'Pregnancy is a choice' 'Pregnancy is not an illness', 'to help the recession we should cut all maternity benefits'

There are a lot of things that are not illness.

So lets see disability benefits cut for those who are blind, deaf, missing limbs etc.

Lets see an end to the NHS giving treatment for erectile dysfunction.

Birth rates dropping in this country anyway and the immigrants are not going to come forever to work for crap pay.

V sorry to hear that Lunatic but glad that you are still with us and able to slag off men make good points on Mumsnet.

Definition of 'illness' from thefreedictionary.com:

Noun 1. illness - impairment of normal physiological function affecting part or all of an organism

Yep, that sounds like my pregnancies.

If it makes you ill, it's an illness.

Foreign invading body causing ill health.

given that you are pg - the whole thing takes on the appearance of bullying behaviour. it would be like me saying to a colleague on long term sick that i thought we shouldn't have sick bens....

get proof if you want to take this to HR.

Or do these blokes want women not to have children? Would that be their preference? How do they think that would work out then?

They weren't the public sector sods who did a brainstorm and suggested the Pope should open an abortion clinic, are they? (offensive on SOOOOOO many levels).

Do think you need to take this further at work.

Pregnancy can go swimmingly, but can make you very very ill. (Labour could end up in major surgery etc). Let's not let anyone have free antenatal care and see if our maternal death rates match those of Malawi. Wonder if those women believe that there is no risk in pregnancy?

1100 in 100,000 in Malawi.
7 in 100,000 in UK.

i think workplaces need not only to avoid real discrimination, but also the appearance of discrimination. Saying that women don't deserve mat bens has the definite appearance of discrimination (for the reason below - couples have children, only women get PG).

what is their opinion of paternity pay?

is this a bulletin board type thing or an instant message thing? If the former then please, please, please keep copies of it all, in case you ever need to prove all this.

I was treated badly by my employer at the end of a pregnancy. I had had similar comments to some of these made to me face to face by various colleagues over the years. If I had had these in writing it would have put me in a stronger position to take some kind of action.

pregnancy related illness can be serious - things can go horribly wrong really fast

some people i know have ended up in hospital for things that (were they not pregnant) they wouldn't even have been likely to take time off for (think UTI getting into kidneys..)

if seasickness was going to cause them to go into premature labour, they'd probably take time off for it too.

Oh it's an internety work thingy, not a face to face thingy

I cannot believe that a load of men sat with a pregnant woman and said these things to her!

I mean aside from discrimination etc, what about a bit of bloody tact? What a total bunch of bastard cocks.

As for the attitudes though - pregnancy is a choice and pregnancy is not an illness are things which are often stated on MN. (Usually on threads about seats on teh underground, IME). So not just confined to the men that you work with.

Honestly your workmates are insensitive wankers, even forgetting whether they are talking any sense or not IYSWIM.

'pregnancy is a choice' - No! No! No! when I hear people say this I want to resort to violence.

sex = pregnancy, I wonder how many of your colleagues are virgins?

Do they wish THEIR mothers hadn't 'chosen' to have them?

'pregnancy is not an illness'

-I'm in 2 minds with this one. Pregnancy is comparable to illness in some ways (sickness, immobility, surgery recovery) but unlike it in others (a normal pregnancy is a healthy state of being)

'to help the recession we should cut all maternity benefits'

-do these people understand that maternity benefits are CONTRIBUTION-BASED benefits, people get them because they have paid into the NI system

Bet these sods all gladly accepted their child benefit when they were children (or their parents did on their behalf), enjoyed a free education system, free university education (if they are over 40 ish) and now need to pull it from all the undeserving poor.

Wonder what their wives would say to this? (If any of them are married?)

They put all this in writing? Your employer has a legal obligation to act - not only to pull the thread, but to warn people posting on it in those terms, and provide training to ensure they are aware of their legal obligations.

I should confine your response to drawing the attention of your HR dept to the thread with a request that they take appropriate steps as you are offended by the content.

I would have taken that one on too, I'm afraid. I just think they are completely ignorant and haven't remotely begun to think through what they are saying. I would enjoy rapidly and systematically dismantling their argument. It sounds like the sort of thing certain kinds of men like to say just to wind women up when, actually, they know it's a pile of crap.

If you are in the public sector you will have some equal opps guidelines and you really ought to ensure they are enforced. Are you a union member? You should be.

There's no way a publicly-funded organisation should be allowed to operate in the sort of environment you describe.

As for drain on public funds - I hope they are as diligent in ensuring they are fully occupied during their working hours (sounds like it if they've got time to have these sorts of discussions....) so as not to 'take from the State' in a unwarranted manner!?

it is a couple's choice to have children or not but it is NOT a woman's choice to bear those children.

until a family can choose for the father to bear the children then there is no choice.

are the people saying these things fathers? if so, i'm disgusted.

however, i do have some small amount of time for those of either sex who are really serious about giving up the opportunity to have children in order to reduce population growth and working out a way to do this without the economy collapsing.