Is there no end to the ways in which women oppress the men of the world? Over on A Voice for Men, Clint Carpentier reports – and I use that term loosely – on a heretofore overlooked form of anti-male oppression: the abuse of fathers in delivery rooms by women who are at that moment literally in the stirrups giving birth.
Yep, we’re talking about women who use 12 hours of labor as a convenient excuse to yell at, and sometimes scratch and bite, their husbands and boyfriends. Apparently, there’s an epidemic of women in labor cruelly attacking men from the comfort and safety of the delivery table.
Carpentier starts off his post by making clear that giving birth isn’t really the big freaking deal all the ladies think it is, anyway:
Giving birth is an amazing feat of zero skill, and it still amazes me. It amazes me that this is the epitome, the pinnacle, the supposed female trump card to all male accomplishments. A man lands on the moon with analogue technology and proves Galileo’s theory of air resistance, but never mind that, another woman gave birth, just as well as any other female animal on the planet. A man creates life in a petri-dish, but never mind that, some broad stole his sperm and created life herself.
Anyway, I’m not knocking the dangers of labor, men know all about the dangers of labor; there really ought to be a better word for giving birth.
And whatever alleged pain women undergo during so-called “labor” apparently pales in insignificance to the pain men suffer from being in their presence in the delivery room. Carpentier has managed to avoid this terrible fate himself – his wife went the c-section route, no biggie – but he has heard tales that would make your skin crawl:
I have … heard stories, have … seen the scratches and bite marks, on the fathers who braved the maternity ward. And these same brave men praise the bravery of the mothers of their children. They proudly display scars the mothers-to-be inflicted upon them during the ordeal.
I’m hoping these scars are only from fingernails and that mothers-to-be aren’t sneaking shivs into the delivery room.
Oh, also, sometimes women in labor yell really loudly:
Sometimes a father will reminisce amusingly about how he’d been temporarily deafened when she had screamed right in his ear for waxing sympathetically over her tribulations.
And apparently it’s only men who are the targets for this scratching and biting and yelling:
I hear these stories only from men. I know, men aren’t the only people comforting these women during birth; some women don’t have a man at the time. But what I don’t hear, are these stories from the female nurses, friends, mothers, sisters, etc, who are there to console and coach these single mothers-to-be. Why is it, I’m only hearing accounts of weathering physical abuse and injury from the fathers?
I don’t know, dude. Do you hang out with female nurses on a regular basis? Do you spend as much time drinking beer and shooting the shit with your wife’s female friends as you do with your own?
You see, if I am correct, and it is only fathers who suffer this abuse, then delivery of such injury is selective. I can see no call for it.
Really? First of all, you haven’t shown that this is abuse and not simply an accident. Second, how many of these female friends, mothers, sisters, what have you, were actually in the delivery room? Because that seems like an important variable to take into consideration before jumping to conclusions based on a dataset of some-dudes-allegedly-told-you-something-once.
In fact, fathers-to-be should avoid the maternity ward altogether, as they are obviously not welcome.
Really again? You imagine an epidemic of anti-male violence by women giving birth based on a couple of stories and a rather half-assed deduction you’ve made from it, and therefore conclude that 1) men should miss out on the birth of their children and 2) shouldn’t be there to comfort their wives as best they can during labor.
If birthing is license to mistreat, abuse, or injure a father in the witness of medical professionals, then what deterrent exists, preventing continued abuse in private? And for that matter, what indication is there that she doesn’t abuse him already?
Woah. Let’s just back up a little here. First of all, dude, you haven’t proven that “abuse of fathers” by women on the delivery table is actually a thing. You’ve offered only a few vague anecdotes – and these anecdotes don’t even make clear whether or not the alleged “ delivery of … injury” – gotta love that evasive wording – was deliberate.
Given the stress and pain of labor, it’s easy to imagine how a woman giving birth might accidentally scratch someone. Maybe the mother in question was holding onto her husband’s hand for support and dug her fingernails in a little too hard and left a mark. Maybe she flailed her arm backwards and accidentally scratched his face. We don’t know, because not only do you offer zero real evidence for any of your claims, but your second-hand stories don’t offer enough detail to know what was going on.
If endangering your own life once or twice provides license to abuse a man, what does that say about our society. Particularly when he endangers his own life as a matter of routine to support you?
Seriously? I know Men’s Righsters love to complain about the fact that many more men than women die on the job – though this complaining never seems to lead to any actual activism on the issue of workplace safety – but the fact is that most men, in the US at least, DO NOT WORK DANGEROUS JOBS. They don’t endanger their own lives “as a matter of routine.” They don’t endanger their lives at all by going to work, at least not any more than women do.
MRAs love to give themselves credit for bravery because they share a gender with a small number of men who do in fact work dangerous jobs. But I’m guessing there are not a lot of lion tamers amongst the Men’s Rights crowd. Somehow I’m thinking that most of them have jobs that mostly involve sitting on their asses in rooms entirely devoid of lions.
Anyway, if the overwhelming majority of men don’t endanger their lives by going to work, they endanger it even less by “braving” the delivery room. Men face no actual physical threat from women who are literally flat on their back, their feet in stirrups, in the process of pushing an entire human being out through their vaginas.
But, hey, women do sometimes yell rude things during labor, so maybe it’s possible that a few of them do scratch or even bite their husbands, though the latter seems like it might be a tad difficult logistically. Some might even do so on purpose. If so, there would probably be some evidence of this somewhere online, right?
Well, I searched for a while using every combination of search words I could think of. I found an assortment of disturbing headlines about men attacking women in and around maternity wards: Guilty: man who punched and kicked pregnant girlfriend outside Poole Maternity Hospital; Man charged with assaulting pregnant girlfriend, staff in hospital maternity ward; Man Throws Meat Cleaver Into Maternity Ward.
I found disturbing statistics about pregnancy and domestic violence, which often begins or increases during pregnancy; according to one 2000 study, some 324,000 pregnant women are abused each year.
On a somewhat lighter note, I found women wondering if it was normal to have a really itchy stomach after giving birth, and another person wondering “why is my bitch digging so much after giving birth[?]” (Don’t worry; they were talking about a dog.)
Amidst all this – and many hundreds of other irrelevant results – I managed to find one example of a woman scratching a man during childbirth.
On a page in which she provided all the gory details of her 28 hours of labor – along with numerous pictures of her newborn – one new mother also posted a couple of pictures documenting the scratches she’d given her husband while in labor. (I’m not giving out the link because MRAs. )
Brace yourself. Here’s one of the pictures, with the father’s face partially blurred out:
If you look very carefully you can see four faint scratches on his forearm. The blogger isn’t a native English speaker, but as far as I can tell from what she wrote about it, she didn’t give these terrible scratches to him on purpose.
The horror!
Have you ever considered writing an article about the correlations between mens rights activists and paedophile apologists? There is some content here: http://www.reddit.com/r/againstmensrights/comments/22s0jx/misters_use_site_that_endorses_child_pornography/ but I’ve seen it come up a few times
Back in the early 20th century it was common to restrain a woman’s hands during childbirth, partly because of the disorienting drugs and partly to control her during the pain. Perhaps the mens rightsesrs are going to ask for that next?
They won’t want the women to have any drugs, though.
…I offer a deal: I won’t ever question that childbirth can be an intensely pain- and stressful affair, and needless to say these MRAs are idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about. In return, this device is not coming anywhere near me… pretty please?
There’s also the fact that we are much more developed at birth than the infants of many other species, meaning we are proportionally larger (especially in the brain). Our pelvises are only barely large enough for the infants we’re birthing, and it’s not uncommon for an oversized baby or petite pelvis to lead to a baby that just won’t fit. We just aren’t comparable to dogs at all on this point.
Wow, this guy is actually comparing a few scratches to the intense pain of giving birth? Trust me, buddy, I bet nurses and the mothers and friends of the mom to be get scratched too, it’s not just husbands/boyfriends. The difference is, they don’t consider it a big deal so they don’t gripe about it. Try pushing a cantaloupe out of your butt and see how you feel during and after the process. Thankfully, I never scratched anyone or screamed obscenities. I had a 100% natural labor and delivery, with my husband supporting me from behind while I squat-labored. I never scratched him, bit him, cussed him out, or even gave him a dirty look. The dirty look is apparently quite common when a husband is trying to say comforting things like, “You’re almost there. You’re doing a great job.” and the wife will commonly give him a “F*@k you! What the hell do you know?!” look. I was too busy trying to get my son out as fast as possible so the whole thing could be over with.
True! Of all primates humans have the most difficult and risky births, precisely because of the head size. Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s easy or safe. Hyenas for example have high mortality at birth, because they have to give birth through a penis-like thing, the females in those species are pumped up on testosterone and are larger than the males. Nature can be weird and cruel.
I still remember being in the hospital, laboring with my bio-kid. I wanted no drugs. (Ah, I was so young and misinformed.) It went on forever. I finally ended up getting a C-section. My husband stayed with me through the night and into the next At one point he was so tired that he was laying his head on my hand between contractions. When he sat up, I knew the next one was coming. He said he could feel a change in the muscles of my hand before I felt the pain. He was my voice when I couldn’t speak. He made sure I knew what was going on. He was a great comfort during a horrible time that I will never go through again. I was nothing but happy with him. But during a couple really intense contractions I told him I wished I had something to bite down on. He just leaned over close and said, “Bite me”. I did. My midwife was an ex-Marine with a house full of kids of her own. She didn’t flinch, but my husband told me later that the nurses looked freaked out. At the time I could not have cared less what anyone thought. If the doctor told me he could rip my baby out through my nose at about the 17th hour, I’d have let him. Biting down gave me some relief. That some dipshit would call that abuse seriously pisses me off. The only man I was more enamored with that night was the anesthesiologist. Knowing I was not a fan of needles and that he was about to put a large one in my spine he whispered in my ear in the surgery, “I can do this better and faster than anyone, anywhere. Don’t worry.” I fell a little bit in love with him. By the time they got Hubby in his bunny suit and in the room, I was laughing and telling him that I was in the fetus frightening room and there really was a machine that goes “Ping”. Those were some good drugs.
You know who does frequently experience abuse, sexual assault and extreme trauma during birth? Women.
Google “birth trauma” or “birth rape”.
It isn’t so much the size of our heads that make human birth rougher than chimp birth. It’s the long birth canal we have because we walk upright. Much like we increased our risk of choking when we gained the tools necessary for speech, we increased our chances of complication and pain in childbirth when our bodies gained the ability walk upright.
Re Clint Carpentier being married, having a child and still writing such unmitigated bilge… My job used to be mostly human interaction and so I have met my share of stupid, self-centred, nasty women and men. Some of these horrible people were in long-term relationships, which used to amaze me.
Based solely on personal observation, I’ve identified three reasons assholes manage to find companionship. First is the rarest, but also most obvious and that’s like attracting like. Some types of personality flaw, like addiction to drama or extreme negativity, can do well together.
Secondly is growing in opposite directions, usually the result of two people getting together very young. Lots of young people are emotionally messed up due to immaturity (I certainly was), bit sometimes as a young couple grow up, one of them learns to be a decent adult and the other either clings to adolescence or grows into adult personality disorders.
Last is the most common & saddest and that’s the amazing power of low self-esteem. So often horrible people just latch onto someone who believes they don’tDeserve any better. My money for partners of MRAs is on the latter.
I could go on and on about the excruciating pain of childbirth. What strikes me the most is his assumption the poor widdle father receives all of the “abuse” while FEMALES leave unscathed. I verbally abused my midwife and her nurse to such an embarrassing level, I still cringe to think about it. Saying things like “get your f***king fingers outta me!!” And “give me something!!! Now!! This is not working! No! No! No! Fuuuuuuk meeee!” I literally could not control myself. I almost reached down and pushed her away. She very calmly and firmly told me what she was doing and why she was doing it as my daughter’s head was descending. My husband stood by and kept repeating what a great job I’m doing. I felt terrible for saying so many wretched things and when I apologized they sorta looked at me as if to say “that was nothing! We’ve seen and heard it all.” I’m pretty sure FEMALES endure the same, if not more “abuse” than the daddies. Funny none of them have ever come forward to report it.
Number one result on an image search of your example is the woman’s birthing story. Might want to crop it some more to obfuscate or the MRAs will find it.
Whenever I read stuff like this, I am amazed that the Men’s Rights “movement” can attract as many followers as it does. The whole thing strikes me as far more misandrist than misogynist. To be so weak that a few scratches on your arm while your wife is in labor is abuse? How does that not insult men more than women?
Around here we joke about the nurse who may still be bearing the marks of my fingernails – she was holding my hand when the doctor cut the episiotomy for my first son’s birth (vacuum-assist). I’d had an epidural, but apparently I progressed quite fast after that and the epidural hadn’t taken effect by delivery time, and they had to get him out – though he livened up quickly, right after birth he had an APG.AR of 1.
I still think that, of the two of us, I got it worse than the nurse did. I was wearing an icepack in my pants for days.
Husband has no scars of any sort from either labor, unless you count the vasectomy scar. The vasectomy would have been less painful if he had managed to schedule it before younger son was walking; a toddler in his lap was not the best possible thing for painless recovery.
I note that the men that Carpentier supposedly heard from didn’t appear too upset about the whole deal, revealing considerably more perspective than he’s capable of.
And this is why midwives aren’t shrinking violets. They’re completely used to this – a core requirement of the job is being willing and able to tell people politely but firmly to to things that they absolutely don’t want to do (and with good reason).
Although I should probably make clear that by “assault” I’m talking about things like grabbing and scratching, not slapping or punching.
OT:
While reading the article on AVFM, I noticed that they are now in a partnership with Wikimannia, a German antifeminist wiki.
Being a German feminist, I am of course familiar with this site and I can tell you, this is the most homophobic, sexist and all around rightwing conservative shit site you could possibly imagine. It is run by people, who have already been considered a hate movement by German journalists and, interestingly, even by most German MRA´s, although they gladly buy into all the other PUA/MGTOW crap.
I already sighed in a mixture of pain and delight (after all, I love it when I´m right :D) at the fact that Dean Esmay gleefully adapted the term “purple poodle”, a propaganda term that even most German MRA´s shy away from, because it´s considered demeaning.
So anyway I just thought I might give you this information, so David can keep an eye on it, if he wants to. This should be interesting.
Greetings from the other side of the pond 🙂
Let’s face it: the whole pregnancy and birth thing — especially the birth thing — is as clear an example of misandry as one could ever imagine (the last word is the key, yes).
Now I’ma go and apologize to my husband for oppressing him so during those two unfortunate birth-giving events to which I subjected him almost thirty years ago.
I did not scratch him (as far as I can remember), but I am certain now, after reading the enlightening expose of this Clint dude, that my husband has been forever scarred by my screams, not to mention the traumatic sight of his kids being born. My “labor” (ha ha) pains and the associated ordeals pale in comparison with his suffering, and I am sure he will agree with it as soon as I inform him about it (and after he finally stops laughing).
maternal death rate in the US: 21/100k
police job-related death rate in the U.S.: 19/100k (includes traffic fatalities)
firefighters:17/100k
reality called….
scarlettpipstrelle | April 13, 2014 at 7:39 am
“Back in the early 20th century it was common to restrain a woman’s hands during childbirth, partly because of the disorienting drugs and partly to control her during the pain. Perhaps the mens rightsesrs are going to ask for that next?”
No doubt. We should do anything in our power to protect poor menz from assaults of birth-giving women. This abomination must stop now. Enough is enough.
MRAs on reddit did a survey. Here are the not at all surprising results:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cxP5G8eJQ73208wEuUNfJG8cCj5WaLoUAV3YeGnQaRo/viewanalytics
Have a laugh with me.
Re: MRA survey: those graphs are a glitch, distorted because they include the empty lines in the spreadsheet. There were 570 responses, not 3000. The true picture is still amusing, though. 🙂
Leatapp,
Young white conservative men who want to legalize marijuana but don’t care about any civil rights issues. So, basically the same demographic that loves Ayn Rand. AKA asshole libertarians. That explains so much! Young and sheltered idiots, the lot of them.
It actually gives me hope that the vast majority of these guys are in the 17-20 age range. They might actually grow up and realize that being an MRA is bullshit. They are probably still really sheltered and don’t realize that all the other people do indeed have it far worse than cishet white males.
Doesn’t he realize this abuse starts LONG before labour?
The woman gets to stay home at the end of the pregnancy (or if she fakes enough troubling symptoms, a lot sooner!) and the man has to take care of everything and take over her duties while she lies on the couch, ever growing more fat and unattractive too. As if that’s not enough, the female frequently makes ridiculous demands like her husband getting her ice cream in the middle of the night and he stands a huge chance of being screamed at and perhaps even physically assaulted when he refuses such a request! Furthermore, this leaves him deprived of sleep and at even greater risk of injury or death at his already risky job!
Don’t be fooled! Pregnancy was designed by feminism to oppress men and this is the ONLY reason I am pro-choice! In fact, men should be allowed to decide a female should have an abortion if she stole his sperm, which is basically always.
/this is sadly what some MRAs actually sound like.
Crap, my previous comment was held for moderation because of a typo in the e-mail address. Again:
About the MRA survey: those graphs are likely the result of a glitch – the results are distorted because the graphs include the empty lines in the spreadsheet that contains the actual answers. There were about 570 responses, not 3000. Click on the link under “3077 answers” to see the source spreadsheet – it has a lot of empty lines in the middle. The true picture is still amusing, though.
That’s because nature doesn’t care if individuals survive. Somewhere in our history, the benefits of walking upright (thanks Leatapp) and being born with large brains outweighed the increased maternal mortality, and as a species we’ve benefitted, even though millions of individuals died.