'Woman Card'? You have got to be kidding [View all]

[trof]

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By Frances Coleman
on April 28, 2016 at 11:33 AM
al.com

The Woman Card.

I know I got one at some point during gestation, but I don't remember the particulars. There's so much going on during the nine months you're readying yourself to become somebody's bundle of joy.

You start out as a teensy little zygote and spend your very first days doing cellular division while free falling through your mother's fallopian tube. Once you make your way into her uterus and manage to imbed yourself in the uterine wall, you officially become an embryo.

There's no rest for the weary, however. Right away, you've got to start growing a brain, spinal cord, heart and gastrointestinal tract, after which you're expected to fashion a rudimentary circulatory system and figure out how to rig a placental connection between you and good ol' Mom.

Soon you'll be working on what will become your arms, legs, ears, facial features and all the other structures they have planned for you. Being only a few weeks along and weighing less than an aspirin, you are not sure who "they" are -- God? the stork? Darwin? – but you've been programmed by something or Somebody to grow, so that's what you do.

Before long, you leave your embryonic period and enter your fetal period, and guess what: Not only are you now about three inches long and weigh about an ounce, but you've gotten your Woman Card. They may not show up on an ultrasound, but if you could manage to look downward, you'd see that you've been issued your genitalia.

In fact, at this point you have the beginnings of everything, albeit it in miniature form, that you'll have as an adult human being. Your hair, eye and skin color were determined early on. All you have to do now is keep on growing per the Lord's, the stork's or Darwin's plan for another 30 weeks or so, until you're born a baby woman.

Then what?
If the answer is based on the recent musings of presidential candidate Donald Trump, then at some point after puberty you'll get to start playing your Woman Card. He did not specify what this card will do for you, but implied that you'll be able to use it whenever you want people to be drawn to you, perhaps to hire you or maybe even to vote for you, simply because you're a woman.

Apparently this is a new and improved card, historically speaking. Centuries ago, the card severely restricted a woman's rights and privileges, dictating such things as what she could and couldn't own, whether she would be permitted to learn to read and write, and when and whom she would marry.

See how things have changed, however, especially in national politics? All an opportunistic woman now has to do is sign up to run for president, wave her 2016 Woman Card and stand back as half of the American population blindly lines up to support her.

More:
http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/04/woman_card_youve_got_to_be_kid.html#incart_river_index