Safety Of Women Quotes

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?

It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different--men and women live in different worlds...at core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.

Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time—that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.

Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.

The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in danger of repeated abuse.

Not being assaulted is not a privilege to be earned through the judicious application of personal safety strategies. A woman should be able to walk down the street at 4 in the morning in nothing but her socks, blind drunk, without being assaulted, and I, for one, am not going to do anything to imply that she is in any way responsible for her own assault if she fails to Adequately Protect Herself. Men aren’t helpless dick-driven maniacs who can’t help raping a vulnerable woman. It disrespects EVERYONE.

Hadley grabs the laminated safety instructions from the seat pocket in front of her and frowns at the cartoon men and women who seem weirdly delighted to be bailing out of a series of cartoon planes. Beside her, Oliver stifles a laugh, and she glances up again. “What?” “I’ve just never seen anyone actually read one of those things before,” “Well,” she says, “then you’re very lucky to be sitting next to me.” “Just in general?” She grins. “Well, particularly in case of an emergency.” “Right,” he says. “I feel incredibly safe. When I’m knocked unconscious by my tray table during some sort of emergency landing, I can’t wait to see all five-foot-nothing of you carry me out of here.

she, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life, her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of their days. It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after a battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child.

The women all had big minds because they were big animals, but they didn't use them for this reason: unusual ideas could make enemies and the women, if they were going to achieve any sort of comfort and safety, needed all the friends they could get. So, in the interest of survival they trained themselves to be agreeing machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking and then they thought it too.

Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.

Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets, for child care, for social welfare, for rape crisis centres, women's refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says, 'Oh, I'm not a feminist', I ask, 'Why? What's your problem?

Love tames the benumbed beast. A man is put to use regarding a woman's physical safety, but a woman is put to use regarding a man's mental safety.

All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivete, inexperience, or foolishness.

Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.

He is your Father, and His role is to protect you; He will comfort you and guide you. He will feed you; He will carry you when you are weak. He will seek you out when you go astray; He will help you in times of trouble. He will not let your enemies go unpunished; He will cherish you like a father cherishes his daughter. When you fall, He will pick you up; when you don’t understand, He will always understand. When you feel like life is weighing you down, He will lift you up. When you feel like giving up, He will encourage you to keep going. When you are sad, He will lighten your spirits. When you need advice, His line is open 24-7. When you feel unsafe, He will be your safety; when you are worried, He will be an ear to your concerns. When you feel burdened, offer your burden to Him and He will take it. Where you have been burnt, He will make you beautiful; where you hurt, He will heal. Whenever you feel lonely, He will always be with you. Where others have not supported you, He will support you. When you feel discouraged, He will be your encouragement. Where you don’t know, He will tell you when the time is right. When you feel unloved, remember that He has always loved you. You see limitations; God sees opportunities. You see faults; God sees growth. You see problems; God sees solutions. You see limitations; God sees possibilities. You see life; God sees eternity.

We walked through the streets with our protectors. We wore our dresses. We gave up our education because that was the price of safety. That was the bargain we made with the devil we knew to escape the devil we didn't.

Females with ASDs often develop ‘coping mechanisms’ that can cover up the intrinsic difficulties they experience. They may mimic their peers, watch from the sidelines, use their intellect to figure out the best ways to remain undetected, and they will study, practice, and learn appropriate approaches to social situations. Sounds easy enough, but in fact these strategies take a lot of work and can more often than not lead to exhaustion, withdrawal, anxiety, selective mutism, and depression. -Dr. Shana Nichols

safety has never been our privilege

Individuals set boundaries to feel safe, respected, and heard.

Many of the signals that either stoke or diminish female desire have to do with the female brain's question: Is it safe here?

I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other. Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, 'I stay out of prison.' This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, 'Nothing. I don't think about it.' Then I ask women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine. Here are some of their answers: Hold my keys as a potential weapon. Look in the back seat of the car before getting in. Carry a cell phone. Don't go jogging at night. Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights. Be careful not to drink too much. Don't put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured. Own a big dog. Carry Mace or pepper spray. Have an unlisted phone number. Have a man's voice on my answering machine. Park in well-lit areas. Don't use parking garages. Don't get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men. Vary my route home from work. Watch what I wear. Don't use highway rest areas. Use a home alarm system. Don't wear headphones when jogging. Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime. Don't take a first-floor apartment. Go out in groups. Own a firearm. Meet men on first dates in public places. Make sure to have a car or cab fare. Don't make eye contact with men on the street. Make assertive eye contact with men on the street.

Rape culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety. Rape culture affects every woman. Most women and girls limit their behavior because of the existence of rape. Most women and girls live in fear of rape. Men, in general, do not. That’s how rape functions as a powerful means by which the whole female population is held in a subordinate position to the whole male population, even though many men don’t rape, and many women are never victims of rape.

A woman who goes around wearing a knife is obviously looking for trouble." She reached deep into her pocket and brought out a long, slender piece of metal, glittering all along one edge. "However a woman who carries a knife is ready for trouble. Generally speaking, it's easier to appear harmless. It's less trouble all around.

We are coached, above all, to prioritize our likability as the surest path to safety and survival.

perhaps the greatest challenge to thinking women is the challenge to move from the desire for safety and approval to the most "unfeminine" quality of all -- that of intllectual arrogance, the supreme hubris which asserts to itself the right to reorder the world. The Hubris of the god makers, the hubris of the male-system builders.

Being tame is what we're taught: ... put the crayons back, stay in line, don't talk too loud, keep your knees together, nice girls don't... As you might know, nice girls DO, and they like to feel wild and alive. Being tame feels safe, being wild, unsafe. Yet safety is an illusion anyway. We are not in control. No matter how dry and tame and nice we live, we will die. And we will suffer along the way. Living wild is its own reward.

It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?

Both men and women remain in dysfunctional, loveless relationships when it is materially opportune.

The clear lesson of New England’s history is that when there are not enough suitable men around to run the world, women are perfectly capable of doing so.

She had expressed herself, as women will, in a smug broadside of pastel shades. Nothing clashed because nothing had the strength to clash; everything murmured of safety among the hues; all was refinement.

Esther was more man than most men I know, myself included. Many of us—men and women—are extremely passive and cowardly. We don’t take risks for God because we are obsessed with safety, security, and most of all, with the future.

Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine. If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it. Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured entirely by your favorite means of sidestepping the suffering you rarely allow yourself to feel. And when you do touch the surface of your suffering, perhaps in the form of boredom, you quickly pick up a magazine or the remote control. Instead, feel your suffering, rest with it, embrace it, make love with it. Feel your suffering so deeply and thoroughly that you penetrate it, and realize its fearful foundation. Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering. By eliminating the safety net of comforts in your life, you have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openness which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love.

Here is the world. It is not a safe place, but however frightening and bewildering life may become, we can survive our fears, grab them by the wolf ’s tail as Peter did, and make peace with the world.

A wise woman protects her kids. A wiser woman hangs out with police officers, retired FBI agents and private investigators.

But sometimes, when she'd be all by herself, walking home late in the evening on a crowded street she'd be afraid of her own shadow following her...

Well, make up your mind. I don’t have all night.” Fidelia set her beer on the porch and removed a set of keys from her skirt pocket. She fumbled with the key, trying to release the trigger lock on her pistol. “Don’t do that,” Heather warned her. “You’ve had too much to drink.” Fidelia snorted. “I’m not drunk. I’m in complete control.” She tore off the trigger lock. Bang! The gun fired, ripping into a nearby oak tree. The women screamed. Jean-Luc winced. A squirrel plummeted from the tree and landed in the yard with a thud. Fidelia shrugged. “I meant to do that. Damned rodent’s been gnawing on the house. And stealing all the nuts from our pecan tree.” Heather planted her hands on her hips. “Haven’t I told you a million times to keep the locks on?” Fidelia hung her head, looking properly remorseful. “I’ll be more careful.” She switched on the safety, then shot Jean-Luc a pointed look. “I know how to deal with a scumbag with nuts.

Women do not enter a profession in significant numbers until it is physically safe. So until we care enough about men's safety to turn the death professions into safe professions, we in effect discriminate against women.

For the first time in history, middle-class women do not need men in the traditional ways - for safety, for money, for a life. So they’re demanding instead what they always wanted but couldn’t ask for: emotional connection, presence, intimacy. Sex with enough foreplay, enough seduction, enough closeness to please them. Men are baffled not only because the needs they are being asked to fill differ so from what their fathers and grandfathers understood to be their jobs but also because full-fledged intimacy requires strengths and skills they’ve never learned. Moreover… they’re strengths and skills that were once left solely to women: Men didn’t have to develop them. This maturational mismatch may be contributing to distrust among lovers of all ages.

Not all men! cry the good ones. They don’t want to be feared, so it is our job to fix our fear. That is, sure, being a woman who gets assaulted and fears it at every turn sucks, but it’s not as bad as getting your feelings hurt. It is the job of women to caretake the feelings of good men, even at the cost of our own safety. We are trained from birth to accommodate them and their uncontrollable urges.

Our freedom and safety are the ultimate goals, and it is men who prevent us from achieving those goals. But not all men, says Mejal. Ona clarifies: Perhaps not men, per se, but a pernicious ideology that has been allowed to take hold of the men's hearts and minds.

The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit." If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.

John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.

The divorced Indian lady combines every fantasy about the liberated, wicked Western woman with the safety net of basic submissive familiarity.

He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it

Hadley grabs the laminated safety instructions from the seat pocket in front of her and frowns at the cartoon men and women who seem weirdly delighted to be bailing out of a series of cartoon planes. Beside her, Oliver stifles a laugh, and she glances up again. "What?" "I've just never seen anyone actually read one of those things before." "Well," she says, "then you're very lucky to be sitting next to me.

no one takes the safety concerns of a woman seriously until she has been injured or dead.

She will burn bright until she goes out; she will go on standing on tiptoe until she falls.

For many women the weight of other people’s opinions will be too big a burden to carry; they won’t be able to step outside the safety net because they’re too scared. But that’s not us. We’re willing to go after it, we’re willing to be audacious, and we’re willing to take it on because the chance to live into our full potential is worth any backlash that comes our way. Some say good girls don’t hustle. Well, I’m okay with that. I care more about changing the world than I do about its opinion of me.

In all the old stories, the geilt is hypersensitive to the sights and sounds of the civilised world, finding them unendurable. She finds other people unendurable too; only alone in the wild, in nature, can safety and freedom be found.

In your rainbow journey toward the realization of personal goals, don’t make choices based only on your security and your safety. Nothing is safe. That is not to say that anything ever was, or that anything worth achieving ever should be. Things of value seldom are. It is not safe to have a child. It is not safe to challenge the status quo. It is not safe to choose work that has not been done before. Or to do old work in a new way. There will always be someone there to stop you.

The most basic bit of advice given to women who have to walk alone at night is, ‘Look alert. Be aware of your surroundings and walk briskly. You will be safer if you know where you are going, and if anyone who observes you senses that.’ The stalking, predatory animal cuts the weakest from the pack, and then kills at his leisure.

It goes without saying that “angry women” are “ugly women,” the cardinal sin in a world where women’s worth, safety, and glory are reliant on their sexual and reproductive value to men around them. None of this leads us to think of anger as the moral or political property of women.

The world of men is a brutal place. And yet women visit our offices, approach us in the streets, and send us petitions with tens of thousands more signatures every year to ask for more freedom. They feel their safety comes at the expense of their freedom. And, gentlemen, the trouble with freedom is it isn't just an empty phrase that serves well in a speech. The desire to be free is an instinct deeply ingrained in every living thing. Trap any wild animal, and it will bite off its own paw to be free again. Capture a man, and breaking free will become his sole mission. Te only way to dissuade a creature from striving for its freedom is to break it ... I, for my part, am not prepared to break half the population of Britain. I am, in fact, unprepared to see single woman harmed because of her desire for some liberty.

There isn't a safety net I haven't fallen through, so feel my back on the Earth and know I can stand longer than you.

Old women’s houses feel like the safest place on earth. A shrine to functional femininity.

There are moment of sadness and moment of joy. This is life.

Faced with an existential threat, we cared more about hating the right woman than we cared about our own safety.

As for Women that do not think their own Safety worth their Thought, that impatient of their present State, resolve as they call it to take the first good Christian that comes, that run into Matrimony, as a Horse rushes into the Battle, I can say nothing to them, but this, that they are a Sort of Ladies that are to be pray'd for among the rest of distemper'd People...

The ugly truth is that more people are still motivated by the desire to prioritize men's income generating and reputations than they are by the desire to ensure women's rights and safety.

Whilst the Earth Mother finds immense comfort, safety and satisfaction in marriage, domesticity, growing food and children, and enjoys order around her, the Creative Rainbow Mother regularly feels the need to fly free. And if she can’t . . . well, the flip side of her is the Crazy Woman: depressed, unable to touch her power, tied, numb, self-medicating, addicted. Crazy Woman breaks out if we try to spend all our time out in the world, or serving others.’ The

V-day is a movement: an organized effort to finally end violence against women. V-Day is a vision: we see a civilization where women live in freedom and safety. V-Day is a spirit: affirming that life should be live creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities. V-Day is a catalyst: by raising wide public awareness of the issue, it will reinvigorates efforts already under way and commence new initiatives in publicity, education, and law. V-Day is a vital ongoing process: we proclaim Valentine's Day as V'day until the violence against women stops, and the it will become Victory Day.

When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time—that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.

Sentencing enhancements won't get police to investigate crimes they don't take seriously to begin with. They won't stop police from harassing trans women on the street because they assume all trans women are sex workers. They won't have any effect against police officers who believe they won't be held accountable. They won't sway the minds of jurors who think 'I killed her because she was trans' is an adequate excuse. Sentencing enhancements will allow them to dole out harsher punishments against the people they think are more deserving. And we already know that the legal system sees people of color, women, sex workers, immigrants, and the homeless as more deserving of punishment. (Tobi Hill-Meyer of COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere), "Disposable People," November 11, 2008, http://nodesignation.com)

For a century, the human response to stress and danger has been defined as “fight or flight.” A 2000 UCLA study by several psychologists noted that this research was based largely on studies of male rats and male human beings. But studying women led them to a third, often deployed option: gather for solidarity, support, advice. They noted that “behaviorally, females’ responses are more marked by a pattern of ‘tend-and-befriend.’ Tending involves nurturant activities designed to protect the self and offspring that promote safety and reduce distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process.

I'd wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure and that often confused pleasure with danger, the mother who had, when I'd moved to the city, sent me clippings about young women who were raped and murdered there, who elaborated on obscure perils and injuries that had never happened to her all her life, and who feared mistakes even when the consequences were minor. Why go to Paradise when the dishes aren't done? What if the dirty dishes clamor more loudly than Paradise?

…it is easier for us to examine the behaviour of the victim than it is for us to challenge the perpetrator. This may be because the victim, be it male or female, is more likely to present to our services and thus become a burden on our resources. As a community we try to limit our involvement by getting the victim to cooperate in his/her own safety. When the abuse continues we conveniently blame the victim for his/her lack of cooperation.

Killing, raping and looting have been common practices in religious societies, and often carried out with clerical sanction. The catalogue of notorious barbarities – wars and massacres, acts of terrorism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the chopping off of thieves’ hands, the slicing off of clitorises and labia majora, the use of gang rape as punishment, and manifold other savageries committed in the name of one faith or another — attests to religion’s longstanding propensity to induce barbarity, or at the very least to give it free rein. The Bible and the Quran have served to justify these atrocities and more, with women and gay people suffering disproportionately. There is a reason the Middle Ages in Europe were long referred to as the Dark Ages; the millennium of theocratic rule that ended only with the Renaissance (that is, with Europe’s turn away from God toward humankind) was a violent time. Morality arises out of our innate desire for safety, stability and order, without which no society can function; basic moral precepts (that murder and theft are wrong, for example) antedated religion. Those who abstain from crime solely because they fear divine wrath, and not because they recognize the difference between right and wrong, are not to be lauded, much less trusted. Just which practices are moral at a given time must be a matter of rational debate. The 'master-slave' ethos – obligatory obeisance to a deity — pervading the revealed religions is inimical to such debate. We need to chart our moral course as equals, or there can be no justice.

[Pope] Clement waved his hands in irritation as if to dismiss the very idea. "The world is crumbling into ruin. Armies are marching. Men and women are dying everywhere, in huge numbers. Fields are abandoned and towns deserted. The wrath of the Lord is upon us and He may be intending to destroy the whole of creation. People are without leaders and direction. They want to be given a reason for this, so they can be reassured, so they will return to their prayers and their obiediences. All this is going on, and you are concerned about the safety of two Jews?

Was it a poor decision for Kelly to walk home in dark? Teenagers routinely make poor decisions. Does that justify them being hurt, or assaulted, or raped? No it does not. A person should be able to walk home, even in the dark, even through an isolated field, and arrive home safely.

So what is love? It’s an unbuttoning of the self. Not an unbuttoning of the clothing covering your sexy self, but the reassurance that, without any camouflage, cover-ups or compromise, you’re safe. You’re in the presence of another person who would rather be with you than with anyone else.

Conscience is strong in women. Children are very violently taught that they owe all to their parents, and the parents are not slow in foreclosing the mortgage. But the home is not a debtor's prison - to girls any more than to boys. This enormous claim of parents calls for extermination. Do they in truth do all for their children; do their children owe all to them? Is nothing furnished in the way of safety, sanitation, education, by that larger home, the state? What could these parents do, alone, in never so pleasant a home, without the allied forces of society to maintain that home in peace and prosperity. These lingering vestiges of a patriarchal cult must be left behind. Ancestor-worship has had victims enough. Girls are human creatures as well as boys, and both have duties, imperative duties, quite outside the home.

Radiation is all around us. It emanates from the sun and cosmic rays, bathing cities at high altitude in greater levels of background radiation than those at sea level. Underground deposits of thorium and uranium emit radiation, but so does masonry: stone, brick, and adobe all contain radioisotopes. The granite used to build the US Capitol is so radioactive that the building would fail federal safety codes regulating nuclear power plants. All living tissue is radioactive to some degree: human beings, like bananas, emit radiation because both contain small amounts of the radioisotope potassium 40; muscle contains more potassium 40 than other tissue, so men are generally more radioactive than women. Brazil nuts, with a thousand times the average concentration of radium of any organic product, are the world’s most radioactive food.

It was a truth that didn't feel anything like safety. It felt better than safety. It felt like gunpowder at her back, driving her toward a fight that needed winning. Keep fighting. It will be hard, and it will be awful, and it will be worth it. Don't give up, even when it feels like dying. Don't give up. This is only the beginning.

First of all understand that I get it. That there are millions and millions of women who are steely eyed realists. And millions and millions of men who are anything but. However. For lack of a better term I would say that the feminine values are the values of america : Sensitivity is more important than Truth. Feelings are more important than Facts. Commitment is more important than Individuality. Children are more important than People. Safety is more important than Fun. I always hear women say 'Y'know married men live longer'. Yes. And an indoor cat also, lives longer.

In the end, then, suffrage for women came down to the vote of one young man, influenced by his mom. It was rumored that “the anti-suffragists were so angry at his decision that they chased him from the chamber, forced him to climb out a window of the Capitol and inch along a ledge to safety.”15 Thus suffrage arrived in the United States, kicking and screaming.

No, my Lord," answered she, "it would have been from mere shame, that, in an age so daring, you alone should be such a coward as to forbear to frighten women." "o", cried he, laughing, "when a man is in a fright for himself, the ladies cannot but be in security; for you have not had half the apprehension for the safety of your persons, that I have for that of my heart.

I’ve heard nauseating stories of women who have given up their dreams because they fear for their safety, who go to worse schools that are closer to home in order to avoid sexual predators. These stories come from all over the world, including the US. Until the day we end all gender-based violence, we need stronger efforts to protect women and girls. There is no equality without safety.

You deserve safety. You deserve protection. You deserve love. You deserve peace. Breathe beloved. Let's do it together. Right now! Breathe in what I'm saying. Breathe out what you were thinking. We tell the world they don't have to be anything but themselves to be worthy. And then we work until the stress is about to kill us to prove our worth. It's not just you. It’s not just us. It's the paradox of deeply melanated women. But right now I need you to hear me, because if we are still alive, then there is still hope to beat this thing.

A solo woman is more likely to survive a perilous incident in the outdoors than a solo man. Yet, the average female hiker fears for her safety more than the average guy does. Ironically, this phenomenon, dubbed the Fear-Gender Paradox, may be why women fare better, because their angst makes them behave more cautiously. Meanwhile, their overconfident male peers are taking more risks and suffering the consequences.

The Robespierre women (as one tended to think of them now) were all on display. Madame looked actively, rather intimidatingly benevolent; it was her aim in life to find a Jacobin who was hungry, then to go into the kitchen and make extravagant efforts, and say, “I have fed a patriot!”.

He says, "It's just a hat." But it's not just a hat. It makes Jess think of racism and hatred and systemic inequality, and the Ku Klux Klan, and plantation-wedding Pinterest boards, and lynchings, and George Zimmerman, and the Central Park Five, and redlining, and gerrymandering and the Southern strategy, and decades of propaganda and Fox News and conservative radio, and rabid evangelicals, and rape and pillage and plunder and plutocracy and money in politics and the dumbing down of civil discourse and domestic terrorism and white nationalists and school shootings and the growing fear of a nonwhite, non-English-speaking majority and the slow death of the social safety net and conspiracy theory culture and the white working class and social atomism and reality television and fake news and the prison-industrial complex and celebrity culture and the girl in fourth grade who told Jess that since she--Jess--was "naturally unclean" she couldn't come over for birthday cake, and executive compensation, and mediocre white men, and the guy in college who sent around an article about how people who listen to Radiohead are smarter than people who listen to Missy Elliott and when Jess said "That's racist" he said "No,it's not," and of bigotry and small pox blankets and gross guys grabbing your butt on the subway, and slave auctions and Confederate monuments and Jim Crow and fire hoses and separate but equal and racist jokes that aren't funny and internet trolls and incels and golf courses that ban women and voter suppression and police brutality and crony capitalism and corporate corruption and innocent children, so many innocent children, and the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and birthers and flat-earthers and states' rights and disgusting porn and the prosperity gospel and the drunk football fans who made monkey sounds at Jess outside Memorial Stadium, even though it was her thirteenth birthday, and Josh--now it makes her think of Josh.

Although a security guard is ostensibly there to provide security, his actual role is to give the illusion of safety to suburban women. If someone wants to do something dangerous, a security guard is helpless to stop them. Most older security guards understand this. If you're a yuppie in a suit, you will never get stopped. If you're a bike messenger, they're on you in a heartbeat. Go stand in an office building lobby and watch if you don't believe me.

It seems right now that all I’ve ever done in my life is making my way here to you.’ I could see that Rosie could not place the line from The Bridges of Madison County that had produced such a powerful emotional reaction on the plane. She looked confused. ‘Don, what are you…what have you done to yourself?’ ‘I’ve made some changes.’ ‘Big changes.’ ‘Whatever behavioural modifications you require from me are a trivial price to pay for having you as my partner.’ Rosie made a downwards movement with her hand, which I could not interpret. Then she looked around the room and I followed her eyes. Everyone was watching. Nick had stopped partway to our table. I realised that in my intensity I had raised my voice. I didn’t care. ‘You are the world’s most perfect woman. All other women are irrelevant. Permanently. No Botox or implants will be required. ‘I need a minute to think,’ she said. I automatically started the timer on my watch. Suddenly Rosie started laughing. I looked at her, understandably puzzled at this outburst in the middle of a critical life decision. ‘The watch,’ she said. ‘I say “I need a minute” and you start timing. Don is not dead. 'Don, you don’t feel love, do you?’ said Rosie. ‘You can’t really love me.’ ‘Gene diagnosed love.’ I knew now that he had been wrong. I had watched thirteen romantic movies and felt nothing. That was not strictly true. I had felt suspense, curiosity and amusement. But I had not for one moment felt engaged in the love between the protagonists. I had cried no tears for Meg Ryan or Meryl Streep or Deborah Kerr or Vivien Leigh or Julia Roberts. I could not lie about so important a matter. ‘According to your definition, no.’ Rosie looked extremely unhappy. The evening had turned into a disaster. 'I thought my behaviour would make you happy, and instead it’s made you sad.’ ‘I’m upset because you can’t love me. Okay?’ This was worse! She wanted me to love her. And I was incapable. Gene and Claudia offered me a lift home, but I did not want to continue the conversation. I started walking, then accelerated to a jog. It made sense to get home before it rained. It also made sense to exercise hard and put the restaurant behind me as quickly as possible. The new shoes were workable, but the coat and tie were uncomfortable even on a cold night. I pulled off the jacket, the item that had made me temporarily acceptable in a world to which I did not belong, and threw it in a rubbish bin. The tie followed. On an impulse I retrieved the Daphne from the jacket and carried it in my hand for the remainder of the journey. There was rain in the air and my face was wet as I reached the safety of my apartment.

Harassment and the ever-present suggestions of violence at this scale constantly reminds women and girls of their place. For the most part, girls' and women's experiences with harassment are still cloaked in silence, and we continue, as a global society, to peddle dangerous advice to girls about "staying safe." This isn't about safety. If it were, we'd teach boys, who are also subject to childhood molestation and risk, the same lessons, but we don't. It's about social control.

But delivery has to do with the safety of two lives. Jiyoung chose to give birth in a hospital with the help of experts because she had decided it was the safer way, and believed the birthing plan was a decision based on the parents’ values and circumstances, not something to make a value judgment on. However, a significant number of media outlets reported on the possible adverse effects of medical treatment and medication on newborns—their causal relationship speculative—to arouse guilt and fear. People who pop a painkiller at the smallest hint of a migraine, or who need anaesthetic cream to remove a mole, demand that women giving birth should gladly endure the pain, exhaustion, and mortal fear. As if that’s maternal love. This idea of “maternal love” is spreading like religious dogma. Accept Maternal Love as your Lord and Savior, for the Kingdom is near!

In a series of experiments, safety officials ran regular people through mock evacuations from planes. The trials weren't nearly as stressful as real evacuations, of course, but it didn't matter. People, especially women, hesitated for a surprisingly long time before jumping onto the slide. That pause slowed the evacuation for everyone. But there was a way to get people to move faster. If a flight attendant stood at the exit and screamed at people to jump, the pause all but disappeared, the researchers found. In fact, if flight attendants did not aggressively direct the evacuation, they might as well have not been there at all. A study by the Cranfield University Aviation Safety Centre found that people moved just as slowly for polite and calm flight attendants as they did when there were no flight attendants present.

Laughing,Savannah jumped from her precarious perch on the boulder into the safety of Gregori's arms. He caught her,crushing her against his chest, sheer elation, exhilaration, rushing through his veins. To feel again was beyond his comprehension, to feel like this, to have such joy in him, was totally unbelievable. He whispered to her in the ancient language, words of love and commitment that he could not find a way to express in any other language. She was more than she could ever know to him; she was his life,the very air he breathed. You worry about the most ridiculous things, he said gruffly, burying his face for just a moment against her neck,inhaling her scent. "Do I?" she asked aloud,her eyes dancing at him. "You're the one always concerned I'm going to do something wild." "You do wild things," he answered complacently. "I never know what you are going to do next. It is a good thing I reside in your mind, ma petite, or I would have to be locked up in the nearest asylum." Her lips brushed his chin, feathered along his jaw, then nibbled enticingly at the edge of his mouth. "I think you should be locked up.You're postively lethal to women." "Not to women,only to you.

A person who is walking around with the belief I am safe in my body is going to approach the world from a very different place than someone who doesn't believe that. That person will be more confident in approaching others, as Sonia was in sharing her business at the women’s event. They’re going to be much more willing to put themselves out in the world, to be vulnerable in relationships, and to be willing to risk and dare, because they’re operating from a place of safety. Page 60

Desperately trying to remember her manners, she curtseyed and murmured, "Your Grace." The smile lines at his eyes deepened subtly. "You appear to be in need of rescue. Why don't you come inside with me, away from this riffraff? The duchess is eager to meet you." As Pandora hesitated, thoroughly intimidated, he assured her. "I'm quite trustworthy. In fact, I'm very nearly an angel. You'll come to love me in no time." "Take heed," Lord St. Vincent advised Pandora sardonically, fastening the loose sides of his vest. "My father is the pied piper of gullible women." "That's not true," the duke said, "The non-gullible ones follow me as well." Pandora couldn't help chuckling. She looked up into silvery-blue eyes lit with sparks of humor and playfulness. There was something reassuring about his presence, the sense of a man who truly liked women. When she and Cassandra were children, they had fantasized about a handsome father who would lavish them with affection and advice, and spoil them just a little, but not too much. A father who might have let them stand on his feet to dance. This man looked very much like the one Pandora had imagined. She moved forward and took his arm. "How was your journey, my dear?" the duke asked as he escorted her into the house. Before Pandora could reply, Lord St. Vincent spoke from behind them. "Lady Pandora doesn't like small talk, Father. She would prefer to discuss topics such as Darwin, or women's suffrage." "Naturally an intelligent young woman would wish to skip over mundane chitchat," the duke said, giving Pandora such an approving glance that she fairly glowed. "However," he continued thoughtfully, "most people need to be guided into a feeling of safety before they dare reveal their opinions to someone they've only just met. There's a beginning to everything, after all. Every opera has its prelude, every sonnet its opening quatrain. Small talk is merely a way of helping a stranger to trust you, by first finding something you can both agree on." "No one's ever explained it that way before," Pandora said with a touch of wonder. "It actually makes sense. But why must it be so often about weather? Isn't there something else we all agree on? Runcible spoons- everyone likes those, don't they? And teatime, and feeding ducks." "Blue ink," the duke added. "And a cat's purr. And summer storms- although I suppose that brings us back to weather." "I wouldn't mind talking about weather with you, Your Grace," Pandora said ingenuously. The duke laughed gently. "What a delightful girl.

To feel safe, you need to control what the people around you are going to say and do. This is not achieved by going after the root causes of violence. This is not even achieved by working to slowly improve social conditions. It is achieved through silence and disappearance, by moving the offending object or person out of sight. . . . [However] [d]o we want to live in a world that is safe? Do we want to push the homeless out of our cities and call that a victory over poverty? . . . Or do we want to do the very hard work of recognizing and addressing the actual causes of harm to women? Safety is a short-term goal and it is unsustainable. Eventually, the unaddressed causes will find new ways of manifesting themselves as problems. Pull up the dandelions all you want, but unless you dig up that whole goddamn root it's just going to keep showing back up.

The fourth time, it’s after you both lose at the Oscars. You are in a silk, emerald-green, one-shoulder dress. He’s in a tux with tails. He has too much to drink at the after-parties, trying to nurse his wounds. You’re in the front seat of the car in your driveway, about to go inside. He’s upset that he lost. You tell him it’s OK. He tells you that you don’t understand. You remind him that you lost, too. He says, “Yeah, but your parents are trash from Long Island. No one expects anything from you.” You know you shouldn’t, but you say, “I’m from Hell’s Kitchen, you asshole.” He opens the parked car’s door and pushes you out. When he comes crawling to you in tears the next morning, you don’t actually believe him anymore. But now this is just what you do. The same way you fix the hole in your dress with a safety pin or tape up the crack in a window. That’s the part I was stuck in, the part where you accept the apology because it’s easier than addressing the root of the problem, when Harry Cameron came to my dressing room and told me the good news. Little Women was getting the green light.

A woman is like a universe; there are many things that even she still needs to discover about herself. Men on the other hand are miners, which means they are in a better position to uncover, perceive and appreciate things about women that they themselves have not yet come to the full realization of. Men know more about women than they can tell (it's for their own safety that they keep their mouths shut and pretend like they don't know anything, lest they get slammed for claming to know anything at all about women in the first place). Sadly, women are losing out on a wealth of knowledge and understanding about themselves by debunking men's ideas and notions about them especially when it comes to their femininity and sensuality. I think there is a need for women to start gently and safely asking men what they 'inherently' know about their femininity. I'm not a chauvinist nor a proponent for men's rights, but I strongly believe that men hold the keys to a lot of treasure chests that most women are daily striving to open up. Perhaps you should start inviting your man to get a little bit more involved in your feminine/sensual journey. It's only a suggestion...

Do you not think you could share this with Dragon?" "Dragon,who was reluctant enough for this marriage and who now finds himself with a wife he can never hide anything from. Who will always know whether he is telling the truth or not. You think he would welcome such a wife?" Cymbra thought for a moment. "Well...I don't know...Perhaps if you rubbed his feet." Rycca stared at her in shock, saw the look of pure deviltry in Cymbra's eyes, and burst out laughing at the same moment as her new sister-in-law-and friend-did the same.They laughed and laughed, not quieting until Lion stirred, gazed at them reproachfully, and opened his mouth to unleash a bellow that reverberated off the nearby hills and sent the sea birds scattering to safety. "Oh,my heavens," Rycca said when it was finally quiet enough to say anything at all. Cymbra sighed.She rose, picked up her son, and tried to settle his head back against her shoulder. "It has been ever such.He almost brought the rafters down in the chapel at Hawksforte where he was christened." "It is most impressive," Rycca said as she, too,stood. "I suppose that accounts for his name." "It's actually Hakon,to honor Wolf and Dragon's father,but he is called Lion and I suspect he always will be." Just as he would be satisfied only to be set down. On his own two feet, he toddled off determinedly toward the top of the hill, leaving the bemused women to follow.

Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations. The stretch of Hudson Street where I live is each day the scene of an intricate sidewalk ballet. I make my own first entrance into it a little after eight when I put out my garbage gcan, surely a prosaic occupation, but I enjoy my part, my little clang, as the junior droves of junior high school students walk by the center of the stage dropping candy wrapper. (How do they eat so much candy so early in the morning?) While I sweep up the wrappers I watch the other rituals of the morning: Mr Halpert unlocking the laundry's handcart from its mooring to a cellar door, Joe Cornacchia's son-in-law stacking out the empty crates from the delicatessen, the barber bringing out his sidewalk folding chair, Mr. Goldstein arranging the coils of wire which proclaim the hardware store is open, the wife of the tenement's super intendent depositing her chunky three-year-old with a toy mandolin on the stoop, the vantage point from which he is learning English his mother cannot speak. Now the primary childrren, heading for St. Luke's, dribble through the south; the children from St. Veronica\s cross, heading to the west, and the children from P.S 41, heading toward the east. Two new entrances are made from the wings: well-dressed and even elegant women and men with brief cases emerge from doorways and side streets. Most of these are heading for the bus and subways, but some hover on the curbs, stopping taxis which have miraculously appeared at the right moment, for the taxis are part of a wider morning ritual: having dropped passengers from midtown in the downtown financial district, they are now bringing downtowners up tow midtown. Simultaneously, numbers of women in housedresses have emerged and as they crisscross with one another they pause for quick conversations that sound with laughter or joint indignation, never, it seems, anything in between. It is time for me to hurry to work too, and I exchange my ritual farewell with Mr. Lofaro, the short, thick bodied, white-aproned fruit man who stands outside his doorway a little up the street, his arms folded, his feet planted, looking solid as the earth itself. We nod; we each glance quickly up and down the street, then look back at eachother and smile. We have done this many a morning for more than ten years, and we both know what it means: all is well. The heart of the day ballet I seldom see, because part off the nature of it is that working people who live there, like me, are mostly gone, filling the roles of strangers on other sidewalks. But from days off, I know enough to know that it becomes more and more intricate. Longshoremen who are not working that day gather at the White Horse or the Ideal or the International for beer and conversation. The executives and business lunchers from the industries just to the west throng the Dorgene restaurant and the Lion's Head coffee house; meat market workers and communication scientists fill the bakery lunchroom.

That day in Chartres they had passed through town and watched women kneeling at the edge of the water, pounding clothes against a flat, wooden board. Yves had watched them for a long time. They had wandered up and down the old crooked streets, in the hot sun; Eric remembered a lizard darting across a wall; and everywhere the cathedral pursued them. It is impossible to be in that town and not be in the shadow of those great towers; impossible to find oneself on those plains and not be troubled by that cruel and elegant, dogmatic and pagan presence. The town was full of tourists, with their cameras, their three-quarter coats, bright flowered dresses and shirts, their children, college insignia, Panama hats, sharp, nasal cries, and automobiles crawling like monstrous gleaming bugs over the laming, cobblestoned streets. Tourist buses, from Holland, from Denmark, from Germany, stood in the square before the cathedral. Tow-haired boys and girls, earnest, carrying knapsacks, wearing khaki-colored shorts, with heavy buttocks and thighs, wandered dully through the town. American soldiers, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, leaned over bridges, entered bistros in strident, uneasy, smiling packs, circled displays of colored post cards, and picked up meretricious mementos, of a sacred character. All of the beauty of the town, all the energy of the plains, and all the power and dignity of the people seemed to have been sucked out of them by the cathedral. It was as though the cathedral demanded, and received, a perpetual, living sacrifice. It towered over the town, more like an affliction than a blessing, and made everything seem, by comparison with itself, wretched and makeshift indeed. The houses in which the people lived did not suggest shelter, or safety. The great shadow which lay over them revealed them as mere doomed bits of wood and mineral, set down in the path of a hurricane which, presently, would blow them into eternity. And this shadow lay heavy on the people, too. They seemed stunted and misshapen; the only color in their faces suggested too much bad wine and too little sun; even the children seemed to have been hatched in a cellar. It was a town like some towns in the American South, frozen in its history as Lot's wife was trapped in salt, and doomed, therefore, as its history, that overwhelming, omnipresent gift of God, could not be questioned, to be the property of the gray, unquestioning mediocre.

After all, the media have been and are the major dispenser of the ideals and norms surrounding motherhood: Millions of us have gone to the media for nuts-and-bolts child-rearing advice. Many of us, in fact, preferred media advice to the advice our mothers gave us. We didn't want to be like our mothers and many of us didn't want to raise our kids the way they raised us (although it turns out they did a pretty good job in the end). Thus beginning in the mid-1970s, working mothers became the most important thing you can become in the United States: a market. And they became a market just as niche marketing was exploding--the rise of cable channels, magazines like Working Mother, Family Life, Child, and Twins, all supported by advertisements geared specifically to the new, modern mother. Increased emphasis on child safety, from car seats to bicycle helmets, increased concerns about Johnny not being able to read, the recognition that mothers bought cars, watched the news, and maybe didn't want to tune into one TV show after the next about male detectives with a cockatoo or some other dumbass mascot saving hapless women--all contributed to new shows, ad campaigns, magazines, and TV news stories geared to mothers, especially affluent, upscale ones. Because of this sheer increase in output and target marketing, mothers were bombarded as never before by media constructions of the good mother. The good mother bought all this stuff to stimulate, protect, educate, and indulge her kids. She had to assemble it, install it, use it with her child, and protect her child from some of its features.

I'm going to throw some suggestions at you now in rapid succession, assuming you are a father of one or more boys. Here we go: If you speak disparagingly of the opposite sex, or if you refer to females as sex objects, those attitudes will translate directly into dating and marital relationships later on. Remember that your goal is to prepare a boy to lead a family when he's grown and to show him how to earn the respect of those he serves. Tell him it is great to laugh and have fun with his friends, but advise him not to be "goofy." Guys who are goofy are not respected, and people, especially girls and women, do not follow boys and men whom they disrespect. Also, tell your son that he is never to hit a girl under any circumstances. Remind him that she is not as strong as he is and that she is deserving of his respect. Not only should he not hurt her, but he should protect her if she is threatened. When he is strolling along with a girl on the street, he should walk on the outside, nearer the cars. That is symbolic of his responsibility to take care of her. When he is on a date, he should pay for her food and entertainment. Also (and this is simply my opinion), girls should not call boys on the telephone-at least not until a committed relationship has developed. Guys must be the initiators, planning the dates and asking for the girl's company. Teach your son to open doors for girls and to help them with their coats or their chairs in a restaurant. When a guy goes to her house to pick up his date, tell him to get out of the car and knock on the door. Never honk. Teach him to stand, in formal situations, when a woman leaves the room or a table or when she returns. This is a way of showing respect for her. If he treats her like a lady, she will treat him like a man. It's a great plan. Make a concerted effort to teach sexual abstinence to your teenagers, just as you teach them to abstain from drug and alcohol usage and other harmful behavior. Of course you can do it! Young people are fully capable of understanding that irresponsible sex is not in their best interest and that it leads to disease, unwanted pregnancy, rejection, etc. In many cases today, no one is sharing this truth with teenagers. Parents are embarrassed to talk about sex, and, it disturbs me to say, churches are often unwilling to address the issue. That creates a vacuum into which liberal sex counselors have intruded to say, "We know you're going to have sex anyway, so why not do it right?" What a damning message that is. It is why herpes and other sexually transmitted diseases are spreading exponentially through the population and why unwanted pregnancies stalk school campuses. Despite these terrible social consequences, very little support is provided even for young people who are desperately looking for a valid reason to say no. They're told that "safe sex" is fine if they just use the right equipment. You as a father must counterbalance those messages at home. Tell your sons that there is no safety-no place to hide-when one lives in contradiction to the laws of God! Remind them repeatedly and emphatically of the biblical teaching about sexual immorality-and why someone who violates those laws not only hurts himself, but also wounds the girl and cheats the man she will eventually marry. Tell them not to take anything that doesn't belong to them-especially the moral purity of a woman.

If our democracy worked as it should, we would elect wise women and men who made laws for the good of the people and enforced those laws. That, though, is not the way things work. Greedy, power–mad billionaires spend money so that politicians such as George W. Bush can buy elections. Corrupt corporations such as Enron defraud old ladies and commit crimes. And they get away with it. They get away with it because most of us are so afraid of losing the security of our nice, normal lives that we are not willing to risk anything about those lives. We are either afraid to fight or we don’t know how. Or we believe that bad things won’t happen to us. And so, in the end, too many people lose their lives anyway. In Nazi Germany, millions of men who acquiesced to Hitler’s murderous rise to power wound up marching into Russia’s icy wasteland—into the Soviet Army’s machine guns and cannon—to themselves be murdered. In America after 9–11, trusting teenagers who had joined the National Guard found themselves sent to Iraq on extended and additional tours. Our enemy killed many of them because we, citizens of the richest country in the world, did not provide them with body armor. Grieving mothers protested the wasting of their sons’ lives. Nadia McCaffrey defied Bush’s shameful ban on the filming of U.S. soldiers’ coffins returning home from Iraq. She knew, as we all did, that this tyrannical dictum of Bush dishonored our soldiers’ sacrifice. And so she invited the press to the Sacramento International Airport to photograph her son’s flag–draped coffin. Again, I am not comparing George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler, nor America to Germany’s Third Reich. What I do believe is that each of us has the duty to keep the Bushes of the world from becoming anything like Hitler—and to keep America from invading other countries with no just cause. We will never, though, be able to stop corrupt politicians and corporations from doing criminal things until we stop surrendering our power to them. The more we fear to oppose them—the more we want to retreat into the supposed safety of our nice gated communities or downtown lofts—the more powerful people will conspire to ruin our prosperity and wreck our lives.

There once was a female snake that roamed around a small village in the countryside of Egypt. She was commonly seen by villagers with her small baby as they grazed around the trees. One day, several men noticed the mother snake was searching back and forth throughout the village in a frenzy — without her young. Apparently, her baby had slithered off on its own to play while she was out looking for food. Yet the mother snake went on looking for her baby for days because it still hadn't returned back to her. So one day, one of the elder women in the village caught sight of the big snake climbing on top of their water supply — an open clay jug harvesting all the village's water. The snake latched its teeth on the big jug's opening and sprayed its venom into it. The woman who witnessed the event was mentally handicapped, so when she went to warn the other villagers, nobody really understood what she was saying. And when she approached the jug to try to knock it over, she was reprimanded by her two brothers and they locked her away in her room. Then early the next day, the mother snake returned to the village after a long evening searching for her baby. The children villagers quickly surrounded her while clapping and singing because she had finally found her baby. And as the mother snake watched the children rejoice in the reunion with her child, she suddenly took off straight for the water supply — leaving behind her baby with the villagers' children. Before an old man could gather some water to make some tea, she hissed in his direction, forcing him to step back as she immediately wrapped herself around the jug and squeezed it super hard. When the jug broke burst into a hundred fragments, she slithered away to gather her child and return to the safety of her hole. Many people reading this true story may not understand that the same feelings we are capable of having, snakes have too. Thinking the villagers killed her baby, the mother snake sought out revenge by poisoning the water to destroy those she thought had hurt her child. But when she found her baby and saw the villagers' children, her guilt and protective instincts urged her to save them before other mothers would be forced to experience the pain and grief of losing a child. Animals have hearts and minds too. They are capable of love, hatred, jealousy, revenge, hunger, fear, joy, and caring for their own and others. We look at animals as if they are inferior because they are savage and not civilized, but in truth, we are the ones who are not being civil by drawing a thick line between us and them — us and nature. A wild animal's life is very straightforward. They spend their time searching and gathering food, mating, building homes, and meditating and playing with their loved ones. They enjoy the simplicity of life without any of our technological gadgetry, materialism, mass consumption, wastefulness, superficiality, mindless wars, excessive greed and hatred. While we get excited by the vibrations coming from our TV sets, headphones and car stereos, they get stimulated by the vibrations of nature. So, just because animals may lack the sophisticated minds to create the technology we do or make brick homes and highways like us, does not mean their connections to the etheric world isn't more sophisticated than anything we could ever imagine. That means they are more spiritual, reflective, cosmic, and tuned into alternate universes beyond what our eyes can see. So in other words, animals are more advanced than us. They have the simple beauty we lack and the spiritual contentment we may never achieve.