Lady Bits Lady Bits

The title is cheerfully free-associated from the Ladybug charm most anglo kids get taught when they're just old enough to toddle. The traditional charm's still used to magically send a ladybug on its way when it's landed on you, with the not-so-subliminal idea that mom shouldn't go out alone or dreadful things will happen to the kids left behind in the woman-empty (and therefore adult-empty apparently) home.

The witty ditty's message fits quite well with the magical concern many in authority express when presented with women out of "the home", for women's own good of course, usually when 'good' is defined as procreative functionality. We here in Canada usually see these handwringing declarations of Revealed Medical Wisdom Feelings attached to Dire WarningsTM about the horrors of legal abortion, but it's a global game.

The latest Very Worried cultural counselor shouldering the heavy burden of keeping women from harming themselves in shameless pursuit of being considered human beings is in Saudi Arabia. He's waxing scientifictionish on the topic of women being harmed by driving motor vehicles. He's not bothering with actual vision hazards of wearing full hijab/niqab affecting collision statistics, he's bemoaning the sliding of a Lady Bits owner behind the wheel at all.

"If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show that it automatically affects the ovaries and pushes the pelvis upwards," he told Sabq. "That is why we find those who regularly drive have children with clinical problems of varying degrees."

Oddly, women are just selfish, wild things, unwilling to put "reason ahead of their hearts, emotions and passions".(where have we heard this before?...where haven't we heard this one before?)

These 'common sense' expoundings about women's internal organs tendencies to go walkabout have always been a go-to when denying women full participation in society. I especially like the one that circulated in the 'women can't be educated because think of the children!' hey day. Apparently, women could procreate or think, but not both because the blood supply available in a woman was a zero sum game. If she thought too much, her Lady Bits would shrivel. Medical certainty!

But with biological sciences slowly turning attention on how Lady Bits actually function, the "Glurge of the Gaps" is being reduced to even less coherent sputtering that often now receives the media respect it is due.

Why, even the International Olympic Committee has tired of looking like Saudi Muslim clerics. The Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 will be the first time women are allowed to compete in Ski Jumping.

2014.
First.
Time.
Ever.

Why? Finally struggling past Lady Bits and the gender expression expectations foisted upon those that have'm? Nahhhh, can't be that...can it?

PS: Just as an aside for how talking about woman's sexual reproductive organs is twisted into our taboos and gender expectations, has anyone else ever met someone who found Regina uncomfortably close to Vagina in pronunciation and how it somehow made Regina sound even more feminine and unworthy of a capital city? Especially when trying to indirectly haw-haw insult the Roughriders? No? Just me?