As equal human beings, as individuals, as persons, re-claim your wombs as an integral and inalienable component of your whole being. As long as the State claims superior, over-riding and distinct claim and interest upon that element of your biological make-up and its processes, as a separate 'issue' to other aspects of your lives, a necessary in-equality will exist between the male and female sectors of our society. In that sense, it is fundamental. Best wishes in your project.

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Damn, I went over there all prepared to combat misandry and was surprised to find very little.

There are women on that site actually suggesting that any discussion on gender has to include men!

What a revolutionary concept!

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I wish I knew a good way to word it.. How can we make an appeal to equality when our media- magazines, television, film- is so un-representory of real people *WOMEN especially*. Consume consume- buy makeup- lose weight- get a diamond if you really care- beer attracts hot women (the only kind of woman that matters!) And it does rub off on us.. a lot.. especially our kids. It is always in our face. Can we stop people from marketing to the lesser side of us? If only we could appeal to the better side of everyone. Things would get better. I like this idea of starting the speech! I hope a lot of folks post some ideas.

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Sorry Ms. Wilson, but some of your premises undermine progress towards your stated goal of “acknowledging and rectifying the persistent and pervasive injustices based on gender that women continue to experience in all areas of life”.

Gender is a social and cultural process that is both done to, and done by, “both” genders TO “both” genders. (I’m sticking to the inadequate but dominant two-gender binary system here for simplicity’s sake.) Any social or political movement to change how females are gendered by both women and men must also address how males are gendered by both men and women. There will be no change to what is deemed “feminine” and appropriate and expected for women without change to what is deemed “masculine” and appropriate and expected for men.

One easy example for your imagined speech: strike all reference to “mothers” or “fathers” and use only the word “parents”. (Even better, try to frame this not as a passive biological result of reproduction, but as an active process - “parenting” as a verb.)

You say “Yet there is another essential element to creating a more perfect union: acknowledging and rectifying the persistent and pervasive injustices based on gender that women continue to experience in all areas of life”.

By using this language to frame your goals, you perpetuate and validate the perception of women as passive people who have things done “to” them by “others” who are powerful and non-passive actors. While unspoken, these others are apparently not women and thus are presumably men. This is no way to launch social change which improves the empowerment of women. Again, gendering is done “to” women by women, not just by men. Both genders are probably near equals in terms of the degree to which their daily actions – physical acts, words said, dollars spent, votes cast – either perpetuate or resist gender inequalities and category systems.

Another easy example: when there is a woman and a man in a car, who is most often driving? Why?

Later you seem to imply that it is only women who can implement change in gendering and achieve a more egalitarian country: “And it is our thought, at The White House Project, that no one woman, or leader, or organization should be writing that speech. Instead, the women of our nation must join together to chart this course.”

Again, it is not just women who must participate in this process. It is true that those willing to take action in oppressive situations are most often those who are oppressed, and you can certainly argue that by most measures women have less power and freedom than men. “Both” genders (and all races, classes, and power levels) must participate for any successful social and political change to be achieved, however. Both genders are also to at least some degree “victims” of gendering processes when any of their life choices are considered “o.k.” if they are one gender and “not o.k.” if they are another. (Fighter pilot or stay at home parent.)

Reduction in the degree to which power and freedom are gendered will only come when all people who “do” gendering (all of us) do so much less and much differently.

Further, gender is not separate from race or class or religion. In the US, it is probably Abraham based religions that throws up the greatest resistance to social change in gendering. Current political surveys emphasize questions like “Is the US ready for a female president?” or “Is the US ready for a Black president?” No one asks “Is the US ready for a Buddhist president?” or even more interesting, “Is the US ready for an Atheist or Agnostic president?" The reason these questions are not asked is that we already know the answer.

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Let's not forget that Obama made the remarkable speech on race as a transformatively positive response to getting pushed into a dangerous corner.

I would like to see his Democratic opponent break the ice by giving a gender speech of her own, instead of just complaining. Me, I'm kinda tired -- I've been speaking out for my right to be a human being and a full citizen of this country for 40 years now. Let the would-be President show that she can inspire the nation on this issue, like Obama did on race.

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