Shouldn’t there be some fair play?
To undo unplanned, and sometimes undesired, pregnancies, there’s a morning after pill women can take, but like other forms of birth control, this particular pill has been under siege by folks apparently seeking to do away with contraception.
Sometimes it’s politically opportunistic politicians who are battling birth control, shrouding their zeal, perhaps, under a cloak of ‘professed’ religious convictions.
If you happen to see ducks out in the wild, this time of year, right around Valentine’s Day, it’s interesting that libidinal… or shall we say horny?… male ducks seem to be pretty much rampaging all over female ducks. Looking closely, you may be thinking the female ducks maybe aren’t in the mood, since they seem to be fleeing, a lot, from the loving male duck, or ducks, when more than one appear to be piling on. Are the males expressing their love, or their lust?
If female ducks, somehow, could share their emotions with humans, would they be begging for birth control? Just a little something… anything!… to keep male ducks’ sperm cells at bay?
Isn’t that it, whether we’re talking about ducks or humans, or other creatures? Females seem to be under scrutiny, much of the time, while males are pretty much being left to their own devices, going about their business, with few restrictions.
If women and their egg cells are under the microscope, so to speak, shouldn’t men and their sperm be looked at as well? Someone I know has been wondering about that, hearing news about women’s health and birth control clinics being forced to shut down, and other initiatives, in the pipeline, targeting birth control.
Since male sperm play a key role in conception, in conjunction with females’ eggs, shouldn’t there be some fair play? But that’s seldom the case, it seems, perhaps especially when men are wantonly squandering half of what, under other circumstances, could have become a living being… when, shall we whisper this?… men are pleasuring themselves? You don’t hear about restrictions governing that, do you?
In a ‘Today Show’ story about the 1998 movie, There’s Something About Mary, a main character, taking lust into his own hands, so to speak, “ends up with a rather personal substance hanging from his ear,” that another main character “mistakes… for hair gel.”
Holy mackerel… Hair gel?
And men doing as they please, denying their sperm to procreation…
What’s that idiom in the dictionary… ‘There oughta be a law?’
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.