Would women and men be perfectly identical in their roles in a world that was perfectly just? Alas, the answer to this question is a resounding “No”. And it is this truth that animates Dr. Laura’s often made remark that in a loving home it is the home woman who has the power.
To begin, with there is the asymmetry of sex. In the absence of a woman’s consent, there can be no sex between a husband and a wife that does not amount to rape on the part of the husband of his wife. It is, of course, that men in meaningful sense that men can be aroused against their will. Just so, there is no analogue to the penetration that occurs with women; and that difference makes all the moral difference in the world. A wife who gets her husband around, against his will, and then inserts his penis in her vagina has not penetrated him.
So this straightforwardly entails that the husband has to ask his wife for sex and she has to give her consent. Now, to be sure, this can be done nonverbally and with great passion. Alas, this does not change the fact that the wife has to give her consent. With respect to all sorts of things, there are ways in which we can consent non-verbally. And the simple truth of the matter is that the non-verbal consent matters.
In a perfectly moral world, the importance of women giving their consent to a sexual encounter would not disappear in any way whatsoever. Not at all. This truth is at the heart of Dr. Laura’s observation.
Here is a second consideration. It is women—and not men—who bear children. This is relevant on two accounts. For one thing, bearing a child is a most extraordinary emotional and physical experience for which there is nothing even remotely similar in the life of a man.
Needless to say, a father may love his children as much as a mother may. Indeed, that is the way it should be. This reality, though, will not change the fact that, from the outset, the mother has had an experience with the children that the father has not had can and cannot have.
Test-tube babies, à la Huxley’s Brave New World, may change all of that. Alas, this is a change that may be for the worse in terms of the well-fare of the child. The extraordinary asymmetry between women and men with respect to bringing children into the world has tremendous survival value for the infant. In evolutionary terms, the difference is one of parental investment. The greater the parental investment is at the outset, the less likely it is that a parent will abandon the newborn.
A mother’s initial investment far surpasses a father’s initial investment. At the very beginning, both are equal: one egg; one sperm. Then with incredible rapidity the investment of the mother far exceeds the investment of the father. The child develops in her body and she puts her life on the line in bringing the baby into the world.
It is owing to this difference that the story Sophie’s Choice is done in terms of the mother rather than the father. The Nazi asks the mother to choose which one of her two sons shall live and which one shall die. Instinctively, intuitively, and at a most profound visceral level, we automatically understand the mother’s angst. With a father, the very same sentiments on our part do not get off the ground in a like manner; and this difference is owing to none other than the striking difference that between a mother and a father in terms of the role they play in bringing a child into this world.
For those who do not believe in evolution, the preceding point can be put in terms of the difference in the way in which God created women and men. A father-to-be putting his hand on his wife’s stomach and feeling the movements of the baby will never ever be tantamount to the mother-to-be having that baby growing inside of her stomach. The mother-to-be has an investment in the child that the mother-to-be cannot possibly have.
From an entirely different direction, there is issue of trust. With respect to the biological tie, the husband has to trust his wife in a way that the wife never has to trust the husband. If there is anything that the wife knows, she knows that the child who comes out of her stomach is her child.
Of course, the father could in all cases insist upon a paternity test. Needless the damage that does to the marriage is rather like the damage that a friend causes in sexually approaching the spouse of a dear friend. One never ever fully gets beyond the friend’s betrayal. Likewise, a spouse who routinely insists upon a paternity occasions a rupture in the marital relationship that is never fully repaired.
In an unjust world, husbands have tried to eliminate the need to trust their wives by formally restricting the freedom that the wife has. It goes without saying that nowadays such measures are entirely out of the question.
The differences between women and men are ever so real. And there is no better indication of this truth than the fact that even in a morally perfect world there would be fundamental difference between the two in terms of two of the most significant aspects of the interactions of the wife and the husband, namely sex and children. In both cases, the woman has a moral power that the man simply does not have. This, in effect, is Dr. Laura’s point.
I have not claimed that women are morally superior to women. I think no such thing. Superiority is thing. Fundamental differences are quite another. Unfortunately, we live in a world that has become so ideologically driven that truth now takes a backseat to ideological commitments. One of the ways in which ideology manifests itself with respect to the topic at hand is that moral differences are immediately seen in terms of either inferiority or superiority. Women and men are morally equal human beings. Just so, they are far from being identical. So it would be even in a morally perfect world, given that human nature does not change.
