It doesn't happen when you realize how caring the female palliative care nurse you have to help you through your final days is.
It doesn't happen when your youngest daughter takes you into your home to care for you when you're in the final weeks of your life.
It doesn't happen when you celebrate your 40th anniversary with the same amazing woman.
It doesn't happen when people your partner's age is called too old to still be sexy.
It doesn't happen when you walk your daughter down the aisle, hand-in-hand as she marries another woman as amazing as she is.
It doesn't happen when you hold your granddaughter for the first time.
It doesn't happen when your daughter tells you her friend was sexually assaulted.
It doesn't happen when your daughter tells you she was sexually assaulted.
It doesn't happen when she tells you she's pregnant after that sexual assault and doesn't want a child.
It doesn't happen when you watch your oldest daughter graduate from university.
It doesn't happen when you drop your oldest daughter off at university.
It doesn't happen when your read the comments on a picture of your daughter wearing a bikini calling her a slut or too fat to wear that swimsuit.
It doesn't happen when you read your first story about a female journalist having her life threatened repeatedly for writing a story about misogyny.
It doesn't happen when you watch your youngest daughter scores the game winning goal in her first game of the senior soccer team.
It doesn't happen when your daughter gets her period for the first time.
It doesn't happen the first time your daughter is the target of a sexist remark and people laugh at it.
It doesn't happen when your daughter asks you to help her shop for bras.
It doesn't happen when your daughters asks her other dad "why aren't there any female superheroes at this store?"
It doesn't happen when your daughter wins the lead role in the school play.
It doesn't happen when your daughter asks "How are babies made?" or "Can women marry other women?"
It doesn't happen when you hold your daughter for the first time.
It doesn't happen when you get married to the woman of your dreams.
It doesn't happen when your partner gets offered her dream job in another city.
It doesn't happen when you see a quiet girl in your third grade class get bullied for being a girl.
It doesn't happen when your mom puts a Band-Aid on your knee when you fall off your bicycle.
It doesn't happen when you're breastfed for the first time.
It happens the day you're born.
We don't all experience all of these moments or the many other moments that can and do happen over our lifetime. And, we don't all come to the realization that women's issues are men's issues at the same time (and some never do.) But they are. We don't need to think of our mothers, friends, daughters or sisters when we want to think about how horrible gender-based violence is. We need to think of women as people.
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