I thought I was a liberated woman.

All my life I thought of myself as open minded independent woman. Growing up was average. I had encouraging parents, I loved to get dirty, I kept up with the boys, and yet I still liked to play dress up and had plenty of girl friends. As a young adult I have thoughts an opinion of my own, and for the most part I felt in control of my life and confident about my hold on society. It wasn't until halfway though my Women Across Cultures class that I realized I might be living in ignorance.
This realization didn't hit me in the beginning. At first the class was inspiring in the sense that it was educating me about the different kinds of female discrimination going on though out the world, but they weren't issues I was completely unaware of. At times I became disgusted by some of my classmate's responses during class. With comments like "Why can't they just leave" or "Why doesn't somebody do something about it’s hard not to be a little appalled at these students who appear to have no concept of the world beyond their own.
One day we were watching a movie about men kidnapping wives in Nepal. These women are snatched coming home from work or school and are then pressured by their abductors and their abductors families to stay and become a wife and mother. Often times the victims' parents try to convince their own children to say. As I started intriguingly at the screen… it happened. For a minute (which is much longer than I would like to admit) I thought, well… maybe that's better than ending up alone.
WHAT???
Wait a minute… stop rewind…
I couldn't believe I actually allowed my brain to admit that thought to my conscious mind. If felt like a virus have been uploaded. I had glitches in my system, and my face read system error. Had I been conditioned by society to think that women didn't deserve more than to conform to situations that are confronted with? Am I a victim of society? I think I need to re-boot.
Word to the wise
No one likes to be told their "sensitive" when their sad, or "cute" when their mad. I’m not crippled by emotion and PMS does not make me inhibited. I am neither male nor female. I’m simply human.