THEY STILL DON'T GET IT

GenderGappers 2007 – 011

THEY STILL DON’T GET IT

There is a play written by Jane Martin in 1993 called “Keely and Du”. It comes close to being fair to both sides of the abortion debate. The major characters are a young woman, Keely, who is seeking an abortion after being raped by her husband and Du, an older woman.

Du along with another anti-abortion extremist, a male minister, kidnaps Keely when she was on the way to terminate her pregnancy. Here we have the classic confrontation of free will and religion.

Legally, Keely has the right to have an abortion; but the minister and Du have the power to stop her by chaining her to a bed in a basement. Here most of the action is played out with Du watching over a very angry Keely.

The minister, who of course feels he has all the rights on his side due to his gender - being made in the image of God and his vocation as God’s representative on earth - at first calmly exhorts Keely.

She remains intractable and over the days and nights this angers the man to the point that he raves like the anti-abortion screamers that flock outside women’s clinics. Even Du finds him ridiculous and tells Keely that, “He is with God but he is insufferable about it.”

As the women spend more time together, they develop a friendship. They understand that they have much in common and, as women, can find amusement in the foibles of the raving minister.

Things do not end well in this play. How could they? Religion as always divides people, bringing hatred by the powerful and resentment by the weak. However males usually find what they think is a solution for the abortion debate in the play.

Because Keely and Du seemingly come to like and understand each other, mostly male reviewers of the play think that putting the two sides in one room together, just to talk quietly would bring a solution.

One such reviewer based this on Roe versus Wade suggest opposition [versus], whereas Keely and Du brings a word [and] of inclusion and togetherness and hope. He disregarded the 500 pound gorilla in the room – men’s religion which enslaves womankind.

But one real point of the play is to show that captivity and force of one gender by another just has no saving grace. Males cannot be raped and impregnated by a stronger, privileged gender and forced to continue a pregnancy because of the stronger, privileged gender’s religion.

They still don’t get it when they think religion and freedom can sit down in a room together and compromise. They never will as long as women’s bodies are owned by the state.
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