Gender wars?

When I was younger, I viewed equality with a superficial eye.  I wondered why certain groups of our society were fighting for privilege and now I fully grasp the ramifications.  Why do we have domestic violence shelters for women?  Why do we have land especially for aboriginals?  Why do we have extra rights for children?  The answer is to compensate for societies ills, lack of respect and judicial acknowledgement.  Without these, these groups are robbed of their rights and sometimes their lives.  

If everyone could see equality in the view of balancing scales, one would see how important it is to have these things because there are still human beings that walk amongst the earth believing that they should have power over all with out the responsibility to care for the people underneath them and reflect with heart and compassion on how they had come to the status of "underneath".  Women everywhere have suffered immensely until one had gave her life in front of the queen just so that we could vote.  She had been imprisoned, ridiculed and humiliated by many in her plight to vote.  Women everywhere became inspired by her journey to protect women's rights and lived through their own struggles to obtain the same rights as men.  Somewhere some how, through generations, her story got lost and misunderstood.  Women began to forget why women's rights were needed and "feminists" became a bad word.  

It is not until one experiences the pain and suffering that patriarchal oppression has brought, that we truly appreciate what our female ancestors did for us.  They made it possible for us to go to be treated like human beings instead of "property" to be owned like a car and kicked when we don't do what he wants.  Somehow, our rights became a "gender war" and our children became a target.  The reprisal of freedom became another episode of human suffering.  A struggle to be free of oppression and sadly more violence.  The ignorant are what feeds human suffering like that of the apartheid, the holocaust and other tragic human events.  Our only hope is for the authorities to really acknowledge the genuine amount of human suffering that the family court causes so that everyone can move forward with respect and peace.