From needs to rights

Women are human too and as all humans, we are not born with rights. We are born with needs, and when those needs are not satisfied and we are hurting physically or emotionally, our right to have our needs satisfied emerges. Therefore, we must understand how needs become rights.

I have the need to breathe fresh air, and drink clean water, which will satisfy my need to live a healthy and self-fulfilling life. If my needs to breathe fresh air and drink clean water are denied me, I then have the right do all in my power to demand that the air that I breathe and the water that I drink are cleaned up.

Here are the basic needs of women.

Our basic needs are food, water, warmth and rest. We also have the basic need for safety and security; the need to be protected from harm or any threat of harm. This latter is also a basic need. If a woman cannot walk our streets with the confidence that there is no threat to her basic need for security, or safety, then she has every right to demand it. It is in the demanding to have basic needs satisfied that women are becoming angry and aggressive. Wait a minute! Don’t men have these needs too? Here are two other basic needs.

The needs that emerge after our physiological and safety and security needs are satisfied are love and belonging and esteem. We have the need for friends, family and relationships.

However, if we feel threatened and do not trust that our men mean us well, and they want to harm us instead of protect us, then we will not be genuine with our interactions with members of the opposite sex, and our one-on-one relationships will not succeed.

In my moving around this sacred space that is my beloved country, I observe many young women dressing like young men. They are in the baggy pants, oversized T-shirts, slippers dragging and walking with a swagger and bump that says “do not mess with me.” I did ask one very attractive young woman about her manner of dress and she was very frank with me, when she responded that she did not want to expose herself to the uncomfortable and disrespectful advances of those uncaring men.

I remember that Alicia Keys confessed that this was the reason she dressed how she did in her late teens and twenties. It is only now that she feels confident enough as she is getting older. She is now in a secure, fulfilling relationship. I hasten to add that she feels safe and protected enough now to express her femininity without feeling threatened.

We now have to teach our girl children how to negotiate the space that they inhabit with uncaring and selfish men, who only look at women as “a good piece of meat” to be devoured or “a good &%$#.” Here is another subject that must be included in our school curriculum.

Our boys must learn that as human beings we all need to be protected, to feel safe, to belong to a group of caring individuals and to feel good about ourselves and be creative.

These are basic.

If these basic needs are not met, they become rights and as women we have a right to demand that we be treated with respect. This country and the world that we inhabit are as much women’s as it is men’s.

When we are all fulfilled and are working together in an environment that is safe, full of respect for each other, only then we will feel good about who we are. Love will flourish.

Our country will then be filled with citizens who create beauty, produce order, and promote justice and who work to develop community and share their talents, with the understanding that “I am my brother’s keeper.” Get a life, men. It is no longer a man’s world. Deal with it. We have needs just like you have and if you are not working with us to ensure that our basic, emotional and self-fulfilling needs are not satisfied, then we have a right to demand it no matter what.