So, this...
...is funny because it flips reality. It's also sad because of the reality that it flips. Namely, that in 2012, we have individuals, Congresspeople and actual candidates for the presidency publicly debating women's sexual health, when no one outside of America's comedians would broach doing the same for men's sexual health.
Don't shake your head at me, man-reader. You know what? I love my male friends, the feminist ally ones especially. But after a month that saw the Komen/Planned Parenthood thing, the health insurance provider/contraceptive thing and its sequel, the Congressional panel on contraceptives with no women on it thing, I'm pretty tapped out on male opinions regarding things that affect me and that don't affect them.
No offense, it's a free country, and blah blah blah, but I've discovered that even the most enlightened man has a point where he hits his "admitting my own privilege" limit and starts patting on my head and telling me how much worse the women in Afghanistan have it.
*profanity alert*
FUCK THAT. I am a human fucking being, and my citizenship and my vote count for just as much as yours do. When Congress and people who want to be in charge of negotiating the next Cuban Missile Crisis find time out of their days to waste taxpayer time on your testicles, then you can talk. Right now you can buy condoms in every goddamn gas station bathroom in this country and nobody gives a shit, so don't fucking pretend you know what it's like to be me.
You don't know what it's like to take it for granted that everything about your body is open for public debate, from how you have your children to how you avoid having children. (Unless you're gay, which is a whole 'nother category of MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.) When you ask your doctor for that little blue pill, you don't have to worry about swearing that you're only going to use it to fuck your wife. It probably never crosses your mind that your insurance company might not cover your boner pills. You don't think for a second that some fundie state representative will pass a law keeping your doctor from treating you the way his/her education and experience dictate. Because your body isn't up for public debate.
Mine is. And I'm fucking over it. If I decide, and my doctor concurs, that a medicine or medical procedure is best for me, there are individuals who would keep me from acting on that. More seriously, there are state and national legislators who would do the same. This is EVERY DAY in my life, and in that of all women in this ostensibly free country.
I didn't make reproductive rights a political issue. The people - sorry to stereotype, but pretty much universally Republicans - who swept into office promising jobs and fiscal restraint have instead wasted no time passing laws restricting access to abortion and contraception and, in Virginia last week, pretty much mandating state-sponsored rape-via-camera dildo*. They're the ones who made this political.
*watch if you think that statement was hyperbolicious
And they've done so largely without input from women. No wonder. In this country, when a woman points out that men are not, in fact, all knowing, we get that little head-pat. An eye roll if we keep it up. Maybe even the b-word. Most of us don't relish CONSTANTLY having to inform the men in our lives of the most basic facts.
Fuck that. I love you guys, but you don't know what you're talking about. If you'd like me to enlighten you about specifics, drop me a line and I'll be glad to do so. I mean, if women were 90 percent of the people making public policy decisions, and there were an issue that pretty much exclusively affected men, I'd consider it my duty to ask them what they thought.
So, men - I love you, but you need to shut up now. You need to listen to the women in your lives and that it's your job to represent. We don't all think the same way, sure. But we all know a hell of a lot more about this stuff than you do.
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