Top o’ the morning to you! Happy St. Patrick’s Day. (But what a scoundrel he was. He apparently killed as many Irish folk as he “converted.”)
(This greeting means “best of the morning to you,” and the proper response is “And the rest of the day to you!” I used to wonder which hour between dawn and noon was considered the top of the morning. Was the top the minutes just before noon, or was it at sunrise? It turns out I was wrong on both accounts. Yet another reason why I’m thankful for the Internet!)
I have always had a special affection for Ireland, although there is no direct descendant that I know who came from there. All four of my great grandparents (on both sides) came from the region that later (after their passing) became known as Germany.
Perhaps it’s because I have (and had, naturally, before it turned grey) red hair and blue eyes and was often called a “lassie” as a child. (Alas, “laddie” would have been more correct, but that’s water long since under the bridge!)
But when I developed Dupuytrens’s Contracture in my right hand (nothing as serious as the images shown in the link), the doctor who operated on it told me that it is primarily an affliction of Northern European men (bingo!) and their (usually) male descendants wherever they migrated to, and that it also proves I have significant amount of Viking blood coursing through my veins, as Vikings were the first known people to develop the condition.
And I just learned that fully 20% of citizens of the Emerald Isle have Viking DNA.
What this means is that Viking conquests of Scandinavian countries and Ireland resulted not just in countless rapes and pillaging but in marriages, eventually, as the descendants of invaders over the years ingratiated themselves with indigenous populations (as happened here to a lesser degree in North and South America as invaders /colonizers became homesteaders and neighbors over time next to the remaining/surviving Mexicans and Native Americans).
Eventually the warring between the Norse and Irish ceased and they became one people; that is, the Vikings were assimilated into the Irish culture. They shared many of the same attributes and established a kinship over time as a result of them.
(Alas, the same cannot yet be said of North and South America, where so-called “civil warring” continues, largely supported by rich, influential, powerful white supremacists who want to keep the lion’s share of the existing bounty at the expense of everyone else, even though everyone else is doing most of the heavy lifting as vendors and worker bees. Their “essential workers” are mostly low-paid, poverty-level pawns on their chess board. White male conquest is still an active, ongoing thing here in far, far too many of our fellow countrymen. Some of them will even do their best to steal elections, semi-bloodlessly, by disenfranchising non-white, non-male citizens and attacking legislators in D.C. and in other states. We must stop them! End of political rant and history lesson.)
What this tells me is that I am here today, most likely, as the result of literally scores of rapes that occurred in my ancestors’ past. Does this make me anti-abortion due to rape (or for any other reason)? No, it does not. I believe that women should have autonomy over their bodies (including recreational sex in the same way men enjoy that freedom, although I am in no way a libertine; in fact, I’m celibate!) and that they should decide when and whether to give birth. Men don’t have the right to dictate to women when it comes to bodily autonomy. If men want to prevent unwanted pregnancies, they can have reversible vasectomies to keep pregnancy from happening a lot easier and far less expensively than women can get birth control pills, IUDs. or abortions.
The facts: A lone man can inseminate a woman (or two or three or more) every 24 hours if he finds willing (or more sadly, unwilling) partners, but a woman can only give birth once a year. So, to stem the tide of births, the logical target should be unmarried and philandering married men, not women. Men hate hearing this because it impinges on what they want to do with their bodies. WAAAH WAAAH WAAAAH!!! Get out the tiny violins. Deal with it. That’s my message.
No wonder so many people are saddled with damaged/altered DNA and past life trauma as a result of the lives that our ancestors lived. Women were property like other enslaved people, cattle and oxen. They could be treated in whatever ways their “owners” decided. And far too many owners decided to be tyrants, without the slightest regard for the people and animals in their charge.
And it still happens. Until we stand up and vote out the people who support subjugation (at present, that’s the GOP, the cult of Trump), it will remain an ongoing battle against evil.
The victors in this millennia-long battle need to be US.
“The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.”
ML King Jr.
