Gender equality? Don't make me laugh
The latest issue of Spark, the republican youth magazine, is out next week. This passionate debunking of the myth that gender equality has somewhow gone too far is just one of many thought-provoking articles in the autumn 2002 issue, available soon from republican outlets nationwide.
Sure we're all equal now aren't we? In fact, really there is no need to worry your pretty little head about things like that anymore. It's out of date, and who wants to be dated?
We've person power, not man power, personholes have replaced manholes. What more do you women want for God's sake?
It's not the fashion anymore to tell blond jokes, or come to that, bird jokes, babe jokes. Any of that stuff has gone out with the last century, and women have really come on, so to speak.
OK, there aren't many women in government, or the judiciary, or amongst CEOs ripping off ('earning' they call it) over Û100,000 a year, or in wigs among the barristers or in white coats with the doctors. There are only a few parties that have women up there at the top, but this is all changing - they are just the beginning.
OK, women earn less than men across the board, and do most of the manky jobs like cleaning and bar work, and anywhere you need a pretty face, but this is all changing. Wait for this next generation of university graduates. Women will be up there with the men - no mistake, and the last vestiges of inequality of the sexes will be a thing of the past. Satisfied, are you?
Come back John Wayne
In fact, some people believe things have really gone a bit overboard - that because of these changes men have lost their role models, their identities, their very manliness. Come back John Wayne! I even heard it argued (John Waters in the Irish Times for one) that the real reason behind the appalling statistics for suicide amongst young men is that they are lost in a sea of woman power.
In the battle of the sexes, some claim the balance has tipped too far against men, with all this talk of men abusing women, of crimes of violence, and rape that are prevalent. Rape even now exists within the marriage bed (a judge recently decided this can happen). Whatever next?
Really, things have come to a pretty pass and the balance of power needs to be righted. It is time, they say, for the pendulum to swing back the other way, if men are going to be able ever again to hold their heads high and be men again. After all, they say, look at violence within relationships. Look at the figures. Lots of that violence comes from women, not men. It's all gone too far. Time to cry halt.
Reality
This is the backlash, big time. No mistake. Let's get a few things straight. Certain facts spring out of history to hit the modern day misogynist in the face, and let's be aware of them.
Q. Was it men or women that had their feet broken and bound at birth?
A. It was just the girl children.
Q. Why did anyone think to do anything so disgracefully cruel?
Because it meant that when the child grew up she couldn't stray very far from the bed chamber, or her household 'duties' - she couldn't wander off to look at the world for herself.
Mao's revolution put a stop to this disgusting practice, though you may still see oldish Chinese women, crippled, unable to do more than hobble - in considerable pain - a few yards behind their men folk.
Q. Is it women or men who, on the death of their partner, are thrown onto the funeral pyre that frazzles the body of the loved one. Did you think for one moment it was men?
A. No. It is women who are thrown onto the fire on the death of their husbands, because they are of no further use, a practice which was widely pursued in India.
Take circumcision - a fairly wide practice across this strange world we live in. Men get circumcised supposedly to increase hygiene. But women too are circumcised, under varying practices, all of which add up to ensuring that a women's capacity to enjoy sex - the clitoris - is cut. Circumcised women are not able to enjoy sex, because they are there for men's enjoyment. And what's more, where all female genitalia have been cut away, as is the practice, the young girl is then sewn up, sometimes with thorns, so that no one may take her (virginity). 'She' is then preserved for her husband's pleasure alone. She has a use as a sex object for a particular man, and that man only, and that purpose only.
The Fall of Man
d in case we get altogether too self righteous in the fact that we don't practice these appalling, cruel rites of 'womanhood', cast a quiet eye across (Genesis 2-4), the story of Adam and Eve, upon which our faith - the Faith of our Fathers - bases its myths of human generation. Eve you may remember was created from one of Adam's ribs, given to Adam as a 'companion'. And while you are about it, don't forget that it was Eve who succumbed to temptation to eat of the tree of knowledge, which gave both Adam and Eve wisdom - which straightway taught them to be ashamed of their nakedness. It was this fault of Eve that led to the Fall of Man.
This is our myth, which, it is unlikely, for all our talk of person power, that we have quite obliterated from our collective psyche or view of man and woman, and their respective roles.
Proof of this point is to be found in no less a document than the Free State Constitution, crafted so sanctimoniously by Eamonn de Valera.
Article 41, 2.1: "In particular the state recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. 2.2: The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their children in the home."
The heart of women's inequality is the imbalance of power between the sexes, which the facts of history and cultures prove.
Women are women - not sex objects, possessions, mothers, or anything else de Valera might have thought while he mused over why his wife refused to speak to him for the main part of his married life.
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