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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:
qwerty232 · 09/01/2017 23:49

You're talking about whether testosterone EXCUSES aggression there. That's a different argument. But the fact remains that if men are MORE LIKELY to be aggressive than women because of their hormonal make-up, then more of them always will be - regardless of whether they should or not. And therefore patriarchy will always endure because it is indelibly inscribed in a male neurology which lots of morally inferior men will always default to.

Anyway, this is all moot because recent research suggests that there is no clear link being testosterone and aggression. Its a myth that stems from crude experiments in which rodents were castrated. It is mainly used by male chauvinists to justify their behaviour as natural.

qwerty232 · 09/01/2017 23:52

What if I, a woman, feel more violent in the week before my period due to hormones? Does that give me a free pass to twat someone who annoys me?

The very fact that most women don't go around twatting people when they're on their periods when lots of men do proves that hormones do not not determine violence.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 09/01/2017 23:54

No, and testosterone doesn't give men a free pass either. Someone who is violent makes a choice to be so

No and no-one has said that except Cote mentioned testosterone as the cause (although then conceding socialisation might be a factor too)

ageingrunner · 09/01/2017 23:55

I agree. Hormones don't in themselves cause violent behaviour. Sometimes they really make want to twat someone, but I manage not to Smile and so do most men

qwerty232 · 09/01/2017 23:58

Good for you ageingrunner. My girlfriend says she sometimes wants to twat me, but I'm not sure if that's because of her hormones or me Grin

ageingrunner · 10/01/2017 00:04

Probably a bit of both Wink

nooka · 10/01/2017 02:26

Beathcomber I'd be more than happy to agree that parenting (and of course I am assuming whole hearted nurturing parenting here) is likely to make you value life more, I just don't think that the pregnancy/childbirth part is the most important thing when it comes to how women think about life, at least compared to their male parenting counterparts (or indeed female but non biological parents).

In systems where women do the vast majority of the childrearing as well as run the initial risks (and I wonder if that might be the case in the US community you describe) I would absolutely agree that they would care more than men who had opted out, I just don't think that this is inherent to being a woman or a mother.

Feminist theory about how patriarchy values women only for their reproductive abilities (and fears/controls them for the same reason) doesn't I think cover how women feel about life does it?

Oh and personally I didn't have a terrible pregnancy but I really didn't enjoy it and my two c-sections weren't a walk in the park. Sure it pissed me off that my dh couldn't have carried at least one of them, and the other day dd and some of her girl friends were bemoaning that they had to put up with periods while their brothers did not. Not sure any of those experiences made us more caring (about anything really) though.

nooka · 10/01/2017 02:30

Sorry that was so long!

CoteDAzur · 10/01/2017 06:43

"that's feminism scuppered isn't it?"

No. Feminism is about equal rights and opportunities.

Yes, men have a tendency to be more aggressive and violent. That's why we have laws and education.

My hair has a tendency to keep growing but I can cut and style it. White-skinned Northern Europeans have a tendency to burn in the sun but can use sun protection and keep out of the sun around noon. Children have a tendency to hit and snatch but can be taught to take turns and say "Please". Men are more aggressive than women but laws and society keep the behaviour of the vast majority in check. (Until war or similar breaks down authority and then we see them killing or raping their neighbors).

CoteDAzur · 10/01/2017 06:46

"There is very little evidence of innate differences between male and female brains, or that testosterone makes people more aggressive."

The second part of that sentence is blatantly false. Go to scholar.google.com and start reading up on testosterone and aggression.

CoteDAzur · 10/01/2017 07:10

"if I, a woman, feel more violent in the week before my period due to hormones? Does that give me a free pass to twat someone who annoys me?"

Good example. I am often tense, frustrated, and confrontational before my period. No, it doesn't give me a free pass with DH, friends, or strangers.

It would do no good to pretend this biological effect isn't happening. I hope you would all join me in going Hmm if you were told that a feminist committee has reached the "consensus" that PMT doesn't have a basis in biology.

Beachcomber · 10/01/2017 07:19

Nooka, I'm not arguing that pregnancy and childbirth are the most important factor in how women think about life.

I'm also not talking about caring about one's own children. I'm talking about having an understanding of the value of the product of women's work.

In patriarchy, women's work, time and energy is systematically under valued. Female dominated domains are considered to be less important and inferior to male dominated domains - no matter what those domains are. What gives them their status is which sex they are associated with. Perhaps the female work of carrying and birthing babies is the unique exception to that rule but I doubt it and I see no evidence of that.

I am not in any way talking about loving, nurturing or caring about children. I am talking about work and the status and value that it is awarded within a society in which one sex's work/energy/time/contribution is undervalued and the other sex's is overvalued.

As I have said before I am also talking about class. I am not talking about your or your children's father's individual feelings and experiences of having your own children.

An example. In societies in which blatant gendercide takes place, unwanted female babies are drowned in buckets on birth. These societies, as all societies, are male dominated. This gendercide strikes me as a total devaluing of the female work of pregnancy and childbirth. As well of course as a total devaluing of human life (female babies are human).

The Women in the US that I mentioned upthread spoke specifically about their feelings of anger about the devaluing of creating life. They spoke about this in addition to their anger and sadness over the children they had loved and raised being killed. They also were specific about wider society not caring due to a lack of value placed on black lives. Their anger wasn't only about love it was about value.

Beachcomber · 10/01/2017 08:11

And as I have said what feels like about 20 times, I am also not talking about anything innate, intrinsic or essentialist.

I am talking about a perspective as a result of one's experience of one's position in the world, within society. I am talking about lived experiences. I am coming at this from a feminist phenomenological angle.

Perhaps this isn't coming across because in the west where we have access to toilets, sanpro, painkillers, good diet and healthcare, contraception, safe abortion (not everywhere), etc we are protected from the brunt of the hard work of child having in a world that undervalues girls and women.

qwerty232 · 10/01/2017 08:29

I'm also not talking about caring about one's own children. I'm talking about having an understanding of the value of the product of women's work.

But surely 'having and understanding of the value and product of women's work (children)' is 'caring about one's children'? If you understand the value of something then you care about it more. Or are more given to.

And could this ever be otherwise? Could pregnancy ever not be women's work? If it can't, then you are positing a form of essentialism. Or at least you are saying that women's status as reproductive labourers is fixed, completely independent of social conditions, as is their maternal instinct.

As women will always have a higher valuation of the children they produce, then it would make sense to designate them the natural child-rearers would it not? I thought this is what feminism was against?

qwerty232 · 10/01/2017 09:00

CoteDAzur. Theories which ascribe aggression to testosterone, like theories which ascribe depression to serotonin levels while ignoring all the environmental factors that cause people's levels of serotonin levels to fall, are generally rubbish. Or hugely simplistic. Studies tend to show that testosterone levels interact in a highly complex way with an array of other neurochemical and hormonal agents in response to an environment, or show that there is not any simplistic link between testosterone or aggression at all. As an article on one study states:

For example: regardless of their gender, the most violent prisoners have higher levels of testosterone than their less violent peers. Yet scientists hypothesize that this violence is just one manifestation of the much more biologically and reproductively salient goal of dominance.

It then asks the very important question:

Which is to say, are high-testosterone males more likely to become violent criminals, or does being a violent criminal raise a man's level of testosterone?

No one really knows the answer, but a growing body of evidence suggests that testosterone is as much the result of violence as its cause. Indeed, both winning a sporting match and beating an opponent at chess can boost testosterone levels. (On the other hand, losing a sporting match, growing old and becoming obese all reduce levels of testosterone.)

So in other words, the way our nervous systems work is as much a RESULT of environmental factors as an innate predictor of behaviour or a determinant of behavioural propensity.

Really, you're suggesting a world in which males are all walking round trying to keep their testosterone fuelled desire to rape, pillage and under in check. If there was the case, then there would not be any naturally meek, mild and gentle men (of which there are lots) and hyper-agressive women (of which there also plenty).

Analogising the behavioural predispositions of human beings to growing hair is silly.

People did try to explain the dominance of blacks by whites in terms of brain differences. And they were racist.

This really is a novel experience. I've never found myself arguing against neuro-essentialist theories of male dominance with a feminist before. It's supposed to be the other way round.

qwerty232 · 10/01/2017 09:05

Rape, pillage and murder. Sorry, this auto-predict thingy

CoteDAzur · 10/01/2017 10:02

"you're suggesting a world in which males are all walking round trying to keep their testosterone fuelled desire to rape, pillage and under in check."

No I'm not. Culling and simplifying other people's arguments to the point where they look silly is a form of Straw Man.

"If there was the case, then there would not be any naturally meek, mild and gentle men (of which there are lots) and hyper-agressive women (of which there also plenty)."

That doesn't follow at all and is an example of Non Sequitur. You really should try to avoid logical fallacies.

Yes, men have higher levels of testosterone which affects aggression and impulse control. But there is obviously a spectrum in both men and women, which means there are also outliers as well as mild-mannered meek men and highly aggressive women.

Beachcomber · 10/01/2017 10:17

Oh for goodness sake qwerty, forget about essentialism for 2 minutes and actualy think about feminism.

You are here on a feminist board on a female dominated forum so do us all a favour and consider that there are other lenses with which to view the world than the male one. There is for example the feminist lens/worldview/perspective. And that feminist lens, in order to exist as a female centric way of thinking about the world has necessitated the development of concepts, words, ideas, philosophies, etc that allow us to escape male domination of thought processes. A concrete example of this is when Mary Daly makes up the words she needs to express what she wants to say about the female condition because those words to not exist in male dominated language despite the fact that the phenomenon Daly wishes to talk about exists.

Talking about sexed and or gendered experiences of the world we live in is not essentialism. Analysis of sexed and or gendered experiences is not essentialism. Recognition that our lived experiences take place within the context of our sexed existence is not essentialism.

You seem to use "essentialism" as what feminists call a "gotcha". The point of feminist discussion is not to catch people out and point score. It is to explore, analyse, understand, share, consciousness raise, etc.

I said that I am coming at this discussion from a feminist phenomenological angle. An angle which is a little more sophisticated than categorizing everything as either being essentialist or nonessentialist.

Feminist phenomenology holds the position that being-in-the-world is not an abstract condition--without sex or gender. At the most obvious level, this leads to a focus on gendered embodiment and its impact on subjectivity. From these beginnings, feminist phenomenology clarifies how sex and gender impacts one’s experiences and understandings of the world, broadening to explore the social political consequences.

philpapers.org/browse/feminist-phenomenology

Beachcomber · 10/01/2017 10:19

Culling and simplifying other people's arguments to the point where they look silly is a form of Straw Man.

Ain't that the truth.

CoteDAzur · 10/01/2017 10:21

I don't have the time to find loads of studies for you to read at this time, but take a look at this one for now.

Neural Mechanisms of the Testosterone–Aggression Relation: The Role of Orbitofrontal Cortex
The findings suggest that testosterone increases the propensity toward aggression because of reduced activation of the neural circuitry of impulse control and self-regulation.

The correlation between testosterone and aggression are extremely well established in animals except humans. You don't see the correlation hold well in people because we have laws, accepted modes of behaviour, etc. So yes, the biological basis is there and it does nobody any good to deny physical reality. However, it doesn't mean that bad behaviour should be excused or accepted. Just like I won't be acquitted on grounds of PMT if I take DH's head off one day, people with higher testosterone levels don't get carte blanche to do whatever they want.

CoteDAzur · 10/01/2017 10:26

"This really is a novel experience. I've never found myself arguing against neuro-essentialist theories of male dominance with a feminist before"

So you thought "feminist" means we all have to think they same stuff and act the same way. How odd. I'm happy to have helped widen your horizons.

Having said that, you are only shocked into clutching your pearls there because you think I am saying "Men can't help it, they are made to be wife beaters and rapists". I am not.

Beachcomber · 10/01/2017 10:26

And what Cote just said above isn't essentialism either.

CoteDAzur · 10/01/2017 10:28

Welcome to MN, by the way, qwerty.

qwerty232 · 10/01/2017 10:30

Yes, men have higher levels of testosterone which affects aggression and impulse control. But there is obviously a spectrum in both men and women, which means there are also outliers as well as mild-mannered meek men and highly aggressive women.

How come there are outliers and a spectrum? If all men have higher levels of testosterone then they will all be latently, if not manifestly, more aggressive won't they? They will all have a baseline of aggression independent of environment. And we all know that's not true. We all know that in spite of general, socialised patterns of behaviour schools are full of lots of boys who would not say boo to a goose and would rather read poetry than engage in competitive sports; and that there are girls who hospitalise their opponents with hockey sticks.

There is no biological connection between the physical condition of being male and violent and dominative psychology. To say otherwise is extremely reactionary and demeaning to both men and women.

Men are manifestly more physically and sexually violent, no mistake. But that has nothing to do with their inborn biological characteristics.

And furthermore, the way in which aggression is expressed by the sexes varies massively due to patriarchal norms. You just need to watch the different ways girls and boys bully to see this. Male bullying tends to be overt, physical, direct; whereas girls tend to bully in much more emotionally and psychologically subtle ways.

qwerty232 · 10/01/2017 10:32

And what Cote just said above isn't essentialism either.

Well I'm sorry but it is.

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