The Drawbacks and Advantages of Being A Woman

[bobquasit]

I'm often grateful that I wasn't born a woman. It seems to me that in many ways, it's harder to be a woman than a man. At the same time, the issue isn't totally black and white; there's something to say for both sides. So, recognizing that I'm not really qualified to be saying any of this:

Drawbacks of Being A Woman

1. Gynecological examinations. By all accounts, these are pretty damned unpleasant. Prostate exams are uncomfortable, but men don't have to start those until they're 40 or so, and I suspect they're nowhere near as painful. And this may reveal incredible ignorance on my part, but don't women have to have prostate exams too? Do women even HAVE prostates? Why don't I know?
   
2. Mammograms. Squish. Ouch.
   
3. Childbirth. I will forever be profoundly grateful that I can reproduce without having to push an eight-pound nine-ounce creature through my genital area.
   
4. Periods. Cramps, bleeding, pads, tampons, bloating, mood swings...sheesh. They're an excellent argument against the existence of a compassionate God. What sort of sadist would design a system like that?
   
5. Menopause. It just sounds nasty; a message from Nature telling you that you're no longer a participant in the process of evolution. On the plus side, I've noticed that many women seem to get a lot more sane - or calmer, anyway - after menopause.
   
6. Rape. Men can be raped too, of course, but it's a lot more likely if you're a woman.
   
7. The fashion industry. Actually, the entire cultural mystique of femininity is a heavy weight to bear. Wear the right clothes. Weigh the right weight. Use the right perfume. If you don't, you'll be repulsive. And that message is drummed in constantly by all sorts of media. No wonder so many women develop anorexia or bulimia! Of course this is a cultural issue, not a biological one, so maybe it shouldn't be counted.
   
8. Men. Hairy. Dirty. Smelly. Drunk. Liars. Okay, not all men are that way^*. But admit it, the majority of them are.
   
9. Bras. Or maybe this should be "breasts". Men, after all, don't need a special garment to keep a body part from reaching the floor by age 50. And we only need to keep track of one piece of underwear, not two. But in any case, I have the strong impression that it's almost impossible for most normally-proportioned women to find a comfortable, well-fitting bra for under $100. You could buy 50 pairs of boxers or briefs for that kind of money.
   
10. Bathrooms. I pondered for a moment - is this biological, or cultural? But I think it's biological. Women take more time in the bathroom, which means that in her life, a woman is sure to spend much more time in line, jiggling from one foot to the other.
    

Hmm. What else? I'm sure I've forgotten something.

In any case, this has already gone longer than I expected, so the advantages of being a woman will have to wait until next time.

---

* - For example, I'm usually only two out of the five. Whoops - make that three.

Comments

[goddessgrrrrl.livejournal.com]

LOL you are so right... I love this!

Which of the three out of five are you, btw? *looks at you with growing distrust and suspicion*

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Except on the top of my head, I am one of the hairest people in the world. And although I shower every morning and use deodorant and cologne, by evening I'm sure that I'm smelly.

Lastly...well, actually I'm more truthful than most people, I think. But for the purpose of the piece I thought it would be funny to pretend that I lie. Which is, in itself, a lie. Which makes it true. Endless recursion! :D

[nakedfaery.livejournal.com]

Women don't have prostates. It's a special little gland that only men have, mostly there to fulfil the function of not allowing semen to enter the bladder.

Mammograms get less painful as you get older. Not to be offensive, but a 50 year old with saggy boobs will experience much less pain during a mammogram than a 25 year old with dense, pert breasts. It amazes me that there isn't a more advanced technique for breast screening than squishing your poor booby between two metal plates.

In fact, a lot of medical examination techniques stupify me. They are so archaic and invasive. Someone needs to put some serious effort into finding less icky ways of looking inside people. I nominate annagramatical to do this when she's finished her pHD training. For example, ever had to have a colonoscopy or sigmoidoscopy? Anyone who has knows that medical technology most certainly isn't a fucking triumph.

The childbirth bit, I won't deny. It is bloody painful, especially when you're trying to fit a 9lb giant headed baby like Nathan through a relatively small pelvis. I never actually crowned because Nathan got stuck, so I had a caesarean, but I still experienced the pushing, the stretching, the bleeding, the pooing. From what I've heard from most women though, it's the long labour leading up to delivery that is worse. If you're anything like me and don't want to be pumped full of drugs when you're trying to give birth, you can expect to be awake and in varying degrees of excruciating pain for at least 24 continous hours, ocassionally having to undergo the torture of an internal. For those that don't know, internal pelvic examinations when you're in labour make smear tests seem like a piece of cake.

As for smear tests themselves, I don't find them painful at all. A good doctor using a warmed speculum and plenty of lubricating jelly should be able to perform it with the minimum of discomfort. If you've had children, they tend to be a lot less painful because you're so used to be stretched down there. The only bit I wince it is when the speculum gets opened. *shudders* I find that by far the worst part of a pap smear is having to open my legs in front of a relative stranger and let them have a better view than most of my boyfriends/girlfriends get.

The periods and childbirth thing I completly agree with you about, nature a triupmh of design MY ARSE.

[nakedfaery.livejournal.com]

Contraception is another big bugbear of mine. It pisses me off no end that contraception is mainly, if not entirely, a womans responsibility. The only time a man ever has to do anything is when he's putting a condom on, and most men that I've met seem to want to avoid that at all costs. The outrageous thing is that when you compare the fertility of men and women, men are hyperfertile in comparison. Women are only fertile for about 7 days, 12/13 times a year. Men are constantly manufacturing sperm. If a woman was to carry every pregnancy to term between the menses and the menopause, with an average period of 6 months breastfeeding, then the most she would usually have is 13 children. Men could father that many children PER DAY if they wanted to. So why does the responsibility fall to us? We either have to get shots in our butts that make us gain weight and get vaginal dryness and spottting. Or we can take a hormonal concotion in pill form everyday that can cause all manor of nasty side effects, including goddess awful migraines, cramps and thrombosis. Or we can have an implant put in, which causes similar side effects and is a pain in the arse to get taken out. Or a patch, which has the same side effects as all hormonal contraception. Then there's the cap/diaphragm, which is undignified, uncomfortable and pretty much takes all the fun out of sex. Then there's the IUD which causes low grade endometriosis and is NOT contraception, it's an abortifacent. Where is the mans part in all this?

I think a lot of women do look upon menopause as a sort of release, mainly from periods and PMS. But then there's the whole problem with vaginal dryness caused by a lowering of oestrogen in the bloodstream. Post menopausal women are also at much higher risk of breast cancer and osteoporosis.

Don't even get me started on the rape thing. *seethes* This is not meant to be offensive to you, but my opinion is: men should start being afraid for their lives. Every time one walks past without a shirt on, or in tight shorts showing off their crotch, or wearing those stupid jeans that reveal their arse cheeks, women should make them feel bloody uncomfortable. They should feel as uncomfortable as we women do when wearing a low cut top or a short skirt. Then they'd start looking at the issue of rape a bit bloody differently.

You're entirely right that the fashion industry is mostly an obsession in our culture. But in other cultures, women still shape themselves to what men think is perfection, and is about as far from normality as you can get. Over here it's make up, leg waxing and breast implants, in some cultures it's being infibulated or binding your feet or enlongating your neck or wearing a corset.

Men do suck. I agree. In my experience, about 1 man in every 50 that I meet will be even worth talking to. Then again, some women really aren't a picnic. Being a woman, I'm a little biased.

I manage to buy decent bras for about $45, but I'm lucky enough to live but a decent department store that measures AND sells bras in larger sizes. The thing about breasts, is they're never perfect. They're always too big, or too small, or too fake, or too saggy, or too stretchmarked. Womens breasts aren't actually allowed to show any sign of their function - nursing children. When womens breasts become deflated and lower and darkened after breastfeeding, they become repulsive. What the fuck is that all about?

Finally, women take longer in the bathroom because they wipe AND wash their hands, which most men don't seem to do. Also, in my experience men take much longer when going for a poo than women do. It takes me about 3 minutes at the most, it seems to take most men I know at least 3x that. Weird.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Good point about contraception, I should have thought of that. As for the washing thing, I'm reminded of a woman who (according to office gossip) never washed her hands after using the bathroom. She was generally regarded with disgust by the other women of the office.

I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to washing my hands, and it often amazes me how many men simply walk away, or merely wave their hands under the water for a moment without benefit of soap or scrubbing. In fact, I considered doing an entry called "Magic Water?", since apparently these idiots think that moistening their hands somehow removes bacteria. But that seemed too picayune a subject.

Me, I always scrub for at least 30 seconds (long enough to say the ABC's) and rinse thoroughly. Unfortunately the doors of the office bathrooms here all open inward, so after you wash your hands you've almost no choice but to instantly re-soil them.

Once in a while someone wraps a paper towel around the inner door handle. Which is, of course, not at all helpful for everyone who follows that person.

Sigh.

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

I should probably wait until you post the advantages, but...

... there's a possibility that menopause is linked to a longer life span. The specific evolutionary value of this is the preservation of knowledge across generations, which can mean survival for the tribe, including, of course, all of the women's offspring.

That particular piece of speculation comes from The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. You'd probably find it an interesting book, given that he spends maybe a third of the book discussing the evolutionary consequences of various human sexual behavior patterns.

Kiralee

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I'll probably need help to think up the advantages. Being able to take the passive role in dating is one item on my list, I suppose. So is a longer lifespan. The "closer bond to your children" thing I'm kind of up in the air about; I believe that's more of a cultural issue, rather than a biological one. I seem to recall hearing about cultures in which fathers raised the babies, rather than the mothers, and bonded just as closely as mother do elsewhere.

And of course I believe I'm at least as close to Sebastian as Teri is. But I know that I'm out of the norm in that regard.

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

I think that, in nature, mothers tend to have a closer bond with their children while they are nursing. But of course we have the technology to get around that now. I think it's a toss up after that. So much depends on the kid / parent.

I personally haven't experienced the oportunity to take a passive role in dating. Most of my experiences I had to actively pursue.

I think women find it easier to make and maintain close friendships. Women get to gossip more, and to receive the rewards of gossiping more often. I'd like to say women network better, but I don't think it that straightforward - it might be more accurate to say women network differently.

That's about all I can think of right now.

Kiralee

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

Oh, I should have added that there are a whole bunch of things that women get to avoid, like being kicked in the nuts. I'm told it's possible for the ovaries to suffer similar impacts, and that it hurts just as much, but it's a lot less common; I've never experienced it.

Kiralee

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

'm going to wildly tangent here, 'cause that's what I do. :)

Women have one pretty big advantage over men in that, in a slightly more technologically developed society than ours, men are not needed to perpetuate the species. Given cloning, or the fusing of ova (something like that), males just aren't needed for reproduction and that's not going to require all that much more tech than we have. Artificial wombs, on the other hand, will take rather more tech and might not be all that desirable even then. Under such circumstances, we males aren't needed for much more than recreation and opening pickle jars, and maybe not even for that.

Now, I'm not sure how much this has been dealt with in SF; the one example I can think of is "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon). In that story, some male astronauts find themselves in a future where there are only women; they proceed to act like colossal jackasses to (I think) an unrealistic degree.

The anime Geneshaft has a more benign version of the story in the episode "Hotline from the Past" in which while the astronauts still misbehave they are nowhere near as obnoxious as in the original Tipree story; the "Geneshaft" future there area also still men although in far fewer numbers than women. Oddly, while almost every other story in the series has a title that is a variation on a title of a famed written SF story (there is even a reference to another Tiptree story, "The Women Men Don't See"; the episode is "The Men Women Don't See") this one doesn't do a variation on the obvious inspiration, although to be sure it's possible the original story had a different title in Japan. We'll probably be doing an LJ post on "Geneshaft" and other anime I've watched recently if I'm feeling up to it (was out sick today).