By Georgie Bright Kunkel

It would be exciting to obtain a time machine and set it to ages past in order to observe the dating rituals from time immemorial. Then I got to thinking, maybe there was a time when there was no dating. Maybe the Neanderthal male just walked around with his club and when he needed sex he took it without asking. It would be interesting to flash back to the days before the modern world evolved a dating ritual. Women went to dances dressed in their enticing best and waited for a man to choose them. Then after marriage the woman took the man’s last name and women were not important outside the world of their husband’s sphere. Women didn’t even get to vote in this country before all men were allowed that privilege. As I have probably mentioned before, my mother didn’t get to vote until two months before I was born. And since my father had died before I was born I didn’t have the same sheltered upbringing that most young girls had in my day.

Yes, I feel so fortunate that fate brought me into the world in a civilized little town in Washington State. Just think how many women over the years of civilization have not been educated or allowed to vote or take part in political life. And I wonder if we have come such a long way if our corporate ruled TV is still showing women dressed in low cut garb showing their breast implants alongside men who are fully dressed in their penguin suits. Men can walk the beach in a bikini but out in public they still formally dress in the boring suit and tie signifying their status as alpha males.

In upper class families, young people were supposed to link up with families with as high a status as could be arranged. Families cemented their power alliances by supervising their offspring’s marital plans. It is no wonder that couples in arranged marriages often found other ways to find sexual partners more to their liking. Upper classes who removed to the countryside in the summer months played bedroom tag. In a world of secret alliances, such goings-on were kept out of public scrutiny. The novel Wuthering Heights centered on this story theme. The author was true to the morality of her time and so the reader had to wait until near the end of the book to get closure. The star crossed lovers waited throughout many years for an opportunity to be reunited.

Even today, society has not found a way of socially approving the meeting of the sexual needs of a married couple in which one is incapacitated either physically or intellectually. Fortunately, our society is not as closed as it was during the last century. Certain taboos which forbade lovers from marrying outside their clan have been removed in part. More women are freer to work outside the household once dominated by a husband. With urban living allowing more freedom, it is much easier to live a life without other people passing judgment at every turn. To tell the truth every person who marries today is marrying someone directly descended from the first human and so we are all related by using that standard. The hue and cry about keeping the blood line pure results from ignorance of our roots which all stem from the same beginnings.

With modern science now able to read DNA it won’t be long before a couple will require the DNA evidence of their intended partner to be produced before a marriage can take place. Imagine the traditional male on bended knee and his intended saying, “Yes, if your DNA is acceptable.“

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at 206-935-8663 or via gnkunkel@comcast.net

Note: If you are or know of a woman who worked at a job during WWII, she is a Rosie the Riveter.