Every now and then somebody will say, “How come there need to be women’s studies classes? There are no men’s studies classes, are there? Hm? Are there?” The answer, of course: There are men’s studies classes. They’re called “history.”

I was reminded of this dispute when I read the book pictured above, The Celts: A History, by Peter Berresford Ellis. Mr. Ellis is a well-known scholar with multiple books on Celtic history to his name. He also writes historical fiction under another name. The book is a short overview and seemed at first glance to be just the thing to satisfy my curiosity.

My interest in the subject came about something like this:

·       Much cultural wailing about the decline of marriage and the rise in out-of-wedlock births

·       May 1 (Beltane) was coming up

·       I remembered once reading that in the old pagan days, young women and young men performed the fertility rites by, er, frolicking, about the Beltane fires

·       And the resulting Beltane babies were much cherished

·       So I wondered what sort of family structure allowed the cherishing, rather than the reviling, of the babies, and how babies and everyone else were cared for

·       Then I checked this book out of the library

Scanning the table of contents, I found the book included Chapter 6: Celtic Women. Well, you may be certain that if there’s a chapter devoted to women, the rest of the book is about men. It’s also a very dry recitation of facts that are hard to incorporate into one’s own knowledge store because they are laced with people and place names that are unfamiliar and unpronounceable.

Things I learned about: ancient Celtic rulers and warriors; Celtic farming implements; Celtic chariots and battle tactics; Celtic road building; Celtic architecture; Celtic religion; and several other topics. Things I did not learn about: How families were formed; who lived together; how children were cared for; how food was prepared; whether men were involved in caring for the children they sired; what happened to women and children when husbands and fathers died; what work women in general did while men were building and driving chariots into battle; and other things I wondered about. The closest I got to any of this information was the author’s assertion that Julius Caesar’s description of polygamous Celtic families did not accurately represent them.

So what was in the chapter on Celtic women? A dry recitation of facts about the handful of Celtic women who were known to have been rulers and warriors. Apparently, women are only interesting when they are doing typically male things.

To be fair, the matters that interest me do not leave artifacts to be dug up and studied, like the iron-age plows and the graves of the prominent. And maybe whatever I once read about Beltane babies was invented new-age mumbo jumbo. But maybe somebody knows about daily life in Europe in the six or twelve centuries B.C., and I just picked up the wrong book. I need the women’s studies version.

Pity poor Ann Romney, who was recently, unceremoniously dragged into the mud-wrestling ring by her husband, the ever-clueless Mitt. Candidate Romney attempted to cover his own complete inability to relate to others, especially those in possession of vaginas, by casting his wife in the role of interpreter. Problem is, Mrs. Romney is eminently unsuited to the role. Not only does she live in the same mansion(s) that he does, she apparently never leaves them except to get in one of her Cadillacs and drive to another one, or to engage in her favorite sport, dressage, an activity that few Americans could define and only might possibly know that it involves owning five-figure horses.

A Democratic operative, whatever that means, loudly opined that Mrs. Romney has never worked a day in her life, thus setting off a firestorm of bumper sticker sentimentality from the right, left, and middle. Every Mother is a Working Mother! Being a Mother is the Hardest Job in the World! Being a Mother is the Most Important Job in the World! All Choices are Good Choices! We Respect Stay-at-Home-Moms More! Don’t Dis the SAHMs! And blah blah effing blah. Yes, we all Respect SAHMs. And that, plus $4.11, will buy a SAHM a tall soy mocha at Starbucks.

The truth that the Democratic operative, whatever that means, was ham-fistedly pointing out was that being a SAHM, though respectable as all get out, actually prepares one for…nothing. It's the ultimate dead-end job. Sure, it might seem like after the decades-long multitasking gauntlet of wrangling the children, the husband, and house single-handedly, one could easily step into a CEO position of at least a moderate-sized firm. I believe Michelle Bachmann made that argument, actually, when she was still running for president. But in fact, the world outside your house doesn’t see it that way. At all. Go ahead, apply for a management position with nothing but a 20-year SAHM job on your resume. Let me know how it goes.

So the Democratic operative, whatever that means, might be forgiven for wondering just what Mrs. Romney knows about struggling to build and maintain a career; find safe, affordable childcare; keep yourself and your family healthy when you don’t have insurance; battle discrimination and unequal pay; ensure that you can have a reasonably comfortable old age; and other concerns faced by many, many women, but not by Mrs. Romney. There’s nothing wrong with marrying a rich man and raising a pack of kids. Bless you, Mrs. Romney, they all turned out well. Thank you for your service. But perhaps Mitt could find an operative, whatever that means, of his own, with some expertise in or experience with the reality faced by a wider contingent of women in the US. Let Ann go back to her horses.

The national discussions these days all seem to be chicken-and-egg arguments.

Right-wing: Social pathology causes poverty!

Left-wing: Poverty causes social pathology!

The real answer: This is a stupid question. Real life is much more complicated than that.

Aside from the vast oversimplification of complex dynamics, we all manage to not understand each other by engaging in what-is-it-really-about arguments.

Right-wing: It’s about religious freedom!

Left-wing: It’s about women’s health!

The real answer: Sorry, right-wing, it’s about women’s health, and the religious freedom card is a hefty load of codswallop.

Here’s why.

Religious practice being a matter of personal values, beliefs, and behaviors, it should directly affect only the practitioner of said religion. There is only one realm in which anyone would think it appropriate for an employer’s religious issues to impact an employee’s health care, and that realm is the control of female reproduction.

Let me give an example.

Say there’s a medication, a treatment for cancer, that is made out of bacon. (What? Many people think that bacon has salutary properties.) If an individual is suffering from cancer, one might reasonably expect that their health insurance will cover the bacon meds.

Jews (some of them, anyway) don’t eat pork. It’s a biblical thing. Bacon is off limits. For Jews. But if an employee of Beth Schlomo Medical Center has cancer and needs the bacon pills, they will be covered by the Beth Schlomo health care plan. Should the Jews running Beth Schlomo be able to refuse coverage for bacon pills for a cancer-stricken employee, who may not even be Jewish? 

Sure, the employees can pay for their own bacon pills, but the cost is high. They may have to skip the pills and rely on some less efficacious treatment.  And in any case, why should their health coverage be subject to the whims of their employer’s whacky religious issues? 

We will never have an argument about this, because it will never happen. Jewish employers would not refuse to cover bacon pills. Seventh Day Adventist employers do not refuse to cover blood transfusions. Christian Scientist employers do not refuse to provide health insurance at all.

Birth control is basic, critically necessary care. Of course it should be covered. It has zip to do with religious freedom. The Catholics who own Saint Mary Margaret Paul Health Care Center are free to not use it (though most Catholics actually do use it). They are not free to foist their whacky religious issues on their employees and refuse to cover basic care in their health plans.

Why are we even having this conversation?  Because we, as a culture, still think that wise, godly men ought to decide how women manage their reproductive lives. We, as a culture, still don’t want women running around having sex just because they want to. We, as a culture, still don’t really think women ought to want to have sex at all. We, as a culture, still want to use female sexuality as a tool to manage male behavior. And indeed, men’s behavior has gotten worse since women abdicated their responsibility to manage it for them.

Are you following me? Are my leaps too long? Let me break it down further.

·       Anyone can claim any nonsense as a religious belief.

·       You have to follow the usual rules in spite of your religious nonsense.

·       Except where sex in involved.

·       Because women having sex without patriarchal permission is the root of all evil.

Of course, sex is what the social pathology argument noted above is about, too. More about that another day.