I Am a Human Being

This is not a personal blog so my desire is that it be semi-professional, devastatingly informative, and not too chatty.  But sometimes my heart gets so wound up into the issue that I just want to burst.  Right now is one of those times.

I am a woman.  And I am sick to my core of women being viewed as objects, as lesser than, as easy prey.  I am a human being.   I have thoughts in my head, desires in my heart, skills in my hands.  I have the intrinsic right to protect my body, as far as I am able, from disease and abuse.  No one - no one, no one, NO ONE - has the intrinsic right to take that from me.  Anyone who desires to use me, manipulate me, physically hurt me, or willingly and unfeelingly subject me to emotional or physical harm or disease for his or her own benefit is acting outside the bounds of his or her rights.  

I am a human being.
It is not okay to use human beings.
It is not okay to misuse human beings.
It is not okay to abuse human beings.
The attitude of these men toward human beings is not okay.
It is not okay,
it is not okay,
it is not okay.

We throw around the word objectification a lot, but that's exactly what people who rape and traffick or knowingly use those who might be trafficked have done.  They have taken a human life - this bottle of experience and creativity and emotion and potential and life - and reduced it to any common object found lying around the house.  And less, even, because I bet every single one of the men interviewed in the article above has a smart phone or a laptop or a car or a favorite beer mug on which he places higher value than he has placed on the prostitute he's shagging.   

How can this be?  
How is it possible to think this way?

Oh God, change the heartbeat of the world, please.