Carey On... The Women's Self-Reliance Crisis
When I was a teenager, my mother said, “If you’re at a party and you put down your drink, never pick it up again.” She was warning me that someone could “slip a mickie” into my drink---the term for date drugs in those days.
I really did it. I didn’t drink from anything that wasn’t in front of me the whole time, and thereby lowered my chances of being date-raped. I knew the onus was on the girl to make sure she didn’t set herself up as a victim-in-waiting.
Nobody in my circles really talked about unwanted pregnancy in those days. In a proper 1960’s way, my mother was warning me that I could be a random victim of violence, but she was also onto something else: she wanted to make sure I didn’t make bad dating decisions, trust the wrong kind of man, and end up pregnant. Those are two sides of the same coin, carried only by women.
Today, we women are experiencing a self-reliance crisis. We want freedom to choose all kinds of things, but not the responsibility that comes with it. We want to be liberated, yet we revert to weakness when our liberality has an unplanned result.
Unplanned? Women plan things every day. We plan our schooling, our jobs, our calendars, our hair cuts, our body piercing, our oil changes, meals, vacations, shopping, home repairs, computer activities, meetings and parties. We plan every detail of our lives, and usually somebody else’s life too.
We’re women. We roar. So why can we plan everything but our own sexual safety and who’s going to father our children, how many, and when?
Taking my mother’s cue, I had a talk with my daughter when she went to Michigan State University last fall.
“Always carry your cell phone. Avoid walking alone at night. Avoid parking lots and dim areas. Don’t go with anyone you don’t know. Date in groups, in public places. Don’t ‘help’ anybody, except to phone for other help. Put together a list of people to call if you need a ride or an escort. Don’t drink or take anything that dulls your mind. Don’t be too easily flattered. Demand that men treat you with hands-off respect. If they don’t, walk away. Be a ‘lady,’ not just a ‘girl.’ And if you put your drink down, don’t pick it back up.”
Of course, just because we forget to lock the door, doesn’t mean we deserve to be robbed. Bad things can happen no matter how careful we are, but women can dramatically lower our odds of becoming victims, or ending up in a situation like an unplanned pregnancy.
When we get in a car, we lower our odds of injury by buckling our seatbelts and obeying traffic laws. We can lower our odds of social compromise with the same vigilance.
Men can also be victims, but women are the ones who get pregnant. Nature has put that on us. It means we women must be ferocious if we want to avoid pregnancy. Too many women want the “right to choose”, but not the bother of dodging the circumstances that might make them pregnant. They choose at the wrong time.
The so-called “women’s rights” crowd wants violence against women stopped, but doesn’t put the assignment on us to avoid risky social situations, or to hold a high standard on the men we go with. They want us empowered to “do with our own bodies” whatever we want, yet they want us to see ourselves as helpless victims of “unplanned” results.
Then they want us to create a second victim—an aborted child—and say it’s a freedom issue as long as the woman was a victim first.
Okay, sisters and daughters, here’s the truth: If you don’t want to be pregnant or to be victimized, you should take fierce daily steps with your own body to actively reduce the odds.
That’s real freedom of choice. Why isn’t the woman-empowerment crowd saying that?