I am mother, hear me roar

I am mother, hear me roar

This is my newest op-ed, published today in the Free Press.  In general, I am proud of it-the editing was fine and I believe in what I said.  I love that it ran in the weekend paper, so more people might see it. However, writers never get to choose the headline.  I am upset about this one.  If a man wrote about getting good and equal access to healthcare, childcare, job equality and its effects on the tax base...everyone would say, "oh, right, of course, that is entirely reasonable and logical."  If I write about it, as a woman, as a mother, as a (gasp) feminist, I am roaring.   I am somehow making an (implied inappropriate?) loud noise and by implication, a statement about what women have to do to request a fair and equal status.

Really?  That makes me sad.  Not as sad, of course, as the struggle to get a fair wage, to have good access to the kind of healthcare I'd like, or to have decent and affordable childcare....but sad that the editors decided that what I wrote was somehow full of lioness rage, rather than full of a sort of legitimate frustration and an obvious logic about how to boost the tax base.  Boo.