On a cold January night I heard screams. Screams that still wake me up at night. As my roommate and I ventured into the winter air toward the source of the screams an apartment complex next door to the house we were living in we ran into a woman. Her face was gushing blood and she walked around blindly, trying to look through eyes that were swollen by shades of black and blue, mingled with tears. She screamed hysterically about someone saving her baby.

Trying our best to understand her, we made out that the source of her violence was in an upstairs apartment, which we presumed was hers. Listening closely, you could hear the sounds of her child’s screams, mixed with her own and the racing of our hearts. The police had been called, but they hadn’t arrived yet. Perhaps it was the screaming, or the situation itself, but in a fit of rage and fear, I bolted up the apartment stairs and kicked in the locked door. I expected to find some drunken, burly guy, but instead I rushed in to a room full of young women. I stood shocked. What was going on? I asked for the child, but there was none.

It seems that the story is that this group of girls had beaten this woman and locked her child in a different apartment because they suspected her of sleeping with one of their boyfriends. The police finally arrived, the girls were arrested, and my roommate got her child to unlock the door, so all was safe. I walked away, though, with a sense of confusion about the whole situation.

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I had seen the these people on numerous occasions, I had heard plenty of fights that took place that involved this fine specimen of a man that they were going to such lengths to preserve. Now, this guy was your stereotypical abuser in all the media portrayals. So it left me to wonder, what have we done to society’s women? That incident left me to wonder why women were beginning to lower themselves to the animalistic behavior most commonly associated with men. It is because like a many men, women have lost all ideas of self respect and love. Why shouldn’t they though? Ever since the those infamous first passages in the Bible, it has been taught that women are second-class citizens. No other group on this planet has suffered more than the women of this world.

There are two things that must happen. One involves women themselves. It seems that the women of this world have forgotten just who they are the most wonderful creation that nature has ever produced. They are the supreme creators and bearers of life, the first to nurture, the first from which most of us feel love. The struggles and hardships that women have had to face forever in this male-dominated society should fill them with a pride that should be seen in their poise and grace, for they are the strongest, most beautiful beings to ever exist. Women should realize their beauty and importance and break the mental and physical shackles that have been placed on them.

The second thing is simply that men need to respect the women of this world. This is a bigger task then it sounds for we too have to break centuries of false presumptions of superiority. If you have a wife or girlfriend, or even if you don’t, treat the women around you like the goddesses they are. Until recently I was a walking contradiction, I spoke one thing yet practiced another, for that I feel shameful, but let us all try to break the chains that bind.

This month is Women’s History Month, but they deserve an eternity of recognition.