by Christyl Rivers

Created on: October 14, 2010   Last Updated: October 15, 2010

If you are both a woman and a minority, you are obviously suffering more than someone who is just discriminated against due to racism.

That said, it is important to realize something very factual about human beings.  There are most definitely, and most literally at least TWO sexes. There is in scientific terms, only one human race.  This very fact is going to make it impossible to ever achieve complete comprehension between the two sexes. They will never be the same.  Not even trans-sexuals, the closest thing we have to people being able to experience both sides, will never be able to be just one sex.

This is because a trans-sexual person is not the opposite sex upon birth. He or she, is just a male, or a female, born in the body of the opposite sex.  This is not the same dilemna as being another "type" of person. It is simply a case of mistaken idenity, a little trick nature plays upon us to teach us compassion and tolerance.  We are slow learners.

Women who were, (or are) enslaved today can attest that being owned by another person, or a sex trafficking cartel of some kind, is even more difficult  and anguishing if they are from another country, another culture, or of another color.  Ideas of inferiority may be insane, but clearly they do exist. For well over two hundred years the "scandal" of white slavery, our women being taken by "inferior" people has been much more threatening than the very real threat of other types of women being enslaved.  It has been the impetus of many a beating, lynching, and injustice.

Hitler was well-known to have commanded women to have more aryan babies.  Officers of the SS were expected to have more than one sexual partner for the higher good of preserving the "race."  They didn't much care how they got all these perfect white babies, they just figured it seemed like a great idea at the time.  That it was completely sexist did not seem to trump how racist it was, because it was so horrible, at a horrible time.  Who had time or tears, for the unfortunate cheated upon wives of SS officers?  Also, women could not even become SS officers.  This is probably a good thing. They would not be able to attain the blind brutality it required, although we should never assume anyone incapable of crimes against humanity.

Men and women will always be separate, but let us hope they must not always be unequal.  The empowerment of women and their worth being calculated as much as that of a man is the salvation of the world.  Educated women, and women who have some independence and power to feed their own children have fewer children and more opportunities.  Greed and corporate profits are in a race against a formidable opponent:  humanity discovering women can stop overpopulaiton and shatter the Bad Old Boy billionaire club. The winner gets the world, to love and to cherish, or to shred and to destroy.

Racism is clearly horrible, but sexism is too, because it tries to tell people that someone always has to have the power of authority over another person.  Competition is more destructive than cooperation.  Until we recognize the dignity and right to live, that all people should have, we will never be able to expand our circle of compassion to include all the earth and its living intelligence that sustains life.

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