Where are the Men in the Pro-Choice Fight?
I really don’t like this episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale”
The other day I was having lunch with P, a male conservative friend of mine. We were talking about Medicare for All, and in between bites of a Reuben he said, “Why should I have to pay for your birth control?”
I laughed. I thought he was joking. When I realized he wasn’t, I tried to explain the birds and the bees to him. Didn’t he realize that “her” birth control was also “his” birth control? That if he didn’t want to be a father, this was really his only option? (Unless he wanted to wear condoms, and we all know how well that usually goes).
“Well,” he mansplained, “pregnancy is an exclusively female condition, so it’s her birth control.”
I am very proud of myself that I didn’t reach across the table and stab him in the neck with a butter knife. Instead, I said, “I agree, it is exclusively a female condition, so how can you, a dude, justify being anti-choice?”
He stammered something about the sanctity of life, and I stopped listening.
As frustrating as it was, the conversation with P finally answered a question I’ve been ruminating about ever since I binged all three seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale in one month:
