My daughter recently volunteered to babysit an adorable five-month-old baby boy to help out a struggling family. Having been the mother of baby girls, my daughter was unprepared for how quickly she could get sprayed while trying to change his diaper. I told her about these little “tents” I saw in a Hallmark store. They are designed to fit over a certain part of a little boy’s anatomy to give the mother, or whoever changes the baby, time to take the old diaper off and put on a new one without getting a mouth full of pee. We both laughed about the clever little device.
That got me thinking about other little devices we women could think up for the big boys that might curb the number of unwanted pregnancies so we wouldn’t have this whole reproductive rights issue on our shoulders. We should share the burden because, last time I checked, women can’t get pregnant all by themselves. It takes two to tango, as they say. Yet only women are singled out as the “culprits” in unwanted pregnancies as if we are sultry seductresses preying on poor helpless men.
I have no idea what measures we could propose to hamper a man’s sex life, but whatever they are, they should be invasive and humiliating. After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? And the measures should be voted into law so men can’t wiggle (no pun intended) out of them. I’m open to suggestions. Mandatory vasectomies in certain situations shouldn’t be ruled out.
The problem is that these measures would be impossible to vote into law because men make up the vast majority of lawmakers. Women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought hard for a woman’s right to vote. According to the 2010 census, there are more women of voting age in this country than men of the same age. Why are women so underrepresented? Why have women so passively given up their voice?
I started following an excellent blog recently called Broadside. The author, Caitlin Kelly, said, “The last time I looked, American women do have the vote. But you’d never know it.” Men dictating what women can and cannot do with their bodies is nothing less than tyranny of the minority. It is long past the time when we women need to step up and vote into office some of the many competent women out there. If we won’t speak for ourselves, we let men do it, and we see where that is going. I have a huge knot in my stomach thinking that some of my rights could be abridged while a man gets to skate on by with no responsibility, for unless I missed it, only women’s rights seem to be the subject of political discussion these days.
But back to my original discussion, starting with those little tents. Ladies, are your brains working? Are you getting any ideas? No, no, don’t send them to me. Send them to the presidential candidates so they can see what they might be in store for when we women finally step up to the plate. They should be afraid. Very afraid.



