the idea of a ‘biological clock‘ is completely foreign and ridiculous to me. in my life, it has absolutely no application whatsoever. my maternal instinct has been replaced by a fascination for electronic equipment — particularly that of an apple-produced variety. when i look at a baby i feel nothing. wait, no…that’s not entirely true. i’m usually filled with a sense of vague unease and revulsion. 90% of all babies are pretty much hideous, especially the newborn ones, and all of them are accompanied by various fluids and scents that are not at all pleasant. were you to blow up a baby to adult size yet keeping its infantile proportions, you would be horrified by the monstrosity before you. babies = gross = NO. this math is not hard.
Your biological clock? Yeah, it’s ticking. But it’s hard to know how fast. A new study out of University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands says while menopause for most women begins sometime between 40 and 50, there is no real “average” age that marks the lack of fertility, meaning that some women may begin menopause as early as 30 and some well into their 60’s. In other words, feel free to become more paranoid not knowing what end of that spectrum your body will fall. Happy Monday! (via jezebel.com)
luckily, my “biological clock” has a permanent snooze button and i don’t feel even the slightest of urges to procreate. unwaveringly for the last 13 years i have not changed once on my decision to never have children. it is firm and resolute. this is not open for discussion or subject to change in the future. i’m absolutely disgusted with the arrogance of society as a whole deciding it knows what i want more than i do. as if i’m completely incapable of making my own decisions about my life and my body. i would never presume to say something so intimate and condescending to anyone else, yet on a regular basis friends, family, strangers, acquaintances all have at one point or another completely belittled my choice.
no, i will not change my mind. no, i will not see. no, i will not regret it. no, it is none of your business. seriously? none of your fucking business.
honestly, if i go up to a man and ask him if he ever plans on having another human being burst out of his genitals it would be met with more than just a little surprise. but i’m so sick of my worth and my purpose in life being defined by whether or not i squat out some mewling, poorly produced genetic copy of myself just to see whether i can or not. i am more than my reproductive organs. i.am.more.
mind you, i do not care if anyone else has children (to the extent that said children do not get on my damn nerves). what you do with your own body and financial resources is up to you.
i’m at odds enough with my own body in preventing any fetus invasions, that putting up with the general disapproval of everyone else in the world is just not on my fucking to do list. due to the technological advancements in the medical world and the general fucked-upped-ness of the world at large now we have extreme teen pregnancies and geriatric gestations! awesome, and science can’t exactly pinpoint just when exactly you’re out of the danger zone. menopause and all of it’s fabulous little goodies could come as early as your 30s or as late as your 50-60s…there’s no guarantee.
don’t get me wrong, i am happy being a woman. i would not be happy being a man, i have never had the desire to be a man (ok, well maybe once or twice when i really had to pee), nor would i ever choose to be a man if given the choice. however, i do not enjoy being a slave to the potential of my body. a man can go out and have as much sex as he pleases and not worry about the possibility of impregnation. very few men out there deal with the frustration of birth control in any form: they occasionally get condoms, true; but they don’t deal with diaphragms, IUDs, sponges and spermicidal lubricant that stings like a motherfucker. they don’t get poked and prodded and invaded just for the chance to scurry on down to the pharmacy and shell out hard earned cash for pills to keep baby infestations away. they don’t ever have to pray their insurance will cover the costs, lest the fundamentalist world decide that providing contraceptives over the counter is ‘immoral’.
guys have it easy. they don’t even face the same condescending scrutiny if they should decide not to ‘sow [their] wild oats’ as it were. you can be a childless bachelor without causing much of a stir, pedophiles excluded, of course. but as a woman, you are subject to scorn, pity, derision, and a host of other unwelcome and unfounded ignorance.
by not having children i am not:
- causing grievous harm to anyone else
- causing grievous harm to myself
- causing harm to the world
- detracting from society
- committing a crime
- negatively impacting my environment
- fostering an unending cycle of emotional torment and future therapy bills
i am merely living my life as i see fit. and what, i ask you, is so fucking wrong with that?
by never spawning offspring i am doing myself, society and the environment as a whole a great favor. i know i would be a horrible parent, so much that i don’t think it’s even worth the effort to try and prove it otherwise. i do not believe in instant familial love, nor do i believe in a bond between mother and child as i have not seen nor felt any direct proof of it (my mother issues, let me show u them). i don’t think you should instantly love someone “just because” you’re family. and if a stranger (fetus) lived off of my body and my biological resources and then caused severe pain and physical trauma to crawl out and thus continue sapping my personal and financial resources like the relentless parasite it is…well, i guarantee you that love is not the first thing i would be feeling. far from it, in fact. and frankly, i do not need that sort of resentment and pressure in my life.
is this selfish? i don’t think so. emotional trauma in childhood can cause a host of unforseen psychological problems in adulthood, you know. would i abuse my offspring if i were unfortunate enough to have it? no, of course not…but just as i can guarantee there would be no outright and deliberate abuse, i can further not guarantee there would be any love or good tidings. i am preventing this kind of situation from ever happening, because there is nothing quite as harmful to a child as realizing a parent does not love you. or worse, that you do not love them back. it kind of skews your whole world view.
i do not even actively hate children. in fact, i have spent a good many years contributing to the raising of my baby brother. up until he was 6-years-old i was one of his primary caretakers, and looked after his needs and wants and well-being. i have done my part in child-raising and am fully content with it. did i enjoy it? no, not really. would i do it again? only for my brother. was it worth it? of course. but i’ll tell you this much, being an only child for 12 years made me very reluctant to generate any good will to the diapered interloper my parents brought home that long ago may. honestly, i was not very fond of the buttnugget for the first few months of his life. in fact, maybe we weren’t even on good standing till he was 3 or closer to 4. i mean, you don’t really know each other and his personality was just developing, what can you expect? do i love my brother now? of course i do, absolutely! but getting peed/puked/snotted on routinely by a squaling infant kind of sours you on any endearing factors said infant might have. plus, i’m sure i was equally unpleasant as a baby as well.
i have given my decision so much thought and consideration that me without children is exactly who i want to be and who i am. it is not a possibility, it is fact. soon to be permanent fact (fingers-crossed) that will be indisputable. of course, i have to say that it’s still not fair that a vasectomy is a fairly non-invasive outpatient procedure whereas i will have to undergo internal surgery that will result in some scarring. not fair at all.
the best present a boy could ever give me? a motherfucking vasectomy. but something about male virility and all that other nonsense makes them very reluctant. thus, i meet with a doctor this may to discuss my options.
halle-fucking-lujah.
“I ovulate sand.” — margaret cho
