Jub, I went through a phase in my life where pregnant women made me passively, silently angry. I would not, could not, have publicly expressed this anger publicly, but at that time, I did feel that pregnancy was something akin to "selfish."
And, frankly, I found the email you quoted annoying, too--I get those kinds of emails from my relatives all the time. I just got one today--"TRUE STORY!!!! IT WILL MAKE YOU CRY!" (in the subject line)-- about some kid whose hair/clothes was a mess for his recital (what was his mother thinking? says the piano teacher narrator) playing, out of the blue, Mozart for his dead deaf mother who had just died that morning and so could "hear from heaven," before the child was taken off to foster care by weeping social workers. (I'm not exaggerating.)
It's clear exactly what we're ALL SUPPOSED TO FEEL and if you cringe at any element of it (say, your story's implicit approbation of the bratty kid, e.g.) you're somehow not right. Often these stories are sent around to middle-class circles, and the sense is: we know how to behave! They are about reinforcing middle-class norms and values.
And, the wee part of me that sympathizes with you, is still not very keen on the whole "baby shower" scene. Ewghrshnsh. And for the same reason. I haven't given birth ever, although I've raised children, and I guess I still feel, within my family and even some of my friends/colleagues, that there is a kind of "hierarchy" at play: that giving birth or bringing home an adopted infant/toddler is somehow more "real" than other giving relationships, which are not so acknowledged.
Often it is people--and especially women--who are "child-free" who are the ones "available" to do the lion's share of the heavy lifting when a colleague gets cancer or a parent falls ill or a sibling with children goes into prison. Especially in a world where there is little support or compensation for that kind of work, it's easy to get resentful at other people who "choose" to give birth. Personally, it took me some serious therapy time, but I finally figured out that my own anger was all tangled up with a whole slew of issues related to family, and class and the way "we" value certain relationships and devalue others.
But, I also needed to realize that, on the other hand, there are many circles where having children does bring out a kind of latent misogyny, and--as a whole--the culture I live in (US) pays a lot more lip-service to valuing motherhood than it gives proper support to it, and this is I believe primarily due to the expectation, even requirement, of self-sacrifice on the part of women. That expectation IS misogynistic.
I don't know you, Jub--you may have no good reason for your anger, but I guess I'm saying that resentment against pregnant women, while always "unfair" at some level...
--e.g., even just from a purely selfish perspective, if I hope that the US system of Social Security is going to pay for any part of my retirement/old age pension (and my parents') at all, people better be having children about now, and we better be paying very well to make sure they are taken care of, so that they can get proper, tax-paying jobs one day (and the best way to do that is to have their birthmothers and then primary-caregivers taken well care of, see below)--
...this anger might not always be "misogyny." Sometimes it might be another kind of misdirected anger. I'll give you the tiniest benefit of the doubt, for now.
[By the way, the children thread (which I can't be arsed to find at the mo')--it was either in the Headshop or here in the conversaiton--went through the whole selfish/not selfish debate, by the way. IIRC, many of us certainly felt that there are potentially "selfish" reasons for/ways of having/raising children, as well as "selfish" reasons for not having them, and I believe a consensus emerged that, actually, "selfish"/"unselfish" are pretty useless, emotionally-charged terms in this context that don't get at the core issues very well.]
Finally, however, all that being said, the part of your argument that does annoy me, and that does verge most on misogyny, is when you say, I don't think the baby suffers any benefit or disbenefit from the women sitting or standing? Does it? And if that's true for a 20m train ride, surely the women should be at home, sitting about and not doing stuff which requires her to scurry about town?
Others have addressed some of the flaws in latter part of the argument, but I want to emphasize that the whole quote does implicitly view the woman only as imporant insofar as she is a baby-carrier. If her body is suffering: tough. By this logic, women's bodies are dispensible; it's the fetus that matters. If she does anything that might be good or necessary for her but neutral or harmful to the fetus, she's selfish, unwomanly--a bitch.
This is the logic that the extreme right uses in justifying ending abortion rights in the US, even if the mother's health (mental or physical) is likely to be damaged, or if the pregnancy has resulted from rape or sexual assault. Such logic is repellent, and that is why the benefit of the doubt that I am extending to you is so tiny. |
of Jub´s stance, so he can get a chance to collect his thoughts and reply, and so give him a chance to get out of this with his head still attached?