Dear Readers,

I’m not feeling well. Over the past few days, my stomach has been feeling kind of queasy and I’ve had a certain malaise about me.  My mood has been a little off and I’m just not as focused as I usually am.

This morning, it hit me harder, like it’s been building up and building up. It was while scanning Facebook and Twitter, blogs and news sites that I realized what has gotten me feeling so very out of sorts, and giving me what I think might be a case of mild depression. This constant barrage of aggression toward women and our liberties  -- and I don’t mean that with a lean to the left – I mean that with lean toward humanity -- is really, truly, honestly affecting me. I am literally getting sick from it.

American women are being besieged by arrogant men telling us we’re sluts and prostitutes. Today I heard that single mothers are child abusers and that sixth graders are asking each other which of their classmates was attractive enough to rape.

Yesterday, a young mother I know was at a client's home getting ready to leave after completing her work for the day. The client's 17 year old stepson called for her as she was leaving. She obliged in the way caring women want to help a teenage boy. As she got to his doorway, he dropped his pants, held out his unit and told her what he wanted her to do to it. Thank God she was able to run. But the memory is something she cannot run away from fast enough.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?

To the men who think this is just political discourse, it is not. Your boys are listening and are now thinking it's ok to rape women physically or with their words of intent. Stop. Stop with the vitriol. And frankly, I don’t care what side of the aisle you sit on. Stop getting off on telling women you are judging our morality and taking pleasure in victimizing us.

Don't hide behind politics or behind religion. Instead, use your manhood to get in front of the daughters and nieces and friends and wives and all the women you love, and protect them from this emotional and sometimes physical bullying. It's going too far. It must stop now.

If this whole thing is getting to a perfectly sane, grown woman for whom birth control and single motherhood are not direct issues, then imagine what it’s doing to the women at whom these men are directly wagging their misogynistic fingers. And imagine the girls and women who are becoming victims of the laissez faire "it's just politics as usual" rhetoric. This discourse is having implications that are no longer political. They are very personal.

And they are making me sick.

Melanie Notkin
CEO SavvyAuntie.com