British 'man' becomes pregnant

Attention seeking idiot.

Female who dresses/presents in a masculine way gets pregnant. This is not news.

So true, Beachcomber.

Well, if women are indeed not a nurturing, caring, passive homogenous mass but human beings just like men, then there is no reason to suppose this. To suggest otherwise is to buy into the patriarchal myth that women are innately different to men on an emotional and psychological level.

IMO women, as a class, have a better understanding than men as a class of the value of human life, all human life. And that is because we do the actual work of creating that life.

The patriarchal myth is not that women and men are different but that we have different value.

Also it's very difficult to unpick the entitlement men experience and see what is innate given that it's based on thousands of years of women being second class citizens.

I've said on another thread recently, I think one of the major fears men have about feminism is that women might get in charge, and start doing to men what men have been doing to women and girls for thousands of years.

YY to this ChocChocPorridge. To which I always want to say "don't judge others by yourselves".

It is very difficult to quantify or measure trafficking and modern slavery in a meaningful way. But I do believe it's a huge problem, and in the case of sexual exploitation hugely gendered. I don't think we can indulge any thought experiments about what would happen if women were in charge. Because they aren't and never have been, so we have no idea.

It's not that I don't see your point qwerty - it's that I don't agree with it.

Men oppress girls and women because we are female - that is that we are the sex that carries and births babies.

Men's size and strength helps them to be able to oppress girls and women but it isn't the reason for that oppression. Patriarchy is a sex based social order not a strength or size based social order.

Another thing that helps men oppress girls and women is their willingness to be violent. Girls and women are subjugated through violence and the threat of violence.

It is important to be honest and clear about the above if we are sincere in a desire for girls and women to be liberated from sex based oppression. We must name it for what it is and resist obfuscation or shying away from uncomfortable truths.

Which is why so many of us have an issue with "man has a baby!". Men never have and never will have babies. Men oppress women because women and only women have babies.

fortune.com/2015/03/03/women-led-companies-perform-three-times-better-than-the-sp-500/

Fortune is an OK source I think.

Not sure why it matters? Are you suggesting that we hold female CEOs to some higher standard - that they have to both be profitable, and somehow better for all their employees too? I'm saying there's certainly no evidence they are worse, but on the contrary, that they are better, by the measurements used to assess the performance of CEOs.

It is absolutely shocking and it is incredible - indeed almost weird - how little you hear about it.

I guess for most of us in western countries you only come into contact with or are exposed to the reality of modern trafficking if you are engaging in illegal or elicit activities - prostitution, cannabis farming, gang masters, for example - and you're hardly going to broadcast it to your wider social circle. It's 'easy' for the average British person not to see, unless they work in law enforcement or another related job like child protection. I have a friend who works in one of these roles and they come across a lot of vulnerable and trafficked adult workers by happenstance. It's really unsettling when she talks about her work, because it is happening right under our noses within half a mile of where we live. It really does go on in plain sight.

It is absolutely shocking and it is incredible - indeed almost weird - how little you hear about it.

It was in a magazine which I don't have to hand. And I agree it's questionable. However there are globally 20-30 million human slaves and around 80% of slavery is estimated to involve sexual exploitation. I would imagine that would exceed the number of American and European colonial slaves in the 1700's. Could be wrong though.

Qwerty - I'd be really interested in the source for that trafficked women/children vs slavery. DH and I were just discussing it & wondered how you'd estimate or measure the scale of current trafficking. We're assuming there are good historical records for slaves, as there would be for any other traded commodity at that time.

It's almost like short hair and a preference for trousers, or even "gender identity" aren't a reliable barrier to conception. It's almost like biology is the thing that's real, and gender is made up bullshit

Who'd have thunk?

What evidence is there that female CEO's increase the performance of their companies? And how do you define 'performance'? An increase in the wages of the companies' lowest paid employees and it's contribution towards a more prosperous society? Or an increase in the private wealth of the CEO and the companies' shareholders?

Not aware of many multinational CEO's, male or female, giving a shit about the former.

Violence isn't just physical. It can be political, social and economic

It can indeed. The vast majority of people aren't going to be the head of Goldman-Sachs of course. The evidence we have to work on right now, is that female CEOs increase performance of those companies, that micro loans to women in poverty to start businesses greatly improves the life of both those women, and the people around them. That if you reduce economic imbalance, then social violence is reduced.

The trick will be to stop once women are equal, rather than go all the way to female domination - of course since we're no-where near that yet, I think that we can keep pushing forward.

Of course women commit less violent crime. Because of their disempowerment and anatomical differences they don't have the same opportunity to. Presumably though if you put a woman at the head of a company like Goldman-Sachs she would be no less likely to mistreat her employees or commit fraud than a man? Violence isn't just physical. It can be political, social and economic.

Prawn I'm not sure.

I don't know how old you are, but how much better are things really? I recently read (and I don't know if this is true) that the number of women and female children being sex trafficked exceeds the number of slaves at the height of the slave trade. That is a staggering statistic. And this is just one woman's perspective, but my baby boomer mother insists women are now far more objectified than they were when she was young. In certain respects things are better. A particular social class of women in the West have far more opportunities than they're grandmothers could have even dreamed of. It is no longer legal to rape your wife and you are no longer locked up in any infirmary if you don't sign your life away to a man. All unquestionably good things. But whether aggregate female oppression is overall worse throughout the world than it was in, say, 1950?...I actually don't know. The sex industry is now one of the biggest business in the world and as more women and flee conflict zones and countries destabilised by climate change induced catastrophes, more and more will fall into exploitation. Sexual abuse will become of the biggest global industries.

then there is no reason to suppose this

Except there is. It wouldn't be a direct switch replacement, it would be an evolution, and what is self-evident in the world, right now, is that women commit far, far less violent crime. That if you educate and empower women, then societies become better for boys, girls, woman and men.

Since this is where we're starting from, not some blank slate, flip of a coin, who's in charge - yes, we can say that with great confidence, feminism, female empowerment, will make the world a better place for everyone

Queen: Of course societies can improve, and the degree to which particular expressions of oppression manifest themselves vary from culture to culture, for all sorts of complex reasons. But oppression exists in all culture.

Furthermore, we need to be vigilant against reversals in social progress - which can happen at any time. (The recent resurgence of fascism throughout the West and the election of Trump is a case in point). It is mistake to complacently fall for the enlightenment myth that social progress is an inevitable upward trajectory towards a utopian end. Civilized order is always fragile and progress can always go into reverse. Unfortunately.

As for me trying to suggest that attempts to foster equality are pointless because women will be just as bad...I think equality can only have any kind of value within a broader moral paradigm. Winning power for its own sake will not bring about any kind of improvement in human societies. Numerous revolutions in which the revolutionaries have ended behaving as badly or worse than the oppressors bear this out. But of course more equal and harmonious relations between the sexes would be a good thing - as, it goes without saying, would be as less rape, sex slavery, child abuse etc etc as possible - an achievable goal that should occupy the full efforts of those who have the power to make a difference. The same goes for any project concerned with making human life happier and less subject to agony and abuse. A utopia in which reversions never take place or none of these things exist to any extent at all is not possible however.

As for perhaps women not being as bad as men...Well, if women are indeed not a nurturing, caring, passive homogenous mass but human beings just like men, then there is no reason to suppose this. To suggest otherwise is to buy into the patriarchal myth that women are innately different to men on an emotional and psychological level.

I don't agree with you, Qwerty. What's acceptable male behaviour varies massively across cultures and at my advanced age I can compare the attitudes of my DPs generation to those of my young adult DC, their cousins and their friends. How DC are raised makes all the difference and each generation is less sexist than the one before. Of course there are still yobs and Neanderthals, just as there are people who are happy to commit other crimes, but the atmosphere in the UK is far more female friendly than in many other countries or when compared to the UK in the 1960s when I was a child.

We are moving towards women's liberation and, as feminist views become more mainstream, more is being done to improve the life chances of women and girls across the globe. Progress is not fast, but it is happening.

However it is only through class analysis that sexism can be measured. If woman ceases to be a measure of material reality and instead becomes no more than an adopted identity then we lose the tools to analyse our oppression.

Yes. A lot of the fear of feminists / women by certain men and groups of men is a fear of reversal - it's projection. They assume that women feel about men the same way men feel about women. It's interesting.

penetrative appendages

Women do have penetrative appendages. We rarely use them to sexually assault people though.

And actually qwerty, I agree, there is, and will always be a set of humanity that are jerks. The point of society is trying to minimise the effect of those people.

I've said on another thread recently, I think one of the major fears men have about feminism is that women might get in charge, and start doing to men what men have been doing to women and girls for thousands of years. The Handmaid's tale isn't a dystopian future - every element is happening to women right now, somewhere in the world.

It's this sort of bollocks - pregnant man, ffs - that makes it clear that the T doesn't belong to the LGB. The first three just want to be left alone to be true to themselves. They require no third party intervention, medical or otherwise, and do not require validation. If I told a gay man he wasn't gay he'd think I was an idiot. He wouldn't tell me I'd committed an act of violence by failing to reinforce his sexual preference.

The T is based on factual untruths. Rather than be true to themselves, they want to adopt someone else's identity and demand that the rest of us collude in this nonsense. If you're pregnant you cannot possibly be a man. Trying to force people to utter what they know is a lie: that a man can be pregnant, corrupts communication. It's a serious matter, and as PPs have remarked, it will have far-reaching effects.

Frustrating though it is, this issue seems to me to be the most pressing facing feminists today.

Someone posted on MN about this within the last six months. I can't imagine it's particularly common...

Attention seeking to try to get some money by selling the story to the paper; totally legit.

I cannot reconcile this... there is no point at which the spheres overlap- pregnancy and being a man.

I also think saying well let's not bother supporting women who are oppressed because if they get a voice they might be just as bad as the men so why bother...

Maybe they won't be just as bad as the men? Maybe they will... It's worth finding out, surely?

In some matters it is highly unlikely that women will be just as bad as the men ie sex crimes. Someone said one way of stopping the sexual abuse carried out by NGOs and which goes largely unpunished / covered up would be to make them all women. It's an interesting point. Both men and women in the west have the money and wherewithall to go overseas to sexually exploit impoverished children, for example. But strangely it's almost all men who do this.

This needs to be addressed honestly rather than playing with thought experiments that in a totally equal world women would perpetrate these crimes at the same rates as men so why bother.