Female castration; or, yet another thing women aren't qualified to decide for themselves.

The United States performs more than 600,000 hysterectomies per year. That's a staggering figure when you consider that the primary reasoning behind most hysterectomy operations is treatment of uterine leiomyoma, or fibroid tumors. Why would so many women choose to have a full or partial hysterectomy when there are other options available for treating fibroids (some of them with exciting increases in success levels)? I suspect that we have no idea we're making the choice at all.

It's a somewhat precarious position, this one I'm in right here. I have every right to elect whatever procedure I want or none at all in the treatment (or lack thereof) of my body. It's difficult to address the stickiness and confusion of what having or not having a uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, etc. might entail psychologically without lapsing philosophic. If you don't have a uterus, rock the emptiness, I'm not looking for a war on the Naming of Parts. A woman is no less a woman lacking an arm or a leg or an ovary. But the freedom to make that decision can only really exist if there are options presented.

I recently underwent an abdominal myomectomy (surgical removal of fibroids) for a very rare case of cervical fibroids, and I had to game the patriarchal system, if you will, to obtain this surgery. My first doctor (the one who initially discovered the fibroid tumor) suggested that I was a lost cause. It was her official medical opinion that I was going to end up with a hysterectomy if not by choice, then by some emergency surgical fallout response that was destined to occur should I try a less-invasive approach. She never even gave me the names of those approaches. I was bleeding to death, I was vulnerable, and I trusted her. Luckily my powerful tendencies against confrontation had me in a new city less than two weeks later, and those toward both apathy and sloth had me in a new doctor's office shortly thereafter. Dr. William Parker asserts in her book A Gynecologist's Second Opinion, that "If you're only getting one option, it's likely that your doctor doesn't know how to do the others." Hurrah for this charmed existence, right?

So how did I get someone to attempt the impossible? To treat my impossible condition, in the shadow of my inevitable hysterectomy, we're doomed, blah blah blah, "don't worry honey you'll still be beautiful"? How did I avoid my apparent destiny as one of this year's 600,000? I went to a man; a man who specializes in keeping me fertile. I don't know if I want kids, and it's not even relevant, as far as I'm concerned. This guy, though, cannot fathom a world or mindset in which I wouldn't want kids. He lives and breathes to ensure that I maintain my ability to do the only thing I was put here to do, apparently, and that is incubate. I suspect he's not all that rare, I stumbled into him myself. Sometimes when we spoke it was all he could talk about, always drawing the conversation back to how I'll be able to carry a child, and maybe even have a vaginal birth, sweetie! Ugh.

So here's comes the guilt. Because what did I do? Did I tell him that I'm more than a baby incubator? That I have spent almost zero hours total over my lifetime thus far thinking about how badly I wish to conceive? That I've already had two abortions and he can go ahead and do away with this condescending implication that all I could ever possibly want is to serve God's greater purpose for me as a pregnant chef? No. I played that part like I was born for it. It's the only time I've ever lied about the abortions, too. The fact is, when someone is cutting me open, I want us to share the same goal: fixing me, regardless of the principle. Prepare your slings and arrows, because I would do it again if I had to. Is this speaking to how far (or not) I will push my feminist viewpoint? Should I be ashamed? Am I not as feminist as I thought? Maybe. Or maybe we all have a line somewhere that we just decide not to cross when we're selecting our battles. My line is pretty visible now: you will know me by the scar across my abdomen.

I was lost, but now am I found?

Somehow I (for apparently large values of t) temporarily lost this blog during the whole Blogspot/Google mashup. I was resurrected in admittedly lacklustre fashion, but we can still be exciting, Internets! I know we can!

I saw that eight people commented on my prior post, and when I saw that I nearly cried. That could be because I'm an emotional wreck due to my feminine health trainwreck status, but I'd prefer to attribute it to genuine glee that I'm not alone in the world. The feminist cloud I skate through is not some mad genius figment of an overactive imagination, even on my bad days.

Forthcoming: some insight into what I feel is a devastating state of our health industry specifically as it related to both birth and hysterectomy.

just one of the guys

That's me. Just one of the guys. I work in a male-dominated industry. I am one of two females at my office, and I'm the only one who doesn't "answer the phones" - I say it like that because that's exactly how they treat my coworker (who has almost completed her masters in finance and has been an actuary for longer than they've been off of chewable vitamins) - "Who is that?" ... "Oh, that's C, she answers the phones." Okay.

Not only am I in a male-dominated industry, I'm almost at the top of it. Almost. I plan on getting there, because I like what I do, and I'm good at it; the sad part is that getting there depends on this blog staying seperate from my identity. I work at one of the most coveted companies in my industry. There are only about 25 of us here. It's young, relaxed, liberal, and misogynistic as hell.

But don't tell them that, they fancy themselves the good guys.

One of them once told me to stop wearing a particular vintage tee that I had on because it MADE him stare at my breasts. Now I feel like if I wear it he'll say I'm asking for it, and if I don't I've lost whatever tiny battle was instigated by my (obviously powerful) shirt.

One of them asks me to ascend the stairs after him so that he won't be tempted to stare at my ass or look up my skirt.

One of them told me that I was not a real woman because I didn't have lotion available for his use; apparently all real women keep lotion handy at all times.

I have had to sit through business lunches with clients at Hooter's, because it was the client's choice, and we "work for them."

I am the only one who has been given the lecture on how it's not okay to date coworkers.

I have never dated one, but six of them have hit on me. Two of them ignored my repeated rejections and pushed the issue beyond its already unreasonable and uncomfortable boundary.

They all eat lunch together in a large room next to my cubicle while they watch any one of a number of cheesy courtroom dramas. I'm invited, but I rarely partake. When I do, conversation does not change from endless judgement of the women on screen based entirely on the size of their tits, their style of dress, their weight, or their general attractiveness.

They don't judge me like that, though, they were just kidding around; I'm different, I'm not like those other girls, I'm just one of the guys.

Lonely Musings

I recently went through a painful breakup. It's healthy, but that doesn't make it any easier.

I am not going to apologize for being hetero, but I will acknowledge all of the uncertainty that I have about how I arrived here. And the guilt. The way that I allow myself to be treated at times makes me feel like I am working for the patriarchal system that I'm fighting. Prepare your stones for casting, for I have in my life done the dishes far too many times and surrendered the only remaining slice of pizza when I wasn't yet sated. And I will do it again with the sullen petulant scowl of a child crossed, because sometimes I'm too weak to fight.

But sometimes I am not.

This internal conflict, at times, has me distrustful of my own emotions - and that, in turn, has me pissed. I'm mad that I even have to think about these things, because I know that he does not ever have to think of them. He can be anyone without a vagina, spoiled by the gluttonous lack of societal pressure to be less than he is. But I digress.

I drink. I like to go to a bar, drink, and play pool. I love to play pool, and I'm good at it. Now I have to go to the bar alone. What before was a seemingly unfathomable amount of disgusting unwanted drunken advances has escalated beyond epic proportions, because I don't have a big scary man to protect me from all of the other big scary men. I moved across the country to this city with my partner, and now my entire support system is 2000 miles away. I really didn't think this one through.

And so perhaps we arrive (um, finally) at my point: why is it so hard for a girl to meet other girls? I want, nay, need girlfriends, and society has us all too fucked up and freaked out to even talk to one another, lest we lose some of the precious male attention that we strive so hard to attain. Last night I was trying to be all cool, you know, smoothly trying to talk to the only other girl in the place that wasn't dressed like a "sexy nurse" or "sexy firefighter" or "sexy zamboni driver" or whatever, and she shuns me in that weird, ultra-territorial style. Why do we do this?!

And what's the most productive way of responding to it?

You're damn right I'm pissed...

...and hopefully you will be too by the time I'm through.