You may write me down in history,
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise …
Those sentiments have echoed through the hearts of women all over the world since they flowed from Maya Angelou’s pen in 1978.
The poem, Still I Rise, confronts issues of sexism and racism, and emphasizes the power of a woman.
Still I Rise has never been as relevant as it is today because young people all over the world are taking the torch from their feminist forebears, and are continuing the struggle.
The marginalization of women dates back to when the first invertebrate crawled out of the primordial ooze 460 million years ago. But it certainly didn’t end there.
Primates face sexism. In Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans, by Martin Muller and Richard Wrangham, the relationship between the marginalization and even abuse that male primates exhibit toward females is compared to what happens in modern humans. It seems that instead of progressing and evolving past these behaviours, humanity entrenched them in society over time.
It wasn’t until 1921 that a woman, Agnes MacPhail, was elected to the House of Commons. Even then, it wasn’t until 1993 that Jean Augustine became the first woman of colour elected as a Member of Parliament.
Women have struggled with prejudice for thousands of years, and it continues, especially for women of colour. Less than 40 women of a visible minority have been elected to the House of Commons in its history.
Feminism, the quest for equality between men and women of all ages, races, ethnicities, or creeds, is an on-going struggle, even in Canada, a nation that so often likes to pretend it’s above the turmoil that exists in other parts of the world.
Teenagers, a group so often called ignorant because they are steeped in social media, actually seem to be more literate than their parents when it comes to issues such as these.
Whether it’s the #Enough movement, begun by teenagers following the Parkland, Florida school shooting, or simply a high school’s gender and sexuality alliance, young people right now are becoming more and more aware of the issues faced by women, minorities, and the LBGTQ+ community.
Teenagers know about issues of sexism and discrimination because they are not issues of the past. Today, many women in Canada still face rampant sexism, even hatred.
According to Statistics Canada, women make up 47 per cent of Canada’s workforce despite the fact they are still only paid, 87 cents an hour for every dollar made by men.
The Pay Equity Commission of Ontario found that there are many factors contributing to this gap, namely, “women choosing or needing to leave and re-enter the workforce in order to meet family care-giving responsibilities, resulting in a loss of seniority, advancement opportunities and wages … [and] discrimination in hiring, promotion and compensation practices in the workplace.”
Both of these factors are tied to sexism. Women who face violence are often ignored or vilified for reporting this type of discrimination to authorities.
Sherry F. Colb, of Newsweek, wrote that one of the reasons women find the veracity of their accusations of sexual harassment or even rape called into question is because, “To acknowledge that a normal man who generally abides by the law is raping or sexually harassing women (or men) is to recognize that society has been condoning or at least tolerating such behaviour for a very long time.”
The #MeToo movement has helped millions of women all over the world find the courage to overcome fears of backlash and report instances where they have been abused. At first, the movement was flooded with praise in the media and the general public, but as time wore on and more and more men were being accused of misconduct and rape, Colb’s observation was proven true.
Andrew Sullivan, of nymag.com, wrote about how men were now being discriminated against, just because they had been accused of harassment, assault, or rape.
It’s people like Sullivan who make women afraid to come out and talk about what’s happened to them.
“Punishment [for the allegations] was almost always the same — social ostracism and career destruction — whether you were Mark Halperin, who allegedly sexually assaulted women in his workplace, or Al Franken, damned because of mild handsiness and pretending to grope a woman’s breasts as a joke,” Sullivan wrote.
The fact that Sullivan can write “mild handsiness” is just offensive.
Sentiments and terms like this are being normalized and used with alarming frequency. Perhaps this is because of the election of a United States president who was recorded saying: “When you’re a star, [women] let you do it. You can do anything … ”
Feminists are often accused of ‘hating men,’ but even when feminist icons such as Margaret Atwood defend men, they are berated for it. In Am I a Bad Feminist?, an op-ed in The Globe and Mail, Atwood defends her position on the treatment of former UBC professor Steven Galloway.
Atwood was a signatory on an open letter to the University of British Columbia, which had attacked Galloway and suspended him over allegations of sexual harassment, of which he was proven to be innocent.
She expressed deep concern and anger over the way the situation was handled. Atwood defended him, and was suddenly a ‘bad feminist.’
An “Open Counter-Letter About the Steven Galloway Case at UBC” was started as a petition on Change.org and had more than 600 signatures as of Tuesday.
In much more moderate and articulate terms, Atwood was echoing some of the concerns expressed by Sullivan in his article. Yet Atwood, a feminist icon who has worked for decades to raise awareness about women’s rights, was publicly criticized, not Sullivan.
There seems to be no winning. At every turn, every change of perspective, women are questioned, dismissed, then cast aside, no matter the issue.
Women waited hundreds of years to be able to fulfill rights as basic to our society as suffrage, as ownership, as confidence and safety.
It’s simple rights like these, which many men take for granted, that women have been denied.
It’s the simple, yet ever elusive concepts of confidence and trust that have been hard for women to gain, even before Pandora, who, in her simple “womanly ignorance,” opened a box and set forth evil upon the world.
The fight is on-going. Women are still campaigning, marching, fighting for their freedom. On Jan. 20, in Vancouver alone, more than 20,000 people walked in the cold rain in support of the Women’s March. Many of the people at the march were teens who want to change the world so that when they inherit it, women will have completely equal rights and opportunities.
The words of Maya Angelou’s poem adorn posters at women’s rights protests across the world. Her words still ring out a challenge to those who would stand in the way of women.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
And rise we will.
Marlowe Evans is a senior student at Thomas Haney and head delegate of the Model UN Delegation who writes about youth issues.