Here we are, in the final stretch of the marathon. It appears I will once again make it to the end, break the tape as I pass the finish line. It has been a challenging year, and it’s only March, so I’ve struggled at times to keep the marathon going. But when I make a commitment, I believe I am bound to honor that commitment. So here for Day 28, another essay. (I’ve really been doing a lot of essays this year. Many nights I feel like I simply don’t have a story inside me, so I turn to non-fiction).

PERMISSION

Some women have it pretty good. I include myself in that. They have a partner who is truly a partner, and regards them as equal in all respects. They don’t have to remake everything to fit some ideal woman, and they are able to achieve levels of education and career based on their own ambition, not someone else’s. Of course, as we are all aware, this is actually a minority of women. It did not include me in my first marriage, though I am sure my ex thought it did.

In spite of that, I’ve been thinking lately about this situation, about being in a marriage of true partnership, where I don’t feel like I have to dumb myself down or dress myself up to meet his expectations. No, he likes me smart. He also likes me happy. I feel often like I fell into a vat of chocolate. Still, with my first marriage looming in my mind, I have come to realize that even my situation is not actually truly equal.

Why? Because it depends on a man. A man being a decent human being and not seeing his wife as a piece of property. A man who can feel comfortable being a man even with a wife who has more education than he does. A man who can find a way to accommodate both his desires and her desires in a partnership, without compromising his integrity or her freedom. Without such a man, I would be like many other women, in a relationship that was trumpeted as an equal partnership, but felt…wrong. Unequal. A partnership where one partner subtly or not so subtly undermines, debases, dehumanizes, or condescends to the other…and this is usually the man to the woman.

When I was a teenager, I somehow imagined by now the default would be women and men finding an equality, and men possessing their wives would be an outlier. I assumed we would not have to hold our breaths as the Supreme Court decided our reproductive future for us. I assumed we would not worry about the changing of Congress every two years because someone was up for election that had a desire to shove women back into the kitchen. Well, we all know what they say about assuming.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think my husband is going to turn around tomorrow and demand I give up my career to stay home and clean house. I don’t think he is suddenly going to see me as an ignorant ditz unworthy of holding a conversation. I am, however, acutely aware that other things could happen to women that would once again shove us into the status of second class citizen – not that we’re completely out of that status yet, but we’ve made a lot of stride.

It was much easier in the 1970s to be hopeful, to expect better days ahead. We were making a lot of moves forward: in the courts, in the workplace, and in the home. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and the failure to ratify the ERA demonstrated just how tough it was going to be. The only right guaranteed to women by the Constitution is the right to vote, and when we got that, it took another fifty years before we were granted other basic rights, such as the right to credit in our own name, the right to equal pay, the right to have sports for women.

Many people who oppose Roe v. Wade complained that the court created a new right, the right to privacy; however, this had already been stated in an earlier case, Griswold v. Connecticut, in which it was determined there was a right to privacy and that married women had a right to use contraception. There were a number of cases prior to that where similar issues were adjudicated, with a variety of outcomes that built to these cases.

Threats to reproductive freedom are in the air. It is possible that the current court will overturn or at least weaken Roe v. Wade in the upcoming session. This is a right women came to take for granted, but we forgot it was a gift given by men, and men always reserve the right to take back such gifts given to women. Once again, the decisions of countless women depend on the men who make up the court. You might protest that there are women on the court now. Yes. Three women to six men. If Jackson is confirmed, there will be four. Four women against five men…better odds than we usually have, but not enough, especially since one of the women is likely to vote against Roe v. Wade.

If Roe v. Wade falls, I expect it to be only the first. This could lead to a domino effect where any right not enshrined in the Constitution (remember, this is all the rights women have gained except the right to vote) could come up for reconsideration. The 14th Amendment specifically defined rights as belonging to men, and specifically excluded women. While the courts have chosen to interpret women as citizens in the past five or six decades, it remains that women’s rights are not constitutionally protected should the court change its mind. Late Chief Justice William Rehnquist resisted expanding women’s rights, arguing that women were not covered by the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has praised Rehnquist, indicating that Rehnquist is his hero.

There are several justices on the court who can be counted on to vote against women in many cases. The question is, are there enough to roll back women’s rights to the 1920s? They couldn’t go much further, because the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, gives constitutional protection to women for the right to vote. The rest of the rights it took more than fifty years for women to get; we have only had those rights for about fifty years, and we are in danger of losing them if we are not diligent…and maybe if we are, since the mechanisms are already in place.

It is disturbing to realize how precarious our rights are, and how much they rely on men, who still make up the majority of our lawmakers and the majority of the federal judges (women make up only 27% of federal judges). While there are many men like my husband, men who value and respect women and regard them as equals, there are more men than we like to admit that devalue everything female, regard women as lesser, and believe women should not be involved in the world that rightfully belongs to men. It is difficult to get a good idea of what percentage of men believe this, since most men know what is expected on a survey or poll if they are to continue to be regarded as good persons.

The place you can get a good feel for the extremity of animosity toward women’s rights is on the internet – Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and TikTok. While the sites where men hate on women are essentially echo chambers that amplify the voices of what may be a tiny percentage of men, it is worth noting that these sites have large numbers of followers, and it is likely most of those followers agree with the views expressed. Around the world, men gather to discuss and degrade women, and talk about how much they would like to see women ‘put in their place’. Much of this happens under the radar of the average voter; most women are unaware of the extent of hatred spewed at them online, except when they direct it specifically at a given woman.

I was wrong in the 1970s. I thought we would continue to progress toward a better world. Okay, I can be forgiven for being naïve. I was a teenager. I have long since lost that naiveté. Now I remain vigilant, wary of the attacks on our freedom. And I am disheartened at how much still relies on the permission of men.