I recently read a story about a woman fighting to acquire the rights to photographs that were taken of some of her enslaved ancestors that belong to a prestigious university. Although a judge denied her request, she is continuing the fight (via the appeals process) in the hopes that our laws may one day better reflect the humanitarian aspects of property rights of enslaved peoples. According to our current legal standards, people who do not have the rights to negatives and actual pictures are not considered to retain the rights to them, even if they are the subject matter of them. In accordance with our current laws, those pictures probably would belong to the picture taker's ancestors, or to the institutions or organizations they were given to. But because her ancestors were enslaved, they wouldn't have had the right to such ownership, even though our current-day climate would allow for such. The point being--our legal system doesn't really take into account these sorts of moral, ethical, and emotional dilemmas, and while the university and the woman might be able to come to some arrangement (it wasn't stated if that was tried first or not,) this was brought into the court systems likely to bring up a valid concern--how do we account for property and rights that should belong to the ancestors of enslaved people when those rights were not available to those same ancestors during their own lifetimes? It is why the idea of restitution is often brought up, and it is understandable that people should want to be able to lay claim to items and properties that would legally have been theirs if their family hadn't at one time been enslaved or had their rights abridged by laws that are no longer valid.
But I digress. I wanted to bring up this idea of laws and legislation, because I believe these are powerful tools that enable us as a society to say what is important to us. And while the legalese may be a bit wordy for many of us, the ideas that are espoused by those laws are important because they shape how we think and how we act.
One group that strives to work toward reshaping our society for the better is the National Women's Law Center. They are on the forefront of many legal fights for women here in the United States, and they lobby for legislation that will further empower women to have an equal say and equal pay that is comparable to what their male counterparts have.
Their work began in 1972 and has grown in scope since then. Back then, they wanted better pay, and better working conditions, and while there have been many advances since then, we are essentially still fighting the same battles in 2021 as we did back then. We're still working to ensure that women get the same educational opportunities as men. We're still fighting for our bodies--both in caring for them and in ensuring that we're not being exploited or treated in a demeaning manner. We're still fighting for access to things like tampons, pads, and birth control--which a lot of poorer families can't always afford or provide for their children and themselves. We're still looking for equal pay for equal amounts of work, and we're often still striving to be seen as people rather than what we're wearing, how we smell, or how we appear physically. And often, women are punished for the bad behaviors of men--such as shaming what we wear as just cause for sexual harassment or rape.
Every day there are new stories about allegations of sexual harassment in the news. And I don't have to look very hard to find studies proving that male and female salaries are not and have not been comparable to one another. There are fights going on about abortion rights, and access to health care--things that men have that women don't, and are often being legislated by largely male-dominated legislatures.
I said it yesterday: inclusion is important. And I am glad that women are finally standing up and being heard these days, but even still, we are treated as though we are complaining about nothing. We're told that we should just put on our big girl pants and move on. But doing that doesn't change the things that are wrong, and doing that doesn't heal the wounds that these behaviors can create. Here in the United States, women make up slightly over half the population of the country, but you'd be hard-pressed to guess that from the makeups of many of our companies, and don't look too closely at our state and national legislative bodies.
And so that is why we need organizations like the National Women's Law Center--people who are fighting to create an egalitarian system in which we all have the same rights and are considered to hold the same value as one another--regardless of our sex. But they also understand that women have different needs from men--especially when it comes to health care, and ensuring those needs are met is part of that egalitarian vision. And that is why I believe the National Women's Law Center is a cause worth celebrating.
I want to add one last thing here about the power of words. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it strikes me that we don't really talk enough about this. I grew up in an era where the prevailing wisdom was: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And while that's a nice platitude about not letting others get to you, it fails to capture the real harm that words can have in the world--especially in this day and age.
There are so many studies about the ways in which our thoughts are shaped by the languages that we speak, and if that doesn't convince you that words have real power, then ask someone who has ever been a PoW or a soldier what freedom means. Speak to a black man or woman about what freedom means to them.
Funnily enough, I was reading an article about Hong Kong the other day. It was talking about how many pro-democracy advocates were leaving Facebook because of the censorship they saw happening around and after the election. They were switching to platforms like MeWe, which has less censorship and moderation overall. The interesting thing about that is that here in America, MeWe has become a platform of the far-right--often seen as being more authoritarian in nature, and less democratically inclined (wanting to disenfranchise certain people of the vote, for instance.) People here in America flocked to MeWe because they also didn't like Facebook's censorship. That two completely different groups with differing concerns about censorship share the same platform, but would likely be ideologically opposed if they were in the same country, tells me that our views and ideas are shaped by our societies and our experiences. And so even ideas that may seem similar have different connotations throughout the world.
That is how important words are--not just because they convey ideas, but because they allow us to share those ideas with others--both the good and the bad. And so I think it is important to consider the words we use in our lives--to understand them in as many contexts as we can, and to seek to do the most good we can with them when we can. That is something all this week's causes to celebrate are, hopefully, doing.
I'll be taking a day off on Saturdays this month, though I'll share a few ideas that caught my eye this week with you. This is to help me focus on getting some other work done that I need to be doing as well as allowing me to spotlight some other interesting finds I've gathered along the way. It will also, hopefully, allow me to get organized for the week to come.
And with that, I hope you all have a great weekend!
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