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by D. Savannah George
I'm reading Nora Ephron's Crazy Salad Plus Nine, a book published in 1984 but comprised primarily of essays Ephron wrote about the women's movement in the early 1970s. She got the title from a Yeats poem that speaks of the "counterproductiveness of women".
Thirty years after she wrote many of her essays, I'm sad to report that women have not come a long way. We still don't have equal rights, we are still diminished and controlled and demoralized, simply because we are women.
Because I am a woman, and so cannot possibly know what I want, I had to fight for five years before my doctor would agree to perform a tubal ligation on me. Even then, I had to sign many papers saying I wouldn't sue him if someday I changed my mind and decided I wanted children. Even then, he insisted on telling me that the procedure was indeed reversible, again, if someday I changed my mind and decided I wanted children. Three years later, seeing new doctors, new nurses, all women, they all seem surprised that I found a doctor who would do what I want.
A friend of mine, a woman who has given birth to two children, informed me that when she requested the same procedure, she had six doctors lecture her on why she shouldn't have it done -- and still has not been able to convince a doctor to perform it!
A man, however, regardless of his age, can have the equivalent procedure -- a vasectomy -- performed at any age and with no questions asked! Oh, sure, the doctor will likely inform him of the risks involved, but otherwise will not hassle him on it.
Even today, insurance will pay for Viagra -- a drug used the majority of time by men, and to do what? Make their dicks hard -- while that same insurance will not pay for birth control pills so a woman won't get pregnant or so her cycle will be regulated.
If it's a health issue that is primarily dealt with by women, the medical community won't study it, and the insurance companies won't cover it. For instance, lupus, an auto-immune disease primarily contracted by women, is so hard to diagnose that most women, like myself, continue to suffer without knowing what is truly wrong with them -- or getting treatment. And why is it hard to diagnose? Because medical researchers aren't actively studying it, and thus there is no one test that can say for certain, yes, this is what you have.
If insurance will actually pay for a medical procedure needed by a woman, it's likely they'll charge more: my insurance company has set a copay for $30 for a regular adult physical exam, but a $50 copay for a routine gynecological exam -- an exam which, by definition, ONLY WOMEN have to experience.
And the old adage of men being the head of the household is still standing strong. Just because my ex-husband had a penis, his name was listed first on everything. Never mind that I paid all the bills, arranged all the utilities, cleaned the house, and even did all the paperwork necessary to buy the house in the first place! And never mind that I, in fact, made more money than he did!
Oh sure, we have lots of TV shows and movies with a strong female lead, but there are probably ten times as many instances in the media where the male is the lead -- and even if a female is a co-lead, her name may not even be listed or promoted in the trailers, and her face may not even be shown! And an "old" male can still be a sexy leading man (Sean Connery is a good example), but the female playing his love interest will be a third to a quarter his age! A male can be fat, bald and ugly, and still make lots of money in Hollywood, whereas they'll show one woman who is bigger than today's standards of beauty, yet still "making it", and hold her up as an example of how equal everything is.
And don't get me started on working versus motherhood. Either way, we can't win. If we make a conscious choice not to have children, as I have, there is something wrong with us and we are "selfish". If we do have children and choose to stay home with them, like my best friend has done with her daughter, we are not contributing members of society. And we still aren't "complete" unless we're with a man!
Despite all the supposed "strides" women have made in the workforce, men are still the ones in control. It's still such a rarity for a woman to head a major company that the media makes a big deal about it. The boardrooms are still dominated by men. And so-called "women's magazines" still focus primarily on makeup and weight and boys and sex and fashion and movie stars.
I wish I could say that things had changed in the thirty years since Ephron wrote her essays, but they simply haven't. We're still underpaid and overworked; we're still marginalized, abused, raped, treated like sub-class citizens. Sadly, although it's the 21st century, we're still swimming in this "crazy salad".
The End
Copyright © 2005 D. Savannah George. All rights reserved. Please do not steal my work. If you would like to reprint, please ask permission.
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