Women’s Power to Dispute Anti-Abortion Laws

The liberation of women’s bodies will prevent the need for abortions.

For the past several years, I have attempted to communicate a meaningful, collective understanding of women empowerment. The best shot I have is when women are in reaction mode over social issues. However, as soon as the media dulls, so do our collective efforts to inform ourselves, so it seems. Nevertheless, my advocacy work brings me here again, beckoning for women to reawaken to our true essence — our power.

While many women are asking themselves, how did we get here, shocked at the governing of the female body, I would like to pose questions beyond anti-abortion.

• How and why did we develop into a world of political, social, religious, and sexual inequality where men lead, and women listen?
• Why do some of the world’s oldest cultures subject girls to genital cutting?
• How did men become in charge of their daughter’s virginity?
• What sanctions the practice of polygamy in as much as 30% of the world, while still demanding female virginity?
• Why is rape a common occurrence with little legal or social consequence?

The questions above highlight the historical interference of female bodily autonomy. To the degree that we fail to fully understand the commodity of female body autonomy, all women’s rights remain fragile.

This article is intended to shed light, not only on abortion, but on the threat of all female body autonomy. This knowledge is where our power is situated.

How coerced sex informed a world culture

Almost two decades ago, Thornhill and Palmer, a biologist and anthropologist, released a controversial paper that asserted rape is a “natural” occurrence in evolution to facilitate reproduction.

Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory, which is the backbone of the male-dominant paradigm, would support this assertion. In other words, men realized long ago that coerced sex was the most efficient way to get their genes in the gene pool.

This assertion has been challenged on many grounds. The theory of gene pooling proposes that, not only is rape unnatural, but its practice is the most significant conflict in the history of human kind.

In order to understand the relevance of rape to anti-abortion laws, the gene pool theory takes us back in time. The theory goes all the way back in time, not Darwin’s understanding of time to explain conflict. Back further, before the time of conflict.

The fine print in history says “it was good.” Researchers have concluded that natural selection favored cooperation, sympathy, empathy, and reciprocity as the most common way of life.

There was no conflict among early humans; there was no rape. Early humans had it “good,” good cooperation, good equality, good sexuality. All they had to do was eat, sleep and occasionally reproduce.

Since there was equality, both sexes determined when and where to eat and sleep. However, females had to select whose genes would remain in the gene pool. Females governed reproduction.

Scripts of patriarchy

• Tell us having to bear children prevented women from gathering food, so we had to rely on men.
• Limits our interest in sexual expression to baby-making or satisfying men.
• Define sexuality as dichotomous, rather than continuous.

All of these over-generalizations of differences between men and women sanction the leadership of men and the submission of women.

So, we have to go back further, before these scripts were written. As much as these scripts may make sense to you now, it is the effect of patriarchy, not the inherent nature of woman. Follow me back in time.

When men take over women’s responsibility

There had to be a point in time where rape among human beings did not exist. There had to be a first rape, then a second, then a pattern. Before rape women were exclusively in charge of the gene pool, and some men were unselected.

At some point in evolution, as Palmer and Thornhill proposed, men began to rape as a means to circumvent women’s inherent governance of the gene pool.

Gene pool theory firmly asserts that regardless of motivation, rape is not a natural selecteion. It is contrary to natural selection.

The natural intuition and insight women used for selection was obstructed when rape became a means of reproduction. The circumvent of women’s intuition to reproduce changed the course of evolution in two ways that drive humanity to this day.

First, the men who raped created conflict for cooperative men who waited to be selected. Good men had to protect women and their governance of the gene pool. Good men were forced into aggression to protect women. This was, arguably, the most significant human conflict in all of history.

Second, once men took on the role of protector, the relationship between men and women could no longer be egalitarian. The most assured way to protect anything we love is to limit exposure.

As the men prone to rape were more likely to reproduce, cooperative men’s role as protector became increasingly important. Women’s exposure in the world became increasingly dangerous, therefore increasingly limited.

In the absence of woman

Over thousands of years, rape culture became represented by keeping women tucked away for safety while men gathered and negotiated terms of society. The protection of women came at a grave cost.

Men took control over the gene pool selection, the most unnatural event in evolution.

Between hiding from men who raped and conceding to men who protected, women lost all bodily autonomy, and control of the gene pool.

An entire world culture evolved largely absent of women’s voice, intellect, and intuition. Moreover, the intuition that women once used for selection had to be applied to discerning which men were predators and which were protectors.

Instead of women governing the gene pool by selecting men who complemented cooperative existence, men began choosing mates for women based on the ability to protect and provide.

Women’s role in the male-dominance system

Defense against rape changed the role that women played in evolution and created a gene pool metamorphous. Men advanced from being selected to being the protector of the selector.

Men began to control the gene pool by controlling the people who controlled the gene pool. Virginity became of utmost importance for men to control the gene pool selection.

Some cultures even cut the clitoris to deter women from exploring sexuality in a way that would feed her intuition about gene selection. Dowries were offered as access to women’s wombs became a commodity.

As culture evolved and symbols were created everything represented the interest of men as protectors — not protectors of women — but protectors of the gene pool. Every script of culture, including religion, education, economics, and politics was established with the intent for men to govern the gene pool.

Generation after generation, the language of the script was updated, but not the intent. Men led and women listened while governing reproduction remained the priority.

The status of women was determined by her ability to sustain a permanent, therefore protective, relationship with a man. Any behaviors that obstructed men’s power to control the gene pool was deemed immoral and illegal, as man created God in his image.

• Inter-racial relationships were banned and the institution of marriage was devised for man to have legal rule over women.
• Arranged marriage required women to have sex with husbands, and the use of birth control was deemed a breach.
• Abortion was regarded as immoral and illegal.
• Heterosexuality, the cornerstone of reproduction, became the only acceptable expression of intimacy.

Meanwhile, rape developed into a weapon of mass destruction as women lost bodily autonomy.

So, here is where we are today, in a continual state of reaction every time evidence of rape culture becomes overt. Yet, women, as well as men, continue to sanction so many other norms that evolved from rape culture.

All authority is male, from the household to the courtroom, to the high priest. God is male. The sexual experience is geared around male pleasure, no matter how perverse.

Script after script and sermon after sermon, women became good characters. Most women’s magazines have monthly articles that teach females how to cater to men.

Women became the supporting cast of the gene pool instead of its writer, director, and producer.

Our original alliance with good men evolved into a fear of all men as the lines between cooperative men and aggressive men became increasingly blurred. The blurred lines represent what we can identify as “rape culture.”

What it takes to shift the paradigm

Rape culture must be properly understood as a system of living that manipulates the sexual expression of females in order for men to maintain control over the gene pool.

Reinstitution of anti-abortion laws is a means to an end. It is not about morality or divinity, but making sure that men maintain power over the gene pool.

When women and men reconsider the evolutionary systemic influence of rape and rape culture on our human experience, we will shift our perspective on women empowerment.

Men will stop denying the fact that we live in a rape culture that maintains the structure of male dominance. They will stop asking what it means to be a good man and pursue what it means to be a quality human being, a good steward of humanity.

When men perform as partners, and not predators, unwanted pregnancies will decline. When we shift the sexual experience to a culture of respect and care, clear of historically oppressive scripts, we will rebuild the trust in women’s intuition for gene selection.

Laws can restrict abortion. However, the liberation of women’s bodies will prevent the need for abortions.

For now, I invite women to use their anger, not just to reject the laws, but to question all the norms that give power to men and silence women. I urge women to understand the connection between rape culture, abortion and women’s bodily autonomy.

We must peel back the layers of familiarity and enlighten ourselves to all of the ways women yield to male-dominance and rape culture as the evolutionary social norm.

Because the world evolved with the voices of women silenced, there is so much we have to unlearn to accommodate the knowledge that was unheard, including this article. We must open our hearts and our minds and be willing to reassess, admit what is wrong and misguided, no matter how admirable the intentions.

We must expect men to be accountable as humanitarians, equal to women, not protectors of women. We must allow ourselves to see men as fallible and require them to earn the right to lead if they want to lead.

We have to stop choosing them to lead just because they are male. There are plenty of good men around. Every time we support the bad men who silence or harm women, we make it more difficult to recognize the good men.

We should believe in good men enough to stop supporting bad men.

Men have been fighting to maintain control over women’s bodies for a very long time. Our need to cooperate with men on this level has served its place in history. Now, it is time to rewrite history and move humanity forward. Let’s go back in time.

References

1. Associated Press (2019): Hundreds Protest Alabama Abortion Ban: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-protest-alabama-abortion-ban-my-body-my-choice-n1007561. Associated Press, May 19, 2019. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
2. Bakari, R. (2016): Original Sin: Understanding the Movement toward Female Empowerment. Karibu Publishing, Des Moines, IA.
3. Catherine Waldby & Melinda Cooper (2008) The Biopolitics of Reproduction. Australian Feminist Studies,23:55, 57–73, DOI: 10.1080/08164640701816223
4. Mukwege, D. (n.d.): How gender inequalities fuel rape in war. https://www.mukwegefoundation.org/2017/03/gender-norms-rape-war-sexual-violence/. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
5. National Research Tomsk State University. “Cooperation, Not Struggle for Survival, Drives Evolution, Say Researchers: Empirical Experiment Confirms New Hypothesis on Evolution of Life.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 May 2016. .

5. The 3 P’s of Manhood: A Review. https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-3-ps-of-manhood-a-review/

6. Thornhill, R. & Palmer, C. (2000): A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

7. Wevorce (2016): Evolution of Marriage. https://www.wevorce.com/blog/evolution-of-marriage/, retrieved May 20, 2019.