BY ERIC SMITH Of all the things we should not be debating in the year 2013, the question of gender equality is at or near the top of the list. Yet the Republican Party, fueled by its male dominated Conservative base, is now engaged in an all out war on women's rights. It is attempting inch by inch, step by step, to return America to those days when women were second class citizens at best, and "property" of their male counterparts at worst. The Republican Party is seeking to strip women of their fundamental humanity by denying them full human rights, chief among which is the right to be treated as we males wish to be treated, with dignity, respect, and the right to decide and to act in our personal best interests. At the Federal, state, municipal level and in our courts the rights of women to maintain control of their own bodies, to decide their own healthcare, and be equally compensated as their male counterparts for doing the same work for the same amount of time, is under attack and in danger of being rolled back. It begs the question of what is wrong with the men who are leading these attacks and what is even more wrong with the women who actually support them in making these attacks for at the heart of the issue we men are not qualified to determine what is best for a woman because by being men we do not know what it is to be a woman. Oh we can guess, and imagine what it is like but do we have the right to impose the solutions drawn from our guesses on the problems of women themselves; problems that are unique to one being a woman? I don't think that we men have that right. On questions pertaining to prenatal care and whether or not a woman should choose an abortion, we men should not be deciding what is best for our female counterparts because we men do not have any idea what it is like to be pregnant. We are not the ones Nature has charged with bringing a life to term within our person. We cannot even begin to grasp the hormonal changes induced by pregnancy; the impact the carrying of a human life to full term has on a woman's physical, psychological, and physiological well being. We as men are not burdened with the awesome responsibility of having to determine whether or not the life we carry within us will be better off aborted before it is born, or allowed to enter this world while knowing that if it is allowed to enter this world that it will be condemned to suffer through a lifetime of disease, abuse, poverty, and deprivation. We don't know and by not knowing, by not having any way to possibly know, we as men are not qualified to make that call one way or the other. Now on the question of whether or not women should earn equal pay for equal work, that should not be a question at all because of course they should. I mean if things were reversed and women got paid more for doing the same work for the same amount of time that we men did, we men sure as hell would object. I mean if women made the same decisions regarding the use of our reproductive organs, of our health care, of whether or not we should be given equal pay for equal work that we are now making for them, you better believe we men would be up in arms and raising hell. If you doubt that just think of how we object when our wives, our girlfriends, our mothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, daughters, and granddaughters tell us what to do. We lose our damn minds, screaming that these women are making us feel like less than a man and less than fully human. Hell, we do all this kicking and screaming even when we know that the things these women in our lives are telling us to do are for our benefit. So let's look at the the larger context here where we men are seeking to impose our will and telling women what to do in matters of health when the women know that what they are being forced to do is not in their best interests and a blatant violation of their basic rights. We men don't have to be women to know that this is wrong, that it is unjust, for what is being violated here is not so much women's rights but human rights. Only those men who are weak and insecure feel the need to place themselves over women because if you as a man are comfortable in who you are and feel secure within yourself then you don't need to lord it over women or anyone else in order to prop yourself because you know and everyone else knows that you stand tall already. So if you're a man, then ditch this ass backwards idea that you are somehow superior only because you were born a man because the bottom line is you are not. You are not her superior and you are not her inferior, you are her equal. You are her equal because like her you are a human being and as such are entitled to full and equal human rights just like she is. It is all as simple as that. |
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