British 'man' becomes pregnant

Just because women understand the labour in creating a product doesn't mean they have an inherent desire to carry out the maintenance or development of that product.

You don't have to be able to drive a car to work in a car factory.

I think it is a headline because it is a big and blatant "fuck you" to women.

And that's where the success and popularity of transgender ideology lies - in that it is a big "fuck you" to women.

I find this sort of thing more sinister than just "click-bait" although of course it is that too.

I agree Prawn; I was just responding to Jaxing about the headline.

Thread on this issue in AIBU is going down the obvious route, sigh.

I'm not fussed about the headline. It's click bait, the modern equivalent of a freakshow, except that in this case the supposed freak is no freak, just a woman wearing the equivalent of a false beard.

What bothers me is the blurring of facts, particularly when it comes to crime. Maternity services will, I'm guessing, not be reduced because a few transmen have babies. However the number of transwomen who have been jailed for violent and sex crime is easily enough to distort figures, giving a picture of an alarming rise among women offenders that is entirely false.

The other angle that infuriates me is the headlines we keep seeing about. "first woman to..." when it isn't a woman, it's a bloke.

It's a headline because trans activists have been shoving this stuff down people's throats until the 'a trans woman is a woman, a trans woman has always been a woman, a trans woman has never benefitted from male privilege' became the only acceptable viewpoint. It's a tiny proportion of the population who seemingly have no problem being heard and don't care who they step on.

It's a headline because of us right here right now. Discussing this to death. Surely that is obvious.

Yes, exactly, Flogging.

Why is it a headline at all though, Cote? Twenty years ago *she'd have been considered mentally ill and forced strongly advised to have psychiatric treatment; not feted in the media with this ridiculous non story.

• Awaits deletion for calling a spade a spade othering...

I'm getting very tired of Qwerty misunderstanding what other posters have said too, Beachcomber. I didn't have any problem understanding what you wrote. We seem to be spending more time clarifying our posts and explaining basic feminism than is reasonable or should be necessary on a feminist board.

Going back to OP:

Woman Who Would Rather Be A Man Gets Pregnant Like Women Have Often Done Since The Dawn Of Time

... but I guess that doesn't make as surprising a headline.

You're saying that because women do the reproductive labour they have a better understanding of children's needs.

No I'm not. Yet again you fail to read and or understand what I have written. As a consequence the rest of your post is a strawman.

Am I going to have to post the definition of "value", "work", "pregnancy" and "childbirth"?

Why are you so keen to misrepresent what I say? I have already asked you to stop doing it. Did you fail to read that properly too?

I'm finding your arguing against things I haven't said extremely tedious.

In Marxist analysis, the oppressor class seeks to control the means of production. In feminist analysis, the oppressor class seeks to control the means of reproduction. I really am talking about the work and value involved in making a human baby.

Yes but Marxists argue that capitalist systems of production can be changed. How would you suggest that the patriarchal system is changed so that reproductive labour is no longer a 'uniquely female experience'? You cannot can you?

So that is a problem. You're saying that because women do the reproductive labour they have a better understanding of children's needs. Then someone could quite reasonably say 'well, if women have that maternal sensibility then it is quite reasonable that they do all the child-rearing'.

The difference is that with capitalism it is not inevitable that someone performs a particular type of labour. There is no inevitability to working in a factory being exploited by a ruling class who own the means of production. This is the whole point of Marxism. But if you are going to define giving birth as a form of labour then you have a problem. Because you're never going to have a world where women do not give birth and therefore are not identified with that labour. Unless we evolve into hermaphrodites.

I'm presuming you would agree that one goal of feminism is one in which child-rearing is NOT a uniquely female experience? But you are contradicting that goal (or so it seems to me) by suggesting it should continue to be one - or that it is inevitable that it will continue to be one.

Apologies if I have got you wrong.

Agent, if you have a ferret round on Everyday Feminism under the topic of transgenderism you will get a comprehensive education on how to centre men in your feminism. It's grim.

Beachcomber the concept that women's labour in reproduction is fundamental to feminism is well accepted. Men oppress women because of our biology. I am surprised that anyone would argue against that while claiming to be feminist.

Sigh.

Nowhere on this thread have I argued that women have an innate affinity with children.

What I have said is that women as a class provide the labour necessary in making human babies. This is a uniquely female life experience (decades of menstruation are part of that labour BTW). Menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth are female lived experiences. Females actually do these things, in real life.

It is generally accepted that one's lived experiences affect one.

The resistance on this thread to the idea that women are affected by the lived experience of being of the sex class that provides the time and energy required to make a human life is utterly bizarre. I repeat I am talking about the work/investment/time/energy/risk involvement in pregnancy and childbirth. I am not talking about love, childcare, parenting, bringing children up, affinity with children, innate qualities or any of the other things mentioned by other posters but which I have not mentioned because they are not what I'm talking about.

Feminism is concerned with class politics in a similar way to Marxism.

In Marxist analysis, the oppressor class seeks to control the means of production. In feminist analysis, the oppressor class seeks to control the means of reproduction. I really am talking about the work and value involved in making a human baby.

If one hopes to understand what patriarchy is it is vital to understand that in patriarchy menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth are considered "Wifework".

I think women know that our patriarchal value depends on how our offspring are valued. And we also know, as I said above, the real value of what goes into creating that offspring

It really isn't an outlandish idea in feminism to acknowledge the particular link in value that women and children have that men and children don't. Note that I am talking about value, not love or nurturing or parenting. I'm talking about worth, value, status in a socio-political hierarchy.

I agree with you here Beachcomber - and Lass when she implies that women do not have an 'innate affinity' with children. This is the point. It is not innate.

No doubt women, in very general terms, are more attuned to the needs of children as they are disproportionately tasked with raising them within 'the social political hierarchy' you refer to. This is just like saying that train drivers are overall more invested in the maintenance of trains than people who don't drive trains. But that is very different from suggesting that a particular class of people are born with a greater concern for the British rail transport system. Indeed it would be politically very controversial to suggest that a particular species of people are innately disposed to a particular kind of labour.

If you are arguing that women have a natural (or inborn) affinity with children that men do not have, then that is very controversial on feminist grounds, because it implies a woman's status is biologically pre-determined - as, by further implication, is the male oppression of them.

Woolf and Dworkin both write about how the value of children and the value of women are linked in patriarchy. They come at it from the other side - that patriarchy only values women as much as it values the children they can produce.

In "A Room of One's Own" Woolf writes about the male view: "that when children cease to be altogether desirable, women cease to be altogether necessary".

And in Right-Wing Women, Dworkin writes: "For women life is in the uterus and the well-being of women - economic, social, sexual - depends on what the value of the uterus is, how it will be used and by whom, whether or not it will be protected and why. Whatever her race or class - however much she is privileged or hated for one or both - a woman is reductible to her uterus. This is the essence of her political condition as a woman."

I think women know that our patriarchal value depends on how our offspring are valued. And we also know, as I said above, the real value of what goes into creating that offspring

It really isn't an outlandish idea in feminism to acknowledge the particular link in value that women and children have that men and children don't. Note that I am talking about value, not love or nurturing or parenting. I'm talking about worth, value, status in a socio-political hierarchy.

Coming back to the OP of the thread - what I say above is very relevant to why "man gives birth" is a headline that pisses so many feminists off.

I'm not comparing loving and nurturing a child to cleaning floors.

I'm talking about the work involved in pregnancy and childbirth. I'm talking about the time and effort put into bringing a new life into the world. Only women put in that time and effort (I'm talking about pregnancy and labour/childbirth).

Note how we actually call it "labour". The French call it "le travail".

I first came across the whole idea when writing a piece about gang violence in black communities in the US. The women of the communities were very vocal about what a waste of a life young men dying through mindless stabbings and shootings was, and, how such deaths were not only sad to them but also deeply disrespectful of motherhood. The low value placed on human life made them angry because some woman made each of those lives. Some woman had put time, effort, work and risk into the creation of these people who were being killed with very little regard.

It made an impression on me and it is something I have been thinking about ever since.

Nooka, all I am saying is that I think the people who do the heavy lifting of making new humans value that heavy lifting and value the result of that type of work

As someone who did "the heavy lifting" I find the above statement, well I don't want to be rude, but I'm struggling to come up with anything other than ridiculous.

It's a bit like how if you are the one that always sweeps and mops the floors you will be more invested in keeping them clean and less likely to walk over clean floors in dirty shoes or brush crumbs from the table onto clean floors. That doesn't mean that you should be the one cleaning the floors or that you have an innate affinity with floor cleaning or that no one else appreciates a clean floor. It just means that generally, when you have invested in something you value it.

I also think comparing a clean floor to loving and nurturing a child a bizarre comparison.

There is nothing INSIDE men (from the moment they are born) that makes them any more violent than women.

Not sure about that, I thought higher levels of testosterone was linked to aggression? I have read about a few trans men who have become more aggressive after starting hormone therapy also.

So not from the moment they are born, but pretty much from puberty onwards...

Thank you qwerty.

Nooka, all I am saying is that I think the people who do the heavy lifting of making new humans value that heavy lifting and value the result of that type of work.

It's a bit like how if you are the one that always sweeps and mops the floors you will be more invested in keeping them clean and less likely to walk over clean floors in dirty shoes or brush crumbs from the table onto clean floors. That doesn't mean that you should be the one cleaning the floors or that you have an innate affinity with floor cleaning or that no one else appreciates a clean floor. It just means that generally, when you have invested in something you value it.

I may be wrong - I'm putting forward an idea that helps me explain male violence to myself. It's an idea that I have explored with quite a few of the men in my life. They were interesting discussions.

Anyway I think I should stop going on about this now as although it is about birthing babies it is probably derailing the thread.

I shouldn't have spoken on your behalf in that way while you weren't there to speak for yourself. Again I apologise.

Well thank you for that apology.

If it is meant then do me a favour - read my posts properly. (The questions you ask in your post of 21.48 in which you quote me suggest to me that you haven't properly read the words of mine that you have quoted.)

I'm happy to clarify my posts but in order to clarify the one you quote I would just say the same thing again and suggest that you read it - that would be a waste of mine time and yours and clutter up the thread with repetition.