How to Say This Intelligently?

I am already embarrassed by this post, because I know it is going to be crudely written, but I have to organize my thoughts, and I have to start somewhere.

I am proud to be a woman.

I grew up in a somewhat anti-feminist atmosphere. The more aware I become of the issues surrounding the female gender across the world, the more in awe I am.

For example, 3 women are brutally murdered every day in South America and Latin American countries. Officials look the other way. Girls as young as four are sold as sex slaves in the human trafficking industry. Female porn stars are addicted to drugs and become trapped in the cycle of making money and getting a hit.

I belong to the trodden-on gender, and I am a sister to the abused and mistreated. We suffer violence at the hands of our husbands, brothers, fathers, and strangers.

I live in the United States and have freedoms and rights and opportunities that other women will never have. How can I ignore their cries? And here, at home, how can I scoff at the efforts of girls and women to do what men are able to do, who dream of being what they are told they can not be?

I have been reading some commentary on an online forum about girls in the sport of wrestling. One woman said, "Girls have breasts and vaginas. They should not be wrestling with boys."

Well, boys have penises. Why do we automatically assume that the female is being victimized in a one-on-one sport, simply because she has a vagina and her opponent has a penis?

Couples figure skating has crotch-grabbing, too, and no one bats an eye. Except in that case, it's intentional. For some reason, seeing a male and female relate to each other artistically in the public arena is palatable, but seeing a male and female engaged in a contact sport (read: not choreographed) in the public arena is not. This doesn't make sense.

At any rate, as I have become a mother and realized my own capabilities and the enormous reserves of strength that I have, I respect my body and my gender. It is misconstrued, and I realize that I have grown up believing things about myself that are not true, but I thought they were simply due to the fact that I am a woman.

This is horribly written, but one day my thoughts on this will work through the keys like a palatable, viscous honey, but for now, they are choppy and floppy. Bear with me; I am learning to fly.