Though, I am sometimes jealous of the very tall (alternately: extremely suspicious of the very tall). Still, at least I recognize that jealousy as being stupid.

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Also, it's not like women can have children on their own. There still needs to be a man involved at some point.

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(Daily caterwaul tally: 3.)

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@SarahMC: No, I'm suggesting it's a stupid thing to be envious of. It'd be like being jealous of birds because they can fly. Sure, maybe you want to fly, but you don't blame the birds for being able to do it.

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So, I was just poking fun at you before, but this is downright ludicrous. Pregnancy is the only health-related "stressful experience" in which other people treat your body as public fucking property, and moreover any misstep you make is in danger of making you a bad mom, so coping with a stressful pregnancy is a qualitatively different skill than coping with a terminal disease.

Jesus Christ. I understood what you were saying in the first place, but it seemed to me to be yet another example of men not understanding that their view of what "equal" is is necessarily conditioned by their male privilege.

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@PilgrimSoul: [back at ya]

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The definition of jealousy has the idea of resentment in it. I don't think every man has some subconscious resentment against women for being able to have children. But I think some do resent a woman being able to do something they can't.

There has to be some reason for what men have done to women over the years.

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Joss Whedon says, about womb envy: "It's a very simple theory... but basically it just seemed to be a fundamental thing that women have something men don't, the obvious being an ability to bear children, and the resilience to hang in as parents. I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of "women are inferior." Men not only don't get what's important about what women are capable of, but in fact they fear it, and envy it, and want to throw stones at it, because it's the thing they can't have."

Stephen Ducat covers womb envy a bit in his book The Wimp Factor. Amanda Marcotte made the comment that "it seemed fairly clear that womb envy was a result of a process where a man grows to despise a woman and he can't possibly fathom how such a lowly creature can go through such an important event and he wants all the credit for himself. That's why I think the belief that "life begins at conception" is tied to misogyny-it's a way of denying that pregnancy even exists as a process and laying claim to the idea that men make babies through the strenous act of ejaculation, and that all the important parts are over when he's done."

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honestly after the week i've had with my period, the lack of one would be one of the few reasons i'd want to come back as a man in my next lifetime.

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Than I realized that really, a lot of it in the higher levels is just about memorizing and what is the fun in that?

@NefariousNewt:

I don't think the computing power was 'wasted.' That comment makes me think of on SNL years ago when they talked about scientists working towards developing an onion that doesn't make you cry and they mockingly said how that is more important that curing cancer. Resources allocated towards one thing don't automatically take away from another. That computing power used did more than just teach computers to play chess, they learned things in the process.

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