It's June, and that means the Browncoats are stepping up in support of Equality Now, our favorite charity.

I know. You're looking at me like I'm stupid. Aren't women equal? Don't we have the same rights as men? In the US, legally, we're supposed to. In other parts of the world, women are far less than equal. In some places, they aren't even considered completly human. It's time we stopped standing standing by and letting our fellow human beings treat half of our race as less than whole. But where do we make our stand? Is it our right, as equal and free women, to stand and tell another culture that they are wrong? That centuries of ingrained cultural customs are wrong?

When I ponder this, I think about a legend I once heard. It's about an instrument familiar to almost everyone today; a long hollow tube called "Didgeridoo". The didgeridoo has been an essential part of Australian Aboriginal culture for thousands of years. The legend tells that in the Dreamtime, all of the plants and animals of the earth were brought forth through the song of the didgeridoo. Listen to a skilled didgeridoo player today and you will hear him bring forth all of these sounds- birds, wind, trees. Because it was a sacred instrument, a woman was not allowed to touch a didgeridoo, let alone play it. To frighten them from trying, legend told that a woman who played the didgeridoo would give birth to twins. A woman who touched a didgeridoo, or who accidently overheard one of it's sacred ceremonial songs, would be subject to banishment and left to die in the Outback.

As time went on, things changed. Girls were allowed to play with toy instruments, the same as the boys of the tribes, but had to stop when they reached adulthood. In some tribes, it was simply assumed that because women had never played the didgeridoo, that they simply did not know how. As though all of those boys growing up learning to play as part of their education were all born knowing.
Today, didgeridoos are handled by men and women alike. While women still do not play the ceremonial songs, they not only touch, but play with and actually hand-craft didgeridoos. Time changed, culture changed. The didgeridoo itself is no longer truly sacred: A group a few years back used tiny microphones and cameras to figure out how it's eerie sound is created. Science led the way to understanding.