British 'man' becomes pregnant

Another post full of strawmen and misrepresentation (or perhaps misunderstanding, willfull or otherwise) of what I said.

A piece of feminist advice for you - try to listen to and understand what women say rather than bluster on about what you think or arrogantly decide they have implied. Feminists are not generally coy about what they mean, they tend to directly say what they mean. Your posts are jam packed with disagreements with what you want us to be saying rather than what we have actually said, a phenomenon that might be described as prejudice.

You state that phenomenology when applied to feminism is "a statement of the obvious" and yet you have yet to show in your posts that you have grasped what the statement being made is. So perhaps it isn't quite so obvious after all?

I can't see where anyone has said, or is implying, that women and men are stuck in gender roles forever and this can never change due to their biology. I don't understand where you're getting that from querty?

1. The experience of pregnancy means women value life more implies that:

2. Women are naturally more given to caring and nurturing than men. This implies that:

3. Male and female psychology is forever divided by the experience of pregnancy.

All this overall implies that women (who will always be the ones who become pregnant: that cannot be changed) will always, overall, be more caring and nurturing than men. And men, who cannot become pregnant, will always be more likely to value life less - and therefore be violators and killers.

A quick search will show that you are only person who has used the word "predispose" on this thread (in multiple posts).

I said that testosterone increases aggression, activates the amygdala ("lizard brain") and inhibits impulse control. This is fact. And on average men have far more testosterone than women. That is also fact.

I don't know what else you want me to say. If some feminists have agreed somewhere that hormonal differences don't affect behaviour, I cannot agree with that because that is politics turning a blind eye to biological reality. It is similar to what TAs are doing, and I am not in the business of following dogma, whichever side it belongs to.

*predispose not predisposes

I can't see where anyone has said, or is implying, that women and men are stuck in gender roles forever and this can never change due to their biology. I don't understand where you're getting that from querty?

No I'm not saying you said that, and I don't mean to suggest you're stupid. We just disagree. But you did say (and correct me if I'm wrong) that biological differences in male neurochemistry predisposes men to be rapists and killers. That's pretty iffy I think.

Stick around and you will learn to differentiate between arguments.

You will also see, hopefully, that we are not stupid and actually would not say stuff like "Men can't help being rapists and killers, poor dears. We have to accept them that way".

Thanks Cote.

Welcome to MN, by the way, qwerty.

Feminist phenomenology holds the position that being-in-the-world is not an abstract condition--without sex or gender. At the most obvious level, this leads to a focus on gendered embodiment and its impact on subjectivity. From these beginnings, feminist phenomenology clarifies how sex and gender impacts one’s experiences and understandings of the world, broadening to explore the social political consequences.

Well, yes of course gender impacts on how we understand ourselves and the world. That is just a statement of the obvious.

The question is, are those understandings we have of ourselves as gendered subjects immutable? Or can they change?

You seem to be implying that they can't. That women will always be more natural carers (or have more of a propensity to value life more) because they become pregnant. I don't agree with that. And it does seem essentialist to me. I'm not saying that to catch you out or anything, only because that is what you seem to be implying.

No qwerty. You want it to be essentialism so that you can dismiss it without actually considering it or properly thinking about it.

Have you read the link I posted above?

And what Cote just said above isn't essentialism either.

Well I'm sorry but it is.

Yes, men have higher levels of testosterone which affects aggression and impulse control. But there is obviously a spectrum in both men and women, which means there are also outliers as well as mild-mannered meek men and highly aggressive women.

How come there are outliers and a spectrum? If all men have higher levels of testosterone then they will all be latently, if not manifestly, more aggressive won't they? They will all have a baseline of aggression independent of environment. And we all know that's not true. We all know that in spite of general, socialised patterns of behaviour schools are full of lots of boys who would not say boo to a goose and would rather read poetry than engage in competitive sports; and that there are girls who hospitalise their opponents with hockey sticks.

There is no biological connection between the physical condition of being male and violent and dominative psychology. To say otherwise is extremely reactionary and demeaning to both men and women.

Men are manifestly more physically and sexually violent, no mistake. But that has nothing to do with their inborn biological characteristics.

And furthermore, the way in which aggression is expressed by the sexes varies massively due to patriarchal norms. You just need to watch the different ways girls and boys bully to see this. Male bullying tends to be overt, physical, direct; whereas girls tend to bully in much more emotionally and psychologically subtle ways.

Welcome to MN, by the way, qwerty.

And what Cote just said above isn't essentialism either.

"This really is a novel experience. I've never found myself arguing against neuro-essentialist theories of male dominance with a feminist before"

So you thought "feminist" means we all have to think they same stuff and act the same way. How odd. I'm happy to have helped widen your horizons.

Having said that, you are only shocked into clutching your pearls there because you think I am saying "Men can't help it, they are made to be wife beaters and rapists". I am not.

I don't have the time to find loads of studies for you to read at this time, but take a look at this one for now.

Neural Mechanisms of the Testosterone–Aggression Relation: The Role of Orbitofrontal Cortex
The findings suggest that testosterone increases the propensity toward aggression because of reduced activation of the neural circuitry of impulse control and self-regulation.

The correlation between testosterone and aggression are extremely well established in animals except humans. You don't see the correlation hold well in people because we have laws, accepted modes of behaviour, etc. So yes, the biological basis is there and it does nobody any good to deny physical reality. However, it doesn't mean that bad behaviour should be excused or accepted. Just like I won't be acquitted on grounds of PMT if I take DH's head off one day, people with higher testosterone levels don't get carte blanche to do whatever they want.

Culling and simplifying other people's arguments to the point where they look silly is a form of Straw Man.

Ain't that the truth.

Oh for goodness sake qwerty, forget about essentialism for 2 minutes and actualy think about feminism.

You are here on a feminist board on a female dominated forum so do us all a favour and consider that there are other lenses with which to view the world than the male one. There is for example the feminist lens/worldview/perspective. And that feminist lens, in order to exist as a female centric way of thinking about the world has necessitated the development of concepts, words, ideas, philosophies, etc that allow us to escape male domination of thought processes. A concrete example of this is when Mary Daly makes up the words she needs to express what she wants to say about the female condition because those words to not exist in male dominated language despite the fact that the phenomenon Daly wishes to talk about exists.

Talking about sexed and or gendered experiences of the world we live in is not essentialism. Analysis of sexed and or gendered experiences is not essentialism. Recognition that our lived experiences take place within the context of our sexed existence is not essentialism.

You seem to use "essentialism" as what feminists call a "gotcha". The point of feminist discussion is not to catch people out and point score. It is to explore, analyse, understand, share, consciousness raise, etc.

I said that I am coming at this discussion from a feminist phenomenological angle. An angle which is a little more sophisticated than categorizing everything as either being essentialist or nonessentialist.

Feminist phenomenology holds the position that being-in-the-world is not an abstract condition--without sex or gender. At the most obvious level, this leads to a focus on gendered embodiment and its impact on subjectivity. From these beginnings, feminist phenomenology clarifies how sex and gender impacts one’s experiences and understandings of the world, broadening to explore the social political consequences.

philpapers.org/browse/feminist-phenomenology

"you're suggesting a world in which males are all walking round trying to keep their testosterone fuelled desire to rape, pillage and under in check."

No I'm not. Culling and simplifying other people's arguments to the point where they look silly is a form of Straw Man.

"If there was the case, then there would not be any naturally meek, mild and gentle men (of which there are lots) and hyper-agressive women (of which there also plenty)."

That doesn't follow at all and is an example of Non Sequitur. You really should try to avoid logical fallacies.

Yes, men have higher levels of testosterone which affects aggression and impulse control. But there is obviously a spectrum in both men and women, which means there are also outliers as well as mild-mannered meek men and highly aggressive women.

Rape, pillage and murder. Sorry, this auto-predict thingy

CoteDAzur. Theories which ascribe aggression to testosterone, like theories which ascribe depression to serotonin levels while ignoring all the environmental factors that cause people's levels of serotonin levels to fall, are generally rubbish. Or hugely simplistic. Studies tend to show that testosterone levels interact in a highly complex way with an array of other neurochemical and hormonal agents in response to an environment, or show that there is not any simplistic link between testosterone or aggression at all. As an article on one study states:

For example: regardless of their gender, the most violent prisoners have higher levels of testosterone than their less violent peers. Yet scientists hypothesize that this violence is just one manifestation of the much more biologically and reproductively salient goal of dominance.

It then asks the very important question:

Which is to say, are high-testosterone males more likely to become violent criminals, or does being a violent criminal raise a man's level of testosterone?

No one really knows the answer, but a growing body of evidence suggests that testosterone is as much the result of violence as its cause. Indeed, both winning a sporting match and beating an opponent at chess can boost testosterone levels. (On the other hand, losing a sporting match, growing old and becoming obese all reduce levels of testosterone.)

So in other words, the way our nervous systems work is as much a RESULT of environmental factors as an innate predictor of behaviour or a determinant of behavioural propensity.

Really, you're suggesting a world in which males are all walking round trying to keep their testosterone fuelled desire to rape, pillage and under in check. If there was the case, then there would not be any naturally meek, mild and gentle men (of which there are lots) and hyper-agressive women (of which there also plenty).

Analogising the behavioural predispositions of human beings to growing hair is silly.

People did try to explain the dominance of blacks by whites in terms of brain differences. And they were racist.

This really is a novel experience. I've never found myself arguing against neuro-essentialist theories of male dominance with a feminist before. It's supposed to be the other way round.

I'm also not talking about caring about one's own children. I'm talking about having an understanding of the value of the product of women's work.

But surely 'having and understanding of the value and product of women's work (children)' is 'caring about one's children'? If you understand the value of something then you care about it more. Or are more given to.

And could this ever be otherwise? Could pregnancy ever not be women's work? If it can't, then you are positing a form of essentialism. Or at least you are saying that women's status as reproductive labourers is fixed, completely independent of social conditions, as is their maternal instinct.

As women will always have a higher valuation of the children they produce, then it would make sense to designate them the natural child-rearers would it not? I thought this is what feminism was against?

And as I have said what feels like about 20 times, I am also not talking about anything innate, intrinsic or essentialist.

I am talking about a perspective as a result of one's experience of one's position in the world, within society. I am talking about lived experiences. I am coming at this from a feminist phenomenological angle.

Perhaps this isn't coming across because in the west where we have access to toilets, sanpro, painkillers, good diet and healthcare, contraception, safe abortion (not everywhere), etc we are protected from the brunt of the hard work of child having in a world that undervalues girls and women.

Nooka, I'm not arguing that pregnancy and childbirth are the most important factor in how women think about life.

I'm also not talking about caring about one's own children. I'm talking about having an understanding of the value of the product of women's work.

In patriarchy, women's work, time and energy is systematically under valued. Female dominated domains are considered to be less important and inferior to male dominated domains - no matter what those domains are. What gives them their status is which sex they are associated with. Perhaps the female work of carrying and birthing babies is the unique exception to that rule but I doubt it and I see no evidence of that.

I am not in any way talking about loving, nurturing or caring about children. I am talking about work and the status and value that it is awarded within a society in which one sex's work/energy/time/contribution is undervalued and the other sex's is overvalued.

As I have said before I am also talking about class. I am not talking about your or your children's father's individual feelings and experiences of having your own children.

An example. In societies in which blatant gendercide takes place, unwanted female babies are drowned in buckets on birth. These societies, as all societies, are male dominated. This gendercide strikes me as a total devaluing of the female work of pregnancy and childbirth. As well of course as a total devaluing of human life (female babies are human).

The Women in the US that I mentioned upthread spoke specifically about their feelings of anger about the devaluing of creating life. They spoke about this in addition to their anger and sadness over the children they had loved and raised being killed. They also were specific about wider society not caring due to a lack of value placed on black lives. Their anger wasn't only about love it was about value.