In her recent post, "Texas' War on Women," Alec says, "I don't understand it, I really don't. I just can't grasp the logic behind denying low-income women the ability to acquire contraception and treatment for STDs along with routine wellness and cancer screenings." There is nothing to understand, other than it ain't Granny in the local and federal legislatures; it's the Big Bad Wolf, and we'd better stop naively waiting for the lumberjack to come along to save us and start sharpening our own axe.

Sexism against women permeates every aspect of our culture, and because we mostly view the world through the glasses our culture has given us, we literally can't see it. What are women on television, in movies, and in literature? Bodies. Objects.

Bodies are easier to control than people, and the laws against women are symptoms of the larger issue of women not really being perceived as human beings. One in six American women is the victim of a completed or attempted rape, while 97% of the rapists never spend a day in jail. These are also symptoms. Now the Federal Legislature is also rolling back what few protections from violence women (particularly immigrant women) do have.

For as long as I can remember, I've had the distinct urge to be the protagonist in my own story. This should not be a radical idea, but it is. It is in contrast with what we see, and, as women, it is unfortunately our task to develop media literacy to understand how we are affected by this.

Writer Caitlin Moran made some excellent remarks on women's power in her interview on Fresh Air from August 2nd. On Lisa Brown's being banned from speaking on the House floor for using the word "vagina," Moran said she wished every woman in the room would have stood up and said the word, too, like "I'm Spartacus."

She also said she'd like to see women stop working for a day in protest of the cutting of women's health funding, and watch the country grind to a halt, "and that would be a beautiful and symbolic thing to happen, because women's lives grind to a halt if they are not in control of their fertility, if they can't make a decision about when they're going to become a mother and have responsibility over someone for the rest of their lives."

I hadn't taken the time to develop a position on abortion before. I've had friends who've had abortions, but never in Texas, and it was just something they did; it didn't directly affect me. Now I see that the right to choose gives a woman freedom over her own life.

I wonder what would happen in the abortion debate if men were the primary caregivers to children. In Texas, 36% of children live in single parent homes, and 85% of single parent households are led by mothers. Since women still make 77 cents for every dollar men make, it is hardly surprising that single mother households are three times as likely to be below the poverty line.

According to this report from the Texas Legislature,  Texas is 2nd in the nation for the overall birthrate, and 49th for female voter turnout. Barefoot in the kitchen much anyone? We're 6th in the nation for women living in poverty, and douchebags like Greg Abbott threaten cutting off all funding for women's health over abortions.

The only upside to all of this is how skinny I will get by puking every time I think about it.