Don't Ask Me Nothing

CONSIDERING URANUS

Dr. Lester CN Simon

Can it be that there are women who do not consider themselves equal to men but in fact superior to them? In reply to Ms. D Gisele Isaac’s position that the commitment to restructuring and re-engineering society will have to be made by men, I beg to differ. To quantify the losers by noting that at this point of our evolution men have more to lose is at best shortsighted. And even if men had more to lose, who are these men? Are they cohabitating on an isolated island devoid of women?

There is nothing nebulous about the “we” in my article. It simply refers to men and women, or women and men if you prefer that order. I trust it is not difficult for Ms. Isaac to comprehend that the vast majority of men I know want a strong, powerful woman as a companion. In fact, some men who condescendingly put women in high places are probably only looking for the very lowly favours they have always taken for granted or they are playing up to the female gallery.

In 2004, the head of the Royal College of Medicine in England, a woman who earned the right to be there, lamented the fact that the preponderance of women in the profession was having a negative effect of the future prospects of medicine. This was largely because of the domestication of women and they being torn between the demands of the profession and the home. Similar remarks have been made all over the world in reference to teaching and other professions that were once dominated by men. It is a call to arms for all of us.

The biological fact that women carry a fetus for nine months and are intimately and biologically involved in breast feeding and caring for the child is undergoing reconstruction and re-engineering by men and women so that men can have paternity leave and play a greater and more meaningful role. It probably should not be surprising that in the rush to get what women rightly deserve, some women appear to want to repeat history by simply changing genders.

If Ms. Isaac would peruse the archives of the Daily Observer, she would find an article in which I noted that the power compartment of the human cell resides in an organelle called the mitochondria and that all humans inherit their DNA in the mitochondria from their mother. I suggested that this meant that men may be physically stronger but it was women who provided the power. Without a blasphemous bone in my body I suggested that extrapolation of the maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA would lead to the interesting possibility that God might very well be a woman.

If Ms. Isaac perused the archives of the Daily Observer a little more, she might also find an article written under POWA (a position of comfort for some) in which a nameless writer wrote that women do not need men. It was such a silly article it forced me to stop reading the POWA series and to call a few of the real women of POWA to find out that the position taken in the article did not represent the views of most POWA women. In the quest for equality, we may find that women and men are equally capable of the same stupidity.

The central paradox of male-female, or if you prefer, female-male, relationships is that most men are willing to put women in their place (ha, ha ha). Sorry, most men are encouraging women to find their deserving and rightful place but some women want to do this alone, irregardless (as we wrongly say here) of the consequences to society. Isn’t this what men did and what we, men and women, now have to correct? Some men understand the historical basis for this shortsighted approach by some women and they simply ignore them. Thankfully, some of us are more engaging……to a limit…and some to the fault of consuming vinegar.

Surely, Ms. Isaac cannot mean that men alone must do the restructuring and re-engineering. We would probably do it wrong again and women will have to start all over again. Surely, she can only mean that men must make the commitment now, at this point of our evolution, because women are committed already, although her words suggest otherwise. Thank heavens she recognizes that it is our evolution and not just the evolution of women. Asexual reproduction is a luxury of lower animals, not humans.

I assume Ms. Isaac has a very good sense of humour otherwise her position is thrown into sharp relief by her closing point that women, unlike cheese, do not melt. Unfortunately, all humans do. Take your pick. Or is it your shovel? You can be a woman and a human being too. Try it.

By the bye, the reference to Uranus has nothing to do with poor pronunciation. It truly refers to what happened to Uranus when he went to bed with his wife, Gaia. No doubt, Ms. Isaac is aware that she (Gaia, not Ms. Isaac herself) disposed of Uranus by having their youngest son cut off his genitals. It only goes to show that some things, and some people, unlike the cheese in the farmer’s dell, are not meant to stand alone.