Ask anyone to break down their identity using only four words and you'll always here gender first.  Especially with women.  My mother-in-law will say, "woman, mother, Jewish, business executive."  I say "woman, mother, writer, filmmaker."  The point is that probably 99.99% of the 51% of this county's population will, without thinking twice, put the descriptive "woman" first.  We are women first.  I'm not even sure political affiliation makes the list unless it’s your livelihood.

So it comes as no surprise when the press, a celebrity or a public figure insult Hillary, Nancy, even Sarah, and/or their children, we get angry.  But maybe not angry enough.  Applying my "switch-shoe" test application, i.e. "would that be said about a man or boy?", seems to be a good, simple litmus test to the misogyny that is so easily released on the airwaves and in every day life.  We seem to have allowed it to become "normal" in our culture and it is something we have to stop. 

Surely the volley between Governor Palin and David Letterman has caught your attention.  Use the test, would he have ever said what he said about her daughter about her son?  No.

The Playboy columnist who wrote about "hate raping" conservative women?  Besides that this kind of hate writing was allowed (and I am truly an advocate of our first amendment but I also believe in using one's own moral compass too -- maybe this columnist is void of one), would this columnist ever make this list about raping men?  No. 

Consider the second "selling" of the young woman with whom former Governor Spitzer was associated.  Would the press have plastered the face of a boy all over the newspapers in provocative poses (trying to secure readership), like a pimp, her future in tabloid fodder?  Because we are still treated like property, even in the most subtle, unconscious way (for example, why do the bride's parents still pay for the wedding?), women are "commoditized."  We seem to all have a price.

Former New York City Mayor Giuliani had a strategy, the “Broken Window” tactic, with regard to bringing down the crime rate.  He issued an edict to arrest people for the small things.  He wanted people arrested who jeopardized the quality of life.  Beer in a bag?  Busted.  Break a window?  Arrested.  His thinking was that if you go after people for the small crimes, they will think twice about attempting to do anything more detrimental or more dangerous.  This is really the strategy we must apply to cracking down on hate and misogyny.  If it is okay to tout a young girl getting knocked-up, we push the invisible culture envelope to then make anything worse so much more easily to seep into our culture. 

The time has come for us, as women, to demand this desecration to stop.  We have to show that while we may not agree on everything (politics, stay home vs. work, abortion, childcare, etc.), we must be afforded the same luxury as men to be able to stand as women first and discuss finding lasting solutions to our differences second.  We must stand together to stop what I basically call the blatant rape of the human soul.  The line is "don't go there!" and we should be saying it loud -- AND we should be saying in defense of ALL of us.  My sister and my mother are conservative as are many of my girlfriends back in the Midwest and guess what?  I'd take a bullet for each and every one of them... and their children -- boy or girl.  As 80% of the purchasing power in this country, I think someone will hear us if we utilize our power effectively.  Don't buy it, don't do it, and don’t be silent.  We are women first.

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Amy Sewell - "Woman, mother, writer, filmmaker."