British 'man' becomes pregnant

Qwerty what you seem so keen to accuse my views of is gender essentialism. You say that gender essentialism is patriarchal and insulting. And yet you posted the gender essentialist view that the sole explanation for the existence of male dominated society is that men are big and strong.

My suggestion that women's sexed bodies and the status awarded to both those sexed bodies and to women and men themselves are factors in women's understanding of the world is an example of feminist phenomenology. What gets called "gendered embodiment" is a concept central to feminist phenomenology. Your insistence that explorations of gendered embodiment are essentialism suggests to me that your understanding of feminism lacks sophistication and depth.

I'm not a fan of thought experiments but I'm going to indulge in one here for the sake of simplicity.

According to my above suggestion, in a society in which women, our sexed bodies and our time and energy were awarded equal status to that awarded to men (or ideally a society in which the entire concept of status of humans was foreign and or rejected) the value of all childbearing and consequently all children would be perceived equally by women and men.

Concepts such as women and children as chattel, honour killings, family annihilation, the value of a male heir, gendercide, sex selective abortion, prostitution, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, child marriage, rape culture, etc would be entirely foreign to such a society and these forms of male violence would not exist.

Which is a happy thought but unfortunately far from current reality.

Sorry if I seemed patronising, or if I suggested that all feminists think alike. I did try to specify 'third wave feminists', who do tend to have a consensus about gender socialisation. As broad a church as feminism is, I think you have to credit feminists with some common ground, just as you would assume that socialists don't believe in a privatised health service.

My objections were twofold: to the view that the experience of pregnancy means women value life more; and that hormonal differences make men more aggressive. I accused both these views of being essentialist, because they suggest gender asymmetry is independent of social change. Women will always be the ones who will get pregnant and will therefore always value life more; and men will always have higher levels of testosterone and will therefore always be more aggressive. I was disagreeing with these positions because they suggest the possibility of biological identities that are impervious to social change. I was not misrepresenting them at all.

It is insulting and patriarchal (not to mention scientifically questionable) to assert that men are innately or predispositionally more aggressive, or value the lives of their children less than women just because they cannot experience pregnancy.

Why is it still mansplaining when a woman does it?

But obviously I have participated in the derail too, I hold my hand up to that.

And people basically agree with that. But you've argued it in a way that largely misrepresents other people's arguments, and it's very irritating. And you've made several statements which indicate you don't quite grasp what people are saying. But you're doing it in a patronising, mansplaining way, constantly referring to what you think "feminists" think and setting yourself up as some sort of voice of reason. Like no one else ever comes and does that. It's not very ally-like is it? And it's not even the point of the thread.

I have never asked for your sympathy or empathy beachcomber. I don't ask for anyone's sympathy or empathy.

And I have never ducked the fact that men oppress and terrorise women. I fully agree that at this time and for a very long time before they have been the class of people who have done the vast majority of the oppressing and terrorising in the world. All I am arguing is that there is no innate nobility in women or innate violence in men. I feel it is very important to argue that.

I don't know what you think I should do about patriarchy. What can I do?

Frankly, qwerty, I can't be arsed to speculate about "who knows what" and other fruitless, pointless and divorced from reality non realities and thought experiments.

Real shit is happening to real people right now. I find it kind of obscene to repeatedly duck/obfuscate that the way that your posts on this thread do.

Like I said before, I guess it sucks to be of the class of humans that oppress and terrorize.

You will have to forgive my lack of sympathy and empathy on that front I'm afraid.

We might all make progress if hand wringing males who claim to find patriarchy unjust and intolerable did something about it other than mansplaining to feminists.

I guess she mentioned it because its about a maternity policy and the thread is about the reporting of a pregnant man.

It was a nightmare because the pronouns were confusing

Most maternity policies in my very very limited experience include the pregnancy part and it must be difficult to write without the words woman, female, she , her and mother

My work has a maternity policy and a paternity policy

Both of which could feature in a parental handbook

Whether or not it was part of an overall Parental Handbook, there does need to be some clarity around maternity issues as the law is different and relates to the biological reality of pregnancy and maternity. If you can't use the words mother and maternity and father and paternity, it will not be clear for the staff who need it.

The tenor of the posts about don't seem thrilled about.

Why bother mentioning it and saying it was "a nightmare" and it ended up not being called "a maternity policy"

I cant see where anyone does have problem with it

If this was in an employment law context what is the issue of calling it a "Parental Support Handbook"?

I regularly see posts saying it is a shame fathers don't take paternity leave; fathers are never the ones who deal with sick days etc. So what is the issue about having a parental policy rather than a maternity policy?

Clearly there are issues which only apply to the person who is pregnant, which are purely "maternity" but if not related to biological issues, what is wrong with "Parental Support Handbook" ?

No they didn't - good point. I'd forgotten about that. We rolled it together with other related policies and referred to it as the 'Parental Support Handbook' or something along those lines.

Extraordinary Cats.

Cats

Did they actually end up calling it a maternity policy in the end? I guess not.

I had to write a maternity policy for a very, very liberal organisation a couple of years ago. The pronouns were a nightmare. Whatever I wrote, somebody had an issue with it. Think we settled on 'Primary Carer' and 'Secondary Carer'. I was very unnerved to have to remove the word 'mother' from a maternity policy but I was being paid to do a job so...

At one point though, I did sarcastically ask the policy group if we should refer to the parents as 'Reproductive Unit One' and 'Reproductive Unit Two'.

I don't do that job anymore.

Well I guess if political debate didn't involve speculating on future possibilities it would be a bit limited I guess.

Oooh thank you cats

I had completely forgotten what the thread was about

'Woman With Short Hair Gets Pregnant'

What's the point of speculating querty?

If we did not live in a male dominated society, then who knows what proportion of serial killers would still be male.

As we don't have any basis for comparison we can only speculate.

In a male dominated society, the ultimate form of power for some monstrously aberrant men is to take life. Like God.

That's my theory anyway.

Which sex do serial killers tend to be? Who do serial killers' victims overwhelmingly tend to be?

Men. Clearly.

Which sex do serial killers tend to be? Who do serial killers' victims overwhelmingly tend to be?

It seems it rather depends on the maltreatment in question - because when it comes to severe maltreatment, it's men (end of page 10)

Yes I think that's probably true. I don't know. It seems very complicated.

Look, men are more violent than women. This is incontestable. The question is, is that because they were born with an excess of testosterone? Or is it because a culture of male domination and violence exerted an influence on them? I would say the latter. If it's the former, then whatever kind of society we have, there will always be more violent, aggressive men than women. There will always be that general gender asymmetry. I don't think that's the case. I think women can potentially be just as aggressive, competitive and assertive as men - in all the good ways as well as all the bad ways.

Also, it goes without saying that in the extreme examples of mass murders or serial killers/rapists there are presumably lots of other factors that make them so evil. You can't just blame the patriarchy.