Real Women

The other day I was reading in the paper about the visit of an "illustrious" French philosopher coming to Québec to give some conference. His philosophy apparently had a lot to do with women and basically, from what I read, his thoughts on the equality of women went like this: "Now that women have been freed by the pill, and may now decide to have sex without the danger of getting pregnant, they are the equal of man."

Ummm, excuse me, but what did that make all the women prior to the second half of the 20th century? Inferior to man? Isn't saying that woman are only ARTIFICIALLY equal to man quite the same as saying that women are NOT equal to man? Because if you are dependant on something outside of yourself to be equal then you can't REALLY be equal can you? So in fact we still haven't evolved, we're still saying the same thing, just in a different manner. The way society swings from one extreme to another without really changing things is incredible. What is wrong with the MIDDLE ground?

The equality of women to men depending on their capacity to have sex and STILL not get pregnant is beyond me. Why should it rest on such a thing? Yes only the woman gets pregnant, (just the way things turned out) but BOTH are fertile, it takes BOTH to conceive and the child is the responsibility and progeniture of BOTH. Obviously, in the real world, men have found it easy to neglect their responsibilities. But shouldn't we be making it a lot harder as a society, for men to neglect their responsibilities instead of making it easier for everyone to be responsibility-free?

The whole idea that women should be the same as men in order to be equal to men is just totally ridiculous. If we were to take a chicken and an apple and then decide that for the apple to have just as much nutritional value as the chicken for our bodies it would have to be genetically modified to become like the chicken, I think everyone would agree that it didn't make sense. Obviously, we get vitamins and other things from the apple that we don't get from the chicken and protein and things from the chicken that we don't get from the apple. We need both.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but men and women are NOT the same and no matter how many mis-guided philosophers and radical feminists out there try to change that fact and turn us into an androgynous society, men and women will NEVER be the same, we are GENETICALLY different.

However, we are equal. We have always been equal. The pill had nothing to do with it. We may not have had equal rights... we might not have believed ourselves to be equal, but we WERE and ARE equal in spite of it. We could not exist one without the other. For a society to truely recognize that equality, it must accept and celebrate our differences.

Welcome to the world of a REAL woman:

1. I do not reject my fertility, I prefer to work with it, guide it if you will. I do not use the pill or any other artificial contraception and never have. (My husband may decide soon to have himself a vasectomy, but that is out of my control and it won't be ME being artificial, it'll be him.) I use natural family planning, which, as long as you are being careful to do it right is just as effective as the pill. And I am still open to life still open to my fertility, I am not rejecting part of who I am. I was MADE this way.

2. I am not afraid to be sexy. Sexy is neither evil nor provocative. A truely sexy woman is a woman at ease with herself, who dresses with style and taste and who likes herself. I am not even against showing some midriff, (although I would not do so myself) if men can go topless, why can't women show a little midriff? Many women pull it off without looking provocative, and as men don't go topless to Church or to classy restaurants, there are places that women should not choose to bare their midriff either. It's all in what you choose to wear with it, how you wear it, where you wear it and the style you wear.

3. I play sports. My kids (including my daughter) play sports. Sports are not just for guys, and contrary to what some very conservative, home-schooling, american families (not all, some) seem to believe, from certain articles I have read, sports are also not just for families with two working parents and only two children, where the parents want peace and quiet so they sign up their kids in a bunch of different activities. I realize some sports like ballet and figure skating will appeal more to girls and other sports like hockey and boxing will appeal more to boys, but girls should not be forced to play hockey against their will so their parents' can feel sexually impartial, and boys should not be kept from figure skating because it is "for girls only". Genuine interests should be encouraged in spite of, or despite gender. Sports are a great way for both boys and girls to let off energy, to release tension, to keep in shape, to have fun meet new people and learn to get along, work as a team and learn self-discipline.

4. I do most of the cooking, not because it is my role as a woman to do the cooking, but because I am the one at home the most and because, quite frankly, except for deserts, (he makes scrumptious date squares and heavenly cheesecake) my husband makes very bland food in general and I prefer MY cooking. I also do the sewing on the sewing machine, because he looks at a pattern and doesn't understand a thing on it. He mows the lawn, because I haven't taken the time to learn how to drive the tracter yet, since he does it anyway, not because I CAN'T learn to do it (it can't be that hard, I used to mow the lawn when all we used was a lawnmower) nor because it's the man's job,... just because those are the roles we've fallen into... and falling into roles, when one is in a "partnership" is not a BAD thing. I have no need of keeping a tally to see who did the dishes or the laundry last.

5. I believe in social justice and liberty for all, not just women and children, for men too. I have a hard time getting involved in womens' rights groups, not only because they defend the right to kill one's unborn child, but because they also seem a bit biased, prejudiced on gender. I can't be for womens' rights only...

I am a REAL woman, not a sterile androgyne.

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