You see, like most women, I was born with the chromosome abnormality known as “XX,” a deviation of the normative “XY” pattern. Symptoms of XX, which affects slightly more than half of the American population, include breasts, ovaries, a uterus, a menstrual cycle, and the potential to bear and nurse children. Now, many would argue even today that the lack of a Y chromosome should not affect my ability to make informed choices about what health care options and lunchtime cat videos are right for me. But others have posited, with increasing volume and intensity, that XX is a disability, even a roadblock on the evolutionary highway. This debate has reached critical mass, and leaves me uncertain of my legal and moral status. Am I a person? An object? A ward of the state? A “prostitute”? (And if I’m the last of these, where do I drop off my W-2?)
In the hopes of clarifying these and other issues, below I’ve recapped recent instances of powerful men from the fields of law, politics and literature tackling the question that has captured America’s imagination: Are Women People?
But, I am also sick of the Democrats and their GOP Lite style of politics, their timidity to stand for civil liberties, their reluctance to bite the corporate hands that feed them, and their utter inability to learn that the GOP has been trolling them for the better half of a decade. I want to see both conservatives and liberals duke it out in a manner where arguments are weighed by logical consistency, and their ability to map to real world data. I guess I'm pretty much just fed up with all the bullshit that we are asked to attend to. It diminishes us all. I admire that Jessica Winter can approach this with a sense of humor.