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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

To wonder if men giving birth could actually end the motherhood penalty

176 replies

ReginaRegina · 06/09/2023 21:06

Obv we're talking a fair few years from now.

My prediction is that, despite all the talk about male privilege, a lot of women wouldn't actually want to be the main breadwinner. However, it would certainly create more choice in terms of shared parenting.

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ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:23

Stormydayagain · 07/09/2023 17:10

You really hate women don't you.

Playgroup leaders are in short demand 2 out of 3 local playgroups are currently shut due to lack of staff. The staff at playgroups are pivotal in getting early diagnosis and support for children with SEN issues yet are paid barely more than minimum wage.

It is clear from your post that you have place far more importance on men building houses than women educating children, caring for three elderly and vulnerable (also terrible staffing issues nation wide currently), etc etc.

Good old fashioned misogyny, which will remain as long as men like you exist and a few men thinking they can have babies won't change that

Lol. Lots of projection there. 😂

I did anticipate that creating a thread about gender issues might lead to the ad hominem attacks. It's always the way on here unless you're 150% indoctrinated. Saying you're GC but not massively concerned about the issue just isn't enough.

I work in construction and prior to this job spent three years working for Tarmac's mortar division. I spent most of my days dealing with brickies. It's not an easy job being in the blazing sun all day, continually going up and down ladders and being around 360 diggers, shovels, and cranes all day. There's a reason it's the most dangerous sector to work in bar none.

We've got the first two mumsnet bingo items checked off the list now - I'm a misogynist and a man. 😂 Can't you be a bit more inventive? At least accuse me of being a tranvestite or something lol.

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ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:31

BlooDeBloop · 07/09/2023 11:24

Whether or not it comes to pass, I think the thought experiment is interesting, thank you OP. I remember similar discussions about IVF. When society can choose the father of their baby without needing to DTD, over time would that have a significant effect on mate choices? In this thread, the question is in the world men have babies, what else changes? I think if male gestation became widespread then it would have an impact. In other areas, as soon as men come on the scene perceived value shoots up (computer programming is one that springs to mind). The lowest paid work of all is care, which is also nearly exclusively done by females. It is also distinctly avoided by men so remains lowest paid.

I think you're possibly the only person on the thread that kind of got the gist tbh. Most seem too locked in ideological battle to be able to discuss it collectedly. I think it's an interesting thing to consider.

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Gahhhhereheisagain · 07/09/2023 17:34

@TheGreatATuin I disagree with you there. I don't think most women would want to stay at home. I'm a single parent of two, one with ASD, I could probably stay at home if I wanted. I wouldn't be much worse off. But I would be miserable.

ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:40

Ohthatsabitshit · 07/09/2023 17:14

I think you’ve phrased that oddly. Do you mean Um, I'm actually saying I'd rather stay at home and work.

Did you read my earlier posts? I'm saying I don't see my job as self affirming like lots of women seem to and would happily not work at all. I only work for the money and don't share the view of many on here that working is some great privilege.

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ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:50

Stormydayagain · 07/09/2023 17:29

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/health-fitness/uk-most-dangerous-jobs-list-26905667#google_vignette

This study disagrees with you. And you'll never guess what profession I've been in for the last 2 decades.

Except I said 'sector' not 'job'.

Paramedics may be classed as having the 'most dangerous' job due to risk of attack but how many actually die at work? The list changes when you start to look at workplace deaths, although sometimes agricultural work is the most dangerous on some lists.

And it's also the fact that there are lots of dangerous jobs in the construction sector. Of the 30 jobs in that list around 1/3 are construction related - roofer, welder, scaffolder, etc.

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TheGreatATuin · 07/09/2023 17:50

Gahhhhereheisagain · 07/09/2023 17:34

@TheGreatATuin I disagree with you there. I don't think most women would want to stay at home. I'm a single parent of two, one with ASD, I could probably stay at home if I wanted. I wouldn't be much worse off. But I would be miserable.

Sorry, I worded that badly. I don't necessarily mean staying home, but rather most mothers would want the choice of whether to work or not, and certainly in the type of work they'd do.
The OP seems to assume that most mothers are having an easy time of it doing little more than going to gym, when I think that's the very, very rare exception.

ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:54

In fact, I did say 'job'.

But no way is working in a care home as likely to get you killed as working in construction. Not even close. However, I'd clarify that I do have massive respect for carers and believe they should be paid more. But ultimately the market is about supply and demand.

OP posts:
ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:56

TheGreatATuin · 07/09/2023 17:50

Sorry, I worded that badly. I don't necessarily mean staying home, but rather most mothers would want the choice of whether to work or not, and certainly in the type of work they'd do.
The OP seems to assume that most mothers are having an easy time of it doing little more than going to gym, when I think that's the very, very rare exception.

No, I think a particular demographic often have it quite easy and we see it on here a fair bit. The key differential is usually a high earning husband.

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Ohthatsabitshit · 07/09/2023 18:00

ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:40

Did you read my earlier posts? I'm saying I don't see my job as self affirming like lots of women seem to and would happily not work at all. I only work for the money and don't share the view of many on here that working is some great privilege.

Oh yes I read quite well, do you perhaps not understand that looking after children IS work you just don’t get paid/aren’t employed to do it?

if you only work for money how would working longer hours without remuneration be an option for you?

PomegranateOfPersephone · 07/09/2023 18:23

There is no need to go to such extremes. If men chose to/felt they had to take time out to care for children and elderly relatives in the same numbers that women do then we will see the end of the motherhood penalty in terms of pay discrepancies.

Men will never choose to do this (uterus transplant or caring responsibilities) in large enough numbers to make any tangible difference. If 80% of men wanted to do this, 80%of women are mothers, how will they source the uteruses? Removing a uterus for transplant from living donors require taking support structures and the upper part of the vagina it will have serious consequences for the donors. Will they be impoverished young women in desperate situations?

Too many men are too squeamish to have a vasectomy let alone wreck their bodies permanently with a uterine transplant and pregnancy.

OP is clearly a fantasist if he thinks this is happening in the next 5-10 years.

He is clearly one of those men who think that we mothers are free loaders getting an easy ride.

I suspect the purpose of the question and this thread is not entirely as it seems. I will answer it anyway. No, I don’t think that men receiving uterus transplants will alter how women are paid or valued in the workplace. I don’t anticipate any benefits for women, more likely if it is ever possible it will result in yet another way that women can be exploited by men and the poor can be exploited by the rich.

Gahhhhereheisagain · 07/09/2023 18:38

@ReginaRegina do you know how many dementia patients punch nurses in the face? Lots!
Teaching is a mostly female profession and will often be hit, bit, have chairs thrown at them.

MargotBamborough · 07/09/2023 19:37

ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:11

The experts saying it will likely be possible. Like the doctor who performed the first successful womb transplant on a female. It's already been mentioned further up the thread.

Yes, I read the Daily Mail links.

What jumps out at me is that you have an "expert" proclaiming that this procedure may be performed on men in the next 5-10 years, followed by the rest of the article explaining how risky and complicated this surgery is when performed on women.

In the first article linked to, Dr Paige Porrett is quoted as saying this could be performed on men soon, but the rest of the article says absolutely nothing about how that would happen. It describes how it works on women, in ways which obviously do not apply to men. For example, when it talks about how a woman receiving a transplanted uterus will then typically begin to menstruate. Trans women cannot ever menstruate, because in order to menstruate you need to be ovulating. There is no mention of ovaries forming part of the transplant; indeed, it is expressly stated that women who have received a transplanted uterus become pregnant via IVF. So a theoretical man receiving a transplanted uterus would not receive ovaries, not ovulate, and not menstruate. They could probably simulate menstruation by taking the combined pill. However, that would probably be quite dangerous because the vagina is self cleaning whereas a "neo vagina" is not. Deliberately causing bleeding in an organ which needs to be manually cleaned seems like it would pose an infection risk.

The article says nothing about a male recipient actually being able to get pregnant and give birth, which is of course the sole purpose of a uterus transplant. They are only performed on women for the purpose of giving the recipient the opportunity to bear children, and are removed after she has finished attempting pregnancy so that she can stop taking the immune suppressing drugs which stop her body from rejecting the organ.

There are many reasons to suppose that a transplant into a male recipient would be unlikely to be successful, for example, the fact that the male recipient's blood vessels would be bigger than the blood vessels in the transplanted uterus, making it much more difficult to join the transplanted uterus to the male body, reducing the chances of success and increasing the risk of life threatening blood clots.

This is important for two reasons. Firstly, it suggests that receiving a transplanted uterus is highly risky for the male patient. (Indeed, the only time it has ever been attempted, the patient died.) It is difficult to see how the patient's doctors could sanction a transplant which is not done to save their patient's life (as all other organ transplants are intended to do) and which might well kill them. And secondly, if there is a shortage of uteruses available for transplant, the uteruses which are available should be offered to the most compatible recipient, meaning the person whose body is least likely to reject the organ and most likely to achieve a successful pregnancy. Given that the donor organs come from dead women aged 18-40 who have previously borne children of their own, I can't imagine there are that many knocking around, and there are a lot of women with absolute uterine factor infertility who have a much better chance of a successful transplant and would be considered a priority. It's hard to see how any male potential recipient would ever make it to the top of the waiting list. And it does bear repeating that the uteruses preferred by the University of Ohio come from dead women aged 18-40 who have previously borne children. In other words they come from the dead mothers of minor children. It seems pretty disrespectful to their memory to waste their uteruses on unsuitable recipients whose bodies will most likely reject them.

Finally, even on women this is a hugely risky procedure. Any resulting babies are born by C-section because doctors don't know whether the mother's (natural) vagina is capable of childbirth, even though the baby would fit through her pelvis. (A baby will not fit through a male pelvis.) Transplants are not currently performed on women over 40 due to the increased risks of pregnancy in older mothers. Let's take a moment to think about that. They won't transplant a uterus into a 41 year old woman because it is considered too risky. But they'll transplant one into a man within 5-10 years? Pull the other one.

Then even if a male recipient did undergo IVF and manage to achieve pregnancy in the transplanted uterus, which I HIGHLY doubt, what about the risks to the baby? This has never been done before. We have absolutely no idea what unexpected effects a pregnancy might cause in a male body. It is simply unethical to use a human embryo as a guinea pig in this sort of experiment. Just one example: infections in the vagina and cervix can cause very serious pregnancy complications and in severe cases cause the woman to lose the pregnancy. One of the arguments against having sweeps at the end of pregnancy is the infection risk. Even a doctor or midwife putting their gloved fingers inside the woman's vagina to check the cervix increases the risk of infection. Now imagine that cervix is at the end of a neo vagina which doesn't self clean and requires daily douching.

Honestly, there are so, so many reasons why this is unlikely to ever work, and any doctor talking about how complicated and risky this surgery is in women and then claiming that within 10 years they'll be able to successfully perform it on a man is talking out of their arse IMO.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 07/09/2023 19:46

MargotBamborough · 07/09/2023 10:19

By changing sex I mean become capable of performing the opposite role in human reproduction, because that is what sex is.

This cannot be said often enough.

Imnobody4 · 07/09/2023 20:06

This thread highlights the dire state of research. Headline grabbing and over promising.

The underestimation of sex differences are only just being realised

news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/03/gender-may-play-key-role-in-rejection-of-transplanted-organs/#:~:text=The%20study%20found%20that%20in,rejection%2C%20particularly%20among%20male%20recipients.

The study assesses what is currently known about the influence of biological sex differences, possible mechanisms that may explain discrepancies between rejection rates for male and female recipients, and what questions remain to be explored. Their analysis is published this week in Trends in Immunology.

CountZacular · 07/09/2023 20:26

ReginaRegina · 07/09/2023 17:11

The experts saying it will likely be possible. Like the doctor who performed the first successful womb transplant on a female. It's already been mentioned further up the thread.

A transplant of an organ that the recipient should have due to their sex being successful is entirely different to implanting an organ not designed for the body and expecting to perform correctly. You may as well say that people flying is just round the corner for all the inference you’re making about a woman-to-woman organ transplant.

In hypothetical terms of whether it would change anything for women - no, it would not. As plenty of posters have pointed out, very few men would opt for it. For most heterosexual couples, providing they are able, the natural way is going to be less invasive, cheaper and safer for all parties.

And at this time men don’t seem to want to be the main caters. If it was going to happen, the addition of shared parental leave should have shown an influx of men staying at home and women not taking the ‘penalty’ (which is actually so much more than birth and actually more likely the childcare years, the flexible hours for school runs, taking jobs closer to home rather than city jobs). It didn’t, so why would a hypothetical pregnancy that is unlikely to really be wanted change that?

BlooDeBloop · 07/09/2023 20:56

I completely get you op but everyone else is intent on interpreting your posts as some kind of endorsement of male gestation. It's like they are arguing with someone else (they really want to have the argument with the tra brigade). I wouldn't have the patience to argue as you have 😆.

To throw in a grenade, I recall a second year lecturer in embryology who insisted cloning differentiated mammalian cells and growing an animal from them would be at the very least a decade away, maybe even impossible. The following year Dolly the sheep was introduced to the world 😁

Imnobody4 · 07/09/2023 22:27

I don't think you've read the thread. There are 2 issues ‐ the likelihood of male pregnancy being either successful or possible and the social consequences of that as a successful reproductive strategy and its effect on women.

Personally I think male pregnancy is a fantasy for practical and ethical reasons. But if it was feasible it would have no effect on the discrimination against women at work. As another poster pointed out there hasn't been a stampede of men taking paternity leave. That would have a real effect as employers would have to change their assumptions about who would care for children. It is childcare that is the real source of discrimination. You can also add elder care to that.

As far as reproductive science is concerned I think the development of artificial wombs or even animal surrogates has as much chance of success. Especially as ethics seem to little meaning anymore.

namitynamechange · 08/09/2023 07:43

" I'm saying I don't see my job as self affirming like lots of women seem to and would happily not work at all"

Not everyone sees working as affirming. But it does give them one a greater amount of independence/options/respect in society which when it matters really matters.

I don't think many people are "triggered" by your logic. Rather that your insistence that men giving birth is on the horizon is illogical. It's an interesting thought experiment in the abstract but insisting it's a real possibility while handwaving away the downsides is kinda dumb.

Besides your other points don't make sense. Even if we accept that all mens jobs (like being a builder) are more dangerous it doesn't automatically follow that they would be better paid since most pay is (as you say) dictated by supply and demand. Even if you think that being a nursery worker is easy Street there is still a shortage of people willing to do it just as there is a shortage of bricklayers. Even if we discount that, it still doesn't fit your thesis unless you think a large number of men would stop being bricklayers in order.to give birth. In which case your question should be "what effect will men giving birth have on the male dominated job market". It's not because you can't actually imagine many men voluntarily swapping over.

In short you don't understand biology or economics as well as you think you do

namitynamechange · 08/09/2023 07:55

Or possibly you do and you are just being a tiny bit deliberately provocative?

crunchermuncher · 08/09/2023 08:19

I think it's an interesting thought experiment, and a useful one (what would happen if men could have babies. How/ when that might happen is a separate discussion).

It's helpful in analysing why women have a different experience in the workplace and what, precisely drives that.

I'm not sure why you're getting such a pile on here. Your comments didn't come across too me like you were saying that staying home and caring for children is some kind of doss.

On another note, someone upthread said scientists should stick to solving climate change rather than conducting unethical experiments into reproduction. It might have been a flippant comment but it would, clearly, be different scientists! Not Hollywood movie scientists like Kelly McGillis in Top Gun who is an astrophysicist or something but has been hired by the navy to work on....aeroplanes 😆 (no engineers available? Fuck it, that astrophysicist will do, she knows about velocity and stuff).

RainWithSunnySpells · 08/09/2023 08:56

If the OP had presented their first post purely as a thought experiment with no ambiguity that it was anything else, this thread would have gone very differently.

However, they clearly state (and also repeat) that they think this (men giving birth) is a real possibility 'Very possibly in my lifetime'. If you state that, then it follows that posters will respond to it.

Tanith · 08/09/2023 09:03

Surely, if male pregnancy is so close, they would have solved the issues around female infertility by now?

Beowulfa · 08/09/2023 09:14

In the OP's science fiction fantasy scenario, you can be assured that the male individuals would not be referred to as "birthing person", "uterus haver" or "gestational carrier". They also wouldn't be volunteering to act as surrogates for poor women.

I work in a STEM department of a university with a pretty decent maternity leave package. Male academics just don't want to take that much of the shared parental option, because it turns out that taking months out of your career is actually quite inconvenient.

PostOpOp · 08/09/2023 09:18

If men gave birth, there'd be paid mat. leave for 3+ years, and a large financial bonus for every pregnancy and every birth. Oh and mat leave would start from 6 weeks pregnant.