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Friday 18 July 2008

Snip, snip, grin, grin, say no more

Toby Young is under orders from his wife to get a vasectomy. But why should men agree to biological redundancy? What about their duty to keep up the birthrate? And what about the pain?

I knew we should never have gone to Legoland. My wife and I were emerging from a scale model of London, having just managed to stop our two toddlers pulling down Canary Wharf, when she dropped the bombshell.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘One more baby and you’re having a vasectomy.’

Had I not been pushing a double buggy at the time, I would instinctively have lowered my hands to protect my crotch. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that I’d sacrificed all my masculine pride in order to meet my wife’s expectation of how a ‘new man’ should behave. Now she wanted literally to castrate me as well.

‘Erm, couldn’t you just, er, you know, go on the pill?’

‘Why the hell should I? Why should I retain water, gain weight and increase my risk of getting cancer just to make your life more convenient?’

‘Well, er, why me? Why don’t you have a hysterectomy?’

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