Unlike most western women today, I spend a lot of time thinking about my ancestors. I am continually amazed by how freaking hard it was to be a woman up until about the 1980s and how good we girls have it now.
Just this whole concept of being able to choose when to have children. This is a profound concept. Although I think some negative things came out of feminism (like, the breakdown of relationships between men and women, although I also believe this was kind of inevitable) I am still so glad this movement occurred and that one of the best results was reproductive freedom for women.
We’ve all been there – 22 years old, sitting on the toilet, hand shaking as you wait for a line to appear on a pregnancy test. This was me, way back when. Right now it’s completely incomprehensible that I ever didn’t want to get pregnant – that the thought of a baby in my life was a horrific, doomsday thing; “I can’t have a baby now! It’s going to ruin my life! It’s going to crush all my dreams! This would be the worst thing to ever happen to me!” I can honestly say that had the result been positive (it wasn’t), I would have kept the baby. Not because I’m anti-abortion (I’ve marched on Washington for abortion rights) but because I’m just cool like that. Still, the very idea that I could have made that decision had I needed to is pretty great. Back in the day I would have married the bum and where would I be now?
In one of my favorite feminist books, The Women’s Room, the author lovingly describes the process of childbirth and bonding with the new baby, and says with sad longing how amazing it would be to be able to have children when you want them, when you’re ready (the character has them on accident, very young, and the husband blames her for getting pregnant). Honey, that time is NOW!
I know this is going to sound kind of stupid but when I first started looking into artificial insemination one of my early thoughts was, “they let us do this? I mean, they let anyone walk into a sperm bank and impregnate themselves, and nobody stops us?” When I went for my first consultation back in November I was convinced the police were going to break down the door at any moment and arrest all of us (in my fantasy they looked kind of like cold war Stasi types, the walls were this pukey green and there were bare lightbulbs involved ). I don’t know why I thought this; I think at the time I was still recovering from the years of truly believing that I could only be a mother if I waited around for some man to choose me to have a baby with. The idea of being able to just choose the time and place and do this all on my own is (the true meaning of the word that I overuse so much) awesome.
The Women’s Room also reminded me of some things I had forgotten about – that even in my very lifetime women couldn’t get a house without a male cosigner, couldn’t open bank accounts alone, couldn’t buy cars or make any major purchases involving credit. There were these public indignities, and there were the more subtle ones, such as mentioning you want to go to a party and your husband saying, “we’re not going,” and that’s it, end of discussion. How my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and all that came before her, lived through this without ending up in a mental institution, is completely amazing to me (especially when the men weren’t even holding up their end of the bargain – my grandmother worked hard all her life to offset my alcoholic grandfather; no, I don’t begrudge her the angry, loud crunching of popcorn every night in front of the TV, not at all).
Some time ago I sat down with an elderly woman who blurted out the story of being driven home from a dance by a male friend in the 1930s, who then proceeded to pull over and try to rape her. Luckily some police came by (back in the days when police patrolled dark side streets at night) and saved her…however, nothing happened to the boy. He was in school the next day. When she asked him why he’d done that, he said, “you lead me on.” And I bet what happened when the police took him out of the car that night looked something like this: a nudge, a wink, some comment about her terrific gams, a cigarette exchanged, and an “aww, go on, get outta here.” Women are all whores, right? They all want it, they just don’t know it yet. Have I mentioned how much I’m glad I live in today’s world???
So I guess today I just want to say thank you to my ancestors, in particular the women. Thank you for being born, thank you for living. Thank you for suffering, surviving illnesses, surviving childbirth, cooking hot meals, cleaning, tilling the soil, working with your hands, marrying good men, marrying bad men. Thank you for making me (and my unborn children) possible!
Amen!
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