But first, a brief recap:The mammogram went extremely well, more on that tomorrow. I ate lunch in a restaurant, first time in weeks and weeks, so that was fun. R bought her car and will register it tomorrow. K's train was actually on time and we did indeed go right from the station to see Harry, which we enjoyed very much. All in all, a very excellent day, although rainy and cold.
I wrote the rest of this entry last night; it was just rolling through my head and I had just posted my entry, so I wrote it up for today, figuring I wouldn't have time to write anything wrong. Like most weird things, once you've got it in your head, it stays there for a while. So here it is.
Just a question, prompted by a comment Fi made about the need to have mammograms:
Let's say you were coming back in your next life, assuming that such things take place, and you happened to be in the position of being able to choose your new life's gender. Would you pick the same one you had in your old life, or give the other one a try? Why?
I've heard people say this many times before. "In my next life, I'm coming back as ..." and their reasons.
My Colleague says that she's coming back as a man, because she wants to be in charge.
My sister said (in years past, when she was maritally-challenged) that in her next life, she wanted to come back as a lesbian, so she wouldn't have to have anything to do with men. (I've actually heard this one a lot.)
Someone else, I forget who, once told me that she would only want to come back as a woman, because she would never want be one of them.
So, you see, there are lots of ways of looking at this. And you pretty much have to forgive the venom inherent in such statements, because mostly people only say things like that -- In my next life, I'm coming back as ...! -- because they're already pissed off about something, or more than pissed off.
As for me, I figure that I'm not coming back, and if I do, I'm not getting any choices in the matter. Logic aside, what would I pick? I do not know. I'm thinking about it, but I don't.
When I was a little kid, I felt very keenly the lack of being a boy. A big part of this, I think, was that all the families on TV had brothers and sisters, and we were without the obligatory brother; since I was the younger sibling, I somehow took this to mean that I was supposed to have been the boy but I made a mistake somewhere along the way, or someone did. I felt bad for my father because he should have had a son (like all the real families), but didn't. It was years before I actually asked him how he felt about this and he told me that he had hoped to have daughters, thereby offering no one for cannon fodder in the next war. (He didn't put it quite that way, but that's really what he said.) Okay, maybe he just said it to make me feel better, but I never did see any indication that he was dying to have a son.
I was a tomboy, always running around and coming home dirty, playing in the woods with the boys, building forts, playing army, and stuff like that. But I also had dolls, and I liked that too.
Childhood is not really the issue here.
Being male - Con:
- Indulging in stereotypes again here, no intent to offend, but men often seem kind of clueless to women. (On the other hand, it might be pleasant to live cluelessly.)
- Men with power issues -- see earlier entry -- can have a kind of arrogance that is pretty repulsive, and I wouldn't want to be like that, either.
- I'm thinking that I would not so much enjoy all the time smelling like a man. For whatever that's worth.
Being male - Pro:
- Generally speaking, men are strong. It would be cool to be strong like that. Even smallish men, it seems to me, have upper body strength.
- This may only be my perception, because I'm small, but it also seems to me that men, because of their strength and size, walk around the world with less fear than women do. Or maybe that's just my fear.
- Give me a minute; I'll think of another one.
- Oh, of course. You don't have to get a mammogram every year. And all medical research is based on you, and everything in society is designed to fit you and protect you. Car airbags, for example, in order to save large men, can kill children and small women. That seems like a perk.
Being female - Con:
- Honestly, who came up with this bleeding and pain thing every month? Now there's an idea that really sucks.
- The whole weak/short thing. Again, I know that's hardly a universal, but it is somewhat generally true, and it's certainly personally true for me. Given my family history, as a guy I would have hit a good 5'8" or so. Which means I could see over the counter in any bank in the world, unlike now.
- There's that mammogram thing again.
Being female - Pro:
- Being relatively not clueless.
- Appreciating a good-smelling man.
- And of course, the big one, which is that women get to have babies, and once you get over the whole pushing another human being out of your body -- on Friends, Rachel said it was like pushing a St. Bernard out of your ass -- it is actually the coolest thing ever. Even in the abstract, since not all women do give birth or want to, it is so totally cool to be the source of life, the bringer of life
Like everything else there is, it's a crapshoot. I took the roll of the dice this time. Why not next?
