The Big "V"

So Nikkolish over at a crazy beautiful mess (which is a great read btw, check her out!) mentioned in passing in a post that her husband would soon be going under the knife for some, well, plumbing changes.

Like many women, Nikkolish (and one of her commenters) is wondering what the big deal is? And why we men get worked up over this "little procedure". As a man who has experienced this modern day rite of passage myself, I thought I'd articulate what other men may have trouble expressing.

First off I'd like to acknowledge that there are a whole lot of reasons why a vasectomy makes a lot of sense. For one, it's an outpatient procedure, many times done right in the office of your favorite urologist. It's minimally invasive as procedures go, the incisions are tiny, and the whole thing takes like 30 minutes if your doc doesn't hurry (and I would recommend finding one that doesn't!) The comparable procedure for females is much more complicated and involves anesthesia which has its own inherent risks.

It means your wife can stop taking oral contraceptives, which again hold their own inherent risks, not to mention the hormonal roller coaster every month.

And it means never having to mess with another condom, which are a pain in the crotch, often quite literally. I mean I never learned how to take one of those off without somehow pinching the tar out of myself and donating the top layer of skin at the same time. Or worse yet, if your wife has a latex allergy (like mine), your choices are to wrap yourself in the skin of some dead animal, which is sooooper sexy let me tell you. Or the new and improved poly vinyl condoms, which do NOT stretch at all, and slowly choke your inner warrior into submission by way of the nuclear sleeper hold.

Suffice it to say, there are many reasons to get a vasectomy. Some of them good even.

So why do guys have such an issue with this "little procedure"?

Let's start with the obvious. From since before we can remember, us guys have been conditioned. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was while we were still baking in our mothers' lovely wombs that we were handed our own special twig and berries, along with our man card. There was no owner's manual (hence our disdain for instructive manuals and maps of any kind for the rest of our lives,) and the instructions were very, very simple. Protect these suckers at all costs!

At. all. costs.

This indoctrination continues throughout our lives. Get smacked in the nose? No matter, blood is way cool. Get blasted upside the head? No problem, chicks dig black eyes. But get kicked in the nads? Not only does it hurt like a $(@#&, but you're quite likely to get laughed at as well. Because let's face it, nothing is funnier to other men than some idiot who was dumb enuough to break the most basic rule of life--Protect these suckers at all costs!

At. all. costs.

And now you know why TV shows like Jackass and America's Funniest Home Videos have been so successful.

So maybe you can understand our hesitancy to willingly let some dude purposely cut a hole in our junk. It goes against 20-30-40 years of social conditioning. Conditioning that has been the meaning of male life for centuries upon centuries.

Not to mention we might get laughed at.

But I know what you're going to say, "That's what they make benzodiazepines for!", right?

Ok, hold on to your ovaries, because we're about to talk about the emotions of the male species.

Sure, we males are human too. And that means we contribute to the human race in a variety of ways. We reap respect from our jobs. We strive to uphold the responsibility of teaching our sons how to be men, and teaching our daughters what to look for in a man when they decide to get married. We participate in church, family time, and marriage relationships. We men have great purpose in this world, and I will go toe to toe with anyone (man, woman, or otherwise) that tries to belittle our existence. But call it an evolutionary throw back, on some gut level when we get a vasectomy, we lose a very basic mammalian and biologic function. We lose our ability to sow our oats, so to speak. It's long been debated whether the male simply exists to impregnate females, and regardless of your position on the topic, there is a loss of function that affects the male psyche in a deeply personal way.

To take it step further--I would wager that the times my wife has loved me the most deeply has been when she's found out that we were pregnant. Those moments were deeply satisfying for me as well. The list of inequities and shortcomings that a female will overlook in a man is long and distiguished if that man is the father of her unborn children. When a man loses the ability to grant that most basic desire of a woman, it can be a frightening thing. In fact, the male mind might wonder if he might be up for replacement if he no longer can function in that role. At that point, what seperates him from the other 4 billion males on the planet?

Maybe you don't understand everything I've written here. Maybe you don't agree with everything I've written here. That's ok. It's just one man's musing about losing his sperm count.

Now quit giggling!!