I’m going to say something out loud that men will not believe a woman said. It was reading Joseph Pearce’s book on Romeo and Juliet that encouraged me. His outspoken disapproval of Romeo further emboldened me. So—if this makes women mad, don’t blame me. It was Joseph who inspired it.
In plain words, it’s this: Men rule. Unless a woman takes brain-altering chemicals or does other weird and dangerous things to her body, she faces the horror of abortion or the pain of childbirth, followed by either the heartbreak of surrendering her child or the difficulty of rearing it alone.
This is what makes women angry: We are at the mercy of men. Men have nothing to lose; they take no risks. Women have everything to lose and risk their lives. If responsibility is placed on a balancing scale, the man’s side of the scale will carry no weight at all while the woman’s side will crash under the load. That’s the way it is. That’s why women poison their bodies, demand abortion and all sorts of nightmarish things, and scream for an equality they can never have—they’re trying to balance the scale. But no matter what horrific things they do to themselves, physically, emotionally, even spiritually; and no matter how much they rant about it, they can’t balance that scale. They have no power—it has nothing to do with any law or lack of law. It’s about power. Women deny this. Men deny this. There are lots of lovely words to camouflage it, but take away all the poetry or philosophy, all the lovely words—and there it is.
Brain chemistry and the inborn instinct to reproduce make people talk a lot about “love.” But only one kind lasts and women have only one way to tell whether what’s going on is that kind. My neighbor recently passed at the age of 87. Her husband had been dead for 20 years, and she mourned him every day of those 20 years. What, I asked her, accounted for the love she still felt for him. Here it is: “I was 17 when I met Jack and I was immediately crazy about him. I tried everything I could to seduce him, but it didn’t work until our wedding night—and I won’t tell you anything about that. What I will tell you is that I trusted him—because I knew I could. That made all the difference—on our wedding night and on every day after that for more than 50 years.”
When people have sex before they’re married, something far more than mere sex happens between them. I had a student who was in love with a boy and dated him for a long time—until she got pregnant and had a child out of wedlock. She kept the baby and continued to live at home with her parents. But nothing that boy could say or do would make her return to him—and he tried—because in spite of all his protestations to the contrary, she knew he didn’t love her. She was right. After graduation, he joined the army; she married someone she could love and respect as her husband and as a father for her child—because he was someone she could trust.
The confusion over responsibility and power has caused much sorrow and destruction. Women have all the responsibility and men have all the power. It’s that graphically simple. A woman who denies it is vain and foolish. A man who denies it is weak and a scoundrel.
Lorraine, I’m afraid you have leapt over the chasm in which the very point lay: Indeed, the man may behave as you describe. The emphasis is on the “may” and it carries within it “may not.” Once she’s pregnant, a woman has no such “may”–she’s powerless. It’s that anger that has caused abortion on demand to be made a “right.”
“In plain words, it’s this: Men rule. Unless a woman takes brain-altering chemicals or does other weird and dangerous things to her body, she faces the horror of abortion or the pain of childbirth, followed by either the heartbreak of surrendering her child or the difficulty of rearing it alone.” Wait, wait! What about a woman who endures the pain of childbirth and then shares the love of the baby with a man who stays by her until death? With all due respect, I think you have oversimplified the situation. Yes, sometimes a woman faces an unwanted pregnancy and then raises the child alone — but not always. Even in cases where a woman is unmarried and pregnant, there are plenty of men who step up to the plate and share the responsibility.