Hey. Hi. 

It's me. 

The one you just called a "privileged white chick."

(& yes, little change of words because I try and keep it classy here)

Somehow, in my disagreement with thousands of others who marched, my little womanly voice was lost- amidst the screams of other women, not men. 

Those people treading the street and burning my flag? They don't represent me. 

Last time I checked, I was a woman. 

So why is the media currently treating me like I don't know what the heck I'm talking about? 

For those of you who don't know my story, I was home educated my entire life. I had a social circle, operated normally, and generally speaking, had way more free time after waking up at six and getting on with my outdoor exploration by three p.m. by choice. I finished school early by schooling through summers. Again, my choice. And I loved it. Through all this ran some threads of Biblical teaching to be purely feminine, a helpmeet to my future husband. I tucked in my baby dolls at night, and every so often looked forward to the day that would- eventually- happen. Otherwise, I was too busy riding horses, breeding ladybugs and ants in the yard, plunking out song after song on the piano, and learning how to sew. 

I threw on skirts, went outside, climbed trees and fell out of them, scraped my knees up, washed it off in the pool, and then came inside to have a tea party with my dolls. 

I was taught how to do things in addition to penning grammatically correct sentences and mathematical equations and geometry. Cook. Clean. Run a business. My mum did not teach me idleness, and if ever the words, "I'm bored," passed my lips, I was handed the toilet scrubber and informed that there were many other jobs one could come up with. And then of course I grew. I wanted (and of course still want) to be a wife, a mother, with every fibre of my being...when the time came. And that's what made things more for me- that I could do what I needed to do, and still become that. I waited on no one. I traveled a lot, I wrote a lot, prayed a lot, and thought a lot. The world taught me I should want to be more than a woman, though. I began my own business as a piano teacher, and eventually went to work for a local music school as well. I worked two or three 

different jobs at the same time, 

I act, I model, I developed the entrepreneurial spirit that flows in my own ancestry. I "went to" college to fall back on anything should my acting plan not hold up, paying each bill without the help of government or parents. Stubborn? Yes. "Specially" privileged? Unless you count the fact that I lived at home at seventeen years old, hardly. 

I became more independent, planned and scrimped and saved any finance that was not tied up in school, and moved to New York for a brief time. God had other plans. I'm almost twenty-one now, and am learning myself and who I am now. 

I guess what I'm chalking things up to is, I lived. I'm living. My parents specifically gave me guidelines; I am learning balance. But as a woman, I made my own choices. I have been to other countries where other women have not been as lucky. True: my own history has not involved being stripped down and beaten to build another's countries, unless you count the nine or ten different ethnicities that make me up that didn't grow up free, either. And of course, that

is

different. I apologize if you still feel I have wronged you before I was born. But as women in America, things are not that way now.

In Mexico, most women need to be off the street by dusk for safety reasons. I thoroughly enjoy my sunsets and my star gazing without fear. In Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, countries both near and dear to my heart, women can't drive, have literally no rights, must always be covered (and yet are still often raped anyway), and have very little self education to speak of. In India, young girls are sold at a price to the nearest temple for the stone idol to smile on the parents and bless them with a boy, and at an early age, those precious little ladies are taught the art of prostitution and their own form of child slavery within the walls of a palace. This is what I would march for. 

In the words of a precious lady, Hannah Acheson, "nobody has ever stopped me and asked for paperwork. 

Nobody has ever stopped me and asked why a woman was doing any of these things. Nobody has ever told me how to dress, how to speak, how to vote, where to go, where to live, or how to conduct my business. Nobody ever stopped me from learning or going to college. Nobody has stopped me from worshipping Jesus. 

I’m an American. I’m a woman. I’m proud of who that makes me. 

I have no reason to protest; I was born and raised a strong, educated, patriotic woman in the most free country on earth."

And yet, I am condemned as a woman, by women who tell me I am somehow not equal to them because I see things differently? (Ironically enough, the male population has remained fairly silent as a whole on my view of this.) Excuse me, but I thought that's what all these women are marching for. Women are losing their unique roles incredibly quickly already. An acquaintance of mine once would not let her boyfriend open the door for her, and yet was constantly complaining about the fact that she could not, for the life of her, ever find a real gentlemen. 

From a Biblical standpoint, we were made for men

just as

men were made for women. I mean, look at us. We were created completely differently, according to our roles. 

I came across something earlier today that summed it up nicely (for me, at least): that women simply were not created to do everything a man could do. We were created to do everything a man could not do- not by willpower, mind you, because heaven knows they have plenty of that. We're soft, and small. But we're mighty in our own ways. 

For those of you who want to march, do so. But don't you dare assume that I have either no voice, have not lived, need to expand my views or social circles, am "too" conservative, was simply uneducated on all grounds, or must not really be a woman (yeah, I've heard it all) because I will not agree. I will uphold your right to speech. You hold yourselves accountable and upright, and I charge you to uphold mine. But hypocrisy suits no one. 

I plan on keeping my identity. 

Not as a feminist. As a woman who realizes her worth in other situations. 

Who has grown, who has an independent and dependent mindset alike, but who loves the comfort that she does not have to be the end all be all. 

I have seen and know- well, not too much. 

But for me, at this time, this is enough. 

I would hardly wait for, wait on, or be me for a man alone. We are equals. 

But if we as men and women can work together for a better purpose, why would we degrade each other's roles?

{photo by Kendra Connelly}