Really. Really?

It is 11pm and I am trying to do something productive, like watch The Golden Girls or find things to tweeze, and instead I have my head buried in my hands because some other politician has gone and said something about my vagina. He might call it The Bible Hole, The Shall-Not-Be-Named, or The Ladies Restroom at Saks Fifth Avenue and Other Places My Wife Won’t Let Me Go. I don’t know. I won’t ask. All I know is that he hates it so much and he still wants to tell it what to do. Essentially, he is a substitute teacher for a fourth grade class of remedial readers. They’re ruining my LIFE, he says, as he continues to read the New York Times unscathed. 

Point is, I hate talking about politics with people. It makes me uncomfortable in the same way going to Home Depot makes me uncomfortable—it reminds me of being bored as a child and it makes me want to whine until I urinate my pants. I hate talking about politics because, honestly, I hate how stubborn and also assholes people I know can be.

But lately, I have to keep talking about politics. I have to keep talking about politics because it’s somehow wormed it’s way into monthly cycle. You know, my period? My period is what happens when I forcibly spray my blood into the eyes of various elderly members of Congress. I’m like Braveheart but with less braids and more flowing waves in my hair. My motto is more about “Kate Hudson” than “fighting for country.” I am a woman. I am so tired and I want to eat a pie I have made, hours ago. Please, control my uterus so I can go and read a cooking blog my sister-in-law sent me on my Earthlink account. 

I have little to say on the subject, and you know what the subject is. All things concerning the temple of my body. All decisions that have to do with me and My God (and because I’m a lady, my God is God that looks exactly like Brad Pitt) and things that are entirely personal and none of your fucking business. And the thing I have to say is this:

YOU’RE NOT GETTING IT.

I mean, clearly you are not GRASPING that I have boundaries and haven’t marched into your house and screamed at your penis in its penis face to not spurt at me because maybe babies would die. “You should do the same for me,” I say as I continue not to yell at your dick. Clearly you are not GRASPING that my uterus is inside my body for the time being and before Freddy Kreuger stabs it out of me in my dreams and therefore it is mine. I get that you think that I’m just some experimental theater lesbian acoustic guitar rat trash who wants to stab men and eat them to the tunes of Melissa Etheridge. These are old arguments and also not old news. 

What you DO NOT GRASP is that these decisions are hard for us. That they scare us. That we are aware of the consequence of that potential doctor’s appointment. That we are aware of what it means to enter a sexual relationship. That we worry about these things. That they make us nervous and scared and terrified because of the heady consequences they can have on either side of the decision. You do not understand that we deserve these choices and that they are oh so scary for us to think about. You have forgotten that we have feelings, which is interesting coming from a group of men who think we are simply boxes of tears whenever a house is revealed on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

What you DO NOT GRASP is that the reason why I don’t want you to dictate the innerworkings of my insides is because someday, IF I HAVE A DAUGHTER, I want my daughter to live in a world where she is allowed to make decision regarding herself. Fuck it, if I have 90 sons or no kids I think that. I think girls behind me should have a god damn chance, a shot at thinking that they are allowed to put their two cents in their own organs because that would be NICE. Yes, believe or not, we are not the kind of women who want to use all future children as kndle for firewood like the Dark Lords. We have souls. Some of us are religious. Some of us aren’t. Again—NOT your business.

What you REALLY DO NOT GRASP is that you are fucking assholes. For all of it. For making women feel like their personal decisions are wrong or immoral or up to anybody else but them. What you definitely do not grasp is that all of these things you do not grasp do not matter, because there is no question here: our right to choose or to take birth control is not an issue for you to argue over.

Sometimes, I think about what these men and women up in Washington DC see when they look at their wives, if they remember their soft curves at 22, if they remember how they had decisions and dreams and the rights to those. You know, before they put on harsh red pant suits and glibly smiled as their husbands made gender-related jokes at dinner before they went to read Women’s Day on the shitter. Sometimes, I think about how they think they are protecting their daughters, and how they hold their daughters at night and think they are protecting them, and how little they know that one day their daughters will one day turn away or squirm at their hugs because that’s how they are. Their daughters will be bratty little assholes, just like the rest of us human beings at 13 years old. 

And then I don’t give a shit about that because really, you politicians should understand by now that all I’m asking for is a choice. I am asking for a choice to protect what I have and that is mine. 

And you’d be wrong again, dipshit. 

Because it is not a choice. It is not a political stance. It is mine.

We simply cannot—will not—ever let it be your choice to make.