I’ve been reading a lot of pregnancy and parenting magazines lately. The occasional piece of advice on what I can do now to make labour easier almost makes it worth wading through the rest: relentless pressure to buy Stuff and soft-focus images of a family life I know I can never achieve. Then I turn to the advice page and find a real slap in the face.

I’m six months pregnant and my partner refuses to be at the birth. I feel so let down - will I really have to go through labour on my own?

I’m not a trained advice columnist, but I do know a bit about how it feels to be facing labour without a partner’s full support. If this woman came to me for advice, I’d reassure her that she doesn’t need to go through it completely alone, but there’s something else it’s just as important for her to hear. She’s allowed to feel let down; she’s allowed to feel that her partner has left her to face what may well look like a terrifying ordeal with no support. If she hasn’t already done so, she should talk to her partner about how she feels - women often feel pressure to keep their feelings under wraps, to deny them in the interests of “avoiding conflict” or because asking to be listened to might be seen as “selfish”.

But what’s the first thing the trained advice columnist recommends? She suggests trying to see it from the partner’s point of view, followed by a string of reasons why fathers-to-be are afraid of labour. Some are valid, like the fear he’ll let his partner down by fainting when she needs him most; others less so, like the fear that witnessing the birth will put him off sex. All of them miss the point.

It makes no difference to this woman why her partner doesn’t want to be present. She’s the one going through labour, he won’t support her, she feels let down. That’s the problem she’s asked for advice about, and the advice to see things from his point of view is suspiciously close to telling her that her feelings aren’t as valid as his.

Chances are, she’s already tried to see it from his point of view. Women are schooled fairly hard at “seeing it from his point of view” - I managed to skip most of my female-socialisation modules, but empathy was one of the ones that stuck. A tendency to look for the other fellow’s motivations stood me in good stead when it came to creating characters in my novels, but it also led me to cut manipulative partners far more slack than they deserved and to make concessions to people who had no intention of making concessions in return.

Empathy is an essential ingredient in a healthy intimate relationship, but it has to come from both sides. If her partner tried looking at it from her point of view, he might behave differently. He might recognise that whatever fears he has about labour, hers are likely to be worse because it’s her body that’s involved. He might see that after everything she’s gone through already in the course of this pregnancy, supporting her during labour is the least he can do in return. And even if he concludes that he cannot face the delivery room, he can understand how let down she feels and possibly support her in other ways so she knows he’s still there for her.

But no. All these things are beyond him because he’s just a man. Men aren’t expected to show any empathy, especially not when there are women around to show enough for two. She has to see things from his point of view in order to relieve him of the burden of seeing things from hers.

When empathy is a one-way street, it becomes all about his feelings. He doesn’t want to be there when she gives birth, and she is expected to understand and respect that. She wants his support, but he is under no obligation to understand or respect that. In fact, she shouldn’t even mention how much she wants him there: “It’s better if you don’t put him under pressure.”

Why offer such lousy advice? I understand that the advice needs to concentrate on things the woman can do, rather than things her partner ought to be doing, but there’s still plenty of advice that can be offered that doesn’t involve making her feelings subordinate to his. Being honest about her feelings means risking conflict and cutting her losses to make birth plans that don’t include him may make him feel left out, but neither of these things will cause the same long-term harm as convincing herself that her feelings don’t matter and her only option is to understand and support his.

Or are women always responsible for looking after men’s feelings? Even when they’re pregnant, and even according to other women? If I wasn’t already a feminist, that would be enough to convert me.

Assuming that you’re a female undergraduate, that is.

The IWF, a partisan think tank that specializes in hewing to the GOP party line (the “I” stands for “independent,” which I assume is a joke) and attacking feminism, is holding a student essay contest. To enter the contest, you have to be a full-time undergraduate in the 05-06 school year, and a woman.

I think it would be great if dozens and dozens of undergrads from the feminist blogosphere entered this contest. Here’s the theme:

Please discuss your experience on college campus as an independent woman. How has your college or university helped or hindered your intellectual and personal growth? Please describe what you think it means to be an independent woman in the year 2005.

They only want 750 words, which is nothing. $5000 first prize, $3000 second prize, $2000 third prize, and $500 for 10 honorable mentions.

Since this is the IWF, I predict that the winning essays will frequently touch on these four much-beloved IWF themes (or variations thereof):

1. It’s so sad how the bitter drones who teach Women’s Studies think that they’re independent, when they’re actually sheep. But by standing up to bullying feministas, I learned how to be truly independent.

2. Our Adventure in Iraq/reading about women under Islamic law/women under Saddam has taught me that my independence is a priceless treasure. (Bonus points if you personally served in Iraq - or claim you did - before attending college).
3. I’m a person of color, to use a PC phrase I personally find silly, and boy do liberals strike me as condescending and racist! Affirmative Action is even more racist and insulting than liberals are! Only conservatives treat me like a person, instead of a skin color. I just want to be independent and free, like my hero, Laura Bush.
4. My best friend thought that “hooking up” with lots of guys meant she was independent, but really she was just being used by men who wanted to avoid commitment. My real independence lies in waiting for the right guy, even though liberal students and profs make fun of me, because they’re all so elite and insensitive.

Nothing in the rules requires the essays to be non-fiction or even sincere, so make up stuff the IWF wants to hear. There’s no entry fee, and no limit on the number of times you can submit essays. Midge Decker is one of the judges, so being subtly homophobic won’t hurt your chances.

Don’t be too obvious about it, and who knows? Maybe early next year, you’ll have $5000 anti-feminist dollars to help with tuition. Or if you’re in a giving mood, give a big chunk to the Feminist Majority Foundation or Emily’s List - and ask them to send a thank-you note to the IWF.

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This post was removed by request of the author.

One of the things I love about blogging here at Alas are the insults. Wholehearted agreement is pleasant, but nothing strokes the ego like the knowledge that you’ve made such an impression on someone that he wants to hit back any way he can.

And insults are such good sparking-points for new essays. Consider this screed:

“I don’t know what more I could have done without sacrificing my self-esteem…”
And there’s another issue - you’re so stuck up your own rear-end you can’t see beyond your own nose. Other people are less important to you than your ’self esteem’. “Hey hunny, I just had a real hard day at work.. I’m ready to flake out, could you make me a drink please?” - “Hell no, that would lower my already oh-so fragile self-esteem, and I’m not here to bow to your patriarchial demands of coffee-making, you chauvinistic bastar…”

I suspect this comment was born out of hostility towards all feminists - or maybe all women - directed at me simply because I made a convenient target. But beyond the inflammatory phrasing, notice the way I’m quoted in a misleadingly selective manner. Notice how a general comment is extrapolated to a situation completely unrelated to the situation I was discussing. And above all, notice how the mere mention of “self-esteem” serves to light the blue touch-paper of this guy’s hostility.

The full sentence of mine that he partially quotes is “I don’t know what more I could have done without sacrificing my self-esteem and my plans for the future on the altar of his personal convenience.” My plans for the future are immediately dismissed as unworthy of consideration, perhaps because they don’t arouse the same fury as my self-esteem. After all, intelligent people can make plans for the future, but only silly, selfish women care about their self-esteem.

I used the ill-defined term “self-esteem” to stand for a whole host of wishes and desires that would have unbalanced the structure of the paragraph if I’d listed them in full. My desire to explore my gender until I can find an expression of it that seems honest. My desire to express my emotions without being told I was “too intelligent to believe that”. My desire to enjoy my favourite foods and drinks without being made to feel as though I was committing some bizarre kind of self-abuse. Little things which, taken together, make me the person I am as opposed to a robot or blow-up doll.

I haven’t always seen my self-esteem as important. Many times in my life, I ranked it below the approval of others, hiding who I was or giving up what I wanted for no better reason than that friends, family or society in general felt it was inappropriate. It’s only after this last year of hardship and introspection that I’ve come to see that what I am and what I want matter: that my self-esteem is not something to be sacrificed lightly.

It struck me, while contemplating that hostile comment, that self-esteem isn’t a word the privileged need to use. If you have the power to impose your desires on those around you, with society’s seal of approval, your desires aren’t a matter of your self-esteem, they’re simply the natural order of things. It’s only if your desires are minimalised and brushed aside by those around that you need a word to stress the importance of being yourself.

If a man wants sex with a woman, if he wants to decide for her whether she should continue or terminate a pregnancy, if he simply wants her to attend to his wants before her own, he doesn’t use the language of self-esteem. Instead, he states outright or, like the commenter above, implies, that he deserves this, that he’s earned the right, that it should be that way. If the woman wants to assert herself and claim back the right to make these decisions for herself, the language of “rationality” won’t serve her. She falls back instead on the language of self-esteem.

So it’s hardly surprising that someone so openly hostile towards a woman who claims those rights would be filled with contempt for self-esteem. It’s in his interest to undermine it and make it appear frivolous and without value. For if we’re allowed to start believing that self-esteem is something worth defending, something too valuable to sacrifice to the convenience of others, his power starts to crumble. I must be put in my place, mocked and accused of rank selfishness lest anyone begin to take my self-esteem seriously.

The more I hear men’s rights activists fulminating about the unfairness of child support, the more I wonder how typical my situation is, and whether there are any general lessons to be drawn about expectations of men and women when it comes to child-raising.

My relationship with the father of my child ran into difficulties before my pregnancy was even confirmed. Initially, we hoped to live together, but it quickly became clear that there were too many barriers, both logistical and emotional, for this to be a viable possibility, at least for a few years. I did some research into the rights and obligations of a non-custodial parent and found that although I would be entitled to a certain level of support as a custodial parent, I wasn’t legally obliged to demand it.

I had no desire to take him for every penny I could get: he was someone I cared deeply about but couldn’t live with. Since bearing and raising a child would affect my ability to work, and since I hoped he would want to see his child well cared-for, I envisaged a compromise whereby he made voluntary support payments and was in other ways an active father.

I reckoned without his stubbornness and commitment to traditional family structures. He informed me that it would be better for the child if he was in no way involved, since this would free me up to find a stepfather I could live with and build an approximation of a traditional family. That I have emotional problems that would make the search for a stepfather the worst possible fate I could inflict on myself or the child did not enter into his thinking: the child needed two parents who lived together, and since we couldn’t provide that, he didn’t want to be involved.

Later, he tried to soften that approach by saying that we lived too far apart to make visitation practical. If I lived closer to him, he suggested, it would be far easier to work something out. When I finally ended the relationship, he said that he’d hoped we would be able to find a solution, although I’m not sure what that solution should have been. I can only assume it would have involved my seeing the light and moving halfway across the country to live close to someone who had proved himself incapable of respecting anything about me that he didn’t agree with.

When I look back over the uglier arguments, I’m struck by how often he tried to put both blame and responsibility on me for the fact that he’d fathered a child without being ready for fatherhood. My explanation that I hoped to get pregnant was rendered meaningless by my statement that I’m committed to a woman’s right to choose. That I told him I wasn’t using any birth control wasn’t enough: I should also have told him the date of my last menstrual period. He believes that a child needs a father figure on the spot, therefore I had to enter another relationship despite my own understanding of myself.

I’ve also been told by family members that I’m not being fair to him and should have done more to make the relationship work. I don’t know what more I could have done without sacrificing my self-esteem and my plans for the future on the altar of his personal convenience, but I suspect that is a sacrifice I was expected to make. Not for him, of course, but for the child. It would be equally reasonable to expect him to move halfway across the country to be closer to me, but no-one is demanding that. Because I have no job to leave? Because I’m a woman? Because all my reasons for not wanting to move have been sifted through the mesh of rationality and found wanting?

The bottom line is that we both made a choice when we engaged in unprotected sex, and that choice has consequences for both of us. I go through the discomforts and dangers of pregnancy and childbirth and have the joyful but heavy responsibility of a child at the end of it. He has to pay a percentage of his income to support the child.

And yet he’s the one who feels treated unfairly.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

Chronology:

1) An article on The New Republic’s website embarrasses some conservatives by printing the unsurprising truth that many conservative pundits don’t believe in evolution, or are followers of intelligent design, or hedge on the matter.

2) Todd Zywicki, of the Volokh Conspiracy, suggests that lefties would be just as embarrassed by questions such as “Are differences between men’s and women’s aptitudes solely a result of society and culture, or is there an evolutionary basis for some of those distinctions?”

3) PZ at Pharyngula responds to Zywicki. Here’s a taste:

He’s making the old, tired nature/nurture distinction, and it drives me nuts. It’s a false dichotomy that is perpetuated by an antiquated misconception about how development and biology works. Genes don’t work alone, they always interact with their environment, and the outcome of developmental processes is always contingent upon both genetic and non-genetic factors. There is nothing for which this is more true than the development of the mind: the brain is a structure which is incredibly plastic and responsive to input, since that is its job, to respond in sophisticated ways to complex situations.

4) Not for the first time, anti-feminists invade Pharyngula, get their asses kicked, and - in a distinctive, almost dadaesque touch - declare victory.

* * *

Regarding Todd’s point, like a lot of other folks who have commented, I think he’s comparing incomparables. The extent to which biology makes differences in behavior between the sexes inevitable and predictable is hotly debated within the scientific community. No one I know of argues that evolution has no effect on behavior, or has no effect on sex differences; however, some folks (myself included) argue that because biology always interacts with culture and nuture, there is no “female behavior” or “male behavior” that is biologically immutable among humans, apart from obvious reproductive behaviors like “giving birth.” While right-wing partisans may consider this view ridiculous, it’s not out of the bounds of reasonable scientific discourse.

On the other hand, not believing in evolution - or thinking that “intelligent design” ought be taught as science - is a genuinely ridiculous position, far outside the bounds of reasonable scientific discourse.

* * *

Along the way, I was reminded of this excellent Brian Leiter post on why Larry Summers’ academic freedom was never under attack. And another excellent Leiter post against civility, which I’m linking because I might want to discuss it later.

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