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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
who feels that they can have a "career", be a "wife", raise latchkey children in daycare...supermom. It is a myth, period. Hope her husband knows he can dump her.
"The crux of this article, for me anyway, seems to be proof that a) neither men nor women have any clue how DRAMATICALLY their lives will change after a child and b) a weird assumption on women's part that men should be happy -- nay! -- thrilled that the woman they married has totally changed into someone so unreconginable that they probably never would have dated them in the first place if they had met each other in her new incarnation."
Really, other Anonymous, what's more important, your children or your on-demand sexual satisfaction? Raising children requires some sacrifices. Most women -- and men -- get it. You, apparently, do not.
Y'all who keep exploding at other writers for voicing dissenting opinion from your own...
C'MON! That's a good thing. A very good thing.
There is no one right answer.
(I like my answer, which is I don't like it...thought it was crap journalism, flabby writing, and tiresome. However, I really liked the smart reasonable letters of quite a few people who explained convincingly from their own perspective why they DID like it.)
This is the whole point of the Letters...or is so to me. I like them even better than almost any article Salon publishes. I like Salon's smart readers and I'm not looking for attitude clones of myself.
This artcile pretty much mirrors my post-baby sex life, except mine was complicated further by having had a csection which resulted in abdominal pain for months AND having had to have cerclage (an operation where they sew your cervix shut to prevent premature labor, which meant no sex the last 7 months of my pregnancy). The pain, the frustration, the exhaustion were all something that I was NOT prepared for and took months to get better.
"Certainly there are medicines to bring down prolactin and increase libido again."
This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've read on here. Less prolaction equals less ability to breastfeed which equals MORE exhaustion. When breastfeeding, you get more sleep - you can latch the baby to the breast and doze back off, unlike bottlefeeding where you have to be awake and upright to feed the baby. Why on earth would someone trade *that* ability - during the months when you're basically a walking zombie - for sex?
I'm wondering why we're supposed to cheer for a woman who went from having sex simply to be good at it to a woman who has sex -shock- because she wants to. The author pretty much admitted for years she had sex mostly just to prove that she was good in bed, to boost her ego. It took a baby to make her realize sex should (at least partially) be for HER pleasure? Not just a competition, or something you can brag about to your friends?
Bravo.
It seems a little juvenille to me, like celebrating the fact that food can be delicious, as well as nutrious. Uh, duh.
A MUTUAL decision means that BOTH parties are genuinely accepting of it. You can't have it both ways. Of course a woman shouldn't have sex if she doesn't want to and everyone understands that there are consequences if she does. BUT women can't really complain if there are ALSO consequences when a man doesn't get as much sex as he wants. It's the same old what's mine is mine what's yours' is ours. It's not easy, or always even possible, to work out TRULY MUTUALLY acceptable solutions to everything, but does delusion accomplish anyhing?
I feel no sympathy for the author. To breed was her existential choice. That it left her boring, sexless, distracted, tired, and preoccupied with the minutiae of "sippy cups and singalongs" is hardly a surprise. This is only one of the myriad reasons that an increasing number of heterosexuals choose to remain child-free. You may think "Child Free" sounds like "Drug Free" "Smoke Free" or "Disease Free". That is correct.
Of course, the author has every right to throw away her life and bespoil her relationship in any manner that she pleases, to trade desire for longing and to bore us in the process if we feel compelled to read about it. The tragic thing is that this sort of wasted potential persists as the norm and continues to be used as a social cudgel against those of us who resist it.
This article only reinforces the increasingly empirically proven fact that the child-free are able to outrun, outwork and outscrew the breeders around us. For the sake of yourselves and your children, please keep the hell out of our way.
I've realized something in the past few days from browsing through the letters on salon.com: I'm not so sure I like people. So many people seem eager to spew hate over an article like this, and I'm not. But I do feel a disgusting level of hatred after reading some of the responses. Let's hate on people who dare to reproduce, let's hate on frumpy women, let's hate on sexually demanding men, let's hate on doctors and babies and editors and self-absorbed writers.
I pay for Salon, too, and I'd prefer it didn't have such a strong whiff of blog, because I can read those for free. That's not to say that I wouldn't have enjoyed a blog entry just like this one, though. And I appreciate the spectrum of opinions an article like this might bring up. But they seem so often to be expressed with such hatred. Are salon.com readers such bitter people? Thank God for free speech, so we can all learn what jerks people can be.
One reader wrote:
"Really, other Anonymous, what's more important, your children or your on-demand sexual satisfaction? Raising children requires some sacrifices. Most women -- and men -- get it. You, apparently, do not."
My point was not "some small sacrafices" or even some "minor" changes in sexual habit.
Child birth, in reality, often totally and radically transforms women into totally different people.
The way they dress changes (goodbye high heels and skirts, hello sweat pants!) and the way they feel about sex (from enjoying it to, basically, doing it once a month out of wifely obligation)
These aren't "small sacrafices" that should be glossed over -- which is exactly what some female readers want to do. Take radical transformation in dress, apperance, personality and sexual habits and just dismiss it all as "a few minor changes."
My observation was simply this: would such a radical transformation be as easily glossed over if the changes took place in a man? If I man totally changed his apperance (no more nice suits, only ripped t-shirts and sweats) and totally lost all interest in sex --- would women see a problem?
Whether they do or not doesn't matter. When one partner, male or female, radically changes their look, personality and sexual habits there are going to be MAJOR problems and confrontations in the relationship. They will be fights, affairs and divorces.
Since child birth obviously has a much much MUCH more profound effect on the women -- perhaps it would benefit us as a sociaty to have an honest conversation about what we should all expect (post child birth) and what we want and what we'll settle for.
Currently people go in blind and are blind-sided when these radical changes occur. Men in particular are often left scratching their heads wondering, "Where'd my wife go? Why am I suddenly living with this frumpy, sexless person?"
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
