By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on July 21, 2022
An Editorial Opinion
At the outset, I want to call to your attention to three truisms about gender disparity in American life.
First, men have never allowed women to control their bodies or their reproductive systems. This subject is not only off limits to women, but it is also unthinkable in our male-dominated society.
In America, only women can be told what they can and cannot do with their bodies. This is a present-day vestige of the colonial era in which women were the "property" of white men, and they were treated as such.
Second, white women in the U.S. have always been subjected to second-class treatment by most white men. In contrast, for over a thousand years, Native-American women have been treated with great dignity and respect by their men. Yet, the "Founding Fathers" described Native-Americans as "merciless Indian savages" in the Declaration of Independence.
Third, black women in America have been disrespected, abused, and marginalized by most white men since slavery. From the day the first female African slave emerged from the hell-hole of a slaveship docked in America up to the March-April 2022 flogging of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson by Republican Senators Josh Hawley (Missouri), Ted Cruz (Texas), Lindsay Graham (S. Carolina), Tom Cotton (Arkansas), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), and other beneficiaries of white male privilege in the U.S. Senate, black women have been raped, beaten, abused, and dehumanized by white men in the ordinary course of life.
This article is written specifically for the WHITE WOMEN in America who continue to empower the men who subject all women to unequal treatment. Today, you are the ones whose bodies are being conscripted by the Taliban faction of the Republican Party for the sole purpose of forcing you and your daughters to bear children, even if this forced childbirth kills you or your daughters.
After the 2020 Census was released and it showed that more whites are dying in America than are being born, the lives of white women changed instantly and drastically. In the eyes of the Taliban faction of the Republican Party, the highest value white women bring to the social order occurs when they become vessels for voluntary and/or forced childbirth.
Whether a woman is single or married, or a woman or girl has been raped, or a young girl has been the victim of incest, white Taliban men in America are forcing them to bring the children of rape and incest into the world in order to sustain a white majority population in the country.
Life Under Taliban Rule in America
American women have never dominated the healthcare profession, whether as regulators, insurers, or healthcare providers. Men have controlled and dominated every aspect of the healthcare profession since the colonists landed in America. Now, the Taliban faction of the Republic Party is waging a full-scale war on the bodies of women and girls of childbearing age. This is their version of Sharia law.
Again, American women have never been able control what men can and cannot do with their bodies or their reproductive organs. Likewise, women have never been able to force a man to procreate life under any set of circumstances.
An American man can avail himself of whatever healthcare he wants for his body. He can increase his testosterone levels, or not. He can fix his erectile dysfunction, or not. He can enhance the performance of his reproductive organs, or not. Above all, a man's penis and testicles are off limits for any form of government control.
Women, on the other hand, have a long and well-documented history of being subjected to complete male domination and control over their bodies. For example, married men in America enjoyed the legal right to rape and beat women for over two hundred years. The rape of a black female by any white male was tolerated by American society and law enforcement officials, without legal consequences for the rapist, from 1612 until the passage of the Civil rights Act of 1964.
Poor women in state prisons and mental facilities were subjected to forced sterilizations without their consent. These eugenics programs were sanctioned by state public health officials and were only terminated when two brave Alabama federal judges -- Frank M. Johnson, Jr. (Montgomery) and Virgil Pittman (Mobile) -- issued court orders to stop this barbaric practice in the early 1970s. Today's right-wing, Taliban-controlled U.S. Supreme Court would allow the resumption of these forced eugenics programs in a heartbeat.
As recently as 2016, a bill to chemically castrate male sex offenders failed in the Alabama legislature because of this truism: A man's body, even when he is a serial rapist of women and children, is off limits to forced government medical procedures in the modern era.
In contrast, a woman's body in Alabama (and elsewhere in America) is and always has been fair game for control, domination, regulation, and legalized interference with the doctor-patient relationship. A woman's body is now subject to the same breeding protocols a man selects for his animals. For all practical purposes, men now dictate how, when, and under what circumstances women will be bred.
Abortions
This brings me to the controversial subject of abortions. Today, Alabama is one of 26 states that prohibits a pregnant woman or young girl from getting an abortion, even if the pregnancy is the result of rape and incest or if the forced childbirth might kill the mother. The state has determined that a pregnant woman or young girl in this circumstance must trade her life for her baby's life, no matter how the baby was conceived.
The man who impregnates a woman or girl during an act of rape or incest gets to live, but the woman or girl might be forced to die. This is the harsh reality of the Republican's domestic version of Sharia law.
As the smoke clears from the "pro-life" rhetoric of the far-right, the message to pregnant American women is clear -- angry white men are terrorizing you. They are controlling your bodies and what you can do with them. If you buck against their control, Taliban dominated state law enforcement agencies might indict you and your doctor, put both of you on trial for murder, and imprison you for many years.
As a nation, we saw this kind of state sponsored domestic terrorism against black Americans during the reign of state Sovereignty Commissions in southern states in the 1960s. State and local prosecutors like U.S. Senator Richard Shelby used the full power of their offices to target, harass and prosecute innocent blacks who sought equal protection under the law.
The paradigm of absolute male dominance and control over women's bodies will not change until white women get tired of being treated like second-class citizens, at best, and zoo animals, at worst. In overturning Roe v. Wade in June, Taliban men (and subservient women) pushed back medical progress for American women by at least 50 years.
Women, is the gift of a tennis bracelet for your birthday, or diamond earrings for Christmas, or a trip to the Super Bowl really worth allowing angry white men to treat you and your daughters like animals? Remember, Donald Trump gave great gifts to the women in his life.
However, Trump privately bragged about "grabbing [women] by the pussy." Trump even agreed on the Howard Stern radio show that his daughter Ivana was a "fine piece of ass."
Trump said out loud what so many white men say and think about all women in private. Trump has never revered any woman -- not his grandmothers, not his mother, not his sister, not his wives, and not his daughters. Yet, the Taliban faction of men and women in the Republican Party have made Trump the Party's top cleric.
Women, have you noticed that these angry white men are willing to give you almost everything, except equal rights under the law? They have never guaranteed you equal rights under the law. The Taliban faction of the Republican Party proudly defeated the ratification by states of the only Equal Rights Amendment (for women) that passed Congress.
For whatever reason, most white men in America have never been capable of recognizing, respecting, and honoring the inalienable rights of women to control their bodies and enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
