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When Men Wax Poetic about My Womb

When Men Wax Poetic about My Womb

Last updated on: February 11, 2015 at 5:00 am by Libby Anne

When Men Wax Poetic about My Womb 2015-02-10T14:19:28-04:00 Libby Anne

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I want to start out by saying that right now, I am very frustrated. Very very frustrated. Men need to stop talking about—and especially for—women until they stop and freaking listen.

I wrote last weekend about some of Matt Walsh’s statements about birth control, but today, I have more to say. Walsh wrote this, for example:

The birth control pill is a dramatic and potentially harmful “medication” designed to “cure” a natural function of a woman’s body. It seems that men who develop and push these pills are vaguely sexist and anti-woman (OK, not vaguely) because they have literally made a female’s reproductive system into a sickness.

I remember sitting in my sister’s dorm room while she lay on her bed, writhing in pain. Her menstrual cramps were so bad that she had to skip a day of school every month to lay in bed, miserable and in pain.

I was lucky—my period cramps were never more than a vague uncomfortable feeling that lasted only a few hours. But do you know what I hated? My period. For five days every month I bled. I was afraid to use tampons—I worried that using them would be taking my virginity—so I was stuck with maxi pads. It seemed like I was constantly bleeding through and staining something, and I hated the smell.

Even after I got a diva cup after I had my first baby, my period was still a huge unpredictable inconvenience. I was incredibly glad to give it up when I had an IUD inserted after my second child was born.

My husband and I wanted to space our two children out by several years, and at the time I was worried about using hormonal methods and fresh off of joining the Catholic Church, so we used Natural Family Planning, or the Fertility Awareness Method. It worked, technically speaking, but I spent two years in constant fear of pregnancy nevertheless.

Matt Walsh claims that birth control makes women’s reproductive system into a “sickness,” but then, he doesn’t have a female reproductive system, does he? I do, and while I wouldn’t use the word “sickness,” I would say that my reproductive system can sometimes feel like an affliction. I am incredibly glad for the wide array of birth control options available to me, as these tools offer me a way to manage my reproductive system rather than allowing it to manage me.

It is utterly outrageous that Walsh would think it his place to tell women how to manage their reproductive systems when he hasn’t even got one.

I recently crossposted an article on a Catholic conference on women’s cultures. Included in the documents released by the conference was this statement:

Generativity turns, without doubt, on the bodies of women. It is the female universe that – due to a natural, spontaneous predisposition which could be called bio-physiological – has always looked after, conserved, nurtured, sustained, created attention, consent and care around the conceived child who must develop, be born, and grow. The physicality of women – which makes the world alive, long-living, able to extend itself – finds in the womb its greatest expression.

Have those writing this statement ever seen a womb? I’ve given birth twice, and it is a messy, messy thing. Pregnancy itself is difficult and complicated and brings with it a variety of possible side effects and conditions.

As I remarked to my husband yesterday, a conference on women held by all-male Catholic bishops and clergy is likely little more than a group of unmarried men talking about how self-sacrificing their mothers were.

Look, I would really rather not be equated to my womb. Actually, that’s putting it very very nicely, and I’m feeling a bit tired of nice, because I am fucking tired of being boiled down to my ability to reproduce. I’ve birthed two children, yes, but I may be done with this whole reproduction thing now, and besides, there are plenty of women who never have children, or who would rather wait until they are more established.

And you know what? Not every woman is nurturing. Every time I hear someone making this women = reproduction = nurturing equation, I have to wonder if they’ve ever met any women. Or at the very least, if they’ve ever stopped to think about how very different the women in their lives are from each other.

Even women who choose to have children need room to be something more than mother and nurturer. I am working very hard not to find my identity in my children. I don’t want my entire life to revolve around my children to the extent that I have no life outside of them. Does this make me selfish? Perhaps to some. But frankly, I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for my kids. My own mother invested her entire life into raising me and my siblings, and as a result she has pegged her success or failure as a person on how we turn out. I know what it’s like to have the weight of maternal expectation bearing down on you until you can’t breathe. I will not do that to my children.

And then there’s this comment last month from Mike Huckabee:

If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it.

I’m so glad to know what Huckabee really thinks about me!

How in the heck does wanting your healthcare to be covered by your health insurance company get twisted into that? When I got my IUD, my insurance company covered it 100%. Why? Well, because the government mandated that all insurance companies must cover birth control, as it is an important component of women’s healthcare. And that makes sense, right? Basic healthcare should be covered by health insurance companies! That’s kind of their job, right?

But no, apparently the government telling my health insurance company to cover my, well, healthcare is me turning to “Uncle Sugar.”

So, new rule! Before a man gets to speak about women’s wombs or reproductive system or birth control, he has to spend a year with a womb himself.

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"Women's Cultures" Reminds Us that the Catholic Church Is Still Out of Touch with Women

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