I recently saw a cartoon of a man walking out of an X-rated video store — only to be confronted by an irate bunch of women picketing him and screaming, “Masturbation is murder!” and “Life begins at erection!” Truly hilarious. But perhaps a lot of people who saw this cartoon missed its main point. Ironic sarcasm? Sure. But also by its shear absurdity, the cartoon made it clear that an American man’s reproductive decisions are his and his alone — and that a woman’s reproductive decisions are mostly his too.
I think that we’ve all seen photos of grinning federal, state and local lawmakers who have just voted in favor of making various birth-control and anti-abortion laws mandatory for all women. And most of the people in these photos are men.
So maybe it’s time to turn the tables here and take away a man’s right to choose too.
The possibilities are endless.
Suppose, for instance, that some man wants drink a few six-packs on a Saturday night and make drunk-dialing booty calls? Nope. His state’s legislature has just made that illegal. No more right-to-choose for you!
Or let’s say that you and your wife have decided to have children. Maybe one or two? Not gonna happen. Laws have been passed. No condoms or vasectomies for you either. You must now have ten kids and change all their diapers and pay child support for all of them too — whether you want to or not. Screw right-to-choose for men. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-appellate-courts-dangerous-precedent-on-contraception/2013/07/12/7cbe629a-e35a-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html
You wanna play around at the office Christmas party? No way! Maximum sentence here. Jail time. You have no choice. Wanna cheat on your wife? No, no, no and no. There’s a law against that too.
Oops. OMG! You just had a wet dream. That’s a $10,000 fine and a year in the slammer. “Baby killer!” Plus some pro-life fanatic might shoot at you too.
Make up your own examples here. Have fun with it.
How about that we make laws demanding that boys should be taught from birth onwards that their whole duty in life is to propagate the race — nothing else. Let’s keep ‘em barefoot sperm banks and chained to the kitchen. Let’s stop giving the males of our species any choice at all, especially their right to make decisions regarding their own reproductive organs — which they clearly can’t manage to keep inside their pants without stern legislative help.
Turnabout is fair play.
Male lawmakers all over America have certainly had fun taking away American women’s right to choose lately, and some of the bizarre things that they have come up with so far have just got to be jokes http://crooksandliars.com/juanita-jean/texas-senate-removes-tampons-mass-des. Reality itself these days has become so weird and far-fetched that even Andy Borowitz’s recent satire on this subject might actually really become yet another facet of male lawmakers’ current Taliban-like right to choose what women can or cannot do with their own bodies. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/07/texas-weighs-ban-on-women.html?mbid=nl_Borowitz%20%28149%29
Then there’s the fact that over 10,000 men show up at the ER each year because an erectile dysfunction drug like Viagra has given them an unrelenting stiffie. Each of their ER visits costs these guys approximately $1,778. According to NBC News, “In all, the mean annual charge for episodes that began as an E.R. visit for priapism was $123,860,432.” http://www.nbcnews.com/health/long-lasting-painful-erections-send-10-000-men-er-each-6C10620067 So shouldn’t we be passing laws that make use of Viagra illegal too? For wasting all that good sperm?
But how about that we pass another new law instead, one that will finally make sense? How about passing a new law that says only women are qualified to make any and all laws regarding their own reproductive freedom.
No men allowed.
PS: About three years ago, I looked in the mirror and said, “OMG, I look old — what can you do with OLD?” That’s obvious. I should become an actress!
Since that time, I have played all kinds of older women in approximately 60 student films — kindly grandmothers, women dying of cancer, judges, burka-wearing Afghan ladies, the devil’s minion, business executives, homeless women, doctors, society matrons, aging sluts.
Last Saturday I played a drunken barfly in a honky-tonk saloon at a morning shoot, and then an aging whore in 1850 San Francisco in the afternoon (and they paid me in pizza).
“So, Jane, what’s your point?” My point is that there are all kinds of women out there — just like there are all kinds of men. And almost all of us are totally capable of making our own freaking decisions regarding our own reproductive organs. It’s time for our leaders to go legislate on more important stuff (such as putting Wall Street criminals and War Street weapons profiteers in jail for criminal destruction of life after birth) and leave our individual reproductive choices alone.
