Faking it.

This is a significantly revised version of the earlier post.

I have Seinfeld on the brain today. While I patiently (yeah, right) wait for code egg white, I have invested a lot of time in watching all the old Seinfeld episodes via DVD. The show always sparks controversial discussions in our house. My all time favorite is the episode titled "The Mango", and it doesn't have all that much to do with mangoes actually. For those who don't have every Seinfeld episode cataloged in their head, the episode concerns a discussion of faking it. Specifically, women faking an 0r.g.@sm during ahem, you know. (Desperately trying to deter goo.gl.ers from finding me using some of these words.) There's a great scene where Elaine reveals to Jerry that she had faked it every time they were together.

This episode sparked some continued thought regarding another blogger's post that discussed what it meant to be a woman. There was some exchange regarding not feeling like a full woman if you couldn't either get pregnant and stay pregnant at all or even yield a child without intervention. I found it so interesting that so many women said they never thought that was what defined Womanhood until they found that they were in that position. Suddenly, it changed they way they defined their gender. While, I am not about to go into what is right or wrong about that thought, I still find it incredibly pertinent here because of the discussion I then had with Husband.

I told him about what I had been reading and then asked whether men feel the same if their boys (sperm) are challenged in some way to make conception more difficult. Would his status as a man feel threatened? (I'm aware that I'm not asking a man who has actually experienced male factor infertility so far, but I thought his response may tell me something anyway). He was quick to say that he would not likely feel any less of a man if he was deemed fertility challenged.

After some rumination, it became clear to me that males qualify their manhood not by making a baby, but, let's be honest here, by being able to enjoy a good "O". Alternatively, women, at times (I know, I know, I can't lump everyone together here, but stay with me on this one), assess their womanhood by their ability to successfully reproduce. Not ground breaking conclusions, but I find it intriguing nonetheless. So if we go back to the faking it issue, I can't help but make connections. You see, I have noticed that while men can and will grieve intensely about the loss of a fetus, women tend to carry a much greater grief (sorry guys, but I am just calling it like I see it). And while women can easily have great sex without the big "O", that seems to be the requisite goal in sex for most men.

I am sure that I have opened up a big can of "WTF?" with this post, but I am really curious what you all think. Are my generalizations way off? Do you have another theory? Any fakers out there? This is one more reason I love to blog. I get to talk about all the stuff that I wish people would discuss in the open.