For hundreds of years women have suffered at the hands of angry, white, male Christians. Women have been blamed for taking the bite of the apple and destroying the garden of Eden. They have been paying for it ever since and continue to pay for it to this day. I am a child of the 50s and 60s. I remember what the “traditional” household was like. Mothers stayed home and took care of the kids, the home, joined the PTA and quietly went crazy. SOME women enjoyed this role, others did not. IF a woman worked outside the home, the neighbors would say “She WORKS???”.
The 60s were a time of great change. The women’s liberation movement was not just about sex and “free love”. It was a time where women were empowered to make decisions about their place in life, their careers, their education, when and if they decided to have children and “the pill”. This was a HUGE controversy when I was a kid. The thought of a woman having sex without taking a chance of becoming “with child” was unthinkable. There was a sexual revolution and MEN were supposed to take control of contraception with latex products. They didn’t do a very good job. Tens of thousands of women especially those who lived in poor southern states had as many as eight to ten kids. SOME becoming mothers as young as 14.
THEN there was Roe V Wade. A woman’s right to privacy in issues of her own healthcare decisions, THAT’S what the Supreme Court decided. The effect of course was to legalize abortion. THAT set the dominating mens club on fire. All of a sudden within a generation, men could no longer have complete control of women. They were “libbers” and “feminazis” bent on the destruction of the American AND Christian way of life.
This mindset at times festers beneath the surface like a herpes virus. Right now it is active like a festering open sore dripping and oozing for the whole world to see. The reason? It’s an election year. The republicans have NOTHING to run on. They have NO accomplishments to hold up and say “WE did this”. The last thing republicans did that benefited the American people was over 60 years ago. That was the interstate highway system. And even THAT was for national security reasons, for quick transport of military resources across the country in case we were attacked. There are sections of our freeways that could operate as airstrips if necessary. SO, they can’t run on the economy, they trashed it. They can’t run on foreign policy they damn near destroyed it. They can’t run on prosperity, they destroyed it. Education, healthcare, infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, jobs, reigning in the out of control banking system, immigration, the safety net and organized labor. ALL a disaster for the GOP. And despite a complicit media, despite tens of MILLIONS of dollars provided by a few very wealthy benefactors and despite a supposed powerhouse teaparty, Americans are NOT buying it. Even Republican women are NOT comfortable with the recent attacks on all women. 98% of CATHOLIC women defy the churches “teachings” about contraceptives.
So whenever you hear angry white conservative men decrying contraception as an attack on religious freedom. Think “They got NOTHIN” or “They are DESPERATE to change the subject”. The women of the United States may be many things. They are nurturers, they are hard workers, they are educated, they are fierce defenders of their families, they are voters and they have sex. OOOOOOOOO sex. But the vast majority of them are NOT stupid. They have worked really hard to wrestle their rights away from neanderthal, fundamentalist, controlling, angry, white, Christian males. They are NOT going back. I firmly believe this action on the part of the GOP and their fundamentalist allies will cause a backlash that will last a generation at voting booths across the country.
