A Double Standard

by Eleanor Rodgerson, MD

I read an announcement the other day of a lecture to be given before a group of obstetricians and
gynecologists, VIBRATORS AND VIAGRA: THE DOUBLE STANDARD, and  I was puzzled.  The title implied a disadvantage and I wondered, isn’t a double standard always with us?

Women will admit they have come a long way in the last century, doing men’s work, competing,
succeeding.  And they recognize help – scholarships, wars which increased their outside-the-home
productivity, opportunities opening in every field of endeavor, laws  passed to encourage female participation in most lines of work.  And affirmative action.  Top officials in many corporations and half the number of medical school admissions are women.  Still, there are those who feel deprived.

Rights for females wrapped in gelabas in other countries are now advocated.    There are
demonstrations and gatherings and marchings to discuss the push for a single standard.  Men are
downgraded, yet envied and imitated.

But --it should be remembered for what women were originally made. God thought Adam was lonely and He dreamed a plan to give him company and  build a family and  increase the number of living beings.  It would begin with only two and eventually nations would result.

The plan was successful and a double standard was enacted.

Certain facts are not questionable.  The female is the only provider of a habitation for the growth and development of a new individual, and  this half of the double standard takes a special kind of care – for herself, her offspring-to-be, her delivery, and her post-partum maturation.

As the complications of pregnancy lessened in this twentieth century and infant mortality dropped within
Western civilized countries, unfulfilled women turned to other pursuits. and  began to ask for one standard for all.  They said, what a man can do, a woman can do as well, maybe better.  Feminization set in and there was less attention to maternity and family.

This struggle was not all for the good.  The male began to lose self esteem and the female’s uniqueness lessened.  In the health field, sexual diseases and infections with no known cures exploded.  The civilized world was transformed to a certain extent, but the double standard could not disappear.  It is based on truth and only it can keep life vibrant, moving the world.  It is nonsense to believe it cannot exist.