Simon and I got into an argument today when I was reading an article about a male midwife. He told a woman in labour to suck it up because pain meds are for wussbags. I read a part in the article where the woman said that her general rule was, "No uterus. No opinion."
This apparently pissed Simon off. He resents the idea that he can't understand what childbirth feels like simply because he doesn't have a uterus. Well...he can't. End of story, right? He doesn't think so.
He insists that men can have painful experiences that can be roughly the pain equivalent of childbirth. Migraines, he suggests (they'd better be pretty fucking bad migraines), cluster headaches, gallstones, being shot, being stabbed. I'll give him the last two. I'm sure that being shot or being stabbed are probably at least as painful.
When I pointed out that you're unlikely to sit for 18 hours with a stab/gunshot wound without treatment, he pointed out that in a war situation, you are.
Okay fine. So men in war situations who are shot or stabbed have probably felt a rough pain equivalent to giving birth but there are PROBLEMS with this.
1. Not all pain is created equal. I have a headache right now that on generic pain terms is probably roughly equivalent to horrible menstrual cramps - but I'll be damned if it isn't a whole Hell of a lot easier to tolerate. Pain cannot be transferred between situations without changing.
2. It doesn't matter how much pain he's experienced. Without a uterus, without giving birth, he can never understand what giving birth feels like. Period. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. Because he can't experiencing it. You can't understand something like that without the experience.
Either can I, to be fair, because I haven't yet. I understand that it's blindingly painful. I'm sure that I'll find out it was ten times worse than I thought it would be. But I accept that having not given birth, I can't even imagine what it's like.
So this is one time where I felt it was acceptable to end an argument like this.
Simon: It's not acceptable to tell me that I can't understand what something feels like!
Sandra: Okay. You can't. You never will. End of story. No uterus, no opinion.
Simon: That's not fair.
Sandra: That's how it is. Deal with it.
Normally, I'd feel like an asshole. Here, I felt like I was just being honest.
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Would he offer to place said penis in a vice for 36 hours?
ReplyDeleteOf course when he gets kidney stones he'll bring this up again... and then tell him yeah you went to the doctor for two little pebbles. Now let's try shoving a 7 pound bowling ball out that little urethra of yours.