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Monday, September 23, 2002 @ 10:59 PM
Prepare for the possibility that what I'm about to record for you might depress you. Skip this post entirely if you want to avoid this.
When I came home last night and Karissa told me not to come in (because she was having sex), and I went to the lounge, I read the newspaper a few times and played a game of Snake on my cell phone. It was too late to call any of my U-High friends, or anyone with parents for that matter. So I called Kat Helgeson's cell phone. And we talked for a while, and for some bizarre reason, we got on the topic of my "irrational" fear of unwanted pregnancy. And Kat said, "There are worse things. You could die." But I thought about it and really couldn't decide which was worse. Both could potentially be consequences of the same act... and, huzzah abstinence! ... but... seriously, there's a part of me that really can't decide which would be worse.
Then tonight, FMLA was supposed to have a speaker from Planned Parenthood. She didn't show up though, and after about forty minutes, we all left. I went back to the dorms and cleaned, and wrote a letter for Katie Karl, and hung out with Kathy, and found out that Seth fell asleep and that's why he never showed up to hang out with us. And Kathy and I talked activism for a bit, and incidentally, babies... and after she left... I picked up my copy of The Women's Room by Marilyn French. And I found the passage that resonates through me every time I read it. And I'm going to type it for you. You certainly don't have to read it. It's probably not even the best part of the book. But if you've ever been remotely curious as to Why Kellie Thinks Pregnancy Might Be Worse Than Death... here is your chance to find out.
I don't know what it is like to be pregnant voluntarily. I assume it's a very different experience from that of the women I know. Maybe it's joyful - something shared between the woman and the man. But for the women I know, pregnancy was terrible. Not because it's so painful - it isn't, only uncomfortable. But because it wipes you out, erases you. You aren't you anymore, you have to forget you. Everything is an effort - getting a can down from a high shelf is a major project. You can't let yourself fall, unbalanced as you are, because you're responsible for another life besides your own. You have been turned, by some tiny pinprick in a condom, into a walking, talking vehicle, and when this has happened against your will, it is appaling. Pregnancy is a long waiting in which you learn what it means completely to lose control over your life. There are no coffee breaks, no days off in which you regain your normal shape and self, and can return refreshed to your labors. You can't wish away even for an hour the thing that is swelling you up, stretching your stomach until the skin feels as if it will burst, kicking you from the inside until you are black and blue. You can't even hit back without hurting yourself. The condition and you are identical: you are no longer a person, but a pregnancy. You're like a soldier in a trench who is hot and constricted and hates the food, but has to sit there for nine months. He gets to the point where he yearns for the battle, even though he may be killed or maimed in it. You look forward even to the pain of labor because it will end the waiting. It is this sense of not being a self that makes the eyes of pregnant women so often look vacant. They can't let themselves think about it because it is intolerable and there is nothing they can do about it. Even if they let themselves think about it afterward, it is depressing. After all, pregnancy is only the beginning. ONce it is over, you have really had it: the baby will be there and it will be yours and it will demand of you for the rest of your life. The rest of your life: your whole life stretches out in front of you in that great belly of yours propped up on cushions. From there it looks like an eternal sequence of bottles and cries and feedings. You have no self but a waiting, no future but pain, and no hope but the tedium of humble tasks. All of this is what Mira did not think about, or at least tried not to think about. It was in these months that she developed her pursed lips and the set frown on her brow. She saw the situation as the end of her personal life. Her life, from pregnancy on, was owned by another creature. What is wrong with this woman? you ask. It is nature, there is no recourses, she must submit and make the best of what she cannot change. But the mind is not easily subdued. Resentment and rebellion grow in it - resentment and rebellion against nature itself. Some wills are crushed, but those that are not contain within them, for the rest of their days, seeds of hate. All of the women I know feel a little like outlaws.
"Feminism is just the belief that women are people." "No one really believes that women aren't people."
Are you sure? Are you really sure?
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