Give Voice to The Women

Let me tell you a brief story of what happened to me recently. About a month ago, it was Ryan’s (a male) birthday. A few people were over to celebrate, and one of his friends, who I will keep anonymous and give her a fake name Sarah, visited. Ryan, Sarah and I were all talking and Sarah had gotten a bit intoxicated and wanted to take our trash out. So we volunteered to walk with her up to the dumpster that was nearby our townhome.

As we walked to the dumpster a bunch of college guys were standing and talking outside, and two came over to say hey. I decided to continue walking to throw the trash out while they talked to them. Within a minute of me being gone and coming back. Some guys were cussing out Ryan so Ryan was walking back home, and another guy was touching Sarah who obviously did not want that physical contact. I came in and pushed him off and told her to go.

I then walked up to the guys that were yelling at Ryan, for NO good reason, and tried to talk some sense into them. However, they did not give me any time of day, they would not look at me, ignored me, and kept yelling. When I told the guy that was touching my friend that it was not ok to do that,  he just laughed and I thought one of his friends was actually listening, and cared about what I was saying, but then he started wrapping his arms around me. I pulled away and some of my guy friends came up to see what was going on and saw me crying. They sent me home and I am not sure what happened after that.

I have to be honest, before this experience, I never really understood the whole movement of “giving women a voice”. I have grown up in a bubble where my voice was always heard, so I did not see much of an issue. After this experience, and feeling as if I was useless, and could be no help, I realize now how unbelievably important it is to stress this ongoing issue. I want others who live in a bubble like me to realize the issue and take action. I can’t believe I was so blind to it all along. 

Giving a voice to women could also be applied to giving a voice to the LGBTQ and Genderqueer communities, who also tend to struggle with people who judge them and will ignore their voice. This is not right. It really upsets me that some people have to deal with this in their everyday life. Where they try to speak up and no one listens because they are naive and useless.

For the purpose of this blog, I wanted to do some research on ways to get more involved in this movement of giving women a voice and to support it. I found websites such as https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/voice/ and https://mobilisationlab.org/stories/raise-womens-voices-movements/ that talk about the issue and give ways to help. I highly suggest checking them out for yourselves and possibly finding a way to get involved. I want to be able to speak up, I want to be heard, and you should too.