#sillymen

Robert: *makes a comment categorizing Edna as one of Mr. Pontellier's belongings*

Some men will retort “Well, all mammals have live births and you don’t see the rest of them hollering and screaming while giving birth.”

This is because we have gigantic brains. Way bigger than even other primates, which is why other primates have much shorter, less dramatic, and less painful births.

The infant’s head is so large, that the female pelvis had to evolve in order to accommodate it. The fact that women always have help when giving birth isn’t a coincidence, or just a trend with current (by current I mean within the last few thousand years) humans. It’s been that way for tens of thousands of years. Very likely as far back as 100,000 years ago. We need help because it’s hard work, and painful work. 

It’s painful for two reasons. The baby’s head actually has to rotate 90 degrees in the birth canal in order to be able to fit through the midplane and outlet of the pelvis. OUCH. Secondly, let’s see, THERE’S A FUCKING CHILD EXITING THE WOMAN’S BODY THROUGH HER VAGINA. You know, that fun hole that men like to put their penises in? Of course the vagina is able to stretch! Don’t misunderstand what stretching means. It doesn’t mean that the vagina stretches out into a hallway so that the baby can slip on through. It means that it pulls and strains and adjusts so that a human being can be shoved through it without it shredding and causing a woman to bleed out and die. Human flesh is stretchy. That’s how people can hang themselves by hooks in the flesh of their back without their flesh tearing. That doesn’t mean it isn’t painful. Grab your cheek. Do it. Pull it outward as far as you can. Yeah, it hurts doesn’t it? Now, how sensitive is your cheek really compared to a vagina? OH. Yeah, exactly.

Just in case you’re still doubting me, here’s a quote from my anthropology textbook about birth in earlier hominid species vs homo sapiens. “While mothers of A. afarensis infants such as Lucy would have felt discomfort while giving birth, they would not have experienced the excruciating pain and difficulty associated with the complex rotation that occurs in living humans, nor would they have required assistance during the birth process.”

This is a textbook. For a college course. Written by experts in anthropology. What is anthropology? The study of humans. Not life. Not animals. Not mammals. Not even primates. HUMANS. And anthropology says that birth is excruciatingly painful.