...say, 2 kids, or after the age of 40, or whatever. Yeah. This is territory Margaret Atwood has not covered. Because, well, UNTHINKABLE! It does not occur to even speculative fiction’s best writers. Where is the masterpiece of dystopia that equals Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale? “ Only with men being the ones who are subjugated?
The question I asked in my headline, is not even considered as reasonable, anywhere that I know of. And it is NOT my idea of a solution to where we find ourselves today. I would NEVER presume to tell a man what to do with his body, anymore than I would presume to tell a woman what to do with her body.
But I think if you want to REALLY SEE the amount of sexism and desire to control in the current-almost-SCOTUS decision regarding Roe, then you just have to find a way to flip the question, and ask men how they might feel if such a law was passed regarding their precious privates. Because we really, really need men to understand what it might feel like to have their body controlled by the government.
And ain’t it just the absolute height of hypocrisy that such a thing is NEVER even discussed amongst the party of “drowning government in a bathtub,” nor, sadly, to most all of us. It just doesn’t occur to us that men have reproductive organs too, and that if you want to get all het up about control of that, you really should ask men to sacrifice over the holy alter of evangelicalism too.
Y’know, at a time, when China’s autocratic government limited every family to one child, you can at least say it required both sexes---their hopes and dreams--- to submit to governmental control.
The terrible assumption this country lives under, is that women bear the major responsibility for child birth---for procreating the race, and oh yeah, according to a current Supreme Court conservative judge---to refresh the supply of “domestic adoptions.” Hello Aunt Lydia. But like Margaret Atwood pointed out, we really can’t do it AT ALL without women.
Yeah, these days we can get the sperm where it needs to be with scant participation from men (hey, one jack off is all it takes, and if you think that’s rude, get over it) through artificial insemination or in the dystopian ways of Gilead. But we still need a woman’s womb. NINE months of her life, and the many risks of pregnancy--physical, mental, and life long responsibility. It is FAR more often that a man runs out on a woman who is pregnant, than a woman runs out on a man in anywhere near as seriously life altering circumstances as a pregnancy. Or raising kids without a mate.
I’m not sure that we all see this as clearly as we should, even we progressives. And I don’t think we can see it unless we’re willing to ask the same thing from men, as we do from women.
So...Bub, and Harry, and Oscar, and Jim and of course, Mr. Alito, are you willing to have the government control YOUR reproductive organs? Are you okey dokey with the government declaring you MUST participate in making sure no unwanted pregnancies occur? Are you OK with the government telling you we’re going to snip at your privates when we think it’s OK to do so?
Yeah. No. I don’t think so.