Pregnant pause

Shaving is so much more of an intense experience than getting periods. For proof, ask any man. Bleary eyed and reeling from dealing with our morning glory, we trek the dangerous route to the toilet mined with your piles of big underpants, then butcher ourselves with a blade that’s rusted because you took it to task on your stubbly legs, only for all our hard work to get overshadowed come five o’ clock. And this is something we have to deal with every day, whilst you suffer the breakdown of your ovary walls but once a month. Accept it, men will never understand periods because we don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.

My views on this have less to do with sexism as they are all about envy. Not because I secretly yearn for my one-eyed goonda to erupt with fiery liquid every time the moon goes full, or due to my fetish for strapping on the dry-weave top sheet with wings and pretending my old chap can fly, but because ever since I was a wee baby, I wanted one. Not just any old weeing baby, but my weeing baby, created not merely by the fruit of my loins, but right here inside my body.

It’s not fair. I’m fat enough to be pregnant, but I have to live with the fact that I will never be able to reach that higher state of procreation that only a woman can ever achieve. All I can ever do is reliave myself and sit back, watching the result slowly grow inside you, only to get physically involved once the diapers are filled with green, sticky goo.

There’s a very good reason why philosophers are all men. Oh Kismet you lardy freak, of course there are female philosophers, I hear you cry. No there aren’t. Women ask profound questions like: ‘is love eternal?’ or ‘do my boobs look aligned?’ and ‘why don’t January sales last all year?’ This is because women aren’t burdened with that one fundamental question that sends every other thought spiralling into the abyss of confusion, doubt and helplessness: what is the meaning of life? The answer, as every woman with a biological bone in her body knows, is that life is all about creating more life. Every living thing on earth, be it insect, mammal or bacteria, knows this instinctively. Survive, shag, multiply, die.

What’s the point to a man’s life? Is it any wonder we spend our existence seeking things to validate our reason for being on this earth? A shiny new Lamborghini will make it all worthwhile surely, and a season ticket to cheer on men who play with balls; we need to make lots of money and wear pinstripe pants, drink beer and eat sausages with lard and make big, fat bombs and kill some people. Let’s rule the world and act like gods, rid history of any such thing as a goddess because if we start accepting that every living thing on earth is borne of woman – there really is no hope for mankind.

I can only imagine what it must be like. To nurture a tiny amoeba into a fully-grown walking, talking human being; to have two hearts beating inside you (though I grant you the idea of a penis growing inside you is nuts) – to create life. Now that’s what I call playing god.

And the maddeningly beautiful thing is, women all over the world are happy to accept this gift, this awesome, divine power, as a simple fact of life. How you cope with such a physical and mental transformation (it is a biological fact that a pregnant woman’s brain shrinks in size to help rid her of thoughts that get in the way of her mission), I shall never know. There’s something so loveable about an expecting mother flopping down with a how-the-hell-did-I-get-here look on her face that just makes you want to put your arms round her big belly and hope something from that magic bump rubs off on you.

Men who don’t find their pregnant wives attractive might pretend it’s because they like their women slim and supple, but in reality it’s because they are jealous. But like closet gays who go overboard on heterosexual activities, they mask their fear of what they secretly want to be with outward shows of disapproval. Men are too terrified to even consider the undeniable truth that other than providing a few globules of semen, you don’t need us. The sperm bank is our collective kryptonite because if that bank was big enough, men could just disappear off the face of the planet and you could go about creating it all over again. But where would the human race be without the female of the species? It’s called Mother Earth for a reason. And who’s the most famous father on her planet? Father Christmas, and all he’s good for is filling his sack, sneaking around climbing the walls and getting bladdered on crap sherry.

Which is why men and women will never be equal. You put up with us because we are a necessary evil, whereas we put you down because we can’t accept this makes you better than us. We watch you transform, from young girl to motherhood, while boys – for want of a meaningful purpose – will always be boys. In a nutshell: women are mutants and men never evolve.
Granted, the morning sickness, hormonal psychosis, back pain, stretch marks, epidural and brief stint as a shrieking monkey possessed by the beast of hell, aren’t things a sane mind would voluntarily wish upon oneself, but what is life without pain?

Men have to abuse our bodies, torment our minds and make mortal enemies to achieve the kind of pain that makes us feel alive. I’m sorry you have to go through all that hurt to create life. Well, you shouldn’t have eaten that apple in heaven.
Personally, I’m pretty sure I can take the pain. Although the thought of having to shave tomorrow morning is making me cry like a baby already…