The Woman Who Had 14 Children

Some woman this week gave birth to 8 babies. Which was pretty amazing. Then somehow the media decided to pry into her personal life, and found out she already 6 children. So now all the media is "debating" the issue of whether this woman should have had an additional 8 babies, why would a doctor have given her fertility treatments (if they did), and what do we all think about this.

Here's what I think: IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

There is a phrase called "A Woman's Right To Choose." It means lots of things. The big picture is that women are entitled to make decisions about their lives. Society needs to stop treating women like children or slaves, picking apart and debating every single thing a woman does. Whether to have children, or not, and how many. Nobody's business. It's her body, her decision.

I see no difference between this media swarm and public dissection of this poor woman and her family, and the Taliban throwing acid in women's faces in Afghanistan because somebody didn't like the cut of her Burka, or didn't like the way she was walking, or didn't think she should have been outside at all. It's the same thing. Stop treating women like property and slaves. It's disgusting and shows something horrible about this society and its male dominance.

I was just in a local grocery store and saw a man, thin, pale, grey-haired, probably 70 years old, holding the hand of a woman maybe in her 30s, dragging her throughout the store like a possession or a prize. He was Anglo, she was Asian -- I'll say Chinese, could have been Vietnamese. She had a young man with her that could have been a brother or son, unclear.

Lately I've been hearing about men, around 60 and 70, suddenly going on-line to find women from other countries, convinced that those women will be slaves and would worship these men. And maybe they would in exchange for a ticket out of their country. I know one man who reportedly went to Guatemala to buy himself a wife -- he's 70, she's 30.

I guess I should not be surprised when privileged white men continue abusing their privileges right to the grave. With viagra available, we now have 70 year old men who get to act like studs and want young women to tell them how manly they are. Because the women their own age are more likely to tell them to grow up. I'm thinking of the privileged Chinese men who were buried with terra cotta soldiers surrounding their coffins. For these privileged American men, I think we should surround their coffins with boxes of Viagra. Or maybe dildos. And money. To show what they worshipped, what mattered to them.

I remember when I was younger and I heard people warn that drugs are terrible, they destroy families. Who knew they were talking viagra?

I guess under Bush, under the general Republican influence in this country, I have seen things go terribly wrong. That includes the resurgence with a vengeance of sexism. It's nobody's business whether a woman has one or none or 15 children.

And for all you old men with money and a cooperative doctor giving you sex drugs: you're still old, those women are only willing to put up with you for the money, you're old enough to be her grandfather, and you're still going to die. Dream on that one.