I have to chime in on this whole issue of menstrual cramps and related concerns. I want to make it very plain, I'm against it.
Speaking not merely as a committed feminist, but also as a dude, I have to say you ladies got the short end of the stick on this whole setup. Not sure who to blame on that - God or Darwin - but either way, it's clear they were both men. A couple of self-aggrandizing patriarchialists, out to prove some point and/or create the universe on the backs of the suffering of women!
I wouldn't even be surprised if the two of 'em weren't in on it together, at some level. I mean, just look at Darwin's beard - terribly affectedly Jehovaesque if you ask me.
Now some might say, that's not really fair - God's not a "man"! God's some sort of...infinite...energy being, of some kind. Yeah, well maybe so! But to paraphrase his own autobiography, "Judge Ye By Their Fucking Acts!" And in that same book, we see the plain and damning fact that shows without a doubt which side of the gender divide God butters his bread on. Because when God decides to come down here to make some point about solidarity with us lower types, about ostensibly joining in on our suffering, and et cetera, well. He didn't come down as a woman did he?
Did he?
No! I daresay he did not. That would have been a bit too much suffering, eh? So no, of course he didn't. He came down as a human male - the traditional bastion, repository and chief beneficiary of male privilege. A human male - what better form to take, to further the cause of institutionalized patriarchy?
So anyway, the point I'm making here is - that whole menstrual deal - that's a raw damn deal y'all got saddled with on this one, to have to deal with.
I'm feelin' ya.
4 comments:
It's very true you know. We get crampy and have to put cotton plugs up our whoopsies then we get all crampy and achey and sore backy and our boobs feel like they've been kicked by a Gestapo boot, then we have to get pregnant and throw up and expand and have our feet get all huge and puffy and not drink alcohol for like...nine and a half months, then push something the size of a cat out of a tiny little fleshy tube, then get all sewn up again, etc. etc.
Woe is woman.
This is why I don't have kids. It's a giant eff you gesture to creation for all that inconvenience.
Power, sister!
Power.
SCREW THE MAN.
I take it from your tongue-in-cheek tone of outrage that you have tumbled onto (figuratively speaking) the thing that makes outraged feminism so ugly; namely, the assumption that anything bad for woman is good for man, anything good for man is bad for woman, and vice versa. That we are engaged in a knock-down, drag-out (figuratively speaking) gender war, and the only moral thing to do is take no prisoners.
Whereas in real life, most women have men they know and love, and vice versa. Though that is getting less common, sadly.
Pregnancy, birth, by extension even cramps, are a privilege. To participate in a mystery, to suffer for the sake of others. Men have ways they can do those things too, but since are not forced on them biologically, and increasingly are not modeled for them, more and more men are opting out or don't even know what they're missing.
Jen. I love when one of my far-gone ad absurdum libs provokes a serious, thoughtful response like this, that so nails the sad and tragic aspect of reality I was either running away with, or possibly from. So often I see something wrong and run with it. The truth is, it is not so funny. There is deep bitterness infusing the sick-sweet broth I stew my barbed skewers in, and that lip-smack tang of salt is all tears.
Life is hard, bitter; a sore trial and an unfair one at that. It does not seem like it should be so hard to see better, to know better - to reach out with hands not fists! If we could only take our common humanity as a starting point to work from and to rejoice in. But it is so easy to believe in life as a fight, and that means the enemy must be all around. We embrace hate and divisiveness because if we can make our enemy so damn strong, then maybe it can make some sense how hard life is.
I am truly a committed feminist. There is no joke, there. But as a friend of mine pointed out, too many feminists do not have equality at their heart's core for the cause, but enmity.
Thank you for making me look closer.
Post a Comment