-main character, Voices, by Ursula K. LeGuin
I want this to be true in my city and my world.
I want women to be fully equal human beings with equal access to education and healthcare and childcare.
I want women to be able to fully own their own bodies, including being able to divorce, marry, and not marry at will. How much do we hear about men being denied viagra? How much do we hear about women being denied birth control?
I want sex education for women to be free and inclusive and comprehensive (I trumpet Scarleteen as an excellent place to start, but it requires an internet connection and the knowledge that it's there), including a thorough overview of the risks of permanent damage (in many weird ways) and death associated with pregnancy and childbirth. I want deaths like Savita Halappanavar's never to happen again.
I want women to earn the same amount of money as male counterparts. I want women to be able to drive cars, walk down the street and take the bus without being harassed or attacked, take out loans, and have their own bank accounts and property without any oversight.
I want women to be able to vote and be able to hold every public office that their male counterparts can and to otherwise participate fully in public civic life.
I want the cultural narratives that say that women are nice and submissive and gentle and good with children and not good with computers or math or science to die the death.
I want the sale of women under the guise of marriage to stop. Yes, in America too.
I want individual bodily consent to be inviolable and individual life choices to be as free as possible. For everyone.
No, it probably won't happen today. Or even tomorrow. Or maybe for a hundred years. But we deserve this. Everyone deserves this. And I think that if we can imagine kinder, more respectful of our common humanity ways to live together as human beings, we can make it happen. Here's one step forward: coming of age without female genital mutilation
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