lightreads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightreads) wrote2016-10-23 02:58 pm
lightreads) wrote2016-10-23 02:58 pm
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Magic Binds by Ilona Andrews
3/5. Book *pauses to look it up* nine. Urban fantasy *gestures* stuff, but let's talk about babymaking.
So they get married in this one, and there's a couple prophecies about their kid, and then [spoiler, except come on, it's totally not] at the very end she's surprise! Pregnant. And because I'm me I am stuck on whether they were using birth control. I guess we're supposed to assume not, based on the pregnancy (though in reality, birth control accidents happen all the damn time). And I don't remember if we know anything about how birth control works in this mixed magic/tech post apocalypse world anyway. But can we just –
If you are a couple people with the requisite parts and the ladyparts are, like, less than say 43 years old, and you aren't using protection, you are trying to have a baby. Like, there is no 'oh we weren't preventing but we weren't really trying either' – no. That is not a real thing. That does not exist. Babymaking does not depend on, like, deciding that this month you really mean it. And more pointedly, not using birth control is a specific choice to get pregnant, because 90% of couples will conceive within six months of dropping birth control.* That is, like, why there are billions of us crawling around this planet. This shit is supposed to be easy, and just because it wasn't easy for me and it was in fact impossible for several people I care about doesn't change that.
I am just sick unto death of books of all genres – romance, urban fantasy, general lit – treating pregnancy as a surprise random occurrence. As if not getting pregnant was equally – if not more – likely, and really who could have expected this! Who the fuck are these people who go around banging unprotected and don't expect the outcome?
Write me books about people who actually plan their family-building. Who have conversations about the nitty gritty of it like adults. You know, not just the vague will-we-won't-we, but all the actual shit you talk about like doing the math and realizing that having a baby nine months from right now would be super terrible so let's use a condom for these two weeks. Accidents happen, sure, but funny how they seem to account for 90% of the stories about conceiving I read. And for god's sake, let's stop pretending a lot of these pregnancies are accidents at all when they fucking aren't. It's your body, fucking own what you decided to do with it.
Ugh.
*There's a lot more nuance to this, but you get me.
So they get married in this one, and there's a couple prophecies about their kid, and then [spoiler, except come on, it's totally not] at the very end she's surprise! Pregnant. And because I'm me I am stuck on whether they were using birth control. I guess we're supposed to assume not, based on the pregnancy (though in reality, birth control accidents happen all the damn time). And I don't remember if we know anything about how birth control works in this mixed magic/tech post apocalypse world anyway. But can we just –
If you are a couple people with the requisite parts and the ladyparts are, like, less than say 43 years old, and you aren't using protection, you are trying to have a baby. Like, there is no 'oh we weren't preventing but we weren't really trying either' – no. That is not a real thing. That does not exist. Babymaking does not depend on, like, deciding that this month you really mean it. And more pointedly, not using birth control is a specific choice to get pregnant, because 90% of couples will conceive within six months of dropping birth control.* That is, like, why there are billions of us crawling around this planet. This shit is supposed to be easy, and just because it wasn't easy for me and it was in fact impossible for several people I care about doesn't change that.
I am just sick unto death of books of all genres – romance, urban fantasy, general lit – treating pregnancy as a surprise random occurrence. As if not getting pregnant was equally – if not more – likely, and really who could have expected this! Who the fuck are these people who go around banging unprotected and don't expect the outcome?
Write me books about people who actually plan their family-building. Who have conversations about the nitty gritty of it like adults. You know, not just the vague will-we-won't-we, but all the actual shit you talk about like doing the math and realizing that having a baby nine months from right now would be super terrible so let's use a condom for these two weeks. Accidents happen, sure, but funny how they seem to account for 90% of the stories about conceiving I read. And for god's sake, let's stop pretending a lot of these pregnancies are accidents at all when they fucking aren't. It's your body, fucking own what you decided to do with it.
Ugh.
*There's a lot more nuance to this, but you get me.
no subject
I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle him, and then flick the author on the nose.
no subject
Yuuuuuuuup.
no subject
Then again, I am literally the only of my ... eleven? cousins to plan my kids. And I totally did it, like you say, around work deadlines and based on salary calls and a lot of other stuff. But if my cousins' kids are anything to go by, the rate of "oops" or "wishful thinking" in this country is not that much lower than 90%.
Sigh.
Like I get that you can be "not NOT trying" and just rolling the dice, if you're a cis het couple. But it still shouldn't be a SURPRISE.
no subject
Yeah, my unsourced recollection is that something slightly less than half of pregnancies in the U.S. are "unplanned," which always struck me as high. Makes you wonder just how much stuff gets shoved into "unplanned." Like the woman I know who deliberately and specifically stopped using BC, didn't tell her partner for two months, and then told all of us with a totally straight face that the pregnancy was an accident. Ummmmmmmmmmm... #thatworddoesnotmeanwhatyouthinkitmeans
no subject
Ugh. Did you read that thinkpiece a couple months back by the woman who was conflicted about getting her IUD because it meant she couldn't accidentally-on-purpose sabotage her birth control? I read it and I could not and cannot fathom the mindset behind it.
I wonder, though, to what extent this sort of thing explains antichoice women--they hear 'unplanned pregnancy' and think of this, rather than of birth control failure. Or possibly think of birth control failure as another example of this sort of roulette--deliberately using less effective methods or using them badly as another means of plausible deniability. In either case, the antichoice refrains of "Personal responsibility" and "Actions have consequences" would be some pretty rank but pretty typical projection.