Have Women Progressed?

Small tiny rant tonight that is on my mind.
Have women's rights issues actually progressed very much since the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.  Sure, women have more opportunity now, there are more women seeking higher education than men now... but recently we had to fight tooth and nail just to get an equal pay initiative passed and the violence against women act...which to me is a no brainer...failed once and almost failed a second time.

You hear archaic things again like a woman's place is in the home and even more barbaric concepts about how women who are assertive or dress in short skirts or God forbid act a bit wild at times are "asking" for it, basically excusing sexual violence and assault.

I don't care how short a woman's skirt is or how much she has had to drink in a night... when she says "no" that is a pretty clear indication of how the night should go.

There are men who actually believe that NO means maybe or yes... I know it seems far reaching and completely disgusting... but its still acceptable to think that way.  I've heard conversations that say as much...and it was sickening then and its sickening now to know that some grown men think that way


We just had asinine arguments over "legitimate rape" in 2012... and a girl who got sexually assaulted by a few popular football players gets scrutinized because in rape, the victim is always "shady" or "up to something"....

I don't know what breeds this bonehead logic that women want to be treated like crap, dominated, discriminated against, or that this rape fantasy is somehow cool to talk about, think about, or even write about... but its sick and it promotes destructive and dangerous behavior...

And yes, intelligent men who are not complete barbaric ogre monsters do not think this way... My husband would never disrespect me as a woman and doesn't see the female sex as some lesser creature... He was raised though by a loving, strong willed, intellectual, and no nonsense mother and a loving and equally respectful father...people who would not have allowed their son to be so coarse as to look at a woman in a negative light or treat a woman with any level of diminished respect...
Apparently not everyone gets that education...

After reading a few articles tonight when looking into some stuff for one of my classes on the role of women and the perception of women in society and meshing that with my experience with respectful men and disrespectful men... I find myself shocked that in reality we have sort of stepped backwards because rape is so vague and easy to get out of again... how is this?