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Unlike the harmless paternity fraud, misplaced maternity is painful and unacceptable to the mother

megazen

July 16, 2011

39 upvotes

http://antimisandry.com/articles/unlike-harmless-paternity-fraud-misplaced-maternity-painful-unacceptable-mother-144.html

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Post Information

Title	Unlike the harmless paternity fraud, misplaced maternity is painful and unacceptable to the mother
Author	megazen
Upvotes	39
Comments	10
Date	July 16, 2011 7:47 PM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/irh8x/unlike_the_harmless_paternity_fraud_misplaced/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/unlike-the-harmless-paternity-fraud-misplaced.1037207 https://theredarchive.com/post/1037207

Comments

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points7 points 15 years ago (9 children) | Copy Link

Men and fathers appear to be the ogres of today's society.

This. I spend so much time literally just trying to justify my own emotions and sense of self to my female acquaintances (mainly feminists, esp. in "Gender Studies" courses). I really don't wish to be so combative, but it's like they aren't even learning from their own damn curriculum to be sensitive to the needs of everybody.

It's like, because I'm a guy, I don't DESERVE to be a person. Like i'm being punished for the evils done to women elsewhere, or the historical treatment of women in America. I didn't do any of that, and I'm certainly not benefitting from my male status--in fact, as a hopeful academic myself, I'm basically abdicating a lucrative future for a female-dominated workplace with little hope of advancement unless I toe the line. Does that sound like I'm gaining anything special because of my gender?

[–]thingsarebad 1 point2 points3 points 15 years ago* (8 children) | Copy Link

Like i'm being punished for the evils done to women elsewhere, or the historical treatment of women in America

Women have always been the privileged sex.

The fallacy that women were ever oppressed is merely an excuse to oppress you further. It's much easier for people to hate men believing the lie that men are oppressors.

Watch The Human Planet sometime and you'll see that women and men had their roles because they had to have them to survive - and that meant women were protected and men were the risk takers (cannon fodder). http://avoiceformen.com/2011/04/30/4437/

In pretty much every civilization, women have been the protected sex. Women were spared while men were killed in war. Women's lies were taken as truth and used to hang innocent men. Etc. etc. etc.

And yes, being the protected sex is the same as being the privileged sex.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points9 points 15 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

Well--rich women. Poor women, like most poor people, were up shit creek during the Industrial Revolution. But like you say, even poor women in the IR weren't forced to work furnaces, smelt iron, build railroads, mine coal, or any of the most dangerous work. I don't know if that's sexism, though--I think it's just because women aren't as hardy as men for manual labor.

One obvious problem that only affected women prior to the mid-20th century was childbirth out of wedlock. Whereas men could essentially sire bastards until the cows came home regardless of their station, women were stuck with the brats, and could lose their jobs, be forced to live on charity, or just plain die in the streets because of the loss of status with having children outside marriage. I can't say that women were particularly privileged there.

[–]pcarvious 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

I'd imagine that like Native Americans as slaves, it just wasn't conducive to the bottom line. Before slavery really took off in America, British colonials tried to enslave Indians here to work on their farms and such, but found that it was too easy for them to run off into the woods and escape--a combination of home-field advantage of knowing the terrain and being within easy reach of sympathetic allies. The sheer distance from anything sympathetic and recognizable helped to break African slaves of their will to escape, inculcating a cultural fear and resentment that has continued to this day (black neighborhoods are still the least willing among any minority groups to mix and incorporate into the regular population, even when they are a majority of the city's inhabitants).

As for women, there's certainly the inherited concept that women shouldn't be allowed to do dangerous work; yet women have to do incredibly dangerous work just to have kids. The US is actually very far behind in pregnancy survivability rates, as well as live birth and infant mortality rates. Our modern medicine has given us rock-hard penises and thick, flowing hair, but we rank down among such third-world quagmires as the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to anything having to do with pregnancy. Women are discouraged from giving birth properly (squatting), forced to stay in sick-houses (hospitals), and either over- or under-attended before, during, and after the event by means of unnecessary and dangerous drugs and procedures that tend to bring about more complications than they purport to solve. Add to that the growing abortion and pro-life laws, the insane fertility drugs and procedures being used, and a sickly fascination with designer Caesarian sections that can threaten to split open a uterus like an overripe cantaloupe in future pregnancies, and I wouldn't give birth to a baby in this environment if you paid me (if I could get pregnant, of course).

[–]pcarvious 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Different kinds of dangers, and different kinds of expectations. I understand that the fundamental nature of the argument is that both had unique risks that they, to this day, undertake but a lot of these assumptions are truly wrong and damaging to both sexes. (I keep having to go back and change gender to sex because I don't want to misuse the word).

There are many forms of inequality that still exist, and have existed historically. However, many of the modern definitions of what constitutes a disadvantage are very much like privilege, and by extension, patriarchy theories. It refuses to recognize that the reverse may also be taking place. What kept men out of the home space during the Industrial Revolution? What made little boys and young men go into factories and get maimed? It certainly wasn't their actions to oppress women that drove them to.

Maybe it's a power game then. I can see that. Those in power defining roles based on what they personally perceive as correct. Of course, this would conform with the idea that, White, Cis, Males were the dominants entirely, and by proxy males in their entirely were dominant over women. The problem I have with this is by making this statement I am making a fallacious argument. When a select few can and are used to characterize the many, it seems like an empty argument.

That aside, culture in this era, when we live right now, has too much of a vested interest in keeping women and men in hospitals. There is too much interest in taking advantage of people's naivete. Perhaps I am the one that is really ignorant in this case, I would hope to be educated otherwise, but a lot of the problems surrounding mens health have been brushed under the rug. There are many treatments but few cures. There are many theories but no hard answers. It's like you said, there are designer procedures out there that are dangerous. Unfortunately they make money as well. Circumcision comes to mind there. In this country we do very little to aid our sick. We do even less to aid our poor. I'm pretty sure that many people are just holding broken boot straps by this point.

Yeesh I got off topic.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Off-topic IS topic. This is what Reddit should be about--interesting discussion of relevant issues.

I think there's a bit of value to traditional gender distinctions with regards to risky jobs--it is financially more profitable to engage in risky behavior, but only among men is it also possible within a family-oriented culture. Especially during pregnancy and nursing, women are hindered from taking risky behaviors that might hurt the child, while men have no such hindrances. In fact, the looming prospect of fatherhood might actually encourage riskier behaviors for increased earning potential.

In a similar manner, women have generally filled out service positions in the workplace because of their flexibility with regards to hours and skill sets; one can easily stop working as a secretary, waitress, CPA, or other job for several years and then come back to a relatively unchanged field. Not so with computer science, or engineering, or medicine. While it is perfectly fine for men to fill out the ranks of the service industry, they are using their time during procreation rather unwisely by not taking risks to get ahead. Similarly, women who attempt to maintain competitiveness while juggling pregnancy and early child-rearing often have difficulties far exceeding another mother with the ability to take time off. Most of our workforce disparities have really just been people taking the easiest route to success possible, within a family-based culture.

I emphasize that last bit because we have in some senses elided the family from our sense of cultural cohesion; we are an individualist culture, the cult of personality, cult of status, cult of narcissism. Rather than attempting to work well within a group (safety in numbers), our relative safety without numbers has allowed us to range much farther afield in our love lives, our careers, and our academic interests. As a result, that thing called family literally cannot hold--what impetus is put upon us to stay at home, when following our own divergent paths does not automatically lead to ruin, financially or otherwise? Marriage was an institution borne out of necessity, where people pooled their resources and invested their energy (monetary, social, sexual, etc.) most efficiently. However, we can now afford to be inefficient, at least for a time.

If our recession deepens into a depression, however, I foresee a major return to the placid austerity of a traditional household. There are numerous advantages to this, many of which seem sexist but are in actuality merely economic expedients:

both sexes will forego college educations in favor of vocational or focused-curriculum certification (in order to avoid college loan debt);
individuals will get married to save money and stay married to continue saving money;
men will abandon childish habits like video games and internet forums for rampant competitiveness in scarce business ventures;
women will have children younger, recognizing that medical bills for in-vitro and later-life pregnancy are easily avoided by giving birth while young.

Women also benefit from having children earlier because they are able to enter into the working world when the children have grown up sufficiently and live longer than their male compatriots. Vo-tech schools and targeted education can really be of benefit to women seeking to start their careers later in life. Family will once again become very important, if for no other reason than grandparents are cheap babysitters. In fact, if the parents are willing, they can have their grandparents and in-laws live with them in a multigenerational house, the parents both working competitively while the grandparents take care of the children. Saves on retirement care for the elderly and child care for the young, and it has the concomitant response of reviving the familial impulse of our social bonds. And these are only a few of the many benefits of a cooperative, family-centered lifestyle, the kind which brought our country forward from a scattered rural agricultural jumble into an ordered industrial union founded upon solid WASP ethics of family, prosperity, and austerity. It may not be sexy, but it's damn good social bedrock.

[–]A_Nihilist 3 points4 points5 points 15 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]TheSeldomShaken -1 points0 points1 point 15 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]A_Nihilist 1 point2 points3 points 15 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link