Baby Beats: Biological Inequality

It Begins:
 
    Never watch birthing videos at 8 months pregnant. Just don’t do it. It’s scary and violent and you begin to fear greatly for the future of your lady parts. For me I also hate hospitals-- particularly the one I’m going to deliver at. They are filled with sick people, for one-- diseased and germy people around my nice new clean baby. Who will come out all covered in goo though... hmm.

   There’s the other stuff too-- epidurals and IV’s and monitors… aye. It’s not looking good. The videos where people are giving birth naturally at home-- aye again. Not for me, either. Yuck. I have no idea where I’d really want to give birth, and at this moment the entire idea both disgusts and scares the hell out of me. It’s awkward and embarrassing, messy, there’s yelling and it’s just not very dignified. You lose all your sense of modesty.

  And giving birth is just the end game of this awkward process. Sex-- the thing that got us all into this mess-- that's a whole other can of worms. It reminds me of a part of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence. Constance talks about the visuals of sex, how ridiculous it is to see and hear. She’s totally right. They reference it in the movie Dogma as well-- as a big celestial joke that God and the angels all have a good laugh over every time they see humans going at it-- it’s just that. Awkward and embarrassing, with rude sounds and things slapping and flapping around grotesquely.

  But as that's what got us into this in the first place, it’s only fitting that another like act would get us out of it. And it doesn’t happen to men-- as with out social status and capital, women lost the equality lottery biologically, big time. Talk all you want about the miracle of birth and the things we get to experience that they never do, but the fact is that the burden isn't split fairly by biologically. We got screwed. It's a fact. I’d so much rather be a woman than a man, no question, but you have to admit we got the short end of the stick. We’re physically weaker and easier to overpower. The whole pregnancy thing is on us-- men have the power to pull a conceive and leave whenever they choose, and we’re stuck holding the bag.

  Even in the Bible women like Hagar had to just take it from the men and if things didn’t go as planned. She had no recourse and she and her kid were left to die in the dessert by a supposed man of God. It’s a little frustrating. We’re the ones with The Scarlet Letter and good old Dimmesdale just sits by and watches without taking any responsibility in the matter. Sure, he gets it in the end courtesy of fate and poetic justice but if he had his way he would have just sit there forever and let Hester take the brunt of it for their joint crime.

   I’m just saying. We all know about social capital-- where men get more appealing and better looking as they age and women tend to go down hill, along with their social capital. Single older women become “cougars” -- older women who prey on young men-- while men become George Clooney and Sean Connery. They're matched up against Catherine Zeta-Jones while the women get to be mom's and grandma's in movies even when they're still gorgeous-- Anette Benning does not get to play the love interest of Robert Pattinson.

   And all the slang vernacular associated with female genitalia deals with weakness and cowardice (i.e. a “pussy”) whereas if you have balls you are quite brave and strong. Well, I have ovaries, thank you, and I’m saying it takes a lot more courage and strength to be a woman. We might get the short end of the stick but we stand up to it with more tenacity. I'd like to see men be responsible for perpetuating the species. They're just not built for it. So next time you want to give someone a compliment, tell them they've got ovaries of steel. Because yes, we do.