My Unusual Afternoon

My sister evicting the parasite, young Finn. Note the empyrean glow emanating from Dr. Dude.

Although it is not a requirement, a professional spinster aunt’s street cred is vastly enhanced if she has actual nieces and/or nephews to teach swear words to. I had occasion to ponder this notion yesterday afternoon when my sister surprised me by popping out another tot, thereby doubling my auntly qualifications without my having to lift a finger.

I’ll admit that it wasn’t a total surprise. Looking back, I see now that there were clues all along. Having perceived with my usual acuity that she was hauling a little extra mass, I had idly hypothesized that the sibling was either (a) el preggo, or (b) trying a new triathlon training technique requiring her to suspend a medicine ball from her bra. Although until yesterday I hadn’t given either contingency much thought, since not only am I self-absorbed, but the idea of triathlons fills me with ennui, and the idea of childbirth turns my stomach.

It turns out that the actuality of childbirth turns my stomach, too. Through an unexpected and cruel twist of fate, I accidentally observed the whole gory tableau of my young niece’s eviction from her warm, moist bungalow. Oh my fucking god.

I’ll just let the photo do the talking.

Finn's previous residence

But I tell you whut. That OB/GYN gig is great work if you can get it. This dude glided in, smelling of sports cars and clad in the gaudy raiment of the links whence he had just departed, made small talk for two minutes, and glided back out.

“Push, two-three-four,” suggested the nurse to my litter-mate.

15 minutes later, the OB, now enveloped in scrubs and emitting a kind of celestial aura, rematerialized just in time to palm the infant relative as it squirted out (the kid’s understandable reluctance proved no match for the considerable abdominal muscles of its elite-athlete host). Dr. Dude handed the kid off, reached back in, extracted a pulsating wad of gore the size of Guam, applied a couple of stitches, doffed his glowing shower cap to his stunned audience, and was gone in a puff of silver smoke.

Cha-ching.

Despite the fact that nieces can be, in small doses, quite the little lumps of fun, I am no fan of reproduction. So many factors recommend against it. Overpopulation. The uncertainty of the future. The horrors of patriarchy. The repellent hubris displayed by those who assume their genes are indispensable to the cosmos. The repellent hubris displayed by those who view it as a “right.” The repellent hubris displayed by those sanctimonious fucktards whose delusions about supernatural deities compel them to control it.

Other people’s tedious children (present company excepted, of course.)

I particularly resent pregnancy itself, and not just because of the saccharine, sentimental disdain our species confers on it, or the fucktarded social consequences of possessing the organs necessary to do it. Consider the ickiness of the biology: the burdensome inequity of the male/female dichotomy, the depraved practical joke that is menstruation, the parasitic nature of the fetus, the strain on the physique, the bloody violence of labor and delivery, and the absolute tyranny suddenly imposed by the newly expelled mewling tyke. Which tyke, I remind you, resembles a lump of hamburger (see photo) whose purpose in life is to attempt suicide about 70,572 times a day.

Nature’s nonchalance is a pisser.

Comments

[emjaybee]

Heh. And ew.

On a related note, when watching an episode of Star Trek: Voyager because I had no cable nor social life at the time, I saw an episode in which a cast member gave birth. She was having trouble, so the doc finally decided they would simply *beam the baby out.* Zap, sparkly light, there it was, no muss no fuss.

And I sat up straight, outraged, yelling, "Jesus Christ, if they could do *that*, why not just do it before she goes into labor?" And took it as irrefutable proof, if needed, that no women wrote for that show. Hell, I'm a believer in natural childbirth, but only for medical reasons; give me a chance to zap the kid out with no bad side-effects or surgery, and I am *there.*

[BlondebutBright]

Your unassumingly graphic photos leave me speechless and astonished (in a good way). I have honestly never seen anything like them. Incredible post. I’ll consult it daily until the maternal urge to reproduce myself has left my mind forever.

[Sophie]

"the depraved practical joke that is menstruation"

I hope you know that women don't have to endure that joke. There are types of contraception that often have the pleasant side effect of dispensing us with that, along with dispensing us of passing our priceless genes to the future generations.

[Sydney]

okaaaayy....

What happened to the delivery pictures where all the wittle babies just have a little goo and then they’re just beautiful? Damm the patriarchy and their evil lies! I am now traumatized for life.

I’m going to go throw-up now, and when I’m finished I’m going to start looking up facts about adoption.

[Steph]

That has to be the most unsentimental birth-related post ever.

I've been there twice and it wasn't a picnic (damn my desire for midwives and a technology free birth). But it's not all THAT bad (damn my desire to have children!). It is messy though--something that no one tells you about before.

What I can't figure out is how the baby is being held in the first picture. That actually screams the patriarchy to me because the birth attendant--who you so accurately describ--gets to hold the baby before the birthing woman does. I didn't exactly catch, but the first place my kids went when they were born was in my arms. The midwife came to me and checked out my kid.

I'm not a feminist who totally glorifies the biological woman, but I also don't have full disdain for what my body is and does. My problems are with how the patriarchy treats my body when it does these things (birth, menstruates, breast feeds, stops menstruating).

And I'm really ambivalent about using oral contraception to stop periods--I feel a whole lot of patriarchy from big-pharma having me on drugs to control something that the patriarchy views as bad (and no I don't love having my period, I'm just leery about the motives of those who push this as liberation).

[yami]

Crikey, I'd just bitten into a nectarine when I saw that placenta; the resemblance to the yellow bit in the corneer has put me off my lunch... but congratulations to the iron-stomached spinster aunt!

[Mistress]

I swore years ago never to be a baby-maker. There just aren't any reasons to. I love children, and that's why I'm going to adopt one that already exists & could use some love . . . . not any time soon, of course, considering I'm an impoverished 21 year old college student.

www.vhemt.org

While it seems a little extreme & insane at first, I love these guys. Click on BIOLOGY & BREEDING and scroll down until you get to the big chart. It shoots down every excuse that people give to make babies. Fucking brilliant.

[Lauren]

Dude. Placentas are fucking NASTY! Our umbilical cord was the color of a raver's glowstick.

[Mrs. Coulter]

Ugh. I have very little memory of the Birth of Lyra. With good reason--no one would ever have a second child if they could remember it clearly, and the entire human race would die out.

When we went over our birth plan with the doctor, she asked us questions like "do you want to see the baby crowning?" and "do you want to see the placenta?" and "do you [referring the implanter of the parasite] want to cut the cord?" In all cases, the answer was emphatically NO!

And my doctor is a woman who drives a white, late-model Japanese hatchback (Nissan, I think), even though she's listed as one of the top OBs in DC. I know this because she came to my house to do exams while I was on bedrest (yes, my doctor made housecalls). They're not all evil.

[Twisty]

Steph, you correctly identify me as possibly the least sentimental spinster aunt in the world. I like to think that only The Universe has me beat in that quarter.

The obstetrician is literally palming the kid with one hand, like a football, fingers on either side of the neck. Talk about unsentimental.

I'm against big-pharma, too. I really think this reproduction thing needs to be totally reworked from the ground up. I envision a situation where there's only one sex, for example, and possibly egg-laying.

[Twisty]

Mistress, that link is hi-larious!

[Sunya Harjis]

Re Sophie's comment about contraception that halts menstruation:

Fuck you, honey. I mean that in a heartfelt way. Every time I try to discuss a thesis at all resembling Twisty's (Menstruation is evidence that god hates women) I get that ludicrous answer: that They make a magic pill/patch/insertion/device that stops menstruation....

Then I start screaming: Yes, it does so by irretrievably dicking around with your hormonal balance. It has a wealth of side-effects, is not endured equally well by all women, and involves the contraindication of all kinds of other drugs which one might suddenly develop a need for. Drugs are a crap shoot! WHY DON'T ANY OF THESE GLAXO-SMITH-KLINE SHILLS UNDERSTAND THAT?!

I've had hurricane-class arguments with men about the insurance subsidization of Viagra and other penis pills: why can't, I argue, menstruation-related products also be subsidized?

Mensutration isn't a disease!!!! They squeal, clutching their balls. It's natural!

But so is erectile dysfunction, I reply.

But erectile dysfunction means something is wrong with your works! It's a malfunction! A dysfunction! Menstruation happens to all women!

Right, I continue. So paying for its clean-up is like a tax on being female. How is that fair in the first place, much less when set against Viagra subsidies?

BUT MEN DON'T MENSTRUATE! WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO PAY FOR IT?!?! Then, inevitably: PLUS WOMEN LIKE DICK, TOO.

Because men come out of pussies and spend the rest of their lives, so the saying goes, trying to get back in. Pussy is something that everyone in society benefits from but only women have to take care of. If your broken dick nets you a check from the company policy-holder and some magic pills to fix it at $10 a dose, why can I not have the menstruation-damming device of my choice (which inevitably costs less than $10 a month) paid for as well?

They get sore and surly then and claim, with totaly sincerity, to not even begin to understand how I could arrive at such a conclusion. And then they tell me IT WOULD COST TOO MUCH! No exaggeration: it's happened in almost exactly this way on nine different occasions, with many smaller (inevitably meaning "cut short" rather than "different discussion") arguments on the side.

For the next several decades - indeed, for the unforseeble future - I must spend one-quarter of my waking hours physically weakened, hygenically challenged, and exhaustively alert for symptoms of emotional imbalance. And those hours aren't served together! Gently phased against each other they may, in total, comprise a third or even a half of my childbearing years. And these ridiculous men claim menstruation is natural! And these preposterous women claim that I should elect to suffer from a different, less predictable, and unrelieved series of ailments in place of this one!

Not to mention how the legality of contraception is itself coming rapidly into question.

How many millions and billions of dollars went into researching Viagra and its competitors? How many millions and billions have those penis pills made? To relieve a problem which is 9 times out of 10 purely psychological and 10 times out of 10 not threatening to one's health! And here we girls are fighting amongst ourselves and stuffing our girlbits with cotton or sponges or whatever like it was still 1066.

This is an utterly appalling situation and one which demonstrates the essential and unbreachable sexism built into our civilization better than most other examples: most telling of all is how fundamentally incomprehending men are when confronted with this inequity, how frequently and intensely even the most enlightened and liberal ones seem to think that menstruation is just... something women have to put up with.

[ae]

Congrats, Twisty. Welcome, Finn.

In the throes of Aunt Flo at the moment, I am salivating at the thought of its utter and complete eradication. As soon as the (an?) "Intelligent Designer" can figure that shit out, I'll be ready to believe in it/her/him. 'Til then, oww and biological imperative and all that.

And, erm, that placenta. Whoa. Twisty, you are a wonder of philosophical consistency.

[TimT]

Welcome, Finn, you concatenation of DNA strands, you!!!

[alice]

when i worked in the path lab, we had at least five placentas waiting for us to weigh every morning and then store in formalin. you should see the ones that house triplets. sleeping bags.

[Kyra]

Emjaybee, later on in that episode, the baby died because the beam-out weakened its cell membranes, or something like that. Luckily, Voyager had just been duplicated by some mysterious phenomenon, so that the baby's duplicate from the second Voyager (who had been born normally) was conveniently one of two survivors from the second Voyager.

The beam-out method was only a last resort due to the complications. Why else would B'Elanna Torres spend the entire series finale suffering through the Klingon version of labor when there were Borg to be fought and Main Engineering to take care of?

As for female writers, I'm not sure whether any were working on this, but if you were thinking up a future semi-utopia, wouldn't you come up with a way to make childbirth simple and pain-free?

[Mandos]

Well, Twisty already murdered a Lois McMaster Bujold book, or I'd have mentioned her in my answer to your question, Kyra. LMB's Vorkosigan universe has a convenient uterine replicator: no need for labour! Cheap and efficient mass-produced technology, 100% effective unless someone sabotages it (LMB manages to work these things into the plot). Anyway, it's main plot purpose is to gradually infiltrate a feudal society hitherto unexposed to galactic technology...causing (mostly positive) changes to this society that go unnoticed until it is too late.

[Mandos]

Eh, I ended up describing LMB anyway.

But congrats (if she wants to be congratulated---not sure!) to Twisty on her new niece. Clearly her sister probably has a different perspective on the whole business :) After all, she's the one who was voluntarily going through it, not Twisty. For the forseeable future, alas, reproduction will be generally that messy. I've got no kids myself and no imminent plans to have any, but I think (other people's--no responsibility for me!) kids are pretty cute, usually, and am selfishly grateful for whatever annoying process brings them into the world.

[Mandos]

Triple post! In response to Sunya, I also note that there are feminists who think that the desire to (technologically) eradicate menstruation are really part of a patriarchal plot to alienate women from the Awesome Power of their hated-by-patriarchy bodies...

Almost any means to eradicate menstruation itself will involve fooling around with hormones. The ED pills are also fooling around with chemicals that perhaps shouldn't be fooled around with, particularly ones that involve the heart and the eyes (blue vision for some men who take Viagra...). When/if the male contraceptive pill emerges, it will also be fooling around with hormones involved in complex processes. For the time being there's a price to be paid for attemping to escape cruel Nature, worth it through the price may be.

[Mistress]

I &hearts menstruating. It's all good by me-- unless an opportunity to get laid arises, in which case I'm [not] fucked.

[TimT]

As for female writers, I'm not sure whether any were working on this, but if you were thinking up a future semi-utopia, wouldn't you come up with a way to make childbirth simple and pain-free?

Kyra, it's already been done. Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a fantasy about a female society completed isolated from any male influence. If I recall correctly, the babies are grown on trees!

[TimT]

Hmmmph. Seems I was wrong about that:

As the youngest girls from the original group grew older, it seemed certain that the group would become instinct, but then one woman miraculously gave birth - first to one child, and later to four more. All were girls, and all later produced their own virgin offspring.

[Sarah]

Menstrual suppression does come with it's own set of side-effects and risks, definitely, but it can be literally a life-saver for some women with serious gynaelogical conditions, for others it can significantly improve their quality of life. Of course it's definitely not for everyone, and it's silly to say that all women who don't like periods (who does??) should just stop having them, because it isn't a magic pill, and sometimes the side effects can be worse than the periods themselves. And some women are at high risk and some just don't want to take synthetic hormones. Which is perfectly reasonable.

But for the women who do tolerate it well, and make an informed choice to use it, I don't see a problem with that, and don't agree that we're all dupes of "big pharma".

[Twisty]

A couple of remarks:

1. I am not, for the record, anti-baby. I'm a big fan of the niece I've had for the past year and a half, and the new one is so funny-looking that we formed an instantaneous bond of mutual funny-lookingness.

2. When I say that I find other people's kids tiresome, what I am really saying is that I find other people's parental acuity wanting. For example, across the street from me live two families with 2 little boys each. The boys on the left are unruly and troubled (they once famously spent a few horrific minutes sling-shotting pecans at my midlife-crisis sportscar), and it's no surprise: the father is a rage-aholic MD and the mother is in la-la land and the kids are afraid to go home. The boys on the right, however, are charming, having been raised by mellow, drug-free, snow-boarding nudist hippies who have a rope swing suspended from their living room ceiling.

3. I do not advocate in any way a chemical solution to menstruation. I merely point out, with my usual stunning grasp of the obvious, that it sucks beyond all reason to that this process evolved the way it did, particularly if one has no intention of reproducing. And I'm sure nobody's suggesting that women who are irredeemably debilitated by the monthlies should be criticized for taking drugs of any kind!

4. Voyager. Fooey. Janeway was totally cancelled out by Seven of Nine.

5. I have always thought tampons should be free.

6. I would never say "God hates women." What I would say is "men hate women." There is no God.

[jennifer]

Twisty, you're brilliant. I would so make out with you!