Via aesop @ Flickr.
Gentle readers, I’m afraid another literary crush of mine has come to an ignoble–and rather hideous–end. The object of said crush: author Michael Lewis, whose first book, Liar’s Poker, is one of my favorite non-fiction reads ever. No one writes about money and society better than Lewis. Recently, though, he’s taken to writing about his family–specifically about parenthood–and the result is not pretty. I do not recommend his new memoir, so much so that I am not giving you the title, or linking to it. For the reason why my crush is well and truly dead, here’s a sample: an excerpt in the Guardian subtitled: “the joys of having a vasectomy“.
My wife wanted me to be here, and it seemed too transparently selfish to refuse. She had endured three pregnancies, suffered the pain and indignity of three childbirths, changed most of the nappies, got up most of the mornings and, on top of it all, given me the leisure to keep a journal of complaints about the inconveniences of fatherhood.
The time had come for Daddy to take one for the team.
Uh, no, Daddy. It’s not “taking one for the team”. It’s called “taking responsibility for birth control.” And I’m guessing–call me crazy–that your wife has held this responsibility for years, in addition to enduring the pregnancies and suffering the pain of childbirth, etc. Calling it “taking one for the team” is about as ridiculous as men who use the term “babysitting” to refer to taking care of their own children. It’s your job, dude. You don’t get a cookie for doing it.
At the last minute, though, Big Daddy becomes a big crybaby:
Now, with the doctor’s scalpel just minutes away, it was drowned out by a new sound, of a grown man screaming: “They’re going to cut a hole in my johnson!”
You got that right, pal. And after 24 months of pregnancy and three labors, I’m betting your wife has zero sympathy for your short procedure under a local anesthetic. I know I do.
But it gets much, much worse. As the nurse shaves his balls, Lewis goes down a path that honestly makes me wish she had slipped up a little with that razor:
I mean, why am I really here, stretched out and hairless and exposed and not knowing what to say to the mute lady scraping away south of the border? What’s the meaning of this outrage? This operation wasn’t about birth control. It was about life control. I should have fought for my reproductive rights, like other men. A friend of mine, when his wife suggested he might go and get himself gelded, had just laughed and said, “What if I want a trophy wife one day?” (ed: OMG LOL! I hope she divorced him.)
One day someone is going to…write the definitive sociological treatise on the hidden debate inside the post-reproductive American marriage about whose loins were meant to be surgically closed for business.
As that treatise has not yet been written, we are left to guess at its future conclusions. My own guess is that wives across America are seeking, Opec-like, to control the flow of their husbands’ sperm while those husbands are struggling to keep the pipelines open. There’s a war being waged for control over a precious resource, but without correspondents.
The only news comes from couples in which the male has already been neutered. These people of course always claim piously that it was never really an issue and the husband honestly never wanted anything so much as to become an It.
Oh, where to begin? First a technical note: Michael, you are not being “gelded”. No one’s cutting your balls off. Getting a vasectomy does not turn you into an “it.” At least, not unless you equate your manhood with the state of your vas deferens.
Second of all, and more importantly, when a man refers to normal responsible birth control as his partner’s wanting “life control,” and his need to “fight for his reproductive rights” IT MAKES MY HEAD FUCKING EXPLODE. I could go on and on about how FUCKED UP and EMBARRASSING and OFFENSIVE a statement this is given what women all over the world have to go through every single day. If we’re not trying to gain access to safe methods of controlling our fertility, we’re trying to escape the repressive–and often violent–means that men use to control it for us (forced marriages, marital rape, genocidal rape, FGM, assassinating our health care providers, etc).
There’s no way Lewis can come back from that, but damned if he doesn’t try:
Alone on the operating table, I got myself well and truly worked up. Then, from nowhere, came another voice. “You’re being a dick,” it said. (ed: True.)
Sweet reason had intervened. “You are not being fair,” she said. “You agreed to do this and she never really pressed you that hard, except to remind you every two months that you had promised to do it, and to ask if you had scheduled the appointment.” I began to list all the good things I could think of about being sterile:
1. If my wife gets pregnant, I’ll know for sure that I am not the father.
2. If some other woman gets pregnant, I can’t convincingly be blamed for it.
Right, Michael. Because it’s all about you. And how interesting that both these good things have to do with infidelity. I’m just fascinated by the fact that the very first items on your list of “good things” about birth control are: I can’t knock up another woman if I cheat, and if my wife cheats, I might catch her at it. What a lucky, lucky lady your wife is.
I will spare you the rest, except to report that my former literary crush Michael Lewis did, in fact, STFU and get the vasectomy. Personally, I hope the urologist went light on the anesthetic.
The male aversion to vasectomies is ridiculous. For a woman to be sterilized requires an invasive procedure with extensive recovery times; the male sterilization procedure requires outpatient surgery and a weekend with frozen peas in his lap.
That alone would be enough for me, if I were in a relationship where we had finished our reproducing, to expect him to FINALLY take responsibility for the birth control. Because during my entire sexually active life, I have NEVER ONCE had a man even take as much responsibility as to provide HIS OWN CONDOM. Even in college where they were totally free. I have always had to have a stash on hand because the guys couldn’t be bothered to bring their own even when they had a reasonable expectation of getting some. Let alone more reliable forms of BC.
I’m about to go off men entirely.
hahahaa – I’m glad you addressed this because I too have long liked Lewis (largely for his astute sports writing) and this whole book has driven me to the brink of insanity with its endless posturing and self-indulgent ‘ooh fathers have it bad too and we don’t always like our children and we struggle to adapt and SHUT UP MICHAEL.
Sorry had to get that out of my system. I’ve known quite a few guys who had vasectomies and none of them moaned about it or thought they were being ‘gelded’, they all recognised that it was their responsibility without getting half so het up.
It’s one thing for a woman to go through pregnancy and childbirth and surgery and sacrifice and whatnot, but an actual person? Unacceptable!
For god’s sake. I would think vasectomies would be the dream birth control for a monogamous, hetero couple who either don’t want more or any children. Um, hello? Zero chance of failure, no condom, no pill to remember, no extra hormones flooding the woman’s system? Sounds like perfection to me. So, yeah – STFU, Michael. You ARE being a dick.
This makes me want to go home and hug my husband. I recently said something about figuring I’d get an IUD after we have kids. He said, “Don’t be ridiculous, I’ll just get a vasectomy.”
What a dick. I heard him on NPR this week and he sounded like such a self important asshat, “oh (haha) thank god my wife is good at organizing and cleaning or else our house would have been a total disaster area,” (referring to the aftermath of the birth of their first child)
Oh, for the fuck of shit. I went and read the article, and wanted to punch Lewis in the face every second sentence or so.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who gets all rage-y when men whinge about getting a vasectomy, especially when it’s guys whose wives have shouldered birth control responsibilities for years and/or given birth to their child(ren). I agree with every word you wrote, Becky. Thanks for the catharsis.
That’s quite a moment of clarity when he realizes he’s being a dick. In fact, I would venture to say that his preoccupation with the state of his precious dick has turned him into a giant one. Nobody’s turning him into a castrati. STFU, Michael Lewis.
I’m feeling rather stabby today. “Life-control”? Fighting for his “reproductive rights”?! “TROPHY WIFE”?!!
And the point made about how all his perks revolves around infidelity really blew me away. Does this guy pour privilege over his bowl of cereal in the morning? He’s getting WAY more than the recommended daily allowance.
*splutter*
@AmandaS: “Does this guy pour privilege over his bowl of cereal in the morning?”
YES. After he’s taken a nice long hot bath in a deep tub of entitlement.
I think this schmuck finds himself highly amusing.
While there is a teeny-weeny (heh) percentage of men who have complications from vasectomy, the procedure as it currently is practiced is really no big deal. Ask my Dude. He was nervous, sure, but he said it wasn’t painful, just weird to have his business shaved and peeking through a hole in a sterile drape. The doc talked him through it and was politely chatty. It sounded like how a decent pelvic exam goes: not your everyday occurence, a weird mix of initmate and professional, but nothing to freak out about, either.
I went to the doc with him in case it was bad or he needed drugs, but he sauntered out as if everything were perfectly normal. We took the subway home, ordered take out, and watched Kung-Fu Panda. He took a vicodin and went to bed. There was a residual ache the next day, and if he were the gym-going type he would have taken the day off. But that’s it.
At the risk of sounding horribly insensitive: DOODS, it’s all in your head. No, the the big one.
The whole comment about getting shaved and lying on the table and how OMG undignified it was is RAGE inducing.
Not like we have to stick our heels in stirrups on tables and have doctors with little flashlights and stuff ONCE A YEAR.
Or the fact that his wife went through a fair amount of pain and discomfort and EXPOSURE during her childbirth(s)…
GAH!
Jesus effing Christ, man. Michael Lewis is an utter ass.
The fiancé is ready to get a vasectomy the moment I say “go.” (For now, I”m telling him to wait — we’re under 30, so let’s give it a few more years just to make sure our anti-parenting feelings aren’t going anywhere.) I’m glad my guy isn’t a self-absorbed wimp like Mr. Lewis.
@PhDork: Millions of chicken-fried mouth-breathers watched Bob Saget show clip after clip of guys getting hit in the nads for years. You’d think fewer American men would be hypocritically hypersensitive to the idea of male genital trauma. Among the more serious causal factors previously listed, such as privelege, I blame the stamina of insipid cave-man standup and sitcoms (hi Tim Allen!) that have unfortunately lasted this long. But perhaps this is instead a moral indictment of our countrymen’s economic preferences: after enduring a vasectomy, a man can acknowledge that he has responsibly and considerately shifted the burden of long-term birth control to a more equitable distribution between his partner and him; however, there’s no shot at a $50k prize if he broadcasts footage of it on national TV. I wonder which reward is more popular.
My vasectomized boyfriend just said, while reading over my shoulder, “What a stupid fucker!” Indeed, I think he is right.
@ funnyface – Same here! FH has volunteered many times to do it because HE wants to. I’ve spent so much money on BCP over the years, it’s just a recognized fact that it’s his turn next, and he has no problem with that. Too bad we’re in our twenties, never had kids and are too poor to get it done, but hopefully some day we’ll find a doctor who will do it for us.
But BearDown, those clips are of other men getting their nurts racked, which is endlessly funny to doods. But I think part of it is that men have very few areas where they can show vulnerability (physical/mental/emotional), and their twig-n-berries is one of them, so they might channel a lot of generalized angst into the idea of vasectomy (or they just milk the pathos, so as to be coddled and lauded by their partners). And some jerkasses really do believe that their “manhood” is their manhood. But they are idiots and I refuse to entertain them. Maybe we need to start a V-lottery: you get the snip, you get a chance at a once-a-year jackpot.
@Meg there is actually documented failures where the vasectomy does not take resulting in a child. There was a somewhat recent lawsuit here in Canada. The man claimed his doctor didn’t tell him about the failure possibility and sued for wrongful birth and damages – he lost. The procedure does fail but it is extremely rare.
At work there has been a lot of talk about reproduction recently because several of us are pregnant and it always pisses me off when someone says their husband/partner won’t get a vasectomy or at the other end of the spectrum get checked out for fertility problems – because of course it’s always the woman’s responsibility and/or fault. It boggles my mind when these women just accept that opinion without much comment.
@PhDork: Ha, pay for play! Better yet, they can sell credit-default swaps against their infertility! I hear that’s a really popular, watertight financial model.
Actually, my youngest brother was a post-vasectomy baby.
Luckily, the accusations didn’t come flying out because a friend of my parents had had the same thing happen a year or so before. The guy divorced his pregnant wife, then got a positive DNA test that the kid was his later on.
So my dad has actually had two vasectomies. Take that Michael Lewis!
@Mel I figured there must be some sort of failure rate, but it’s got to be below 1%, yes? Which makes it insanely good.
Update: Just did a little Googling, and it looks like the failure rate is about 0.0094%. Though I’m sure the failures in these cases are pretty freaking shocking. Can you imagine? Yikes.
http://www.urotoday.com/browse_categories/male_infertility/vasectomys_failure_rate_in_contraception_about_1.html
@Meg Thanks for looking up the failure rate. IMO it’s the easiest and most fool-proof method. Even getting your tubes tied can fail, and its a heck of a lot more involved than a vasectomy!
“Take one for the team”? Gotta love those sports metaphors.
My fiance has an old friend that is married with 4 kids.He’s about 35 and his wife is barely 30. Last summer he came over to my house, had a few drinks, and got a bit of an attitude. One of our other friends was joking with him that the 4th kid was the last one, right? You guys are done,right? Just some jokes between friends. I suggested that perhaps he get a vasectomy. He got all offended and said “I’m not gonna get fixed! I ain’t no dog!” I almost flipped my lid. His wife has had 4 kids, gained a ton of weight, gone through how many hours of labor, and he can’t do that one little thing for her.I explained to him that it wasn’t such a big deal, it’s a quick and simple procedure. He wasn’t trying to hear it, and implied that getting “snipped” would reduce his manhood.What an a$$hole. I haven’t seen them since, it still enrages me almost a year later. Yeah buddy, you’re a real MAN.
ugh.
ohhhh this is horrifying. I just ordered that memoir, damn it all to hell!
the comments, however, are hilarious. i mean, i die. you harpies are just a riot. pouring privilege over his cereal, soaking in a tub of entitlement…
i was legitimately giggling aloud.
oh, i also meant to add that i just finished taking a summer course all on repro rights, pregnancy, birth, etc at my university & the vasectomy conversation was infuriating. i loudly suggested that it was very much a matter of sexism for the men in the room who argued that it was “de-masculating” or they “shouldn’t be expected to do that” and they were pissed as anything about me accusing them of being sexist because of those comments. little incidents like that make me laugh aloud when people suggest that feminism is a “finished” movement.
I’m a little bit psychic (well okay, not really). But anyway, I see a divorce and a new wife a couple of years down the line for this guy. Because it seems like he kind of hates and resents his wife for somehow forcing him into marriage and fatherhood and now forcing him to be “gelded.” It just smells like a huge male midlife crisis – “the bitch is taking all my fun away!” I bet that in six or seven years he’ll be writing a book about his quest for vasectomy reversal and how much he loves parenting his “new” family – any takers?
Um, if he wanted a chance at having more reproductive control maybe he should’ve changed more diapers and gotten up with the kids more mornings. My partner knows that if he wants kids he’d better not be like the men certain female relatives of mine married. I might want a kid but not if I’m doing a great majority of the kid raising. And yeah, I just don’t get why they feel how they do about vasectomies after they’ve seen their partners give birth. Come on.
If this shmucko wound up having the newer procedure that doesn’t even require stitches, then…well, his whining would be beyond sad, for starters.
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