It bothers me when communication suffers because I'm speaking from a purely biological, medical, literal standpoint when others are coming from a more metaphysical place.
There was a thing on Reddit (my first mistake, I know) with someone saying they dislike "women create life" ideas because it places our value on our reproductive capacity rather than our own lives. I agree with the core of that. However, I also noted that I can see the value in "women create life" points when it is not used to devalue us otherwise but rather to discuss male womb envy, male entitlement to that reproduction, co-opting of biological history by patriarchal religions with male creator gods, acting like women don't contribute to humanity when women literally do contribute humanity itself (in addition to our other achievements).
I spoke on how women do put in 100% of the nutrients and biological material that goes into making a fetus, literally creating it. People in the comments said that was not "creation" any more than a 3D printer "creates" a product. They said that because there isn't conscious input/thought or intentional design on the mother's part, she wasn't really "creating." They spoke of wombs like passive incubators perfect for containing a fetus and said the maternal system doesn't create anything, even the placenta. They said that's why ectopic pregnancies are dangerous, as if the problem is that, unlike normal pregancies, they drain maternal nutrients, not just the mechanical disruptions.
To the design point, I said there is no designer but evolution, and that was when I understood that we were just on totally different viewpoints of the issue. "Design" doesn't need to come into it unless you're getting religious about it. "Creating life," in this context, will never include design. I said all pregnancies, ectopic or not, pull from maternal nutrition and can cause health problems. The placenta isn't just chilling there in the uterus, totally fetal-derived and contained. Even more than some other animals, human placentation is a highly enmeshed weave of fetal and maternal interface. We're hemochorial for fucks sake!
Am I crazy? (No.) This was the childfree sub, where people are usually ok, so fuck me if I expected better than this dehumanizing way of speaking. The mother doesn't create the fetus? Just a printer and incubator? They fucking sound like men who claim the baby is the winning sperm, that they "put a baby in her." If "women create life" is disagreeable because it places life-creation as the only thing women should be valued for, say that, but the solution isn't to pretend life doesn't come from the female body.
Anyway, that's my rant. Other rad gyns have thoughts on this?
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
janainaart
izzy806
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
