We see more blood in our lifetimes. We are under attack from the moment we wake in the morning, until we go to sleep at night. We walk into battle every day no matter what uniform we are wearing.
And the women who step out of femininity and speak out for their fellow females, they are the cavalry. The women who leave men behind and focus on their love for other women, they are the black ops. The ones who write about oppression and feminism, they're the journalists, the warriors of words.
Yesterday, I read this inspiring article that affirms an important point I have been advocating for the past two years. Women are capable of doing anything that a man can do, and then some.
Arguments in favor of patriarchy almost always return to the same exact point--that males are physically stronger and therefore superior to females. While it might be true in a biological sense, what exactly does it mean to be 'stronger?' What political, social, or economic gain does it give a man to be able to benchpress 430lbs vs 225lbs? How does being physically stronger help this world achieve more peace, more humanity, help fight environmental degradation, which in itself is a reflection of the way women are exploited and ravaged all over the world? What does it matter that men are physically stronger when we use guns and bombs to go to war?
This argument has always frustrated me deeply, because the concept of physical strength is relative. There are female body builders who can lift just as much as any male body builder. And again, just what is so significant about being able to lift? Have women been historically tagged as 'the weaker sex' because they are truly physically weaker, or because they have been groomed for passivity and discouraged from physical activity?
The truth is in the latter of that statement. Men don't want women to be strong, because they don't want women to be able to defend themselves.
As a writer and reader with a feminist mind, media that I can bear to consume is a constant struggle, and I know this is true for many women, lesbian and bisexual, who crave stories about the true physical and emotional strength that exist within and between women. This is why I feel that The 100, despite being written by a man, Jason Rothenberg, is such a massively important television show.
The women characters in this show (which often predominate the male characters--amazing!) are just as likely to get beaten up, scraped up, dirtied, and fight back as the men in the show. They are shown with so much dirt and blood covering their face that you can barely recognize them, which is practically unheard of in modern television. Have you ever noticed how female characters tend to keep their clean face and perfect makeup whether they are running through underground caves or waking up in a mucky, dirty cell? The women of The 100 yell out, speak out, rage out, fight, claw, and bite their way to survival and success.
This is what I want my own characters to do, and these are the female characters I want to read about. This is how I want to see women in stories--battling and scraping by for their life as a metaphor for the battle we do every day just to achieve a little autonomy separate from men.
To every woman out there, happy International Women's Day. I stand with you, as we stand together.
Women need not be afraid to fight, because they are already warriors, whether they know it or not.
(Octavia, one of the main characters of the CW's "The 100.")
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