mary's Sharebook 

I'm going to be starting school in the fall, and I recently went to the university for orientation. While I was waiting for the event to start, I went and checked out the student center. All over the the bulletin boards were various posters of couples with the main caption being "My Strength is not for hurting..." At the bottom of the posters, they read a few different followups of the first statement, including "so when she changed her mind, I stopped" and "so when I paid for our date, she didn't owe me."
I'm sure there's a lot of you out there who are aware of the MyStrength campaign, but for those who aren't I thought I'd post it up and let more people know about it.
I'm personally totally stoked about it because, for the last few years my gbest friend and I have been really active in womens' issues, and it's caused us to butt heads with a lot of our guy friends who think we're just PMSing really bad. And, naturally, when faced with that kind of apathy, it's easy to get enraged and frustrated and decide that Well screw them! We're just gonna have to burn the system down and force them into second class citenzenship! Of course the issue always arises that Well then you're just being as bad as they are, but when you're put in a cage like that what other choice do you have, right? Then one day it finally occured to me that we, as women fighting for our rights, can raise as much hell as we want, and we may even overthrow the system and take charge of the world. But if we are looking for equality and a balanced partnership with our male counterparts, then forcing respect is not going to be the way to go. The fight for women's rights, ironically enough, needs to be fought by the men. Boys are taught how to be men by other men. And that means to good men of this world need to rise to the occasion and raise up the next generation to be good men, understanding, respectful, non-raping men.
This new insight kind of threw a wrench into my activism, because that meant that as a woman there is STILL only so much I can do. But then I saw those posters, covering the walls of a college campus, and I checked out the site and was like Oh my god! They're doing it! The good men of the world came out of hiding and took up the fight with us! They are creating a new standard for the next generation, and I can now have hope for my daughters, and my daughters' daughters'.
So check it out.   

www.mystrength.org