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When you're a guy, and a dad," I told Freddy's scarecrow, "and you have to ask your wife to put £5,000 of her bonus into the joint account so that the garage won't refuse your card, and all the jokes about being a Kept Man are worn away, the word is 'vasectomising'..."

I know there are some answers about a Kept Man and 'vasectomising' in the website but please let me ask a little more about the word vasectomising. Because the definition of vasectomy in English is :

noun (plural vasectomies) the surgical cutting and sealing of part of each vas deferens, typically as a means of sterilization

and then could vasectomising mean a constant state of losing someone's manhood because of plus an ing for vasectomy? But acutully after vasectomy , a male could still have sex with a female but not making the female pregnant.So after vasectomy, a male acutally can be manhood.So what is the exact meaning of vasectomising? But having read the context, losing someone's manhood would be a suitable meaning for vasectomising... Im a little confused...

And can I understand the last two clauses in this way(because I think the author omit something.and in this case I suppose that "losing someone's manhood would be a suitable meaning for vasectomising " ):

and all the jokes about being a Kept Man are worn away, and they use a word called 'vasectomising' when they are joking.

The context is :

Though sure, there's no denying that the money stuff hasn't helped the marital stuff. "When you're a guy, and a dad," I told Freddy's scarecrow, "and you have to ask your wife to put £5,000 of her bonus into the joint account so that the garage won't refuse your card, and all the jokes about being a Kept Man are worn away, the word is 'vasectomising'..."

Garden time swallowed me up, because the next thing I knew, Lorna was calling me from the patio.

Excerpted from David Mitchell's novel "The Massive Rat":

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/01/david-mitchell-short-story-rat

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This is a figurative use of vasectomise, implying a figurative loss of manhood. The narrator is using the word to speak not of actual physiological impotence but the psychological sense of having lost his masculine identity: the anxiety induced by being dependent on his wife's income, by being subjected to jokes about being a Kept Man, by his wife's reversion to her maiden name, and so forth.

The word is 'vasectomising' because the narrator is advancing a novel metaphor: he is making the ironic point that his anxiety is not quite so extreme that it can be characterized with the usual metaphor, 'castration'. See the Wikipedia article on Castration anxiety.

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  • thank you for your answers! And can I understand the last two clauses in this way(because I think the author omit something.): "and all the jokes about being a Kept Man are worn away, and they use a word called 'vasectomising' when they are joking." And you said:"the narrator is advancing a novel metaphor" . Does this sentence mean: the narrator is creating a novel metaphor ?
    – Lincoln
    Aug 18, 2013 at 2:48
  • And from the point of biology, after a surgery named vasectomy , a male could still have sex with a female but just could not make a female pregnant. So after vasectomy, a male acutally can be manhood.So why vasectomising can imply a figurative loss of manhood?
    – Lincoln
    Aug 18, 2013 at 2:48
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    @GodelSaint a) It's not a joke - or if it is, it's a very sour one. b) Yes - advancing means putting forward. C) While a vasectomy may not impede his erotic performance, it precludes his sexual performance and prevents him from fulfilling the biological and social role of fatherhood. Many men would see this reduction to mere erotic objectivity as demeaning.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Aug 18, 2013 at 3:48

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