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Health & Fitness

Blame It on a Woman

When I turned 18 it was a much different world. At age 18 in 1964, my life was well planned out and expectations were clear and precise. On reaching age 18 I had to register with the Selective Service and prepare for my departure to college in the fall. My life was no different than millions of other white males coming of age at the time. My future consisted of going to college and graduate, possibly complete some military service, find a good company and begin a career, find a worthy woman and marry, proceed to sire 2.5 children, buy a home, and spend my life working to support my wife and children, achieving the American Dream. Like many of my contemporaries, I was going into the engineering and sciences, having been accepted into one of the top engineering schools in the country. I was on track to achieve that American Dream. I remember reflecting on the awareness that I would be working for the rest of my adult life and taking on the responsibility of caring for my own family. As daunting as the thought was, the one consolation was that I wasn’t born a female.

The life of white males and females were much different than today. In school males took industrial arts classes, math and sciences and just enough of the humanities to meet state requirements. Females, on the other hand, took home economics, business classes (typing, bookkeeping and short hand), and a boat load of arts and humanities. Males participated in team sports and women participated in cheer leading and drill team. Men looked forward to careers in vocations and professions providing living wages; while women were pretty much limited to nursing, teaching, secretarial work, most only marking time until eventually reaching their primary goal as homemakers.  There wasn’t any doubt that men were superior to women and white males were at the top of the heap.

When we graduated that spring, it came as quite a surprise to find the two top students in our class were both females. We males compensated by claiming that if the two females would have taken the same courses that we males took, they would have finished far behind us.

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That fall I set off to college full of anticipation and excitement, a belly full of trepidation, and an unbridled and raging libido. What I had not counted on was my naivety and immaturity.  I was easily distracted and anything and everything became more interesting than what I was there for. At this college there were 4000 men and only 40 women. Needless to say, it was like living in a cloistered monastery. To help remedy this, the college sponsored six social weekends during the school year, bringing in bus loads of young women from a number of women’s colleges. It was during the second of these social weekends when I met my Waterloo in the form of a dark haired dark eyed beauty, all of five foot nothing, a head full of brains and an attitude that I had never before encountered in all of my 18 years. I was immediately smitten by this exotic creature.

Although I was fascinated by her; she didn’t find me that particularly interesting, but I was persistent in my pursuit. Initially, I think I amused her, but soon I became her personal project. She began the process of educating me, bringing me into the real world of the mid twentieth century.  She had me reading books like the Betty Freidan book, the Feminine Mystique and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. We read, discussed and argued, involved ourselves in civil rights activities and within less than a year, I made a transition from the typical white young male of the era to someone who was painfully aware of social injustices and reborn as a progressive and liberal.

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The reason that I decided to share this narrative is for those who think that women will ever go peacefully back into their gilded cages without a major fight, are highly deluded. The gains in freedom and empowerment for women were only won after fighting hard long battles against tremendous odds.

For those that don’t understand that a woman’s physiology has been the main objection to overcoming her limitations, it is time to fully understand there is no going back. Women have proved that they can compete and are the equal to men. In fact, they have far exceeded their male counterparts in a variety of areas.

Women are keenly aware of the tactics that have been used in the past to limit and control them. This is precisely why any effort to use a woman’s physiology as justification for turning back the clock is viewed as misogynistic and is interpreted as a ‘War on Women’.  Critical to personal sovereignty is a woman’s right to control her own body. The idea that birth control should or would be controlled or denied is a direct assault. In addition, unreasonable restrictions on pregnancy terminations are also interpreted as a direct assault on a woman’s personal sovereignty. I have heard and read many who claim that if a woman is so worried about becoming pregnant and giving up her personal sovereignty, she has the option of choosing abstinence. That turns out to be a pretty unreasonable choice and is definitely not a position held by most women.

Women have always been fully aware of the investment that pregnancy and child rearing brings. No man can possibly fully understand the depth of that investment. Since, such a large investment is made and it has such a profound effect on a woman’s life; females, out of necessity, have, unless forced in some manner, generally controlled with whom she engaged in coitus. Resulting pregnancies create a fundamental change in the woman and the woman’s choice options.  Therefore, it becomes a fundamental principle of a woman’s sovereign individuality and rights that she be able to control when she becomes pregnant and by whom. Society should not put unnecessary and unreasonable restrictions on a woman’s choice concerning her fecundity and independence, especially when there isn’t an overwhelming public interest involved.




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