Nov 13 2008
“Men” and “mankind” apparently not being defined to include “ambulatory wombs.”
After having spent my adult life variously not being a mom, being a married mom, being a single mom, being a mom who stayed at home and being a mom who worked outside the home, I have come to the conclusion that if you are a fertile woman of childbearing years, no matter what you’re doing in terms of marriage and motherhood and career, you’re wrong. To wit:
1. You’re married, you get pregnant, choose to give birth, and decide to stay at home with the baby.
Lazy! Self-indulgent! and just GIVING away all the advances women have made in terms of career equality! Get a job!
2. You’re married, you get pregnant, choose to give birth, and decide to work outside the home without the baby.
Selfish! It isn’t all about YOU and YOUR fulfillment anymore, you have a child to think of now! you just don’t want to have to live within your means! You need to raise your OWN child!
3. You’re married, you get pregnant and choose to have an abortion.
Murderer! If you didn’t want to have kids you should have gotten your tubes tied! If you have a husband and a home, there is no excuse for not stepping up to the plate and carrying that life you created to term!
4. You’re married and you choose not to get pregnant.
Immature! Self-centered! Look at Europe–do you want to see our culture crash too? It isn’t all about you, you have a duty to society! It’s time to GROW UP and take on your responsibilities!
5. You’re not married, you get pregnant, choose to give birth, and decide to stay at home with the baby.
Leech! It isn’t society’s responsibility to care for your child conceived due to your irresponsible behavior! Get out there and get a job!
6. You’re not married, you get pregnant, choose to give birth, and decide to work outside the home without the baby.
Slut! Our culture is collapsing because of the explosion of all you single mothers! Why didn’t you give that baby to a real family that could raise it properly instead of shoving it off onto strangers!
7. You’re not married, you get pregnant and choose to have an abortion.
Slut! And now you think it’s okay to take another human life so you can just erase your careless, selfish behavior! You spread your legs, now you need to step up the the plate and take your medicine like an adult!
8. You’re not married and you choose not to get pregnant.
What’s wrong with you? Are you that ugly and unpleasant that no man wants to commit to you, or are you just a selfish whore?
It’s pretty flawless in its circularity, too–like a Monopoly board, except that you never actually get to pass GO–more like getting a Go directly to jail! card every time you start to get close.
Rarely have I seen such a situation that allows virtually no way out into approval. After I realized this, it kept returning to me, preying on my mind–why is it so perfect in its censoriousness? How can that be? Surely there is some kind of trend that leads more to approval than disapproval–generally, when something isn’t approved by society, there is a corresponding approved mode of behavior that, if the persons being disapproved of switched to, would result in their general approval instead. But here, all modes are disapproved of. Is that even really possible in a functional culture..?
It is, and I finally figured out the how of it. The above scenarios, where there is no right choice, is just the surface of the situation. What’s really being globally disapproved of here is that women have a choice at all.
It’s so simple when you finally realize that. Of course all choices are disapproved of, because it’s HAVING A CHOICE that’s the problem. If women, for instance, in all those situations, had to do what their husbands or if unmarried, their fathers, told them to do about each particular situation, society in general would cease censuring them regardless of what the choice was. For evidence, look at cultures where women are married off by their fathers–there is never any censure directed at them, nor is there censure directed at their fathers generally speaking. Oh yes, early marriage is so sad! but aside from the woman-as-victim, there are no other actors ever presented as being at fault. I have yet to read an article that actually blames any individual father or husband for the marriage. Look at cultures where abortion and birth control are illegal. Nobody ever blames the women for how many or how few children they have, or whether or not they are working outside the home or not–because they have no choice. Or cultures where abortion and sterilization are required by law after a certain number of children are borne. And again, I have yet to read the article that ever holds any husbands or fathers culpable either–no actual individuals are ever to blame for whatever situation is in effect. As long as the women involved had no choice.
So I have the intellectual satisfaction of solving the mechanics of a puzzle that has troubled me for some time. Unfortunately, I have yet to figure out the why of it. Why, in a country purportedly founded upon the rights of the individual to choose any number of things–why we have created a situation where doing so is overwhelmingly disapproved of, a situation where the only fix in terms of general societal approval would be to remove entirely that right..? Why is the individual’s pursuit of life, liberty and happiness constrained so much more heavily by loudly exhorted mores only when the individual is a fertile woman of childbearing years..?
