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.

Women and men are different. Genetically and physically.

That difference should end there. It should have no bearing on value.

Sadly, it does.

I agree slithylove. Beachcomber suggested otherwise.

Qwerty, don't tell me what I mean or what I am saying please.

No, I did not mean "in other words" that women are more nurturing, compassionate, passive, etc.

I meant what I said. Which is that IMO women have a better understanding of the value of all human life because we do the work that goes into creating that life.

I think my post is perfectly clear and comprehensible. As is my comment on the myth of patriarchy not being that women are men are different but that they are of different value. You do understand that men=superior and women=inferior is a value judgement? You do understand that carrying and birthing a baby is not only an exclusively female experience but also something that mothers actually live and go through? Women risk their health (both physical and mental), their lives, their independence, their safety, their bodily autonomy, themselves when they create life. It is actually quite a big deal and takes up a lot of time and energy. When you have invested that much in something, believe me, you value it - and you have a handle on the understanding that all children have that value.

And there is nothing essentialist or patriarchal on my part in my observation/analysis that girls and women are oppressed as a consequence of our reproductive capacity. I will spell it out for you - what I mean is that men oppress girls and women in order to control our reproductive systems, our ability to create life.

Essentialism is used as a justification for that oppression, to cloak that oppression in smoke and mirrors of women being weak, dirty, lesser, inferior, other, less human and less worthy and in order to peddle the different value myth.

These are perfectly straightforward ideas.

I agree slithylove. Beachcomber suggested otherwise

No I did not.

Stop misrepresenting what I say.

If you don't understand what I am saying I suggest you ask for clarification rather than putting your own spin of misunderstanding all over the thread. You do not talk for me and it would appear that what I am saying is going over your head.

Hi Beachcomber. I agree with much of your post. However, I'm not sure that giving birth means women have more of an INBUILT capacity to value human life. Why would it? Unless there is such a thing as a maternal instinct - but that would be an essentialist bio-psychological quality would it not?

You do understand that men=superior and women=inferior is a value judgement? You do understand that carrying and birthing a baby is not only an exclusively female experience but also something that mothers actually live and go through? Women risk their health (both physical and mental), their lives, their independence, their safety, their bodily autonomy, themselves when they create life. It is actually quite a big deal and takes up a lot of time and energy. When you have invested that much in something, believe me, you value it - and you have a handle on the understanding that all children have that value.

You might as a woman have more of a handle- but that is that an INNATE instinct? Or is it a quality that is more common in women because they are more often than not tasked with raising children and have to demonstrate those qualities out of sheer social necessity? Just like men have traditionally demonstrated practical qualities because if they didn't roads and bridges wouldn't get built. But of course women are not innately any less practical than men. That just hasn't been their job - or something they've been allowed to do - for much of history. Similarly men are not born with less of a nurturing capacity than women; they're just born into a society in which less nurturing is expected of them. That could change.

If that was a universal female instinct then no women would mistreat or abuse their children would they? And as we know, lots of them do. All the time.

In other words, a system DICTATES that women have a higher valuation of human life because they are designated a reproductive class. It is enforced. They are not born so.

For god sake peopel. Lets get real for a moment.
This is a w o m a n.
A woman, with the reproductve organs of a woman is 'shock' 'horror' PREGNANT.

It's a woman who thinks she's a man, (as in I think I'm a duck therefore I am a duck) is preganant.

Nothing to see here.
Move along.

A woman is pregnant.
Non-newsworthy item.

Reproductive organs = you're a woman.
Youre a woman = you can get pregant.

Headlines:

Woman (who thinks she's a man) gets pregnant.

But Becacomber said men and women are NOT different but have a different value.

No I didn't.

What I said is absolutely not that. What I said is very straightforward and very basic feminism. You may not understand what I said, you may not have bothered to read it properly - either way that has not stopped you from speaking for me and misrepresenting what I say. Several times.

Out of your depth/not listening to what women say/not actually discussing in good faith/treating women's rights as a sixth form debating club ego exercise. Whatever it is, I don't want you to post "Beachcomber says..." again on this thread.

Beachcomber if I have misrepresented what you said I apologise.

I read that as an innate difference too, sorry Beachcomber I find the argument that all women value life/children (because they are the ones who bear children) more than more all men very problematic. To me it leads to ideas that of course women should do all childcaring etc, men are from Mars women are from Venus etc.

I don't believe that I value the life of my children more than their father. Sure I had to go through pregnancy and childbirth but parenting is about so very much more than the biological beginning. Perhaps I say this just because I'm not personally very maternal, but to me feminism is important partly because it fights against those stereotypes and says at least on a personality front we are all people first. Our sex affects our material reality when it comes to biological function and then the world adds a whole other dimension of gender based rules but I really fight against the idea that it fundamentally defines who we are.

And no men cannot get pregnant.

Notsmellies it's about the wider implicarions surrounding the headline

Clickbait and untrue yes, but it has the power to do damage. This new role of men / trans women is very damaging to women and it needs to be fought against.

I'm sure this trans man has no agenda other than a bit of cash for their story. But it opens up the risk that maternity rights will be eroded by men to protect 'men who can become pregnant'. Which would fuck women over yet again.

Well thank you for that apology.

If it is meant then do me a favour - read my posts properly. (The questions you ask in your post of 21.48 in which you quote me suggest to me that you haven't properly read the words of mine that you have quoted.)

I'm happy to clarify my posts but in order to clarify the one you quote I would just say the same thing again and suggest that you read it - that would be a waste of mine time and yours and clutter up the thread with repetition.

I shouldn't have spoken on your behalf in that way while you weren't there to speak for yourself. Again I apologise.

Nooka, all I am saying is that I think the people who do the heavy lifting of making new humans value that heavy lifting and value the result of that type of work.

It's a bit like how if you are the one that always sweeps and mops the floors you will be more invested in keeping them clean and less likely to walk over clean floors in dirty shoes or brush crumbs from the table onto clean floors. That doesn't mean that you should be the one cleaning the floors or that you have an innate affinity with floor cleaning or that no one else appreciates a clean floor. It just means that generally, when you have invested in something you value it.

I may be wrong - I'm putting forward an idea that helps me explain male violence to myself. It's an idea that I have explored with quite a few of the men in my life. They were interesting discussions.

Anyway I think I should stop going on about this now as although it is about birthing babies it is probably derailing the thread.

Thank you qwerty.

There is nothing INSIDE men (from the moment they are born) that makes them any more violent than women.

Not sure about that, I thought higher levels of testosterone was linked to aggression? I have read about a few trans men who have become more aggressive after starting hormone therapy also.

So not from the moment they are born, but pretty much from puberty onwards...

Nooka, all I am saying is that I think the people who do the heavy lifting of making new humans value that heavy lifting and value the result of that type of work

As someone who did "the heavy lifting" I find the above statement, well I don't want to be rude, but I'm struggling to come up with anything other than ridiculous.

It's a bit like how if you are the one that always sweeps and mops the floors you will be more invested in keeping them clean and less likely to walk over clean floors in dirty shoes or brush crumbs from the table onto clean floors. That doesn't mean that you should be the one cleaning the floors or that you have an innate affinity with floor cleaning or that no one else appreciates a clean floor. It just means that generally, when you have invested in something you value it.

I also think comparing a clean floor to loving and nurturing a child a bizarre comparison.

I'm not comparing loving and nurturing a child to cleaning floors.

I'm talking about the work involved in pregnancy and childbirth. I'm talking about the time and effort put into bringing a new life into the world. Only women put in that time and effort (I'm talking about pregnancy and labour/childbirth).

Note how we actually call it "labour". The French call it "le travail".

I first came across the whole idea when writing a piece about gang violence in black communities in the US. The women of the communities were very vocal about what a waste of a life young men dying through mindless stabbings and shootings was, and, how such deaths were not only sad to them but also deeply disrespectful of motherhood. The low value placed on human life made them angry because some woman made each of those lives. Some woman had put time, effort, work and risk into the creation of these people who were being killed with very little regard.

It made an impression on me and it is something I have been thinking about ever since.

Woolf and Dworkin both write about how the value of children and the value of women are linked in patriarchy. They come at it from the other side - that patriarchy only values women as much as it values the children they can produce.

In "A Room of One's Own" Woolf writes about the male view: "that when children cease to be altogether desirable, women cease to be altogether necessary".

And in Right-Wing Women, Dworkin writes: "For women life is in the uterus and the well-being of women - economic, social, sexual - depends on what the value of the uterus is, how it will be used and by whom, whether or not it will be protected and why. Whatever her race or class - however much she is privileged or hated for one or both - a woman is reductible to her uterus. This is the essence of her political condition as a woman."

I think women know that our patriarchal value depends on how our offspring are valued. And we also know, as I said above, the real value of what goes into creating that offspring

It really isn't an outlandish idea in feminism to acknowledge the particular link in value that women and children have that men and children don't. Note that I am talking about value, not love or nurturing or parenting. I'm talking about worth, value, status in a socio-political hierarchy.

Coming back to the OP of the thread - what I say above is very relevant to why "man gives birth" is a headline that pisses so many feminists off.

I think women know that our patriarchal value depends on how our offspring are valued. And we also know, as I said above, the real value of what goes into creating that offspring

It really isn't an outlandish idea in feminism to acknowledge the particular link in value that women and children have that men and children don't. Note that I am talking about value, not love or nurturing or parenting. I'm talking about worth, value, status in a socio-political hierarchy.

I agree with you here Beachcomber - and Lass when she implies that women do not have an 'innate affinity' with children. This is the point. It is not innate.

No doubt women, in very general terms, are more attuned to the needs of children as they are disproportionately tasked with raising them within 'the social political hierarchy' you refer to. This is just like saying that train drivers are overall more invested in the maintenance of trains than people who don't drive trains. But that is very different from suggesting that a particular class of people are born with a greater concern for the British rail transport system. Indeed it would be politically very controversial to suggest that a particular species of people are innately disposed to a particular kind of labour.

If you are arguing that women have a natural (or inborn) affinity with children that men do not have, then that is very controversial on feminist grounds, because it implies a woman's status is biologically pre-determined - as, by further implication, is the male oppression of them.

Sigh.

Nowhere on this thread have I argued that women have an innate affinity with children.

What I have said is that women as a class provide the labour necessary in making human babies. This is a uniquely female life experience (decades of menstruation are part of that labour BTW). Menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth are female lived experiences. Females actually do these things, in real life.

It is generally accepted that one's lived experiences affect one.

The resistance on this thread to the idea that women are affected by the lived experience of being of the sex class that provides the time and energy required to make a human life is utterly bizarre. I repeat I am talking about the work/investment/time/energy/risk involvement in pregnancy and childbirth. I am not talking about love, childcare, parenting, bringing children up, affinity with children, innate qualities or any of the other things mentioned by other posters but which I have not mentioned because they are not what I'm talking about.

Feminism is concerned with class politics in a similar way to Marxism.

In Marxist analysis, the oppressor class seeks to control the means of production. In feminist analysis, the oppressor class seeks to control the means of reproduction. I really am talking about the work and value involved in making a human baby.

If one hopes to understand what patriarchy is it is vital to understand that in patriarchy menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth are considered "Wifework".

Beachcomber the concept that women's labour in reproduction is fundamental to feminism is well accepted. Men oppress women because of our biology. I am surprised that anyone would argue against that while claiming to be feminist.

Agent, if you have a ferret round on Everyday Feminism under the topic of transgenderism you will get a comprehensive education on how to centre men in your feminism. It's grim.

In Marxist analysis, the oppressor class seeks to control the means of production. In feminist analysis, the oppressor class seeks to control the means of reproduction. I really am talking about the work and value involved in making a human baby.

Yes but Marxists argue that capitalist systems of production can be changed. How would you suggest that the patriarchal system is changed so that reproductive labour is no longer a 'uniquely female experience'? You cannot can you?

So that is a problem. You're saying that because women do the reproductive labour they have a better understanding of children's needs. Then someone could quite reasonably say 'well, if women have that maternal sensibility then it is quite reasonable that they do all the child-rearing'.

The difference is that with capitalism it is not inevitable that someone performs a particular type of labour. There is no inevitability to working in a factory being exploited by a ruling class who own the means of production. This is the whole point of Marxism. But if you are going to define giving birth as a form of labour then you have a problem. Because you're never going to have a world where women do not give birth and therefore are not identified with that labour. Unless we evolve into hermaphrodites.

I'm presuming you would agree that one goal of feminism is one in which child-rearing is NOT a uniquely female experience? But you are contradicting that goal (or so it seems to me) by suggesting it should continue to be one - or that it is inevitable that it will continue to be one.

Apologies if I have got you wrong.