Honestly Charles, where do you get your pot?

it harms the body...so what? in most cases it's a personal decision to have a baby and often times brings a new joy and experience to the people having the child.

why arent we liberating people from other things chaz?

also chaz, how high are you to want a brave new world type of reproductive experience?! having a baby that gestates inside you has the benefit of bringing the mother and child closer together.

while there is no denying the sweetness of a little baby, pregnancy is, at its root, the oldest form of slavery and oppression.

it will always be the great divide between the sexes.

Loved the post, though I doubt women will be willing to surrender the "bad power" till they get equal access to whatever it is you might consider non-bad-power.

kerri, are you putting forward the idea that women don't have a choice to be pregnant in this day and age?

Pregnancy is slavery? Wow. I had no idea.

The pain of pregnancy is nothing compared to the pain of Charles' posts.

If it weren't for the ability to reproduce, women would no longer be on this planet.

where will the baby come out?

I'm becoming more and more convinced that our boy Chuckie here is the guy behind the Weekly's Uptight Seattlite (which might explain their prank yesterday.)

Charles' posts often remind me of usenet trolls trying to start flamewars....

While pregancy can have its downsides, swelling, discomfort, outright pain, I have never considered it to be slavery or anything to be liberated from. In fact, I have done it 5 times now and while I have made my complaints, I would do it again in a heartbeat. Women's bodies were made to reproduce and it is an amazing experience to start out with a few cells and grow an entire human being from your own. It is in fact liberating and empowering to know that you can create a baby down to the eyelashes, fingernails and hair. Don't judge it until you have tried it!

I'm with #8. Dad (and his dad) always used to say, a woman's place is barefoot and in the kitchen. Men have already figured out how to cook and give better blowjobs than women.

Chicks best be learnin some new skills.

Charles, your gender politics are so off. This is only of note because you are too versed in theory for any of this nonsense to be forgivable. A supposidly serious discussion about power with a casual "...something we must liberate women from" thrown in is awfully bizarre.

monkey, it's women that need men less and less, not vice versa. and men are guided by sex drive, yet aren't all gay, or willing to be gay for the oral sex.

I remember your posting once about how you're not that into TnA, but you love women's bellies, and benefit greatly from the style of exposed midriffs.

"Look at my big and ready belly."

I bet that was exciting to write, wasn't it?

Women are dumb.

Ignoring Charles' post, Jen's piece was absolutely amazing. Very well done.

Literary journalism is beautiful when done right. This was.

@18: Word to your mother -- whatever gender your mother may be.

Maybe some want sex and reproduction to be disconnected, but, if many of us are honest with ourselves, that is frequently (or occasionally) not true. Not always, but sometimes.

Jen's piece was cool. And Charles had an interesting, if bizarre, take on it.

If Chuck had a baby, he would look like one of those starving ethiopian people. That look would be: HILARIOUS!!!

thats funny how?

Because starving people are FUNNY!!! Didn't you get the message from the editor in cheif? Plus, I am sure that Chuck speaks a little ethiopian. That would be freaking GREAT!!! Wandering around with a big ass belly, flies swarming around his face (because of the smell of Enumclaw horse pucky) and speaking with all those clicks and whistles! A recipie for a feature in the print Stranger don't you know.

Chaz is west african though.

So clicks and whistles with a little french accent.

Cute.

Then perhaps he can paint sarcosies on his faces...

"Bad power?" That's ridiculous.

Producing a child is the single most miraculous act the human body can accomplish.

And Kerri, slavery is introduced against the will of its victims. No woman in America can be made to have a baby against her will.

Resenting biology will get us nowhere soon, people.

Childbirth is no more miraculous than taking a shit.

Is it a hatecrime if you punch a racist homo in the face?
I can't believe ecce homo gets away with the crap he says without anyone out there tearing him a new one.
Again, dude where's your supply of hatin' coming from? I'm sure you've had your fair share of being prejudiced against, perhaps you can understand the irrationality of your own racism.

I feel compelled to point out that women can already reproduce without men; they can only produce female young, but parthogenesis works just fine in other mammals, so there is no reason to think it would not work in primates.

It's the menfolk best be learnin' some new skillz.

Dammit. Parthenogenesis. I hate not being able to edit.

@23,

Wow. You are so fucking hilarious, particularly when you assume that Ethiopians and West Africans speak Khoisan.

Mudede doesn't look even remotely Ethiopian.

@24,

He's from Zimbabwe which is in Southern/Central Africa.

@28

Click here.

@28. Dude's a sheet of grey crepe paper with some random crayon marks on it. Big deal.

@29

I don't hate women, but I feel compelled to point out that men have pretty much invented almost everything. So...yeah. We have skillz.

@27,

How charming.

I'm sick of the American baby fetish. Both conservatives and liberals fall prey to it. Conservatives love teh babies because they want white women to breed more and because they want women back in the kitchen. Liberals also try to make childbirth and parenthood out to be some sort of amazing accomplishment in and of itself -- primarily due to their advocacy for family policies and, to a lesser extent, for governmental programs that pay poor women to have/raise children.

The thing about giving birth is that any woman can do it which might as well make it worthless.

But even I wouldn't compare it to taking a shit.

I stand corrected.

But taking a massive shit can sometimes be an accomplishment. It can even hurt just as much as giving birth, depending on what foreign objects you shoved up there the other night that you forgot about. I'd say it's a fair statement. Word.

its not an amazing accomplishment, but it is amazing it's worked out well for this long.

The other day, I busted the porcelain when I dumped my ass. It was a giant ACME anvil. That isn't an accomplishment?

That is an accomplishment in another way. That youre here to tell the tale.

Well Mr Poe, you wouldn't have that problem if you weren't walking around with that nerf football butt plug up your poop chute all day long.

A nice comparison dirt bag, having children is akin to taking a big crap. Definately the sentiment of the anti-human crowd that the Stranger seems to attract.

Oh, Mr. Poe, you are, as ever, the height of wit. You "dumped [your] ass" -- why, how droll!

Perhaps you might prefer spending time with your peers at www.juvenilepreteensmakingfartjokes.edu than attempting to engage in serious discussion here?

And here you are, Ecce.

what kind of homo refers to anus as a poop chute?

I'm attempting to engage in serious discussion? Whoa! For shame!

@45 - I would never accuse you of engaging in serious conversation, just as I would never accuse you of not being a virgin.

Uh...okay.

The thing about giving birth is that any woman can do it which might as well make it worthless.

But even I wouldn't compare it to taking a shit.

And I wouldn't call childbirth a miracle. There's science involved. Sperm meets egg, baby comes out. Of course, if you eat eggs, shit comes out.

@48,

I wouldn't call it a miracle either. The "miracle" nonsense typically comes from the fundamentalist nutcase crowd who, as we all know, refuse to acknowledge the science involved.

However, if it's taking you nine months to gestate a bowel movement and if it hurts like fucking hell as it takes several hours or days to come out, then you probably should seek the advice of a doctor.

Why do people feel the need to take jerky comments so seriously? It not only kills the entire mood, it makes you look...like ecce homo. And that's saying something that isn't good. Like, at all.

Ah the anti-human gen x'ers and y'ers with an unatural devotion to their dogs stand up against reproduction.

At least someone is doing there job to perpetuate the human race. You know the human race dont you? Its the race that YOU belong too. Or have you been brainwashed to actually think that children are a bad thing?

Good God, SLOG is turning into a real cesspool of people with depression, bi-polar, and satanists with borderline personalities. You best just stick with your dogs, fools, because actually having children would prove to be too much of a challenge to your limited ability to make meaningful commitments.

There's something seriously wrong here when I find myself agreeing with ecce homo.

Yes. It means you're growing up. Into a retard.

Mr. Poes terrible Christmas quandry starts as thus:

Poe: Who's my daddy?

Poe's Mom: Whose your daddy? I dunno, it was a drunken barn dance. Now come on over here and give mama a special massage.

Now you may understand why he hates: Children, parents, heteros, and generally decent hardworking people. It confuses him to see people not acting like basket cases.

What all of this presupposes is that humanity should continue to reproduce. I personally don't care if it does. There's an interesting-sounding book called Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence by a South African philosopher that deals with this very issue (appropriately termed "anti-natalism.")

Anyhow, it's worth considering.

It suddenly doesn't take Columbo to solve this creepy, sad, desperate mystery, does it?

chaz's article that is less interesting and thought-provoking than this comment thread. mere fodder for your cannons. and if childbearing is slavery, then i must be into hardcore bdsm...gee, i never had myself figured for one of those.

@54

You're so terrible at humor. If you're not trying to be funny, that's even worse. But I've had enough of your terrible rhetoric and nonsensical rebuttals.

If I ever meet you, I swear to God [sic] I will punch you in the face.