My Own Personal Heroes

Confession time. I’m mad at someone I have never met, over something that is none of my business. But apparently, Taylor Swift said this.

Yay, feminism, wait, what? I’m sorry, this conversation wasn’t mainstream before now? Only now do we have women doing really well? Now we have women who are brave enough? Now?

I have been really, really mad at this quote for way longer than I should have been, but hell, I’ll go ahead and indulge myself in a rant. Because a 26 year old woman just had the audacity to say that only now do we have brave and talented women.

As a woman writer, I am fully aware that this is not a field women have always had access to. Fantasy and Science Fiction, in particular, were once men only. Ladies didn’t have the right mind for that sort of thing, you know.

Women, women I admire, fought to make that different. Women and men made this world a different, better place, so that women like me, and Taylor, could have a fair shot, and not have to fight to be heard. We stand on the shoulders of great women, who had to prove to the world that they were just as capable as men.

We’ve got a long way to go towards equality for men and women, and I know that. But we have come a long way. Do I think for a second that I would be able to do what I do, every day, if women hadn’t already proven we could? No. Women like Nellie Bly did that for us. How dare we think, in this generation, that we don’t owe something to the generation we came from? And the one before that, for that matter.

So here’s my one big thank you to every woman who is doing something that people have told her girls shouldn’t do. Every woman preacher, doctor, lawyer, writer, plumber, mechanic, scientist, soldier. And a big thank you to every man doing ‘women’s work’. I’m talking to you, teachers, stay at home dads, nurses. We’ve worked hard to show those who would keep men and women in their assigned place that they are wrong. We will keep fighting, but we have come so far.

Never forget who fought to give us that. Never forget our foundation.