Sisterhood

What is Blog for Choice Day?

Each year, NARAL Pro-Choice America poses a question to pro-choice bloggers before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and then asks them to blog their answer on January 22.

This Year's Topic

In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, "Trust Women," this year's Blog for Choice question is:

What does Trust Women mean to you?

As most of you know, I'd classify myself as a woman's woman. I like to wear pretty dresses, and have dinner parties. It's not a crime, people. I also know how to use power tools. I have a hard time with women who claim that they don't get along with other women, and yet it seems that they're everywhere, claiming that other women are "catty," "bitchy," or don't "get" them.

Every day, in high school hallways, or, I'm sorry to say, in more adult scenarios like a bar or on the bus, it's hard not to hear women calling other women bitches and sluts, putting other women down because of their weight, or smugly analyzing some starlet or high school classmate's "poor" life choices. It's shameful, but I won't lie, I've definitely been guilty of this at one point or another. This is partially a call to myself to stop setting myself and my sisters back.

Worse than this is the way many of us, myself included, treat ourselves. Just this morning, I sat around my bathroom pulling at my blouse, sweating, tearing my hair because I just felt undeniably fat.

It's time to start trusting ourselves and trusting our fellow women. This means respecting ourselves and each other. Band together. Cut the bullshit.

In 1981, Regina Polk spoke to a Teamsters' stewards seminar about reminding union members that every right, every wage increase, and every benefit is something that is fought for and earned. As a fighter for workers' rights, especially women's rights, Polk's words are as relevant here. Row v. Wade isn't something that was just given to anyone, it was something that activists had to struggle to take. It's something that a lot of women's (and men's) hard work, struggle, blood, sweat, tears, and sometimes defeat went into.

Apparently in this country, we have to struggle to keep our hard earned victories. Earning them is not simply enough, and let's be serious, it takes a lot of people's collective hard work to fight. Instead of being jealous of one another, or thinking of ways to cut each other down, as women, let's trust each other. Let's try to hold each other up.

Solidarity, sisters.

P.S. Regina Polk's wardrobe would put mine to shame, and she was still a Teamster badass, so we can really be anything we want to be, with each other's support.

I found out about this thanks to Paige Worthy's blog. Thanks, Paige!