acknowledgment from older feminists. So many people in their comments expressed a desire to start a new org, just for young people, to talk about reproductive rights.
Oh my goodness. Where do I begin?

Do you ever feel like one of the Whos from Horton Hears a Who? As in, you want to shout, "We are here! We are here! We are here!" over and over until FINALLY the someone hears you? Because I sure do. Alright, here I go.

A message for the world: Young feminists are HERE! I would never say that I could speak for all of them, but I'm going to give you one big general rant about my top three issues tonight, and anyone else who wants to can feel free to chime in at any time.

With so many states tightening restrictions on abortion due to the perceived threat of the health care bill, with ab-only education back like the zombie it is, with ever more victim-blaming rape apologists being published, I want to cry for the state of women's rights in this country.

Could you ever see a man being told he couldn't have a perfectly legal operation because his doctor was morally opposed to it, and that he would have to drive to another city (watch your step on the way out, there's some protesters out there who are opposed too)? Could you see him being told there would be a wait period before he could sign the papers to have it, because the state wants to be sure he's really thought it through, and really knows what's going to happen? Probably not, but women in Oklahoma now have to listen to a verbal description of the fetus to make sure they know what it is. Because women don't know what they're doing, but men do.
 
Could you ever see atheists telling Christians and Republicans that they must have sex before marriage? Probably not, but the religious right feels that they're rights are infringed upon if they're not allowed to tell us we must not. Funny how individual rights apply where taxes and guns are concerned, but not with peoples' bodies.
 
Sometimes I want to ask the victim-blamers to consider the following situation: Suppose a straight man goes to a party and decides to get drunk. At some point in the night he goes into the room of another man, who rapes him. Whose fault is it? Now replace the straight man who went to the party with "woman" and see how your perspective changes. Because to these guys, who think women are "consenting to anything that might happen to them" if they decide to get drunk, it is somehow different, whereas to the rest of us, the rapist is always at fault. (Duh.) Logic just doesn't apply here for them.

In a completely unnatural segue that will make sense momentarily, I've been studying Ancient Rome recently and suddenly a lot of things make sense to me. The patria potestas used to govern the lives of anyone whose father was living- only the father of the house could own property, make his will, and decide who would marry whom. Abortion used to be decided by husbands, not women, and in an age with out soap, it was usually fatal (probably why Christians banned it). Women used to be married as young as twelve (but in Christian society wouldn't be until the ripe old age of 18- is it any wonder that Christian women outnumbered Christian men in those early years?). So now I understand how Christians came to believe what they believe about certain things.

What I don't understand is why literally 2000 years later, in an entirely different time and culture and technological paradigm, I still live in a world where it is considered a debatable question whether women should be allowed to make choices for themselves, and whether young people should be allowed to know about their bodies and how to care for them. I have privilege in that I don't personally face issues of access to information, or contraception, or an abortion if I needed one. But every time I see another young person denied these things, I am reminded that I can take none of that for granted.
 
I am a young feminist, and I am not ungrateful for my right to vote, or wear what I want, or be heard more than my grandmother or my mother would have been. I am someone with access to everything I need to stay healthy and make my own choices, and I am not ungrateful for that either. 

But it is NOT enough for me to have these things. I want more. I want better. I want to be as respected as my male peers. I want them to not be surprised when a blond girl has something smart to say. I want to be able to stop explaining that consent is important, and have people already know that because they've already gotten informative and accurate sex education.
Most of all, I want to reach out across the country and the world, and hand to others the things that I have, and then these things that I don't (the things that no young woman really does), that we should ALL be able to take for granted.

Society, I have a problem with you, and I am here, I am here, I am here!!!