Chris Jepson: Illumination via feminism

There are events in one’s life that require that you think. An example being my father, in my face (literally eyeball-to-eyeball), as the dimming taillights of a squad car pulled away from the front porch of my Iowa home (once-upon-a-time-long-ago). His 2 a.m. question was a timeless one, an exasperated query many fathers pose to their 16-year-old sons, “When are you going to learn?”

I’ve told my children, recounting this tale, that at that moment it was as if “I” literally pulled the chain on a dangling light bulb and the sudden illumination, the implied wisdom of his question, pierced through the dull (Duh!) wattage of my teenage brain. I really, definitely did not want the police in my life. Thank you, Father.

I had a different kind of enlightenment when my daughter was born in 1970. I was a young lad, just 21. I hadn’t thought much about being a father up to that point in my life. The fact that my first child was a daughter caused me to wonder, “How do you raise a daughter?”

I have been fortunate to have/had many, many great examples of femininity in my life, all my life. But, trust me when I say, I had not thought about raising a daughter. And, should you raise a daughter different than you would raise a son?

But I am “a” product of Western civilization. For 10,000 years the status of women, with few exceptions (see the seventh century B.C. Etruscans for one), was essentially equivalent, in many ways, to the present found today in Third World Islamic cultures. In the 20th century, American women got the right to vote, work freely outside the home, own property, and were encouraged (sometimes/not enough) to pursue their own dreams. That was the example I witnessed in my youth, my home. With the rise of feminism in the 1960s and ‘70s, the women I respected were opinionated, outspoken advocates for female rights. Would you have it any other way?

And why the hell don’t we bring back passing an Equal Rights Amendment?

I had been exposed to a number of babies, my brother’s, mainly. But the first time you smell your “own” baby’s freshly cleaned head, I mean really inhale that child’s DNA, you’re a goner. As unprepared as I was to father, the fact that the born do not ask to be born, implies a tremendous responsibility (a moral obligation if you will) on the parent.

So I brought up my daughter to think there wasn’t a thing she couldn’t accomplish if she set her mind to it. No impediments to her ambitions, dreams or movement.

Anything a lad can do, a lass can do – if she so chooses. That is the way I want my country/culture configured. Neither the state nor federal government shall infringe, for example, on a woman’s right to “own” and manage her own body. Seems so clear to me.

Here’s the rub: I think we men should step out of the discussion of “who” will manage a woman’s body. Let the ladies, and they alone, decide at what age to register your daughter’s uterus with the state.

On this—the only “relevant” distinction (pregnancy) between the sexes—let’s leave it to the gals for themselves to work out. Too many men have way too much to say about none of their business.

And isn’t that frequently the case. Think about it.