Raising awareness is absolutely one of the best aspects of social media, be it twitter, instagram, facebook, etal.

Having spent half my life helping people discover what interferes with their success, and then doing something about it, I can strongly say that insight and awareness simply aren’t sufficient for real change.

Awareness that there is a problem is a necessary but insufficient quality for real change

Hyped up social media awareness can sometimes actually overshadow the opportunities for creating a real change.

How can this be? Well, mostly because there are people who will use the excitement and drama to misdirect and amplify the issue without bringing real healing tools to the gathering.  The democrats will blame the republicans, the republicans will blame the feminists… the (fill in the blank group) will assert their superiority over the other (fill in the blank group)…

….and instead of a deep, powerful conversation happening about misogyny and how women are being sexually harassed and the extent of demeaning actions towards women …

….and the underlying forces that create this acceptable behavior by society (the reasons are not due to one simple fact or group) it becomes an opportunity for propaganda about how a specific group has it all right, while another has it all wrong.

An aha experience of insight or awareness can lead to a quantum shift in consciousness or a healing crisis.  With either of these, real change can happen.

There is some simplicity.

• Rape is an aggressive, violent action that uses sex as a weapon.
• Women’s bodies do not call out to be raped.
• Glorifying rape; talking about women as objects rather than human; Showing images of women being brutalized and objectified – all of these actions create women as second class non-humans that are then set up to be raped, harassed, demeaned and overpowered.
• Society glorifying the music industry and movie industry for their part in this creates the space for all women to be brutalized, sexually harassed, overpowered, and dispossessed of their innate humanity.

This isn’t a puritanical religious issue, this isn’t a conservative/liberal issue, this is a power issue mostly brought about by the groups in power.  The ones that keep telling you they are there to protect you, and they are on women’s sides…old and new.

• Breasts are sexualized and objectified separately from their human function; used in naked-girl magazines, disney cartoons, and by feminists as much as the religious groups.
• Until it is seen as a natural, normal thing to breastfeed children in public and not have it be gross (because it has been overshadowed by the sexual aspect of breasts), women’s breasts will be seen as tantalizing and power objects by men and women alike.

#yesallwomen is a great idea, raising the consciousness of what women have to endure as girls, and young women and old women.

But many of the groups who have joined in the cause to get a piece of the action are the perpetrators that keep that trauma going for women.

Power is the issue.

Until women have a handle on how to be powerful in ways that don’t include the preconceived notion of these groups that are simply using women and their issues for their own political and power gain, real change is not going to happen.  (And just a hint, it isn’t the power to walk around naked…it’s the power to be seen as powerful in their innate femininity).

If you want to help all women, stop glorifying the sexualization of children, the brutalization of women, stop passively going along with the cool game of overpowering women in ALL ways..how?

Stop buying those songs, speak out against them.  Stop watching those movies, stop feeding the industries that keep women down, including, when applicable, feminists that say they are out to help women while putting down their own gender to create their own power structure.

Mothers raise boys and girls.  Mothers teach their girls to take care and be authentic, and yes to be careful to not get raped…mothers need to raise boys to care for girls in a way that doesn’t put the onus on the girl to maintain her goodness.  Fathers raise boys and girls.  Fathers need to deal with the importance of teaching masculinity, without teaching that rape is okay, or that it is the girl’s responsibility to not get raped.

I am asking you to think, to be mindful in your anger, attitude, and righteousness in how you join into this discussion.  Because for those of us who have been one of the #yesallwomen who have had to deal with rape, sexual harassment, work related and personally, it’s a painful, shame-filled wound, so the discussion, the raising of awareness needs to be real, helpful, and not harmful.

Elevate the conversation. Go further, find a way to work with that group you despise, let your real, true love and desire for healing be your guide, because then you will be having the kind of conversation that will result in the elevation of consciousness…and in that shift all women will be enlightened. #yesallwomen, and yesallmen; yes to all humans working together in love and light, bg