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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

British 'man' becomes pregnant

511 replies

slithytove · 08/01/2017 10:50

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/first-british-man-reveal-hes-9582789

Sorry, it's a mirror link

I don't usually post about this stuff, but it's really annoyed me this time.

Now 'men' can get pregnant? So 'men' will need maternity leave, 'men' will need maternity services, probably somehow different to women's.

Is it just me or does the fact they are calling this person a man instead of a transman, allow men (people born as men) to take even more from women under the trans rights umbrella?

Who would it hurt to call this pregnant person a transman?

I guess we should be grateful this person was born as a woman and is therefore socialised to not put themselves first.

OP posts:
RufusTheSpartacusReindeer · 10/01/2017 21:16

I cant see where anyone does have problem with it

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 10/01/2017 21:31

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"

venusinscorpio · 10/01/2017 21:45

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.

RufusTheSpartacusReindeer · 10/01/2017 21:50

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

Beachcomber · 10/01/2017 22:25

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.

qwerty232 · 10/01/2017 23:12

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?

venusinscorpio · 11/01/2017 00:05

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.

venusinscorpio · 11/01/2017 00:06

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

JaxingJump · 11/01/2017 00:11

Why is it still mansplaining when a woman does it?

qwerty232 · 11/01/2017 00:36

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.

Beachcomber · 11/01/2017 06:11

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.

ChocChocPorridge · 11/01/2017 06:58

value the lives of their children less than women just because they cannot experience pregnancy

I think what you're missing here, is that men didn't have any skin in the game. When DP and I had children, he made his deposit and then was done. He was at emotional risk of loosing me, but at no risk at all of losing his life. He could have walked away and the child would still exist.

Children don't just spring into being. Women risk their lives and their health to produce them. Is it really either unreasonable, or essentialist to say that if you've put work and personal risk into getting something, it's likely you'll value it more than someone who hasn't?

HelenDenver · 11/01/2017 07:33

Also, qwerty, beachcomber theorised clearly that the process of pregnancy and birth might be part of the reason or one reason, and cited an example in support.

I suspect there are myriad reasons and hers is an interesting theory that may be a factor. Perhaps the less likely a woman is to die or be injured by pregnancy and birth, the less of a factor it is. Don't know. Still a useful point for discussion, though.

Beachcomber · 11/01/2017 07:59

A key (and feminist) point to what I am saying is that the context within which women produce children is patriarchy.

That is a context within which females, femaleness, female bodies, female time, female energy, female dominated domains, female lived experience, etc are considered and treated as inferior. A context within which women are persecuted for their reproductive capacity to carry and birth babies.

HelenDenver · 11/01/2017 08:18

Very true, Beachcomber.

In discussions about how many men have died in war through history "for the general good", it is forgotten how many women have died in childbirth through history. It's simply not valued.

qwerty232 · 11/01/2017 08:45

Thank you for your response Beachcomber. However, there are problems.

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.

If gender is embodied then gendered differences will always exist. Men and women will always be different - not just on a basic biological level but as gendered identities. In that case, different values will always be inferred from those identities. As you say yourself, women who go through pregnancy have a higher valuation of the life they produce. That is close to saying, in my view, that women have a superior innate capacity for caring and nurturing than men. In that sense, according to your logic, they are valued differently.

However, you believe that in spite of gender identity being embodied, a world is nevertheless possible where men and women are valued differently but awarded equal status. That at some point the honour killings, family annihilation, gendercide, sex selective abortion, prostitution, domestic violence, FGM, child marriage, rape culture etc would just disappear.

The problem is, valuing things different is very close to according them different status.

What I would say is that there will always be systems of status in the world. And there will always be the abuse of power. It's just that organisations of power are never fixed. They change and reconfigure. When communism collapsed new structures of power calcified in its place, for example.

Patriarchy is a system of power that has become stuck for a very long time When it dies out (and it will at some point) then new systems of status will replace it.

To imply that a post-patriarchal future would not feature new status systems and expressions of violence is to imply that women are innately different to men - kinder, more nurturing, more given to cooperation than competition. This is not so. Women are just like men - hugely variable from individual to individual, kind, caring, heroic, magnanimous, selfless, perverted, hateful, power-hungry, sadistic, cruel, merciless, tyrannical, barbarous. In other words human. They are socialised differently, and have different advantages in society so overall patterns of gendered behaviour are apparent, but these patterns are not fixed by nature.

Women are not born more caring or nurturing than men. They are just born into a society dominated by men - in which most of the the great statesman, artists, scientists etc have been men, and most of the most evil people have been men. And they are socialised to believe that this is the case because men are innately more given to painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and serial killing while women. But they're not. We know very well that in history thousands of female Rembrandt's have died without every putting paint to paper because a women's place was considered to be in the kitchen or the bed and they never got the opportunity or even considered the possibility; and I'm sure there were also lots of potential female Jeffrey Dahlmer's and Harold Shipman's to whom it never occurred to put their darkest impulses into practice because they were raised to believe murder and torture is a job for the boys.

`Look at politics and you will see in that in power the few women that gain power are just like men. Some are great and some are not. For every Caroline Lucas there's a Marine Le Pen.

Women do not value life more as a result of being pregnant. They value life more, overall, because they have been socialised over millennia to believe that they are the ones who do all the nurturing and the caring.

Unfortunately 'a society in which the entire concept of status of humans was foreign and or rejected' is never, ever going to be a reality. That's just not how human beings are.

qwerty232 · 11/01/2017 08:46

A key (and feminist) point to what I am saying is that the context within which women produce children is patriarchy.

Yes, I would completely agree with that. And that context can change.

HelenDenver · 11/01/2017 08:47

"Look at politics and you will see in that in power the few women that gain power are just like men"

What the hell does this mean?

HelenDenver · 11/01/2017 08:49

Qwerty

You've done it again: extrapolated from a point beachcomber made to tell her what she believes on a number of topics.

It's deeply annoying and you aren't even doing it to me.

Please cease and desist.

qwerty232 · 11/01/2017 08:50

Sorry Helen typo.

Should have been: 'Look at politics and you will see that the few women who have gained power are just like men"

Beachcomber · 11/01/2017 08:53

Qwerty is labouring under the misapprehension that my point is that men "value the lives of their children less than women just because they cannot experience pregnancy."

When really my suggestion is that in misogynistic patriarchal society men as a class undervalue women and what women do. Pregnancy and childbirth are things women do. As things that women do they are undervalued. This value judgment informs how men as a class also value human life as it is a product of something women do. This may be one of many factors which contribute to men's willingness to inflict violence other human beings. Or it may not.

(I also wonder if it is a factor (or not) in the phenomenon of men abandoning their children and or failing to provide for them.)

YetAnotherSpartacus · 11/01/2017 08:53

Thank you for your response Beachcomber. However, there are problems.

A few problems as you see them. You are not a judge of what is right or wrong although I've noticed that so many men think they have this right

qwerty232 · 11/01/2017 08:54

helen, I'm coming back at Beachcomber with the implications of her views. All my extrapolations are reasonable I think. If you think any are not, please identify which ones and explain exactly why.

qwerty232 · 11/01/2017 08:57

A few problems as you see them. You are not a judge of what is right or wrong

Like everyone else in the world I have an opinion on what is right and wrong, and am gratified when people are persuaded to my view of things.

I could say 'Who appointed you the judge of who is right to say they are right?'

HelenDenver · 11/01/2017 08:59

No, qwerty, not the typo.

What the hell do you mean by "the few women who have gained power are just like men"?

Margaret thatcher, Hillary Clinton, condoleeza rice, Theresa May, Angela merkel, nicola sturgeon, Arlene foster... are all women. With XX chromosomes. Breasts, wombs and vaginas. How are they just like men?