Our daughters would like a word
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- August 4, 2024
- 1383
I remember well the first time someone asked me with a straight face how much my kids would get for going to college.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, they’re ‘minority,’ so they’ll get their college paid for,” they said.
And reader, I use the word “minority” through gritted teeth because somewhere along the way it became a slur. It pains me to type it, but I’m using it to show context.
My kids and their very real student loan balances would like a word. They didn’t get one dime, save for any small scholarships they achieved. It doesn’t work that way, even though folks like to believe it does.
Along the same lines, the argument that women are somehow incompetent to do a job because they’re … women … is an antiquated way of thinking. Despite what you may feel about women running for political office, any concern should be on policy, not gender. I’ve seen more drama and hysterics from politicians who are men than anyone else.
Women do run the world with our ability to multitask while calming any theatrics. Beyoncé was right when she said, “Who run the world? Girls.”
I have two daughters. One runs a clothing company, and the other works in housing policy. Neither one have children yet, and both are fiercely in tune with their jobs. Recent news bites have suggested they shouldn’t have as much of a say in their world — and that word doesn’t count — until they have children. Both of them have two cats and would eat this line of thinking for dinner, along with the mouth that speaks it.
Is this where we’re at?
The backslide into name calling and not just old-fashioned ideas, but toxic ones, is a backslide I’d like to call out. And I’ll call it out while doing my job and various responsibilities while cooking a killer batch of chiles rellenos.
I’m more concerned about why people are upset at the dislike sent toward political candidates than the hate said political candidates put out into the world — hate that has affected my own and enabled and activated some of the most vitriolic words I’ve yet to see in my lifetime.
Because of that, I’m going to sit here in my little corner of America and call it like I see and experience it.
Women only gained their right to vote in 1920, and even then, many were turned away for outrageous, made-up reasons: black, native, Latin. It was 50 years or so ago that women could get bank loans and have their own credit card. When I went to get a tubal ligation 20 years ago, I had to have my husband sign a paper saying he agreed and had to wait for 30 days in case I changed my mind.
Who decided what women could/couldn’t do? Or what shade they needed to be before they could?
I will not go back to the “olden days” where women were expected to stay quiet or at the very least go along with how her husband believed. I will not accept someone saying a woman is given a job “because she’s a woman” and not because she absolutely slays at performing her duties — just like my kids didn’t get into college because they are biracial.
None of us are going back. We’re moving ahead and out of the “good old days” that were good for only part of us.
It’s too bad these are the words being spouted because the daughters of this good land would like a word.
Melissa Herrera is a published author and opinion columnist. She is a curator of vintage mugs and all things spooky, and her book, “TOÑO LIVES,” can be found at www.tinyurl.com/Tonolives. For inquiries, to purchase her book or anything else on your mind, email her at junkbabe68@gmail.com or find her in the thrift aisles.