Are You Equal Yet?

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You also have the responsibility to actually graduate with a “useful” degree, something that will open one or two career doors for you after you move your tassel. A degree in Home Economics, Sociology, Art History, or English Literature just doesn’t cut it these days. Really! Just ask the waitress who has such a degree.

You have the right to a career of your choosing. You have the privilege of pursuing any career you want. It will almost always involve training, so be prepared to train. Fifty years ago the best a young lady could hope for was to “find a good man and he’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.” Frankly, that was a load of crap then, and it’s a load of crap today!

Right to a career means you have a responsibility to get the best career you can, and work every day to keep it. Your paycheck should naturally tend to the needs of your family, Make sure you sock a little away each payday for retirement, because one thing is absolutely certain: barring your untimely death, you will get old! Who is going to take care of you then? Your ex-husband? Your bankrupt children? Social Security?

These two rights in combination are the Formula for Equality. Do you know anybody who has applied the Formula for Equality? Do you know anyone who has systematically ignored it? Do you know people from each side? Do you recognize the differences in their respective lifestyles?

Do you know anyone who has placed, or expects to place her entire heart, mind, body, soul, and livelihood into the hands of a man in the form of marriage? This day in age, ladies, that’s about the stupidest thing you can do, because despite the depth of your love, despite what is in your heart, or in your vagina, you have no idea what “ever after” is going to bring. If you want a relationship that will actually work for you, then a college education topped with a high paying career is exactly what you seek.

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1989. It has made me “equal,” because I took advantage of the same rights granted to both me and you. The door was placed in the propped-open position, and I walked through.

If you believe marriage is the answer to all your problems, then shame on you! You desecrate decades of strife and unrest your mother and grandmother endured so you would not have to place yourself in the servitude of a man. If you have intentionally kept yourself ignorant and uneducated (“… don’t want to get too smart …”) in an effort to attract a handsome man (“ … because it scares all the cute boys away …”) then, frankly, ma’am, you deserve the heartbreak, financial ruin, despair and hopelessness you are enduring, or about to endure. If you have not applied the Formula for Equality, nor do you have any intention of doing so, then you will never be equal. Regardless of the nature and number of rights that may be written, it is up to you to exercise them. If you do not, then it is the same as never having them in the first place.

Are you equal yet?