A Piece of a Woman's Mind

The inevitable fate of men who are control freaks.

Sigmund Freund asserted that women have penis envy from the time we are children and first notice that we do not have a penis. He even speculated that it led to mental illness. I believe that the theory was his oblique way of stating that in his opinion women were inferior creatures. He believed but did not state out loud “I would rather die than be a woman.” I believe that was a Freudian slip on his part.

Men have always wanted to be totally in control of procreation. That is why throughout history they never even tried to practice birth control no matter how dangerous pregnancy was for the women whom they impregnated with or without their consent. After all, what female in her right mind would pass up the chance to give birth to a child that came from a man’s magnificent loins? A desire on the woman’s part to not have a child was seen as a direct rejection of a male.

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States (and most first world countries) have dealt some severe blows to male control over procreation. In the 1960s birth control pills became widely available. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court made safe abortion available through Roe v. Wade. Biological advances made preservation of sperm possible which gave rise to sperm banks. Women could get pregnant without intercourse with a man. Moreover, women could decide for themselves which sperm were worthy and which were not, operating totally outside the bounds and bonds of matrimonial rules established by societal and religious male overlords.

As more education and “equal opportunity” became a reality for women, they were able to have well-paid jobs and careers that provided some financial independence from a man.  Increased sexual freedom for both women and men have changed our societal mores and norms. For many decades now women have chosen to get pregnant outside of marriage. Many times the father never even knows he is a father because that is what suits the mother. IVF made it possible for medical facilities to create and store fertilized female eggs to enable pregnancy and childbirth for couples who were not able to get pregnant through other means. In short, human reproduction has left the control of men, and they have no womb of their own to produce babies. Instead of being heroes who provide food and shelter for their families and defend our country (which they could still do if they weren’t so preoccupied with trying to control women), now they are reduced to mere sperm donors. Men are jealous and outraged. Their womb envy shines brightly through their red-rimmed, emerald green eyes.

The fraidy cat, aggrieved sperm donors first struck back when the male-dominated, conservative U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and put the right to an abortion totally in the hands of each of the 50 states. Since that ruling the Red State legislatures have been very busy trying to get back their power over procreation by banning abortions, while the Blue State legislatures have been very busy trying to ensure that women still have the right to an abortion.

Enter the State of Alabama Legislature. The males in that legislature are deathly afraid of women and what they can do with their reproductive freedom. In desperation those frightened elected officials decided to imprison existing embryos intended for eventual IVF and to establish stringent rules about what could be done with those embryos. By golly, if they didn’t have a womb of their own, they could control when a woman could use one of those embryos to get pregnant and give birth. How pitiful. Why would women envy or want any contact with the penises of such pathetic bullies?

However, I have great empathy for the women living in Alabama and in all the so-called Red States (the states with Republican-controlled legislatures). I live in Texas which is one of the most conservative Red States. Recently our state Attorney General Ken Paxton (under three federal indictments for securities felonies) bullied our state Supreme Court into denying Kate Cox permission to abort a doomed fetus that threatened her health and her future ability to get pregnant. Fortunately she was able to get an abortion in a neighboring Blue State.

The male-controlled legislatures of the Red States are intent on blasting the women in their states back to 1900: when women had no federal right to vote; when there was no reliable birth control; when there was no available safe, legal abortion; when people who identified as LGBTQ had to remain in the shadows in order to be safe. We women in the Red States have to band together. We have to literally and figuratively kick and scream, fight tooth and nail, resist and protest until we can vote and kick our legislators out of office and replace them with people like us who cherish reproductive freedom for women. And we must pursue alternate paths of action to get federal legislation enacted, such as the guaranteed right to an abortion, which will override the Red State legislatures. Lastly we have to invite our sisters in the non-Red States to join with us.

Even though the current state legislative actions are divided between the Red States and the Blue States, the Republican vs. the Democratic Party, this is not a matter of politics. This is a matter of gender. Not all Republicans are against equal rights and sexual choice for women, and not all Democrats are in favor of those same things. Women must not allow themselves to become distracted by battles between the male-controlled political parties. Our goal must be to fight for the rights and welfare of all women and their children regardless of political or non-political affiliation. WE CANNOT ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE DRAGGED BACK INTO THE PAST. THOSE WERE DEFINITELY NOT THE GOOD OLD DAYS FOR WOMEN.