The Fourth of July has come and gone, and every year I am delighted by the celebration of the United States’ creation. I am a first-generation American, a child of an immigrant and a military brat to boot. As such, I understand the heaviness that is the duty to fight for American freedom all too well. I also understand the cost that such employment takes upon the soldier and his family.
I am a citizen of the United States of America, and my gender has been legally considered citizens for only 96 years of the country’s nearly 300-year existence. This is because women, and the rights of women, often took a backseat to all other social reforms such as in the Civil War, WWII, and even the Civil Rights Movement. Since suffrage, women have made astounding strides toward personal freedom. In the Roaring Twenties, women exemplified this new sense of freedom and cast off the earlier generations' notions of propriety by bobbing their hair, going to parties unaccompanied and rejecting the corset — a painful and brutal symbol of feminine repression. Their mothers had been chattel, but the flappers were renowned for their independence from sexual repression and lack of female isolation.
Why am I not allowed to take pictures without a top without it being considered pornography?
Why can a man walk coolly down any street, regardless if their pectorals look like bigger breasts than I have?
Why are women subjected to different dress codes and if they defy the social norms they can be fined or arrested?
The answer is easy and sad — we are still not equal in legislation. No one tells men when and if they can procreate or what is appropriate as a top. No man is told how and if they may choose to have children, even if he is unfit as a parent. Yet, in my state of North Carolina, I was not allowed to have a tubal ligation before I was a certain age, regardless of the fact that I missed the age requirement by two months, and I had always only wanted one child. Regardless that my pregnancy had been an extremely high risk and that any further pregnancies could be life threatening. We have had serious issues with North Carolina’s government intrusion in women’s healthcare, marriage laws and transgender bathrooms.
Women strove for equity in the workplace. Droves of women united bringing awareness to the plight of women who had not been fortunate enough to share the same socio-economic rise. Women’s issues were brought to the forefront of our headlines, and women had legislation passed.
That was the past, I had thought. Because of the women that came before me, I grew up feeling protected and secure as a full-fledged American citizen. Yet current controversy surrounding the rights of women to love freely, control their bodies meaningfully and get paid equally leads me to question this feeling. So, it is despite my nationalism that I ask why? If men and women were declared legally equal 96 years ago, then why is this happening today? Why is it that two equal human beings cannot be free of government intrusion upon their reproductive, marital and bodily rights?
I once got into an argument with a women’s studies professor who disagreed with my post-feminist views, still young and filled with the notion of that I had been raised as valued member of society, especially as a woman. My mother had instilled in me that I was equal to my brothers and, since I was quick-witted, an asset to our family and thereby to society. I had not been taught that men were to be elevated either in my household or in a job environment. I am, in fact, the oldest of three and the only girl. I never was considered less than my siblings; in fact, I was in charge as the oldest and fully capable of taking on all array of matters.
I have a very dominate Southern European mother, who has elevated herself through education, and taught me to be just, honorable, valiant and protective. All of the latter values are viewed traditionally as male-oriented as explained by the same women's studies professor with whom I had disagreed when I was younger. That sentiment left me slack-jawed and steaming.
Over the years I have thought about this professor, and now with more education, I see that she was right. I had been young and naive. Seeing the macro socio-economics as I progressed in my journey through education, I was introduced to a version of American society that was contrary to every one of my mother’s feminist ideologies, which just shed light to the magnanimity of my former skewed beliefs and honestly was and is alarming. Why had this specific professor been so adamant to educate me in the inequality of a woman's plight? She had burned that bra; her grandmother had been owned by her grandfather.
She wanted me to be vigilant, and she was right. Of course, women are not the only ones who have long been considered second class citizens. Many feel the general population has become second class citizens to our own public servants.
But all Americans should be protected under the constitution, and protected equally. This is what makes America great. I understand that these rights are mine created from people who understood tyranny and abuse of government.
They were created by our Founding Fathers to ensure my safety, and that is the reason we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights. Our founding documents were created to protect and help all including civilians and police. Americans should feel that our government and its employees are here to protect and ensure that no harm would or should be tolerated. In my opinion, this is my reason to celebrate and reflect what a true patriot is and why Independence Day is important!
Two hundred and forty years later, I believe the forefathers of the United States of America would hang their heads in shame at the mockery that has become America. While this might seem like an anti-American statement, is it? Is it un-American to protest in either person or publication? Our nation would not have been founded if others had not expressed their dissension.
Currently, this year the Supreme Court has had a multitude of court decisions to deal with because some of our legislators have decided that their personal agendas are more important than the oath which required them to safeguard the interests of Americans with the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Even Governor Pat McCrory had the audacity to enact the HB2 bill, which restricted transsexuals from bathrooms that were not their birth gender, causing boycotts, which gained national attention and uproar.
So please leave my rights alone. Please do not try to stop me from adequate medical care, whether that involves an abortion, breastfeeding my child, a sex change or my choice of whom to marry, because I identify as an American, and how I feel matters. Regardless of gender or ethnicity, both should not be a discussion point as to whether the same liberties allotted to certain persons are constitutional because of a different anatomy or lifestyle.
We all should have the liberty to do with our persons as we see fit. Please leave me the right to defend myself with a weapon as my as the Second Amendment of the Constitution dictates.
Please allow me the right to a fair trial, instead of shooting me or my fellow Americans, which sadly seems to have become an epidemic and as recently happened in Baton Rouge, La., on June 5, 2016, when officers executed Alton Sterling on video.
Or on June 7, when another shooting that turned fatal, in response to the shooting of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille, a mass protest in Dallas, Texas, police officers in attendance were then fired upon by two snipers from elevated positions.
At this point at least 11 officers were shot, and reports are still coming in about the status of the other officers currently injured.
Furthermore, I want to state clearly that I do not condone the murder of any individual. I believe the majority of people now feel the police are no longer there to help but to hurt, especially if you are considered a minority. I myself videotape everything that has anything to do with any dealings with police. So if something were to happen, my evidence could be used in court without the possibility of tampering, since all of my photos and videos are my property.
That is what has happened today. Citizens must ensure their own evidence now because frankly cameras and video recording are bringing to light the atrocities that some police are doing under the cover of their state-issued shields.
So, if things are unequal still, then why do we celebrate the Fourth of July? To set off fireworks for pleasure? To see who can make the most gourmet Pinterest-inspired burger? Or is it to remember the cost of the revolutionary war and the creation of a nation formed from people of all faiths and beliefs? Is it not to celebrate that those individuals, the colonists who once were the underdogs won a war to create an area unified, for the supreme idea of allowing its citizens the ability to retain their individual ideas and beliefs? I am a proud constitutionalist.
I celebrate that our forefathers sacrificed their lives for my freedoms over myself. I celebrate my fatherland with reverence to the fact that people colonized this country and then fought a brutal war to create the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. To announce to the world that this portion of North America was to be a free place devoid of the constraints of religious interference. To create a sanctuary that allotted people be free and equal, which is an amazing feat!
Although I do not support the current political tide of intrusion upon the very meaning of this American holiday, I am saddened that so many forget the true meaning of Independence Day. So in honor of the many who helped to create our young nation, I will tiptoe in their shadows and, as I believe the Original Founding fathers would find fitting and publicize my dissent, I will use the pen to fight the many injustices that plague the people of our nation.
What right do our legislators have to pass laws in direct violation of the Bill of Rights and our Constitution?
What rights do people swear to uphold our unalienable rights have to randomly tell me or any citizen what I can do with my property, heart, body and soul?
None.
And this is why I celebrate.
