By Alexandra Petri
The Washington Post
Hi kids! I’m a state legislator — male, naturally — but really, at heart, I am an expert on the female body. You may know me from some of my work in Georgia, Alabama and Ohio.
Ms. Roberts is out today, so I am here to cover the basics of reproductive anatomy. Which, again, I am expert in.
I am very excited to teach you about the reproductive system. We see here on this chart a body with a womb. The amazing thing about this body is that, unlike your body, which contains a person 100 percent of the time — you! — it only contains a person SOMETIMES.
One of the most common misconceptions people have about women, especially at your age, is that they are people. The idea that women are people is actually a relatively recent innovation, but my extensive knowledge of science — I once heard Ben Shapiro lecture! — reveals that actually they are vessels that may potentially contain people. Like a decorative fish tank, right after you have put the little diver in, but before there is water.
This is the womb. When a woman becomes hysterical, it wanders about the body. A woman is often hysterical, as when she shouts at you that this is not valid science. In such cases just say, “Lady-part, lady-part, fly away home!” and wait for it to return to its home (you will know that it has returned when she is finally, blessedly, silent.) The womb is the only part of a woman that counts.
The female also possesses something that looks almost like a mouth, and something that looks almost like a brain, which some suggest it uses to attempt rudimentary communications; we have discovered writings and recordings made by females, but we have yet to decode them or, indeed, determine whether they make any sense at all. It is doubted by the Learned Scholars (in whose number I count myself) that they are decipherable at all.
Very little is understood about what mechanism powers the woman. Steam? Coal? White wine? Humors? The important thing is that there is this —- sort of — place for a baby, and amazingly, through some sort of miracle, beneath it are legs to help this empty vessel walk around on the land. And, proteins, I think?
So, uh. Processes. Ovulation is a very convoluted process which it is not necessary to understand. It takes no time, or perhaps a lot of time? Anyway, in this process a vile egg promenades lustfully along a stretch of uterus to see if she will catch the eye of any venturesome and praiseworthy sperm. It happens either monthly, annually, or never, and it makes women irrational and causes their sanguine humors to predominate, which is what gives them the ability to control the tides, become werewolves and make cats their familiars.
The beginning of life is the result of two people performing a sacred act that is usually reserved for marriage, or if the president of the United States has become acquainted with an adult film performer and formed a special bond. Don’t worry, the female body has ways of shutting the whole thing down. Or is that ducks? I might be thinking of ducks. It doesn’t matter.
The female body, like the Internet, is a series of tubes. Fallopian tubes are some tubes that are there; sometimes an egg will be careless and get itself fertilized in one of them because it has not been taking proper precautions (the egg ought to take precautions!), and in that case you can just kind of grab it and put it where it is supposed to go, but first you should give it a stern talking to. This is science.
You might mistake this anatomy for a person, but actually it is just something that could contain a person; the moment the thingy is implanted in the whatsit by the you-know-what in a process that I fully understand; that is the moment there is a person. And the thing around it — that featherless biped which erroneously felt maybe that it was in possession of a soul — ceases to exist or to be of any interest to science. I am pretty sure. It can be discarded like a Whopper wrapper, to which, indeed, it is analogous; it is no longer important.
Again, these are not people. Indeed, as a special treat, I have brought one of these fantastic vessels for you to dissect and legislate upon to your heart’s content today.
Do not worry. No matter what she says, it will not hurt her; she is not real like you.
Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter @petridishes.
