And while I was scratching my head wondering where it might have gone, I stumbled upon this.

Really. People have written books on the subject.

Now, I’m all for whatever she wants to do. But honestly, Bonus #2 sounds a little scary.

This post by Deepali Gaur Singh tells a bizarre story of an attempt by the administration in the bandit-riddled Shivpuri district of India’s Madhya Pradesh state to limit population growth. The district, heavily over-populated where the average number of children per family is five, is offering men who get a vasectomy a fast-track application for a gun permit.

“This is a state with a high number of dacoits [bandits], where people like to keep rifles,” Manish Shrivastav, the administrative chief of Shivpuri and originator of the lateral thinking behind the plan, said.

“It also has a low level of vasectomies because of a perceived notion of manliness. I decided to match that with a bigger symbol of manliness — a gun licence. It has been a success.”

That remains to be seen. The problem is that this whole approach does nothing to enlighten males at all. It simply trades off one issue and may well create a larger one. Women in this particular culture, as Singh describes it, bear a heavy burden for infertility, even if it is the man who is infertile.

In a traditional culture with a rigid division of duties where men earn and women nurture, female infertility is seen as a curse that women have to endure. With infertility for women comes ostracism and a life of loneliness, even as male infertility strangely finds its victims in women as well. Often women have had to carry the burden of their spouses’ inability to help conceive and so complex are the images of manhood, virility and fertility that it manifests itself in a complete denial of a man’s inability to be fertile. Concepts of manliness are so acutely woven in to the male psyche from a very early age that while men carry the pressures of that imagery women bear the consequences of it.

The situation does nothing to change the root problems and will probably cause other more serious problems to expand. It looks like a cultural mess which is likely to get messier, and likely more dangerous for women.

Part of the problem is convincing the men of the district that vasectomies will do nothing to change their sexual performance. Many think it will leave them sexually weaker.

That myth isn’t just restricted to the cultures of South Asia. I’ve heard it from men in any group where the discussion of vasectomies arises. In North America.

A vasectomy is perhaps the simplest and easiest way to achieve virtually fool-proof birth control. That should be enough for any responsible male in a committed couples relationship, but there is another undeniable fringe benefit.

Freedom!

No more worries about her pill dispenser, a breaking or leaky condom, a faulty IUD or messy spermicidal jelly. (It ain’t lube.)

Far from weakening a man’s sexual function, my own experience is that it improved it - because the inhibition of generating a bunch of swimming little creatures intent on getting their teeth into something egg-shaped completely vanishes. Semen production is the same, erections are the same and the sex is now definitely for sport.

There are no discussions about birth-control here. It’s done, it’s permanent and it makes sex so much more fun.

You may have noticed that we have a penchant for penguins. Not ordinary penguins mind you, but penguins that can do more than just waddle and engage in Antarctic open ice orgies.

Thanks to Miss Cellania at Neatorama

We talk to each other. About everything.

Tonight’s conversation was about 10 different subjects, but we relished in it.

We sat and drank wine while we talked. It’s what we do. Often those conversations go on until the wee hours of the morning. Tonight, I can report that it didn’t go longer than two hours.

The TV was off.

In that two hours we learned something, however minuscule it may seem, about each other. Simply put, about one half of that two hours involve listening to the other person.

Some people would chalk this up as unremarkable. I’d do that under normal circumstances. What the hell. It’s just a couple getting into the wine and yapping away.

Except that we’re physically separated by about 500 miles. Yet we talk every day. And it’s not “Hello, had a good day, love you, talk to you tomorrow.” That’s the stuff of emails and phone calls. A disembodied voice or the written word.

Yes, we actually talk to each other. And we listen. Even over 500 miles, because right now we’re not there with each other. But that doesn’t stop us talking. We’ve found a way.

When I hear couples make the statement that “we don’t communicate” I understand that there is a problem.

Focus.

If she and I can do it over a separation of 500 miles and put technology to work for us it’s because it means something to us.

We learned to do it across a table. We keep it up even if there is 500 miles of mountain ranges between us.

Makes me want to go home and rip her clothes off.

She Says:

You rip my clothing and you’re dead meat! Besides, what makes you think I’m wearing any?

OK..back to the serious stuff. The technology His Highness is referring to is a webcam. Because my dearly beloved (choke, choke) spends so much time on the road, we’ve made it a rule that wherever he stays, it must have internet access. We spent many years relying simply on a telephone, and it just didn’t do it for us. So now we have our routine. We make our suppers, sit down at a table in front of a laptop, call up each other…and voila!..the light of my life (rolling eyeballs to the ceiling) and I are having supper together.

It not only makes the evening enjoyable for us, it’s actually become a necessity. Without it, we feel more than a little bit lost. There are rare occasions when we don’t webcam on a particular evening (sometimes it’s due to a spat between us which results in the two us reverting to our childhoods and refusing to talk to each other…but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms - separate post to follow re: the refusal of middle-age people to act their age).

There is one very important lesson we’ve learned over the years. When we are separated by time and distance, we are allowed to mildly complain about our day, but only for a few minutes. We are not permitted to drag the other person down the black hole of bitchiness when we are unable to give or receive a hug (or a good smack across the backside of the head..whichever comes first).

All I know is that I need to see his face every day. Even if I can’t touch him, I need to see his smile. Thank God for modern technology.

If you look around our place you’ll notice something. It’s an adult mess. That’s not to say it’s messy, but daily life around our place does not involve having to navigate around the debris of children’s toys.

There aren’t any. That’s because there aren’t any children.

That has caused years of questions, cajoling, amateur (and wholly inaccurate) medical diagnoses and most often, dismissal. Most of the pressure to have children was from parents. For the life of me I couldn’t understand their desire to rush me into siring children. It turned out it was because they wanted grandchildren. There was little consideration for the other party involved; she was but a baby-making machine and in their 1950s mindset, someone who would unquestioningly accept pregnancy and motherhood as desirable.

At one point I was accused of “denying” her the opportunity to become a mother and presumably a completely fulfilled woman. (They never really asked her. It was just assumed.)

It soon got to the stage that they (and other farther-flung family members) decided one or the other of us was “broken”, either physically or mentally.

What they never got is that it goes to lifestyle. It has to do with what we want out of life as a whole. To many people that is defying the accepted social norm. It is the dismissal of “family” in favour of pursuing our own pleasures.However, we as a couple are no less a family than our neighbours raising three children. It’s just that we choose to pursue our lives differently.

We don’t have kids because we don’t want kids. It’s not that we don’t like children. It’s that we don’t want children. It was a fully conscious decision. It was also reasonable. Given the mind that I didn’t really want children I would have made a lousy father. Why subject kids to that?

My experience though is marginal compared to what women face when they make the same decision. Western society seems able to accept to some degree that a man can choose not to become a father but a woman? No, no, no! A woman who decides to remain childless becomes the object of scorn, even if it is posed in the form of “concerned questions”. She is viewed as someone who is denying some unnamed male the opportunity to spread his DNA.

The Galloping Beaver has a post which describes the social minefield travelled by a woman who made the decision early in her life to shape her future without children. As you read it you’ll notice that her decision was the responsible choice, for which she holds no regrets, yet she faced a constant barrage of criticism and prejudice.

I realized at a very early age (13 years old to be exact) that I was not cut out for motherhood. I’m sure Freud would have a field day analyzing my dysfunctional childhood, penis envy, inability to accept my role in life, selfishness, and my irresistible urge to indulge in an entire can of Pringles when I’m PMSing. But in the end it came down to one irrefutable fact – I just did NOT want to have kids. It wasn’t for me. The decision was easy..for me..not for everyone else.

/…

I cannot escape society’s disdain and confusion about my maternal void. To those who have been there, this is to reassure you that your experiences are not abnormal, to those who will be there, this is to let you know what to expect.

Read the whole thing. Those who have chosen to remain childless will likely recognize the endless probes and barbs. Those who have questioned others as to why they did not choose to have children may well see how their own words and “concern” was accurately translated as an attempt to impose their own social values in the form of a stigma.

Watching your parents age is a little like peering into a portal of the next dimension. It has a slight resemblance to normality, but for the most part it is twisted, distorted, and more than just a little frightening.

My parents are in their mid to late seventies, and His Highness’s parents are slightly older than that. His Highness’s parents seem to be holding up considerably better than mine…or maybe it’s just that a lifetime of knowledge of my parents is suddenly being both challenged and confirmed.

Let’s admit it. We all come from dysfunctional families, everyone of us. And those of you who pro-created probably managed, inadvertently, to produce “Dysfunctional Family 101, part 3(a) subsection 4iii”.

I can see the true characters of my parents coming into focus as they drop their lifelong facades in their old age. Sometimes it isn’t pretty. I can’t say that I’m totally surprised at what I see. To a large degree it comes as simply a confirmation of what I’ve always suspected.

Deep down inside, I knew that my father was never happy with the man that he became. He has always tried to follow the straight and narrow highway, do what was expected of him, suck up the miseries of life and carry on with a stoic expression.

My father. A compulsive gambler who quit gambling when I was a child. An alcoholic who quit drinking when I was an adult. A faithful husband to a woman he really didn’t want to be with. A dedicated worker to a job he hated. An old man who now looks back on his life with deep regret and bitterness, but still trying his best to mend fences (mostly with me) before he dies. A man who has somehow managed to still hang onto his soul and still know himself. I admire him… a lot.

My mother. Oh dear, where do I begin? A woman who boxed herself into the smallest, safest corner she could find and would/will not, under any circumstances, allow nasty reality to intrude. A woman with a remarkable ability to create and exist in a world that only she can see, regardless of the pain it may cause others. After all, if people feel pain, it’s because they’ve done something to deserve it. (I’m still trying desperately, after all these years, to shake that mantra out of my head). Since I was a child, there was a timid voice in the back of my head, never wanting to be too loud, that said my mother somehow managed to reached adulthood with a little part of her soul missing. And as I watch her increasing nastiness and greediness as she ages, I’m beginning to think that I misjudged her. She’s not missing a little part of her soul…she’s missing a substantial part of it. When I’m feeling munificent, I acknowledge her hard childhood life and the opportunities she never had. But I have my own philosophy about that…if you’re unhappy as a child, it’s your parents fault. If you’re unhappy as an adult, it’s your fault. My mother decided to save up every petty grievance she ever had, store them into a little (big?) box, and then spring them out on the world.. aka Pandora.

I’m not quite sure where I would be if I had not met His Highness. I always thought my family was bizarre and unusual. Then His Highness would have himself a few glasses of wine and regale me with stories of equally flakiness in his family. At which point, we would raise our glasses to each other and vow that we will never, ever, become our parents.

Oh yeah?

How much of our pasts can we escape? How much of our childhoods are destined to drive us, well into old age? We can make the conscious decisions to change behaviours and attitudes, but the past keeps tugging on us and threatening to bring us down. I guess the best we can do is fight everything that went wrong in our pasts and do whatever we can to reduce the number of times we make the same mistakes as our predecessors.

He says: In a way I’m lucky. I don’t get to see my parents all that often. I don’t live in the same city and I simply don’t have the ability to get away from the job when they declare, “We’d really like to see you.”

I live with the non-stop descriptions of medical problems and the details about the restrictions imposed by prostate, knee and back problems. I understand that these things become the focus of an octogenarian’s life, however, sympathy is difficult to produce.

I only have to go back to my childhood and realize how I was in their shoes. Sympathy? It never happened.

My mother was intent on being the “Victorian” matriarch. The idea of showing a young boy compassion was so far beyond her capacity that I had learned to go elsewhere for such things. The mothers of my friends treated me eminently better than anything I received at home. I can expand on that.

She thought that kicking my sister out of the house because she discovered that my teenage sister had had sex was perfectly acceptable. It was the late 1960s.

Here’s the kicker. My mother still believes she was right and to this day does not communicate, in any way shape or form, with my sister. My sister is now in her fifties.

Yes, it boggles my mind too.

It’s one of those things Her Highness and I share. We left home of our own volition at an early age for the same reason. And we succeeded in this world through our own efforts.

So, Queenie, I’m going to give you this one. Your parents live close by. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, a vasectomy really gives ‘em grief.

Shamelessly stolen from Unrepentant Old Hippie