as an independent free thinking woman i’ve been thinking a lot about my choices this fall. the reality is that even after 100 years of women protesting marching and attempting to secure equal rights and protection under the law we still make 23 cents less than men. and when it comes to issues of health care, being made female (especially of child bearing age) can be deemed a pre-existing medical condition. and speaking of being of child bearing age when women’s health care is finally discussed the conversation revolves solely around having or not having an abortion. i’m tired of politicians, the medical community, the media, researchers and the like speaking to me as though all that i am literally lives between my legs.

i am more than my vagina.

and so are you.

when will we hold intelligent conversations about the things that are important to women? even women who work in politics, medicine, media, research and etc. talk in circles around vaginas and breasts, never mentioning that 42 million women in america are managing cardiovascular disease that’s more than breast cancer by the way. our hearts quite literally are breaking.

we are more than our vaginas.

its time we turn this conversation about right to life around so that it doesn’t focus on whether or not a pregnancy will be carried to term but does actually focus on the the quality of life of ever citizen who is born. alive. right. now.

as women, even in the 21st century, we are the caretakers of our communities. we  bath the babies and diaper the elderly. we feed animals and plant trees so that our children‘s tomorrow will be made up of clean air for them to breath. we fight for things that matter to us in classrooms and boardrooms. on small stages and international conventions we stand up so that our parents and our children will have safe clean places to rest their heads. and we don’t give our needs the care they require because so much is riding on our ability to make this day easier for the ones we love.

we are so much more than our vaginas.

why then do we allow politicians, pundits, columnists, gurus, pathologists and talk show hosts relegate us to the back benches in these conversations. they don’t even ask us what we want anymore. they assume they know and then they make these asinine decisions that close our schools underfund our hospitals leave our roads ragged streetlights unchanged and corners un-policed. when we complain we’re called agitators and bitch.

we care that we don’t get equal pay for the work we do.

we care that we pay up to 150% more for health care than men.

we care that our tax bracket is 2.5 times greater than people who make 60 times more.

it matters to us that our children’s education is now ranked as ‘average’.

it matters when dumps are put in our communities and we notice when the recyclables head there with our yard clippings.

we are more than our vaginas.

and i am so sick and tired of pundits trying to make me believe we are not or that we care only about reproduction.

we care about reproduction but we only live a fraction of our lives reproducing children. the large majority of our life we spend creating ourselves and molding our communities so that this world will be better the next go round. no woman living wishes for less for her daughter or her son than what she was able to accomplish. no woman living wants to be considered a second class citizen. no woman living wants her parents to die in poverty. no women living wants to inherit a world that is broken.

we are so much more than the body parts that get celebrated then castigated and relegated to nothing.

we are bigger than our vaginas.

we are more important.

 its time we once again make the powers that be realize that this conversation about sex (and lets not play because it is about sex) is not the conversation we want to have. we want real talk about the real problems we face everyday. and dammit we want to be brought to the table for the problem solving.

the next politicians that looks me in my eye and uses that sickly pleading voice about women’s rights had better be talking about more than my vagina. i will not be compartmentalized. i will not be dictated to. there is no box for me to fit in. i am a woman. a full grown independent free thinking woman who understands her rights as a citizen of this country. i vote. i vote often. and i am not afraid.