CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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"You're a man, you wouldn't understand."

Thursday, April 24, 2008

this entry brought to you by portishead, "machine gun"


There's a girl I know that's Catholic. She's been married for four years and already has three children. She's insisted that she's absolutely not going to have any more kids, because she's tired of having them. She says in her whole time being married, there was never a nine month period where she wasn't pregnant.

I'm not exactly sure how we got onto the topic of birth control, but it came up, and she said that she and her husband didn't use any, whether in pill or condom form. I informed her that she's probably going to get pregnant again, whether sooner or later, if she's not using anything. "I'm not going to get pregnant," she said.

"I'm sure you don't want to get pregnant," I told her, "but if you're not using protection, you're going to get pregnant."

She insisted that she couldn't get pregnant. I asked her how this was possible. She said, "I know when I'm fertile and when I'm not. We just don't do it when I'm fertile."

"You're using the rhythm method," I said. "You can get pregnant using the rhythm method."

"I'm not using the rhythm method, the rhythm method involves the moon," she scoffed.

"You're using the moon, you just aren't doing it directly," I said. "Our calendar is based on moon cycles. You're using the calendar to time things, and the calendar is using the moon."

I'm not sure exactly what brought up the next part of the conversation, but she told me that he almost never pulls out. I absolutely could not believe what I was hearing. "You're using the rhythm method and he never pulls out? You are going to get pregnant. There's not a 'sooner or later' about it-- you're going to get pregnant."

Then she said something that I absolutely cannot stand when women say: "Chris, I know my body. You're a man, so you wouldn't understand. I can't get pregnant."

This statement when it comes from a woman to a man is beyond insulting, and it's just plain stupid. As a man I can't relate. But to imply that, being a man, I don't understand biology is what gets me infuriated. I wasn't saying something ignorant and bull-headed like "All y'all womens is always shopping. Why you always like shopping so much? Y'all don't make no sense," or some other woman thing that would baffle teenaged boys and grossly immature man-children that have no idea what women are really like. I was talking about science, and yet according to her there was no way I could possibly comprehend how it all works, because apparently this is a third world country where only women and male gynecologists are taught about the reproductive cycle.

Frankly, "you're a man, you wouldn't understand" has always been a baffling statement no matter what the subject was that I apparently couldn't fathom in my puny male brain, because while some female behavior is certainly annoying-- IE, taking forever to get ready to go to even the simplest of places-- there's nothing that I can't understand. And again, there's a difference between empathy and understanding. I don't know what it's like to have mood swings around the same time of month every month, feel doubling-over cramps based on this time of month and bleed a strange, smelly, sticky froth from my nether regions. With that said, I understand it. I know why it happens, and I know it sucks. There's virtually nothing about women that I've learned that I don't understand. I might think it's annoying or odd or frustrating or stupid, but incomprehensible?

Anyway, the above conversation with my friend happened on a Sunday. The following Sunday, exactly one week later, she came up to me and, with a sheepish grin, asked me if I'd heard the news. She's pregnant. She'll be having her fourth baby before she and her husband will even have their fifth anniversary.

For the record, Michelle and I use the rhythm method as well. I pull out for the love of Christ, but the point is, we don't use any official birth control. The difference is that she and I fully understand that we're going to get pregnant eventually this way, and if it happened, say, next month, we wouldn't have any crow that we would have to eat.
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with love from CRS @ 7:43 AM 

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