I keep seeing videos, usually shorts, with women and children making a hand signal when they are in trouble and need help. Usually when a man is being aggressive, controlling, dangerous, or otherwise a problem. I haven't known what the hand signal was. Today I found a video where they said it is the SOS hand signal. Do you know it? Would you recognize someone flashing SOS to you?

Share this signal with friends, family, men, women and children. People need to know what it is whether they are in trouble or might be able to help someone in trouble. You may not be smart to intervene directly. Be careful. In the videos I see people doing various things like putting themselves between the man and women/ child. Trying to edge them out of the way. But, how many of those videos are staged? Likely a lot of them. Call for help from police, security staff, someone who has some authority and protection for dealing with a possibly dangerous situation.

Mainly, I hope you never need to use it yourself.

The Signal for Help was originally introduced by the Canadian Women’s Foundation in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when many survivors were trapped at home with their abusers. It’s a single-hand gesture meant to silently communicate distress during a video call, in public, or even behind closed doors.

Here’s how it works:

1. Hold one hand up, palm facing outward.
2. Tuck your thumb into your palm.
3. Fold your four fingers down over your thumb.

That’s it. No words. No obvious motion. Just one discreet, life-saving signal.

via - Ignite Her - Signal for Help: The Silent Hand Gesture Every Woman Should Know

Originally posted to Sex Kitten (2003 - 2004)

We were given the topic "Inspirational Women" but all I could think of were the women in my life, those I admire and those I love. We all inspire someone, somewhere. Why don't we give ourselves more credit?

Why do we get inspired by other women? Is it really due to their achievements or is there more to it? Do we see ourselves in their struggle and do we envy their success as we compare ourselves to them? I do, but then I think there is really no reason I can't be making more successes in my own life, doing the things that matter to me. What holds some of us back? Why do we choose to go shopping, see something on TV or just never start all these great ideas and plans we have? Is it learned helplessness or do we just have so little faith in ourselves? Really, there isn't any reason we can't all be inspirational women. Maybe we already are, to someone.

Those inspirational women you read or think about mostly wouldn't think of themselves that way. If you could go back in time as ask Amelia Earhart, Nellie McClung, Helen Keller, Boadicca, and Nellie Bly what made them inspirational I bet they would wonder too. Women tend to question our own achievements and see them as less than they really are. We compare ourselves to other women and see how much more we could be doing and then everything we have done seems smaller and less important. We cheat ourselves. Men don't do that. They think every least thing they do is great and should be made note of. We call them cocky. Why aren't we more like that? You don’t need a cock to believe in yourself and your abilities. Trust yourself, when no one is there for you, you are.

I admire women who are part of my everyday life yet I don't think any of them would feel they belong on a list of inspirational women to be admired. I find my Grandmother and her sisters inspiring: Violet Scherle, Alice McRoberts, and the others, all deceased now. I find women I have contacted and worked with on the web inspiring: Deanna, Jade Walker, Bev Walton-Porter, Debbie Ohi for instance. Think of the early women doctors, the old midwives and herbalists who fought battles to do with family, career and a woman's place in our world. I admire my Mother for being a Mom with four kids and a less than pleasant husband. As I grow older I understand her life and things she must have felt.

I admire women writers like: Shirley Jackson, LM Montgomery, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Victoria Holt and Anne Stuart for their imagination and craft with words. I admire women pioneers like Susanna Moody and her sister Catherine Parr Traille. I admire women like Helen Keller and Kat at Sex Kitten who are fighting with health problems and winning. I admire my own sister, Sarah, for starting up her own business and keeping it going even though it's very scary to have big debts, small children and an insecure income. I find Angela Comelli, a friend from high school inspiring cause she was beautiful (she literally turned heads as she walked down the street), very intelligent, witty and a lovely, kind person and she thought I was all those things too.

I think the women I find most inspiring are those who achieve their dreams while being single, working parents. Women who struggle to keep going after huge setbacks like a divorce, a death or whatever else comes along in life. I think we should all take some time to admire each other, for we have all faced trouble we thought we couldn't survive and yet here we are, still working on keeping things together and creating our dreams too.

Marot Kidder was an actress and activist for environmental, political, and women's causes. She was born in Yellowknife, NWT, Canada, October, 17th, 1948. She had a sister, three brothers, one daughter, and at least two grandchildren. As an actress she may be most known as Lois Lane in Superman, with Christopher Reeves. The rest of her life was busy and made messy due to mental illness. But, she was involved with many things and had a respect for people who also had problems in their lives.

I never met her. I would have liked to, not because she became famous but because she seemed to think and feel as I do, maybe a kindred spirit. She was just a few years younger than my Mother, which surprised me. I had thought we were close in age. Time flies.
…more

Wikipedia is doing this #SheSaid Wiki Loves Women thing. I'd like to support it. I just don't feel I can rely on it.

The idea of giving more women a voice, or a place/forum to hear the voice they've been using for years.... is great. But, is it really about women anymore? Or is this just another placebo. Using inclusivity as a way to exclude women while pushing the agenda of men who think putting on make up, a skirt and having body modifications is all a woman really is?

I've lived through too many years as a real woman to accept men (no matter how demanding and aggressive) as women.

It bothers me that we don't even think of this as a feminist issue. The men have infiltrated and influenced too far for women to get their heads above it and have a voice. More likely, it will be other men protesting the issue, who are heard. Not us, not the women being pushed out of our own gender.