The Pulpit Presents: Let’s Get Cyclical

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This week’s stories are all about what the body succeeds at, “fails” at, aspires to — all through the means of production.

We kicked off with an illuminating essay by Elizabeth Cauvel on eggs and what they mean for worth:

“The idea that a newborn baby is flush with one million eggs–stored in her tiny ovaries until puberty like strings of Christmas lights balled up in the attic–is perhaps one of nature’s cruelest evolutionary fuck yous. By the time a woman has finished her education, found steady employment, paid off her student loans, reached a semblance of financial stability, found someone she can tolerate long enough to have regular sex with, perhaps gotten married or purchased a home–let’s call it age 30–she is down to one-tenth of the eggs she was born with.” — Good Eggs.

Next up, we had an essay from Jessi Quinn Alperin that dove deep into contraceptive/menstrual options for trans and binary folks, in “For/Men/Who Bleed”:

“Quite frankly, I think I feel the way a cisgender man must feel; free from biological clocks and desires of the moon. A cis man gets up every day and doesn’t need to think about where he is in the month or if he has “the right…