http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~mferree/images/pee-sitting.jpg

I am taken aback at the strange posit in a long thread about politics that women and men are identical.  Or that they should be treated as such in the world of politics.

I am accused of saying that a woman is not actualized except by giving birth.  While that is quaint and all, it isn't something I believe.

I felt whole and complete for about a decade before I had a child and was told that I would never have one.  It didn't bother me.  The need to breed had never controlled my mind or my uterus.  I thought not having any freed me up to travel and pursue other realities.  With a husband of a similar mindset.

And then it reared its ugly uterine head and I was knocked up. 

 That's what happens when you believe doctors who tell you it can't happen and use no birth control.  Sometimes your body begs to differ.  (If you are female of course, the identical thing is not an issue for men, the high-jacking of your whole body and person by one organ.  Oh, yeah...may need to rephrase that...never mind...moving on)

 I had told myself that men and women were not really different, that our identity was about our minds, not our physical form.  Very brain in a vat, actually.  I had argued this case with many friends, pissing off a lot of different women and men friends along the way.  I was on board with Paglia.

 While navel gazing for nine months (waiting for it to pop out, in fact, and tell me I was nearly done-it never did, btw), I realized that men pee funny.  They could hold their pee for hours on end for one difference from me at the time.  They could also still pee comfortably while on complete bedrest for 5 weeks.

I realized that I had overlooked something essential about being human in my quest for equality, freedom, and liberty, that women and men are fundamentally different.  That whether you are or could get or want to be knocked up is a real issue in how you plan your time and your resources and your life in general.   And that your decisions regarding this are very complicated, require social contracts that are arcane and yet pretty useful, and now necessarily include all of the decisions of two other people.  For the rest of my life.

It was quite a shock to the world view.  Kind of embarrassing considering some of the opinions I defended in the past.  But liberating in a different way, as taking on the trappings and mantle of men never did fit quite right.  For me.  And I am only speaking for me.

All because men pee funny and I don't.  Only in a world that stigmatizes women for existing as they are can it be true that people make the ridiculous posit that our gender is irrelevant to the decisions and opinions we hold.  That argument is the predicate of the idea that we are deserving of equal treatment.  I think we deserve equal treatment because we are all human, not because we are the same humans.  It is a subtle but significant difference that has gotten lost in the feminist movement and in post-feminist thought and writing.

I would contend that the founding fathers already covered this.  All men, meaning actual men at the time but certainly open for debate now, are created equal.  They meant men of differing ethnicity and social class and such.  But I will extend it to "men" of different plumbing as well.

And with that said, why can't we get past the foolish notion that our gender is irrelevant to the opinions, and political thinking, and voting that we do?

Maybe it is all just one big pissing contest after all.