Baby-Making Organisms

Certain films make my stomach sink, such as SCHINDLER’S LIST, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, or even THE PIANO. I don’t usually have that kind of reaction to a book, but THE HANDMAID’S TALE was an exception. Do African-Americans experience the same gut-punch in slave movies? I now understand the emotional impact of identifying with being a non-person, a functional convenience, and I apologize for not truly comprehending before this. Margaret Atwood captured the reaction a modern woman would have if she were forced to be a baby-making organism, separated from personhood by a proscriptive religion. Maybe I’m partially reacting to these hypocritical, openly anti-empathetic times, but I just wanted to run away—from the book and this country. The novel is entirely too possible. The world has been there before.

Thoughtful women are sick to death of being pushed around, when free will is part of our birth right, our divine personal responsibility—as it is for every other human. We’re here in the flesh to make decisions for ourselves. We’ve proven our intelligence, resilience, and courage. We don’t belong as mere background scenery to patriarchy. Men or other women who are so insecure that they feel a need to control somebody else to make themselves feel more significant have an emotional problem that harkens back to pre-history when men discovered they could manipulate natural female cooperation to convince women they were meant to be less-than.

Why did men first want to push their female counterparts into subordinate roles? Originally, men were glad to have a full partner to help them face a hostile world. Was it weapons that made it convenient to make women into pets because weapons made a man more formidable by himself? Or was it simply easy and oddly satisfying to bully women because their bodies, constructed to continue the species, were not as physically powerful? Men subjugated women because they could.

In November, I know some women will vote for candidates who want to objectify them in the same way some women align themselves with abusers over and over again. Women are taught to believe we aren’t enough. Some accept that we’re the evil in the world, that we deserve to be dominated. They worship versions of the Bible that have been rewritten over the centuries by masogynists (see MISQUOTING JESUS, the book). With beliefs like those, a vote for someone who makes your life worse is understandable, even required. But a woman who votes against her own best interests is a woman who accepts herself as less-than and unworthy of free will. However, each of us is voting for the good of more people than just ourselves.

An enabler in addiction is someone who makes addiction possible. People who vote against their own highest good and the long-term highest good of humankind are enabling men and women who prefer to live within restrictive roles to continue being socially selfish, safe-guarding only their own opinions. For example, they’re enabling people who can’t accept that there are more than two genders, more than a single religion, more than a single race or culture. They’re attempting to edit out the variety in human life to suit their personal perspectives. They’re defying the original design of humanity and ignoring the needs of our planet. Find out what/who you’re really voting for before you mark the boxes. Beware of candidates whose behavior makes a mockery of their speech. As Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot would say, “Use your little gray cells.”