I am afraid that this blog will be more ranting than musing. Watching and hearing the news lately has really set my mind whirling. When the economy is in the tank, nations are saber rattling, atrocities are going on all over the world, people are starving and homeless, children are being abused and dying and the planet is sick; the jackanapes in Washington D.C. and the dithering pundits in the media are focusing on denying women’s reproductive rights and attempting to keep women out of the discussion with parliamentary tricks and derision.
The most recent furor over insurance companies being able to have contraception as a part of their plans is mind-boggling. These close-minded and archaic blathers try to cite the cost to tax payers as their stalking horse, obviously totally unfamiliar with the cost to tax payers of raising children who are born to women and/or families who cannot afford them. There are people out there who want to be responsible parents and need to limit the number of children they can afford emotionally and financially. Because one of the women who dared to speak to their hypocrisy was a student, she is immediately branded a slut who shouldn’t be having sex, never mind that she wants to be responsible and complete her education. (By the way, Rush and dunderheads in congress, the need for contraception isn’t because a woman has sex by herself. Some where one of your male cohorts is involved, sometimes aided by his insurance protected Erectile Dysfunction drugs because when a man wants to have sex and has difficulty it’s a “medical problem” and needs to be covered by insurance.)
This is about more than insurance coverage and contraception. This is a tip of the iceberg issue about women and their rights.
I spent much of my 20’s actively working for social causes and women’s issues. I had grown up in the 50’s when the role of women in American society was pretty strictly constrained. The women who had gone to work during WW2 to when the male work force was depleted were expected to go back home to their “place”. The main goal for a woman was to make a good marriage and have children, like your parents and grandparents. Never mind that some of those storybook marriages were more nightmare than fantasy. Any marriage was better than none. Single women were to be pitied or looked down on. Independence was “cute” as long as it didn’t go too far. There were bad girls and good girls and a reputation was very easy to ruin, and recovery difficult if not impossible.
In the 60’s things began to change, women were beginning to value their BA’s as much as a “MRS”. Contraception (that bad word again) freed them to have families of a size consistent with their financial and emotional means. Women were “allowed” to express their sexuality and admit that they had sexual desires and needs. They were becoming a larger part of the workforce and not just on the assembly line or behind a typewriter. Women were making choices for themselves and whether it was to work, or be a stay at home mother or some combination of both, it was their choice. There were still inequalities, but inroads were being made, a few women were making it into the halls of the State Houses and Congress and into board rooms. But one of the memories that comes back to be loudly recently, is the voice of a sixty something woman who was active in the same political causes I was as she warned me that the gains being made would have to be guarded diligently. She had felt the same euphoria that I and some of my female friends were feeling over the gains she had experienced in the 30’s and 40’s, only to see slow erosion.
And now I see the erosion. I also see the apathy from people who have forgotten the past and the fight that it took to bring women to where they are today, to have the choice they have. Freedom is a muscle that needs to be exercised.
I want my government to go back to the business of the nation. I want them to spend time trying to figure out how to lower gas prices, clean up pollution, worry as much about the born as the unborn, figure out a way to keep us out of another costly war, make sure all of the children already here have an adequate, no a superior, education so that we can compete in the world market place, make taxes equitable, run the government efficiently, worry about the State Houses, not our houses, spend as much time peering into boardrooms as they do into our bedrooms, in other words, do their jobs! I want action plans not platitudes.
And as for the media, get your heads on straight. A sound bite is not a news story. Give us balance, facts, research rather than take the easy way out. Ask the follow up questions, again and again until you get an answer. Hyperbole breeds irrationality and clouds issues. Learn the difference between propaganda and real news.
And the rest of us? We need to keep their feet to the fire, we need to demand more of the people we elect to represent us, of the people who give us our information. We need to stand up for what we believe. We need to be active citizens.
musingsfrommelody 