With society repeatedly failing women, it’s time to take the battle for our rights into our own hands.
BY: Monica Obradovic
Staff Writer
It’s 2018. I shouldn’t have to write this. It’s been almost a hundred years since women secured the right to vote. However, my bone to pick is not with women’s rights. What I’m more concerned with is simple morality.
In the past, I’ve been wary of labeling myself as a feminist. I thought that equality is a progressive movement, something that takes time, and didn’t understand why all these women were suddenly raising so much hoopla about feminism. Now with age and some acquired wisdom from experience that thought is long gone. Not only am I a feminist, I’m angry.
Currently, the #MeToo movement is ruling social media and is shifting ideals to help victims of sexual abuse. The cup of justice finally seems to be brimming over for not only women but men who have fallen victim to violations of their bodies. However, this justice does not pertain in the case of Emilie Morris.
Emilie Morris was a 1997 graduate of local Lindbergh High School. She walked the same halls and ran the same paths as I, who graduated in 2016. She and I both participated in cross-country. Our high school experiences probably would’ve been very similar had she not had a sexual encounter with her cross-country coach, James B. Wilder III.
On the high school cross-country team, Coach Wilder’s name was like a curse word that could only be whispered and felt dirty once it came out. Other cross-country coaches refused to talk about him and any mention of his six charges of statutory sodomy was prohibited. Some girls thought he was creepy, but most, as I remember, thought the charges were bogus. No way could Coach Wilder do something like that. He was cool, he was well-liked, he was married.
It took Morris over a decade to decide to take action for the things that Wilder had done. Morris met with her old cross-country coach and recorded their conversation in which he admitted to their relationship. Wilder certainly would’ve been jailed if Morris hadn’t been found asphyxiated in her apartment in November 2014.
Due to her death, which according to the police report was “suspicious,” the 35-year old’s case fell flat. Without her testimony, Wilder, a confirmed sexual predator, walked free despite a taped confession. Also, according to Buzzfeed News, he still possesses his teaching license.
Why is our system failing girls like Emilie Morris? Why are most systems failing women altogether? And lastly, but most importantly, why is our nation led by a man who is practically a billboard for nefarious sexual behavior? No one needs plastic hashtags typed passively behind a screen. What women need is reform
We are at war with each other, a tug-of-war game with nobody crossing the line. This isn’t a fight of men
vs. women; this is change against antiquated ignorance.
It’s 2018. Let’s take this into our own hands and put an end to these injustices.
