Career
Women
by Donald Kingsbury
Women enchant me. That's why I worry about them so much. It distresses my kind soul to watch the mechanisms of our society crush its women into the limited mould it has designed for them when I can see only too clearly the charming potential that is being destroyed.
The so called emancipation of women is a farce. Our culture has not freed its women, it has merely changed its tactics of enslavement. Formerly it forbade women to compete with men, now it invites them to try -- if they dare. If they dare they get clobbered every inch of the way. From birth all "male" talents are deliberately crippled. "Let brother fix the flat on your bike. Girls can't do that". Et cetera. The few girls who survive this childhood treatment with any "male" ambitions intact are grudgingly allowed to go through university while every step they make is served up in mushy warnings such as, "You're losing your femininity. What about a husband?" Anyhow, suppose she comes out of McGill as a doctor or a scientist or whatever, then she has the real problem of profession versus family.
Men are allowed careers and the joys of a wife and children; women are allowed only a career or a family. So, for the love of man, we have MDs and physicists becoming housewives. The few women who are stubborn enough to persist, society tries to punish by denying them marriage. Only a very few end up at the goal which a man takes for granted, a career and a happy family life.
As I said, my
compassionate heart bleeds for these lovely creatures called women. This
"civilization" which brutally crushes half its creative
potential in one blow disgusts me. But I have a solution to the problem which I
modestly call "The Kingsbury Plan" after me.
Item I -- Young girls should be allowed to change flat tires. A daughter who shows a passionate desire to build a radio should be given wires, tubes, and soldering iron instead of a doll. Young ladies should never be helped off streetcars or thru doors. Et cetera. This will give women a sense of equality and a confidence in their own creative abilities. In short a girl should be encouraged to pursue what she is best suited for whether it be courtesan, housewife, or theoretical physicist. To hell with what society thinks she should be.
Item II -- Men like to live with women and visa versa. One of the consequences of this pleasurable relationship is children. Now my generous soul has an affection for little brats and this leads me to the belief that children should be taken care of. In more blunt words I am a staunch supporter of the strong family. But if we are going to liberate women from their slavery what is going to happen to the children?
The Kingsbury Plan proposes a simple way to hold the family together. North Americans, by nature, have a gregarious temperament. Suppose people were allowed to form marriage units containing from two to say eight members? A female scientist with three husbands and two co-wives could easily keep a job and have a happy family life at the same time, for there would always be some member of the family home to take care of her various children. Most professional women who have a family life have to be bothered to hire a servant of questionable ability, but if she was married into one of my suggested multigamous units, servants and even baby sitters would be superfluous. She could have her cake and eat it, too.
I venture to say that a multigamous marriage is a much more workable entity than a monogamous one. Such a large family could afford a huge house with special facilities for children beyond the means of a smaller family. The children would enjoy the wholesomeness of many interpersonal relationships at an early age. If one member lost his job, it would be only a minor catastrophe, not a major one. In case of divorce the family would not be destroyed, but only a chip broken off, and so the children could be spared excessive trauma.
Indeed divorce among the multigamous would probably be very low. If a wife had a fight with her husband she could always seek consolation in the arms of another of her husbands and he in the arms of another wife. A man could not very well brood about having an ugly wife because one of his other wives would probably be beautiful. If a husband was cross, another would be gay and so forth. And who, with three or four mates, would even contemplate committing adultery? Nor would any wife be mercilessly pinned to her home. One member or another could always volunteer to watch the kids. Really, somebody ought to try it. I asked my wife what she thought and her eyes gleamed and a little smile touched her lips. "I could sure use a couple of extra husbands," she said. Then I got kissed. Women enchant me.
