choices – Katrina Michelle Russell

I was born in the mid 70s. I was raised in the 80s, right in the heart of Feminism. When women were all about pant suits and shoulder pads. Every girl knew the words to “Working 9-5”. We were taught from a young age that we could do anything that a boy could do and not to take any flack just because we were girls.

Today women make up 60% of college students. Women make more money than men on average in their 20s. Approximately 25% of Congress, 18% of Governors, and 25% of Mayors are Women, and of course we have our first female Vice President. There are lists of the Top Ten Female CEOs in the World, not to mention all the everyday female owned and operated female companies. Women are doing what women have been fighting for over a century to do. They are ruling… and yet it’s not enough.

Women have women only gyms, and women only clubs, but if a men decide they want to have a men’s only area it’s sexism. Women can sleep around, and play games and they are Queens. If men do it, they’re users. Women have multiple baby daddies and live off the system so they don’t have to work, and it’s all good. Women can sleep around, get pregnant, and decide it’s fine to just kill the baby and people cheer for her. If men say they don’t feel ready to have a kid, they are dead beats.

Women in America today have no idea what oppression is. They think it’s someone calling them “Sweetie”. They think it’s a guy looking when they wear a low-cut shirt. You wore the shirt, expect the looks. No, you should never be touched without permission, but looks… when you’re flaunting it. Get over it. Women in America today should read about women in other countries. If you want to be a REAL Women’s Activist stop complaining that men want to have “safe spaces” where they can talk to each other too, and start looking into child brides, and women being killed for the crime of being raped.

This new feminist wave loves to feel better than because they point out that staying home and having babies (a thing most women actually WANT to do) is a sign of the Patriarchy. No, it’s a sign of existence. Having babies is literally the only way existence continues, and here’s the thing. Once most women have babies, a lot of them would much rather stay home with them than go back to work. That’s the reason why the pay gap changes between men and women in their 30s. Women have babies. They take time off to have them. They take time off to raise them. They switch careers to have a more flexible schedule to stay with them. They do all of this, because they want to. Because they choose to. Because they love their babies. They don’t love the boardroom.

This is a fundamental difference between men and women. Sure, SOME women would choose a career over babies, just as SOME men would choose staying home with the babies over a career, but it’s not the norm. And yes, there is a norm. There are choices and ways of thinking that are more female and more male. It’s the reason that gender roles were created in the first place. Yes, they were a social design. Generation after generation men wanted to go out and fight, and work, and provide for their families, and women wanted to stay home and take care of their babies. This is why in a majority of cultures this is the norm. This wasn’t put upon people by White Anglo-Saxon Men. This same phenomenon happened in Asian countries, and African countries, and Middle Eastern countries, and the tribes that came over from Asian countries to eventually be called Native Americans. The same “Societal Creations” happened regardless of which society, because it’s also biological.

So, today, when you are looking for a feminist fight, don’t look at the guy sitting next to you in the cubical who held the door for you. Look to the countries and cultures that are still raping and selling women if you want to fight for your fellow woman. Unless you just want the big strong men to keep going to war for you.

For those who don’t know there is great debate in the scientific community about whether or not free will is possible. The theory is that time is a relative construct. Therefore everything that has ever happened or ever will happen is happening all at once and time is just how we are experiencing these events. The best way that I have heard it explained was in “Agents of Shield” when Fitz compared it to a book. He said that time was happening all at once but we were experiencing just one page in the book at a time. This was most famously depicted in the “Harry Potter” movies. Especially “The Prisoner of Azkaban”. In this movie Harry knew that he could create his patronus because he already saw himself doing it. Time was laid out and he just had to catch up.

Others in the scientific community think that time is relative based on decisions and that alternate realities are created based on these decisions. Some people use the multiverse theory to explain this. For those fellow geeks out there it was often the plot to “The Flash” TV show. In the beginning of the series Barry often ran back in time to change something and ended up changing everything.. thus Flashpoint is created.

Personally I’m a bit in between. I’m more of a Doctor Who time theorist. I believe that certain things are meant to be and everything else is just happening as it does. I believe certain things are “fixed points in time”. I have noticed that sometimes things happen in my life that had no rhyme or reason but they lead to something life altering. There have been things in my life that I knew would happen one day and didn’t have any idea how.. and they did. I believe we all have these moments and we all see how different our lives and the world would be without them.

Not having any free will is a complicated concept to think about and even more difficult to believe in ones own future one way or the other. When someone can’t fathom having any control over their life it leaves them feeling hopeless and frightened all the time. My son’s father was in this category. He has severe anxiety and depression. He often self-medicated with all kinds of drugs. Whenever I would talk to him about making other decisions. About straightening out his life he would reply with the fact that he had no real control over his life. That if he was MEANT to straighten out that he would, and if he wasn’t he wouldn’t.

This whole theory seemed like a cop-out to me. It felt like he was making excuses for why he didn’t need to sober up. I would remind him that his life was his and if HE made other choices then obviously things would change. No one could make him do drugs. He had to change the behavior himself. He couldn’t handle that answer. He would reply that even if he did change his behavior that it would just be what the universe had done to him anyway. It was like talking to a merry-go-round. His whole perspective that he didn’t have free will left him with no will.

Before I met him he had had a couple attempts at suicide. It always confused me because he had such a fear of dying. I didn’t understand why he would try to kill himself if it was also his biggest fear. Unfortunately I think I figured it out. I think he felt like taking himself out of the equation took away the universe’s control. He was always found by a loved one and brought to the hospital and he didn’t know how to feel about it. I told him that he was alive because he was meant to meet me and we were meant to have our son. That didn’t make him feel any better because it was still something that he felt he hadn’t controlled about his life. Even though our son was a choice we made together, and he loved him very much.

Last August he had a scare. He overdosed while driving. He crashed his car and the police came and revived him. He called me to tell me what happened and I told him how lucky he was. I told him he was both lucky that he didn’t hurt anyone else and that because he was driving people saw the accident and the cops were called and he was able to be revived. Had he been alone in his room no one would have known and I’d have gotten a very different call that day. He seemed to agree.

The next day I got that call. He had overdosed in his room alone. He was dead. Part of me believes he did it to test the theory. If he was meant to not die then he would have been found. He could say that it was proof. That there was no reason for him to have been found and yet he was. Unfortunately he never got that chance. To me he fulfilled his life’s goal because we had our son… his choices after that took him away from our son. That’s all on him.

Tag: choices

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