Up The Women, Gender Fascism

The British sitcom Up The Women (an actual rallying cry of the Suffragette movement in England) is a very funny depiction of a small group of women who realize the need for emancipation of their lot but are sorely inept at making a effective statement of their grievances. The title can only remind you of insults such as “up yours” and “up your bum” in modern times but therein lies the dichotomy of what equality tends to conjure up in the minds of far too many people. The show is an amusing look at the women’s movement in England in 1910 which can apply even today when you realize that so many people are confused and just “winging it” when it comes to how we can address the unacceptable situation that we find ourselves in over 100 years later with respect to the truly just partial equality that women had in this country until the recent Supreme Court decision that took away a large part of that sadly partial equality and set us back about 50 years again.

I took a DNA test recently to try to discover my lineage on my Mother’s side of the family.  I already knew our origins on my Father’s side as a distant relative of mine had done the research for us years ago and published his findings in a large volume that my Father bought for me. I was pleased to discover that we originated from one man who came to America in the late 1700’s from Scotland, but I knew very little about my Mother’s side except for small amounts of information that I managed to glean from my Grandmother.  While waiting for my DNA results I decided to go to Ancestry.com and see what information was available there.  What I found was not really surprising at all when I remembered back to my Grandmother’s jolly and upbeat personality and some of the unusual things that she used to say before I realized that what she peppered her speech with, which to me, seemed eccentric and comically bizarre sometimes, had a legitimate origin that I did not know back then. Things that she often said just in passing were Cockney Rhyming Slang. Someone else having said a certain word or phrase would very often prompt her to say a series of words and phrases that made absolutely no sense in the context of what had been said to her.  It usually just rhymed with the last word that they had said. So it was no surprise to me to learn that her ancestry as far back as the 16th century was British.  She probably had no idea that she was British to the core, but somehow a bit of the linguistics of generations of Brits before her survived in the lyrical language that she spoke nearly every day of her life. I wish that I could tell her all that I discovered about our family centuries ago. I do believe that she would have been proud to know that one of our ancestors, Sir John Kidd, was actually Knighted in the 1500’s.

Another thing that I discovered in our lineage was a tragic testament to how difficult life was for the women in our family especially in the 1800’s. There is a long list of the patriarchs in our family having had multiple wives in their lifetimes from the loss of wives having died young after giving birth to multiple children. There were many men who were on record as having as many as 10 - 20 children by sometimes as many as 3 - 4 wives during their lives.  In one episode of Up The Women, the leader of the suffragette movement in England, Emmeline Pankhurst, visits the group and singles out the character of Eva, who is pregnant.  She asks Eva how many children she already has and Eva replies, “14." Emmeline tells her, “Tell your husband to tie a knot in it!” Very funny in the tv show but not funny at all when you know that before birth control and legal abortion there were probably millions of women who wished that it was humanly possible for their husbands to do just that and stop the continuous pregnancies and the multitude of health problems and financial fears that came with being unable to control the constant addition of children in to the family. No matter how much you love children, there needs to be a balance in how many family members two people can manage. I have to wonder if the men didn’t also wish that they could “tie a knot in it.”

So we truly need to take a look at the past to see what our future holds now that it is officially a crime to terminate an unwanted pregnancy when the right to do so was ours for nearly 50 years.  Having the freedom and ability to plan and balance our lives and the lives of those we live with has been lost and I know while many of us are still reeling from the shock of having lost a freedom which should always have been a given in our lives as human beings, we are now in an unbelievably dangerous position with respect to how on earth do we proceed from here when our government has “tied a knot” in our ability to control our own lives and has made it a crime to even attempt to do so?

ABC television had a series of animated PSAs for children in the 1970’s called Schoolhouse Rock, which taught select events in history.  One of them was about the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote after hundreds of years of denial.  It had a song called, “Sufferin’ ‘til Suffrage”, which was a very cute and clever way to teach what, until very recently, appeared to be something we would never have to address again. It appears that we need a new song and a new voice to speak to the world to let everyone know that freedoms are not necessarily etched in stone anymore.  We absolutely need another “Up The Women” movement to replace the one that we now have which is “Up Yours, Women!”