Piling onto this conversation a week late, but… sometimes I just can’t help myself.

About that New York Magazine feature story: How the Pill Changed the World, that had so many smart folk talking last week: Besides the fact that it was somewhat inaccurate, derivative and kinda insulting, it also seemed to miss the point. In my opinion.

But first, since I’m sharing my opinion, I feel I should also share my background story on this one. I’m on the pill and have been for almost 20 years. BUT, and this is a big but, it’s not for birth control. It was/is prescribed to help control 2 separate health issues. And, my health would be negatively affected if I went off of it. And I’m not going to say anything more about that.

Now that that’s out of the way – YES, many women (of my generation SPECIFICALLY) take the pill for 5, 10, 15 or even 20 years straight. Some of us have absolutely no idea what our body’s natural rhythms would be like. None.

And, some of us are hyper-focused on our careers in our 20s and 30s and wait until after 35 to have kids. Which isn’t the wisest thing to do. We’re not stupid. We know we shouldn’t wait that long.

But, and here’s another big but, there are a lot of people on this planet who do dumbass things. Make dumbass choices. I make them all the time. In this particular case, I’m going to hazard a bet that most women in this situation (the pathetic women in their late 30s and early 40s that Vanessa Grigoriadis, the author of the NYMag piece writes about) weren’t blinded by the pill. Nor weren’t they too stupid to realize their fertility was declining with age.  They were just focused on trying to have it all.

I’ve written about the whole, having it all, thing before. I don’t think it’s possible. Never did.

The superwoman with the great career, fabulous husband, well-behaved kids, amazing home and no household help = MYTH. At least for most people. Maybe there’s the rare exception.  But they’re rare.

Life requires choices. And most of us make our choices without realizing we’re making them.  Millions of women have CHOSEN to focus on their careers during their 20s and 30s, instead of having kids. And some of them, when they get to their later 30s/40s have buyer’s remorse.  They want to undo that choice.  Pretend that they didn’t know.

But they knew. OK, some people are really stupid.  This country elected Bush twice.  So a portion of them might have not known. But the majority KNEW.

You can’t have it all.  You can’t spend your 20s and 30s focused on everything but babies and then wake up one day and say, “Oops. I want a kid.  I’ll do anything to make it happen.  If only I’d known.”  Because that just perpetuates the myth that women are foolish and stupid and shouldn’t be allowed to have complete control over our own bodies.  ’cause, gosh, look how irresponsible we are.

So basically, my issue here is with the narrative. The cause and effect. Who/what is getting the blame. Yes, it would probably be smart if women (ALL WOMEN) thought about fertility in their early 20s and made a personal choice – when do I want kids/if ever?  They could always change their minds in the future. But they should think about it and make a conscious choice when they/we are young. So that they realize that the X number of years of school and the Y number of years they’ll need to get firmly established in their careers… will bring them to approximately aged whatever.  Or maybe they’ll decide to defer one of those things.  Or not.

Most of the women I know didn’t do this. Make a rational choice while the rational choice is still theirs to make. Instead they opted to try for EVERYTHING. And some of them ended up as married moms with careers who are struggling to live with the facade that everything is perfect.  STRUGGLING (and frequently miserable). And others are my age (or near it) and unmarried and thinking, Holy shit I hope it’s not too late. All of which makes me sad.  Because, y’know, we’re free to do and be whatever we want.  But lots of us bought into the whole, you can have EVERYTHING superwoman bullshit.  And that’s just a lot of self-defeating nonsense.

I’ve been working on this post for the last few days.  Or rather, I’ve taken several stabs at it. I keep writing posts full of passion and conviction. None of which really belong here.

The thing is, I have a stake in this fight.  But I try (TRY) to keep my temper in check and keep this blog from turning into a battlefield.

All that said (and I’m not sure a damn bit of it made any sense) I’ll just cut to the chase. I was delighted to see the posts in Broadsheet and Jezebel about the new research related to hookups.  It turns out, SURPRISE, we women aren’t such delicate creatures, after all. We’re perfectly capable of having casual sex and then, at some later time, having perfectly happy LTRs. Those of us who have casual sex aren’t destroying our chances of long-term relationships, or so says the latest research. Well, that’s a relief (because I totally believed all of those people who were telling me otherwise).

Perhaps the best thing (or most amusing) I read about this this week was in the comments section at Jezebel

Once, my younger sister (she’s 16) found out that I was hooking up with a friend of mine. “Yes, we’re hooking up…No, we’re not in a committed relationship.” Horror of horrors, right? (To be fair, I would have reacted similiarly at 16, I bet. There’s room for a lot of growth.)
Then she said to me, “He’s not going to buy the cow if he can get the milk for free.”
And I looked at her very seriously and said, “[insert her name here], why would I want anyone to buy me?” Like, what is this, the year 1350? Or the black market sex trade? Sheesh, what kind of analogy is that – comparing women to cows

So much of the discourse about women and sex is this bizarre connection.  That our worth, to men, is sex.  And that we are more valuable when we withhold it.  And that somehow, ALL WOMEN have internalized this societal belief and so our self-worth is also pegged to the withholding of sex.  Or should be. Or some such nonsense.

Anyway, I could go on for thousands of words.  I won’t, because this is so not the right forum.  And I’ve probably already said too much…

Alright, fair warning, this is one of those posts.

Not too long ago, I was having dinner with a friend.  We talked about everything under the sun: boys, food, work, boys. Suddenly, she says she wants to ask me/tell me something but that she’s embarrassed. And that it’s not the kind of thing she’s comfortable talking about.

Well, I’m cool with talking about any topic. Nothing is taboo with me.

So she takes a deep breath and tells me that she’s recently gone on the pill and has been having this very specific and awkward side-effect (I’ll leave that detail out of the story, as it’s not mine to tell).  So we talked a bit about it and I told her to tell her doctor, to not be freaked out, that I’ve been on one version of the pill or another for almost 20 years and have had all kinds of bad side effects and sometimes it just means changing your specific prescription (I don’t take it for birth control, but for other reasons, not that that matters).

Then last night I was reading this amazing post on Blogher about Birth Control Pills and the effects they have on our bodies (and how they’re marketed and other stuff).

I find it kinda shocking, yes shocking, how little women talk about this amongst ourselves. As I said, I’ve been on the pill for almost 2 decades, and yet I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve talked about it with friends.  And the men in our lives are, for the most part, completely oblivious to the side effects and risks we’re facing – because we don’t tell them.

Which leads me to a bizarre segue.  I LOVED Tracy Clark-Flory post for Broadsheet, Calling out “subtle sexism” about the brilliant article in Newsweek on gender discrimination at that publication titled, Are We There Yet?

Women have come a long way, in terms of gender discrimination in the workplace. But there’s still plenty of problems.  And so many of us (us, here, meaning women) seem to fall into the trap of suffering in silence. We don’t tell our male friends and colleagues about the humiliating, sexist things that happen to us on a daily basis at work (well, many of us don’t). Sometimes we don’t even tell our significant others (if we have them). And so they don’t know about it.  Just like they don’t know about the horrible side-effects we suffer from being on the pill.

All of this adds up to a lot of misunderstanding or lack of understanding.  Which is sad.  And silly.  And entirely preventable. We could all just choose to speak up and talk about the uncomfortable stuff.

I’m foolish enough to believe that information is power.  And that sharing information can be powerful.

I have a very distinct memory of, when I was in elementary school, my family having Chinese food every Friday night for dinner.  It was the only night of the week that we all sat around the table and ate as a family.

Most other nights my mom just gave us what we were having to eat in front of the television (there were lots of these TV dinners for kids that had fried chichen and tater tots – mmm tater tots).  Mom would eat sometime after that, alone in the kitchen and then, hours later, she would serve my dad his dinner when he got home.  He worked long hours and had a long commute and so he ate alone. Except for Fridays, when we were young. That tradition ended by the time I hit junior high school.

He couldn’t have it all.  A good job, a house, two cars, kids that he spent quality time with.  He had the family and the stuff, but he had to live without the quality time.  As did many men of his generation.  And they did it without thinking too much about it because that was the way things were.  My mom quit her job when she got married. That was also the way things were.

Anyway, this is what came to mind as I read Broadsheet’s post, Girls, forget “having it all”, about the British headmistress who pointed out that maybe it’s time that girls were told that having it all wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

I happen to think she made some sensible points.  Encouraging blind optimism in the face of potentially overwhelming challenges isn’t helpful.  I can think of more than one woman I know who was driven to despair because her attempt to have it all didn’t quite work out the way she thought it would.

But then, and I’ll admit that my perspective on this can’t possibly be fair because I never tried to “have it all” and spent my 20s and early 30s married to my job. Maybe the probem isnt’ that girls can’t have it all but rather that no one can.  Again, I look to my dad and the men of his generation who, quite frankly, barely saw their kids during the workweek.  Perhaps it’s impossible for any person to work more than 40 hours a week (plus commuting time) and spend quality time with their family?

I’m not suggesting that women (and men) have to choose between career and family.  Rather that we be more realistic about what can and can’t be done in a single day or week.

Anyway, that’s my question:  Is it possible for a person – MAN OR WOMAN – to work more than 40 hours a week and spend quality time with their family?

• Yes, absolutely. (18 votes)
• No. There’s just not enough time in each day. (29 votes)
• Maybe. It depends on the circumstances. (283 votes)
• Other. Please explain in the comments. (3 votes)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m SO late to this party.  It’s kinda sad.  Even for me.  I’ve been suppressing the urge to write about the “women need to get drunk to have sex” study since I first read about it 10 days ago.   I can hold it in no longer.  But I’ll get to that and why, later.

First, the topic at hand, just in case you don’t know about the study in question.  I first read about it in Broadsheet.  Femfresh, a feminine hygiene product did a survey of 3000 women aged 18-50 and found that, among other things, “Seventy-five percent said that they prefer having sex with their partners after drinking, and one woman in 20 said she’d never done it sober”.

Now, let’s ignore the potential flaws in the survey as many others have picked it to shreds.  Let’s just suppose that within this data there is an essense of truth – many women routinely have sex under the influence of alcohol (I’m not going to get into why, again, lots of others have written about that in the last 10 days).   I don’t think anyone would disagree with that basic truth.  It might not be the majority, might not be 75%, but there are certainly many.

So what?  As long as we’re talking about consenting adults, right?

Exactly.

But here’s the thing, I actually prefer to have sex sober.  It’s kind of a big deal for me.  I will, on occasion, get drunk and have sex because I’m horny (and this is much more likely to happen if I haven’t been getting any on a regular basis).  But my preference is to be sober.  Completely sober.

Which is why I was so excited, last night, to read the really smart post in Blogher by avflox called Drunk on You:  Alcohol Disinhibits But at Cost? She and I are coming at this from slightly different places (slightly) but I think she does a brilliant job of writing about why she prefers sex sober.  My favorite line, “I want to feel everything. And I want to remember it.”

Kind of relevant to this is something I wrote a while back, about how I don’t actually like to date guys who drink a lot. At the time I left the topic of sex off the table.  But that’s a big part of it, too.  I prefer sex sober.  And I prefer for us both to be sober.  A glass of wine, or two, OK.  But drunk, no.  The best sex of my life has all been sober (not that I would remember the drunken sex, because when I used to drink more, I used to DRINK MORE).

Anyway, I just thought it was time to add my little voice to the conversation.  One more vote for awesome sober sex.