British 'man' becomes pregnant

[slithytove]

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.

At least I hope I haven't explained women's experience of oppression to them. If I have, that is wrong. Please draw my attention to any example of this in my posts.

I think I do understand Beachcomber's position - that within a patriarchal society gender is embodied.

But where (I think) Beach and I disagree is on the question of whether an embodied gendered identity is permanent, or trans-historical. My view is that it isn't. It could change.

In other words, in my view gender identity is embodied but that embodiment is a social phenomenon. Particular values are assigned to the experience of pregnancy, or a man's penis, by a society. It is not something that is biologically inevitable in all possible structures of power. There could be a society, theoretically, in which pregnancy is completely divested of all its scared meanings. One in which women do not value children anymore than men. To say otherwise would imo be essentialist (unless I have understood essentialism wrongly).

Qwerty you are boring everyone now and you have no right to demand that your questions are answered. You must know that? Perhaps try listening to yourself of you can't be arsed to listen to anyone on this thread.

Ok, I'll go.

Perhaps just start a different thread? Either in FWR or not. Then posters can engage if they wish to given that this is a huge derail for this thread.

Believe me you don't understand it.

The point is not that within a patriarchal society gender is embodied.

It is that embodiment is sexed and society is patriarchal.

You are making the basic error of confusing sex and gender role and to confound things further you are lobbing "gender identity" into the mix up as well. This is basic stuff, feminism 101. You don't have a hope of understanding my feminist framed point until your grasp of the founding concepts and how they are used improves.

I'm sorry I really don't understand - you're right.

Let's forget gender identity. You say embodiment is sexed. In your view, does embodiment have to be sexed in the same way in all possible societies? Could there be a society where there is a different kind of sexed embodiment?

In other words, is the sexed embodiment determined by society, or is it naturally inevitable?

Aside from the issue of the thread itself, or the derail, have you actually got any sense of appropriate online behaviour, Qwerty? Because if you scroll back through this thread, there are huge stretches where every other post is by you, and some patches where there's strings of 3 or 4 consecutive posts by you. On a thread which wasn't started by you, in a section (feminism) where as a man you should be thinking "hang on a minute, is my voice the one which should be dominating the conversation?" You seem to lack any basic awareness of the give-and-take, and more importantly, of listening to the other person's point of view which characterises normal healthy discourse, whether online or in real life.

Typical male socialisation.

Sorry Mostly. I'll try to limit my posts and their length from now on.

Perhaps just start a different thread? Either in FWR or not. Then posters can engage if they wish to given that this is a huge derail for this thread

I agree ... I don't think this one is going to get any better.

My apologies to everyone for feeding the derail. Sorry, I'm in bed recovering from a virus and I'm at the bored stage of betterness.

I have been googling Hayden Cross though and came across this which actually describes Cross as male.

Man is bad enough but male is another level.

www.itv.com/news/2017-01-08/uk-male-set-to-give-birth-after-finding-sperm-donor-over-facebook/

There could be a society, theoretically, in which pregnancy is completely divested of all its scared meanings

So hold on, you want to talk about an imaginary world, where men and women are the same size, neither is endangered by pregnancy, and it's completely free from effort and risk.

You're saying that in that world, in your opinion, men wouldn't be more violent than women.

I agree.

However, in this world, men are bigger, and are likely to remain so (at least for the next few hundred thousand years without interference). Pregnancy is both effort and risk, and will remain so for a good while yet I would expect, so I fail to see what use at all your thought experiment is.

If we change all the reality so everyone is the same, then yes, every one is the same. Film at 11.

I hope that you feel better soon Beachcomber.

Meanwhile a man requiring a sperm donor to get pregnant does rather boggle the eyeballs.

So hold on, you want to talk about an imaginary world, where men and women are the same size, neither is endangered by pregnancy, and it's completely free from effort and risk.

No, of course not. What I'm talking about is how male and female is identity is constructed around those realities. For instance, the view that women value life more because they give birth to children. Or that men seek power because they have penises and higher levels of testosterone.

I'm saying those things are not true independent of socialisation. Of course there will always be hardship surrounding pregnancy, child-rearing and absolutely everything else in life. But what systems of meaning and power surround those basic biological realities is another matter entirely. At the moment they are systems which favour male dominance - which construct women as passive and nurturing and men as active and aggressive. But this is a constructed system. It is not immutable.

Well qwerty exactly. Male and female identities are constructed around biological reality.

You can't self-identify yourself out of your biological reality no matter how many artificial hormones you take or how much you play fancy dress.

Ideally, men would be socialised to curtail their nature-given power (males being physically stronger etc) perhaps under a matriarchy they would be.

Ideally females could have options outside of the socially constructed constraints that limit a woman's options to the home, which is presently economically undervalued.

However, we do not live in an ideal world. We live in patriarchy. We live under abuse of male power.

There is nothing innate about women putting on makeup and wearing a skirt then being blamed for their own rape because they wore a skirt and makeup. Nothing innate or immovable about Women simply being decorative, the listener, not the informative. That is all socially constructed.
There is everything innate about women giving birth and breastfeeding. Men being stronger, taller, more streamline when running etc. Sex based differences should be recognised and respected as they are immovable.

Gender based appearence-led differences need to be dismantled to liberate women from men's opression.

I partly agree Ophelia. The fact that men are stronger than women and have penises is germane to female oppression - the fact that they have the capability to oppress women physically - is germane.

The fact that children are physically weaker than adults is germane to child abuse. But people do not abuse children purely because they are weaker and smaller. If that were the case, then we would all be child abusers. The reasons why adults are MOTIVATED to abuse children - their psychology - is a completely different matter.

And of course there is everything innate about females giving birth and breast feeding, but there is nothing innate about them being kind, nurturing or caring. And there is nothing innate about men being compelled to oppress women. Men were not born with a compulsion to oppress women. And women are not born with a desire to care for a children - or at least they are no more likely than a man to be born with such a desire.

I'm not really talking about capability but psychology. I'm capable of doing all sorts of things which I don't do - because I don't want to them.

I have been reading this epic derail and find it disheartening qwerty has managed to get so much in the way of responses from eloquent women spending their time explaining feminist tenets.

Qwerty, it is nobody's job to give you an education. If you're sincerely interested you could do some reading. Your performance here demonstrates that you don't know anything as much about feminism as you think you do, and that you aren't prepared to actually listen to anyone

During your umpteen exchanges with Beachcomber I found myself muttering to the screen "but that isn't what she said. She said the opposite, ffs!" You seem to wilfully reinterpret feminist points and language to suit your agenda. To have reached this point in an interminable exchange and still not understand the difference between sex and gender suggests you haven't taken the debate seriously or, I'm sorry to say, with integrity.

It's been a textbook example of sexed socialization, the women taking care of a newcomer while the man expects to be made a fuss of and have his opinions deferred to. However, with all credit to the women who engaged (I really don't have the patience) I suspect it's been a total waste of time.

men were not born with a compulsion to opress women

I do believe if males were socialised in a different way they would not opress women. They would not abuse their power. They may actually use power in a more egalitarian way.

Under patriarchy, males are socialised to advance themselves and other males around them, and are psychologically conditioned to opress women. Women are psychologically conditioned to be passive.

The signifiers of this conditioning are based upon sex and the biological consequences of being of one sex or another.
Gender is a tool used by present day society to accentuate and exacerbate the differences between the sexes which is why it's important to understand the difference between sex and gender.

As for women not having an innate desire to care for children I'd also agree. If you look at communal societies equal care is provided by both adult males and females.

Sorry prawn didn't mean to bump the thread. I'm off too now!

100% agree with you.

My argument can be boiled down to this:

There is no such think as a male or female personality independent of socialisation.

think? thing

and there is no such thing as a male or female personality, full stop.

Unless penis' (penii?) and vaginas have somehow developed character.

OMG, still this

Totally agree Prawn what a waste of female time, and what a pity about what started out as a very interesting thread.

It's been a textbook example of sexed socialization, the women taking care of a newcomer while the man expects to be made a fuss of and have his opinions deferred to