Udder Nonsense
Most men would rather submit to a catheter of Tabasco than append their byline to the following paragraph:
The more I learned about male lactation, the more curious I became. I'm 33 years old and single in New York City, a cross between Carrie Bradshaw and George Costanza—if there's such a thing as a male biological clock, mine has started ticking. I know I can't birth a child myself, but what if I could bear one to suck at my bosom? Could my rudimentary mammae yield a copious supply of milk?
If he uses the George Costanza model, you suspect the correct phrasing is “could my copious mammae issue a rudimentary amount,” but never mind. The whole piece details his experiments to see if he could do it, as if this was some sort of cross-gender game show competition - I’ve Got a Secrete! - and while you might think this is related to the earlier post about genderless children, it’s really . . . actually, it is related. It demonstrates that for our brave new moderns, puttin’ gender in the blender is a prime sign of enlightenment. It’s the last thing left, after you’ve chopped up all the other old boring norms.
You get the sense that gender is on its way to becoming oldthink nonsense, proof of our binary rigidity. It’s not that the right-thinking people will seek to raise their kids as genderless, but they’ll feel compelled to apologize for anything that smacks of gender-norming activity, waving it away as one of those things that happens. Well, Sheridan, she wants to wear a dress, there’s nothing you can do, you have to pick your battles. Everyone will privately believe that men are men and women are women, with variability within the parameters and a teeny sliver of Whatever in the Venn Diagram, but you won’t want to say it, because that gives aide and comfort to the evil conservatives who want to cut off funding to the transgendered cowboy hoedown festival - and besides, it’s much better to be regarded as one of those interesting people who finds the entire subject so fascinating and challenging. If a fellow at a dinner party should start a sentence with “Well, I’m a man, and -” there might be chastening looks, until he realizes his mistake. “Well, as someone who self-identifies as a man, I think -”
There. Much better.
The author’s bio:
Michael Thomsen has written about video games, books, feline diabetes, transsexual weddings, Madagascar, Four Loko, and wearing toenail polish. He lives in New York.
Of course he has, and of course he does.
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Comments :
Sep '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
I'm really going to miss the WW II generation. Whatever their faults, they never tolerated anything like this in their midst.
Dec '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
Michael Thomsen has written about video games, books, feline diabetes, transsexual weddings, Madagascar, Four Loko, and wearing toenail polish.
Wow, that's at least seven whole blog posts. A literary powerhouse.
I guess it's a measure of how desperate the market for freelance stories is that this guy had to -- literally -- squeeze milk from a man-breast to get a gig.
Jul '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
Um...where is the Al Qaeda recruiting office?
Mar '11
Re: Udder Nonsense
1000 words or less, compare and contrast: Man-boob (cf. Boob-man) or Bibi. Who would you trust your one and only life to? Your self-identified whatever-the-hell life?
Mar '11
Re: Udder Nonsense
Hello, my name is... and I am a male lesbian.
Aug '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
S' late . No kidding, I think we missed it.
Jan '11
Re: Udder Nonsense
Milking it for all its worth I guess. I miss the 1970s, when someone dyed their hair bright red and wore more than one earring in each ear, it shocked me for at least a year.
May '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
Once more with feeling!
May '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
:D :D :D :D I'm laughing so hard I'm crying, James!
Oct '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
Come on. This sort of thing has been happening probably since before Lileks was alive. Crazy people say crazy things to get attention. I highly doubt this is a sign of impending apocalypse (gross as it may be).
Aug '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
James Lileks:
The author’s bio:
Of course he has, and of course he does. ·
Ironically, Four Loko and nail polish is what he lactated.
May '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
Kennedy Smith is a blogger living in Chattanooga, TN, who has written articles on availability of sapphic porn in Turkey, pirate movies, Maxim cheesecake photos, the American Revolution, college cheerleaders, the works of Niccolo Machiavelli, and hot chicks with guns. He is clearly overcompensating for his deep-seated insecurities and embarrassing lactation.
May '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
Yes, and the medicos of that era would have located this poor man's pathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and promptly prescribed a dose or two of electroshock therapy instead of publishing his self-described neurosis.
Jan '11
Re: Udder Nonsense
"These were times when men were men, and women glad of it."
---- Three Stooges
Re: Udder Nonsense
Sweet suffering soupspoons. This is just gross.
Jun '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
"Of course he has, and of course he does."
Choked on my coffee here.
Mar '11
Re: Udder Nonsense
Has anyone thought to introduce Michael to Kenneth's favorite adult baby?
Mar '11
Re: Udder Nonsense
Yes, but once upon a time, they got attention by standing on a street corner spouting this stuff. Thanks to the Internet, they can now self-publish and progress from lone loon to interest group to voting block...
This is the way the world ends.
There. I've contemplated the abyss and quoted T. S. Eliot, and I haven't finished my coffee yet.
Dec '10
Re: Udder Nonsense
Amen!
May '11
Re: Udder Nonsense
The first time this yahoo gets a cracked nipple from "lactating", his curiosity will diminish markedly.
Not to be vulgar, but unless and until we get to the point where a penis isn't interested in a vagina (or vice versa), gender will always matter, no matter what "right-thinking people" say.