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New Men's Rights Issue: Women attacking men while giving birth

Is this man in grave danger?
Is this man putting his life in grave danger?

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:

New father displays scratches his wife gave him during her 28 hours of labor
New father displays scratches his wife gave him during her 28 hours of labor

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!

 

 

 

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emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

Whoops, last paragraph is my own.

Angelica
10 years ago

Z: I’m inclined to produce the accurate graphs then, once I find the time. Perhaps tomorrow. I’ll let y’all know.

ivyshoots
10 years ago

I found this interesting article discussing how the presence of any men during delivery may be detrimental to labor http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/18/men-birth-labour-baby

Buttercup Q. Skullpants

If birthing is license to mistreat, abuse, or injure a father in the witness of medical professionals

Wouldn’t hospital staff intervene if a patient were assaulting their husband/partner? It sounds like he thinks this is a conspiracy, as if mothers-to-be deliberately include physical violence and cursing in their birth plan just because they can:

Dear Hospital Staff,

1. I would like to give birth in an African birthing swing immersed in a pool of dolphins during a waxing crescent moon. Pachelbel’s Canon should be playing during second-stage labor, and gentle affirmations of light from Tibetan monks during crowning. Please bathe the baby gently in deionized San Pelligrino.

2. Also, I plan on scratching the shit out of my husband’s forearms.

Buttercup Q. Skullpants

but never mind that, another woman gave birth, just as well as any other female animal on the planet.

MRAs have such a skewed view of basic biological functions.

Giving birth: boring, any amoeba can do that

Having sex: makes you Master of the Universe, head of skool, captain of everything and winner of the mrs. joyful prize for raffia work

They have it exactly backwards. For humans, birth is a much bigger deal than elsewhere in the animal kindom (as noted by others in this thread) due to the cranium/pelvis ratio, the helplessness of infants at birth, and the intense work it takes to raise offspring to independence.

On the other hand, human sex isn’t such a big deal compared to other species. It doesn’t require corkscrew penises, leaping up waterfalls, or getting your head ripped off afterwards. Mainly it just requires not being a total asshole.

zoon echon logon
zoon echon logon
10 years ago

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-swear/

The study, published today in the journal NeuroReport, measured how long college students could keep their hands immersed in cold water. During the chilly exercise, they could repeat an expletive of their choice or chant a neutral word. When swearing, the 67 student volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer.

So, probably a good idea to curse up a storm.

katz
10 years ago

If I ever do give birth, I’m getting a doula/lawyer/ass-kicker (Pell, do you have a sister?)

Noooo! She’ll stick needles under your fingernails!

Robert
Robert
10 years ago

I asked my mother about this issue. In high school, they showed us an educational film about pregnancy and childbirth that included footage of the baby emerging. It. . . made me uncomfortable, to put it mildly. I recall having to lie on the floor. Mom assured me that she had had no such problems, and added, “if I’d gone through what some of my friends went through, I’d have stopped at two.” As number six of seven, that was a bit disturbing. Also, according to my older siblings, Dad had the morning sickness – every time.

agetro17
10 years ago

Ok, first timer here.

Awesome blog. I will not post quite often, mind you. I have visited your site like 5 times a week now.

I know, you have mocked them already and rightly so, but might as well share my experiences. I am a health provider. I have worked assisting mothers during labor. In two months I might have assisted 50 if not more childbirths. I also have worked in the ER as part of my intership. I am telling you this because I wanted to share the following points.

1. Yes, its true that women scream. But as anyone who has seen childbirth will tell you, the process is clearly painful. Sometimes you even have to use scissors to open up the canal so the baby can get out. Obviously we use anesthesia, but that does not mean that we remove the pain away completely. Pain is part of it. We civilized humans care about others in pain. We don´t mind the screams, but we do everything in our power to make it tolerable or outright take it away.

Fun Fact: For that matter, in the ER we have treated men´s injuries that resulted from doing very stupid things. Out of 10 cases in a given day, 4 or 5 are because of careless driving, drunk driving, drunk stairs jumping, not taking precautions while working on the roof. We don´t call them out because of their yelling and crying, we treat their pain in the most respectful way because pain is a very human experience. But boy if we don´t want to yell at them for being so careless.

2. Not every women screams, the majority are very resilent. As you have pointed out, there are some women with very little tolerance for pain. This combined with the expectancy, fear of the unknown, personal problems, can make childbirth a very intense moment in those women´s lifes. Again, we are there to offer comfort and make sure nothing goes wrong. Believe me, the soon-to-be-mothers are in greater risk at any given time during thoses moments. We take this seriously.

3. The pain is so potent that the last thing they want to do is move. You even have to prod them verbally to push or they won´t do it. The pain is almost paralyzing. Sure, there are women that hold onto something when in pain and sometimes that something is someone´s forearm, but this rarely results in even a scratch. Or a boo boo, for those crybabies in AVFM.

4. This just stems from my observations, so take it with a grain of salt, but the more I see the more I am convinced that women are built to withstand more physical pain than men. Hear me out. Men are more likely to whine when we are about to take blood samples or do a procedure. One day I made a little experiment. I was asked to collect blood samples of the 10 patients we had in the ER one morning. We had 9 men and one 19 year old lass. All 9 men whine so loudly when approached about the blood samples and whimpered a lot when I took it. Mind you, I have 3 years under my belt taking blood samples and my patients always thank me because I am so careful and gentle when taking them (their words, not mine). I went to the only woman in the ER to take her blood sample. She readily allowed me to take it and not even winced once during it.

This is just one example, but I have seen more. The men tend to be the ones to tolerate less the pain. There are exceptions, but in my experience this seems to be the case. I want to back this up with actual data, so when I get it, I´ll comeback to you to offer it. If someone here beats me to the punch that would be nice.

If that dude came over to us to complain about so called risk men face during childbirth, everyone will just laugh their ass off. Boy, he is so full of bullshit. The dudes at AVFM act like they don´t have a mother. Sometimes I feel they just sprouted out of the mud.

J. Schmidt
J. Schmidt
10 years ago

Apparently the MRA survey was hit bit a bot. Those results are more skewed than they should be.

Angelica
10 years ago

Alrighty, I couldn’t resist and fiddled some with that survey provided above (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cxP5G8eJQ73208wEuUNfJG8cCj5WaLoUAV3YeGnQaRo/viewanalytics)

Now, allegedly that survey had been messed with, which is probably true judging by the two peaks in activity during which suspiciously similar entries appeared, so I deleted those as well as well as the empty rows and a couple of incomplete entries and was left with 199 respondents. Since I refuse to bother with nice pie charts because limited time and not so handy with that stuff, I’ll do you a summary with letters, yay!

Gender: 88% male, 10% female, 2% other

Age: 10% 13-16, 25% 17-20, 27% 21-25, 18% 26-30, 14% 31-35, none between 36 and 40, and the remaining just under 10% is nearly equally devided between 41-45 and 51+ (with again, nothing between 46 and 50)

Ethnicity: 86% is white, roughly 5% identifies as asion and another 5% as “other”, with Hispanic right on their heels, and black making up the remaining &%-ish.

Religion: 69% indicated no religion, 21% is Christian. 5% indicated “other”. The remaining 5 percent goes to Judaism (for about 2.5%), Islam, Hinduism, and Shinto.

Political Affiliation: 45% independent, 38% nearly equally devided between liberal and strong liberal, 17% nearly equally devided between conservative and strong conservative.

Supported issues: 85% wants weed legalized, 77% pro gay marriage, 73% gives a crap about abortion staying legal, 71% cares about trans* people’s rights, 67% cares about socialized medicine. 59% wants minimum wages raised, and about 40% is all for increased gun control.

Interestingly, the numbers between who is more disadvantaged socially and legally differ significantly. While 27% believes men are largely disadvantaged socially, that number doubles when we’re talking about legal disadvantage. For a slight male disadvantage, the number only increases from 22 to 25%. About 26% believe men and women are equally disadvantaged socially, while only 10% believes so legally. Slight and large disadvantage for women socially both get roughly 12%, both numbers drop to roughly 6% for legal disadvantage.

Now, I went ahead and fiddled some more to see if there were any significant differences between the male and female/other population. Though I’m left with only 25 or so respondents when taking out all the males, which is not a very reliable sample, I’m gonna go ahead and tell you about any “clear” distinctions, for fun!

Ethnicity: among the women, only 72% is white.

Religion: 12% “other” and 24% Christian, both (slightly) higher than the general population, at the cost of “no religion” (56%)

Political Affiliation: 52% more or less equally devided between liberal and strong liberal, at a hug cost for conservative (none) and strong conservative (like.. 1 respondent). Independent pretty much the same number.

Supported issues: There’s a 10% decrease for legalization of marijuana for a total interest of 75, an increase to 96% for both gay marriage and trans* people’s rights and to 88% for abortion. 72% in favor of socialized medicine, which is not a very big increase, but also 72% is in favor of higher minimum wage, which is quite a lot up from the general population. 56% in favor of increased gun control, which is also quite a bit higher.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 8% of women feel men are largely disadvantaged, as opposed to 27%.. 36% believes men and women are equally disadvantaged, which is a 10% increase.
Here’s the kicker: the number for large legal male disadvantage increases dramatically compared to large social male disadvantage, to 44%, mostly at the cost of slight legal male disadvantage. Slight legal female disadvantage nearly tripples as opposed to the general population.

You know, just.. fyi.

Kootiepatra
10 years ago

Part of me refuses to accept the idea that this is not parody. It’s just so depressing to think that somewhere, somehow, a real person believes this malarky.

garvan-the-mad
garvan-the-mad
10 years ago

“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!”

Right.

Violence against men is funny and laughable.

Wow.

No Manboobz, violence against human beings is not acceptable.

It is sickening to see you normalize a violence against the human race.

Humans beings have a right not to be harmed by others.

Human rights.

Angelica
10 years ago

@garven-the-mad: Know what I personally find sickening? A situation both partners understand to be extremely difficult, painful, stressful circumstances during which it’s totally possible for a woman to, sure, curse at everything around her and grab on too tight/dig fingernails into whatever the hell she is clinging to for support because dammit, she’s pushing an entire human being through her vagina, occasionally causing itty bitty teensy scratches or perhaps a bit of a sore hand from excessive squeezing, being blown freakishly out of proportion and abused as a valid example of “violence”.

You’re doing a gross injustice to actual (male) victims and instances of violence and abuse. You’re part of the reason men’s issues are not taken more seriously, when all you can seem to do is light torches over some anecdotal non-event. What I find sickening is your own “misandry” and disrespect for real, valid problems people face. What I find sickening is how you make a farce out of domestic abuse victims. Violence against men is FAR FROM laughable and the only one making it into a joke here is you. One at which I’m not laughing though, cause it’s far too serious an issue to be treated with such blatant disrespect.

You can’t actually expect to be taken at all seriously when you equate physical abuse with this. I know I won’t. I’ll happily go back to empathizing with and fighting for the rights of my male friends who have actually been through shit, and who don’t take kindly to your caricaturisation of abuse either.

J. Schmidt
J. Schmidt
10 years ago

Right.

Violence against men is funny and laughable.

Do accidental scratches count as violence?

sparky
sparky
10 years ago

garvan-the-mad: Really? No, really?

You are really, seriously arguing that a woman unthinkiny scratching her husband’s arm while she is in the throes of labor pains, while she out if her fuckong mind with the pain of pushing a baby out her vagina, that this really, seriously is violence perpetrated by the wife against the husband? Is that really, seriously your position?

The other day, my husband accidentally head butted me when he jerked his head up unexpectantly when I was leaning in to kiss his forehead. He got me right in the nose and it really hurt. Should I have called the police, since he just commited (accidentally and completely unintentionally and an isolated incident rather than a pattern of behaviors) violence against me?

sparky
sparky
10 years ago

…while she out if her fuckong mind with the pain…

Should read “while she is out of her fucking mind with the pain.”

Ally S
10 years ago

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!

Right.

Violence against men is funny and laughable.

Wow.

No Manboobz, violence against human beings is not acceptable.

It is sickening to see you normalize a violence against the human race.

Humans beings have a right not to be harmed by others.

Human rights.

[CN: abuse]

A mother giving birth and accidentally scratching her husband in the process is just like an abusive woman deliberately scratching a man’s body in order to hurt/control him. Not.

I’d say you’re the one trivializing the abuse perpetrated by women, not David. Get off your high horse.

vaiyt
10 years ago

Humans beings have a right not to be harmed by others.

Behavior matters. You’re not going to hold the man who misses a nail and hits their spouse’s hand with a hammer, and the one who grabs a hammer and hits their spouse in the hand to threaten their life, to the same standard.

Skye
Skye
10 years ago

Intent may not be magic, but it does matter in many things. Accidentally injuring someone is not the same thing ad abuse; not even close. There’s even several legal distinctions regarding causing another person’s death. You really want to make the assertion that unintentional harm and abuse are the same?

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Still not entirely convinced that this isn’t some sort of April Fool’s joke. I mean, really? Really really?

J. Schmidt
J. Schmidt
10 years ago

I think this is my favourite part of the article:

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?

Hey, she can’t PROVE she doesn’t abuse him.

Octo
Octo
10 years ago

Right. Violence against men is funny and laughable. Wow. No Manboobz, violence against human beings is not acceptable. It is sickening to see you normalize a violence against the human race. Humans beings have a right not to be harmed by others. Human rights.

Dude. There is such a thing as emotional exceptional circumstances (hm, doesn’t sound as snappy in English). Yes, *ideally*, there should be no scratching or light punching or whatever even while giving birth. But *you* try to keep that in mind after hours of pain!

kittehserf
10 years ago

emilygoddess:

If I ever do give birth, I’m getting a doula/lawyer/ass-kicker (Pell, do you have a sister?)

Bwahahahahaha!

Buttercup:

mrs. joyful prize for raffia work

Ooh, do I see a Nigel Molesworth reference?

Though come to think of it, Molesworth & co would be better company than MRAs, as any fule kno.

kittehserf
10 years ago

Hey, garvan the stupid – volunteer for a session with that birth simulator and get back to us afterward.