Version and Aversion
Here’s a recipe for Friday Night Fun: external version. Turns out The Boy was feet-first, head-up. IOW, exactly the reverse of how he’s supposed to be at this point in time. The term for that position is “footling breech.” This is a funny term, one that brings to mind two things:
- The “handlingers,” odd beings from the China Mieville books that exist as basically sentient disembodied hands, which have the power to control other beings.
- The single-foot dudes (”skiapods”) from medieval mythology, like the guy on the left below:
At any rate, he’s no longer a footling breech.
Which brings me to the other word in the title, referring to men who can’t cope with basic aspects of human biology. This is similar in tone to a previous article in the NYT about men who were squeamish about having dinners with their (male) friends, for fear of seeming gay. Is America raising such insecure nebbishes that friends can no longer enjoy one another’s company, and that birth cauterizes desire? It seems to me that if you have a desire to raise a family, cherishing any sort of “mystery” or anything like that about the human body needs to be the first lame pretense to be jettisoned. I mean, really. I think I can consider myself lucky to be almost entirely free of any of the idiotic “male” behaviors that I’m technically supposed to possess, but I think I’ll have a long struggle to teach my son that being male doesn’t necessarily mean being half-lobotomized to prove masculinity. Leading by example certainly will help, though.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 am
[...] The Girl is also a footling breech. Oy. (Memory jog.) [...]