Spouse and I were on a walk in the summer and we were grumbling about political stuff, as one tends to do nowadays, and I can't remember which specific political thing we were grumbling about (so many choices), but we got around to the observation that countries aren't really defined by borders, they are defined by the number of fertile uteri/wombs they can claim as theirs. Which is why women become spoils of war and invading armies rape and such since the beginning of time. It's not specifically the land that is being fought over, it's the wombs. Who gives a shit about land if you have no one to will it to.

Which makes baby-bearing critically important in a way that is not openly discussed. Men can become consumed with this internal urgency about who is going to inherit the wealth they built (someone as like them as possible, of course), because they cannot pass on their genes without a womb. But they do not want the owner of the womb to know how much power they have. They fear the womb will be denied to them, so they lash out at the womb bearers, or they dehumanize the womb bearers to be nothing but a baby making machine. This is all you are good for - that's the message they want to send. (This system isn't kind to men either - young men get sent off to war as disposable drones - in a way they are just passing down the shit message that was ground into them by their superiors when they were sent off to die.)

I can't remember who I was reading, I think it was MLK jr, and he said that people will naturally be inclined to hate the group they know they have wronged. If they aren't emotionally capable of accepting their big screw up, making amends and asking forgiveness, they will instead vilify the party they injured so they feel their wrong was justified. Which is true and I hadn't specifically noticed, but even in young children it is obvious.

So this has stuck with me, especially since abortion is a prominent issue these days, somehow, again.

Why is a woman's control over her own organs such a battleground. Because a nation is defined by wombs. Because insecure men fear the womb will be denied to them and thus their "legacy" will be dead. Because women must never be allowed to understand how important they are, so their ability to choose must be kept from them. I mean, what if women had the wombs AND the wealth and political power, and they knew exactly what they had and how terribly they'd been treated? Holy shit, what if men were made to suffer like women?

What if men were made to bear the burden of contraceptives? What if the side effects of those contraceptives ruined their quality of life and nobody gave a shit and said they were faking? What if men were denied erectile dysfunction care, and made to go through humiliating, expensive doctor's visits? If you flip the script about what men would be made to endure if the roles were reversed, it's insanity.

But here we are, 2021, in a rich country, and some women don't have autonomy over their own bodies. That instead belongs to men they've never met and may never meet. And there's a whole huge crowd of people who cream themselves over the vicarious flexing of power to suppress others. Yeah, cry harder under the boot, loser (because if the boot is crushing you, it's not crushing me as hard).

Because wars are fought in the womb. Nations are made up of wombs, not land. Wombs are the ultimate resource.

There is no future without the next generation to send out to fight and die and explore.

I've never read The Handmaid's Tale, mostly because it sounded like something that would depress the bejeezus out of me. Ya, women get treated like shit, I already know, duh. I already know things are unfair for us in ways we can't seem to control or overcome. I already hear the message being pumped at us from all sides. I get it. Fucking suffer, womb owner, because that's all you are and the only thing of value is what you could potentially grow for your superior. You are the property of your future husband and your potential children. You don't get to choose your future. I don't need to read a dystopian book to get the gist.

Wars are fought in the womb. All this back and forth about abortion is just another war.

Trans rights have been more in the spotlight lately. Do you need a womb to be a woman? No, certainly not. If someone wants to be a woman because it seems right, knock yourself out. I always believed being gay or trans was an involuntary thing because who would choose the mental anguish of not matching up with generic approved social roles? It's miserable - nobody would put themselves through that kind of torment if it weren't their genuine natural state. But being a woman is total dogshit, I can tell you, and the insecure men will howl to the heavens at you because you are a womb poseur of sorts. A faux womb. They will hate that more than a real womb. I mean I guess the only thing worse than being a woman with a fertile womb is being a woman who is infertile for whatever reason. Tossup, really.

Hate to say it but I doubt the war over wombs will end in my lifetime, just like I doubt I'll see us adopt something better than rampant capitalism, or I doubt we'll ever seriously frame the ultra wealthy as mentally damaged hoarders. Maybe eventually we'll get to that Star Trek future, sometime after I die. If the planet doesn't purge us first. The earth is the ultimate womb, no?

To be a woman is to carry war within you at all times. Like a moltov cocktail. Maybe you burn the enemy or you burn yourself, but your role is to be shattered.