by Jacqueline S. Homan, freelance bioethics writer and author of Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie
Tokophobia. This is the newest trendy buzzword in male-speak for the day which paints women’s aversion to pregnancy and childbirth as a “disorder” — as if “normal” women should all want to go through it no matter how painful it is and what it does to our psyches and bodies.
Why is it that MEN who have aversion to being in the delivery room with their impregnated bed victims, and who are not keen on parenthood exempted from being labeled with any kind of disorder? This is yet one more disgusting use of male privilege as a cudgel to beat women into patriarchal conformity and submission to men.
I never had kids because I did NOT want to go through pregnancy and childbirth, period. What I saw I did NOT like, and too many women who were conned into the mommy trap have shared in the deepest of secrecy that they regret going through it and hate being mothers but cannot say so in our male supremacist society.
I am NOT “tokophobic.” I just didn’t want all the body policing that goes with childbearing on top of the risks, permanent negative side effects and all the physical consequences of pregnancy that are NOT “beautiful” in addition to the economic roulette wheel that is part and parcel of the motherhood experience in this patriarchal shithole of a country.
I just don’t/never did want my body torn asunder inside out during the process of gestating and birthing some ungrateful prick’s genetic “legacy” only to possibly end up abandoned, discarded, denied employment (due to lingering childbearing-related health problems like incontinence, obesity, etc.), made to feel like shit over a ruined body (“having a baby is no excuse for letting yourself go”, etc.), and being denied adequate economic support (thanks to Welfare Reform) in this society — never mind reasonable compensation for the pain, suffering, trauma, disfigurement and very real losses in both economic and physical terms that goes with the whole ordeal of childbearing.
Having a baby is just not worth it. Call me selfish, I don’t give a fuck. It’s MY body. Since I’m a poor woman with nothing else in this shit-filled world that I can truly call my own EXCEPT my body, I’ll be damned of ANYONE is going to take even that away from me for some (male-dictated) “moral imperative.” I didn’t want to go through it 20 years ago and today at age 45, I feel the same way, but our paternalistic male-dominated medical constabulary REFUSED to give me a tubal ligation on demand when I was younger while I still had the (albeit limited) earning opportunities and funds to afford the procedure.
My whole life was fraught with anxiety beginning with puberty because of being forced against my will into vulnerability to pregnancy — something I did not ever want to go through. I have never wavered in my position and have no regrets about passing on the miserable, pain-wracked and blood-filled anxiety fest that pregnancy and childbirth really is.
Living under patriarchy where the ONLY way women can get ANY job at all is if we’re sufficiently young enough and physically attractive and thin enough (according to male-defined standards), a body ruined by childbirth is NOT a shallow, vain, or superficial concern — not when women’s economic survival is at stake. Without just compensation for the pain, the trauma, and the disfigurement of childbearing, on top of the very real risk of permanent disability or even death as a result of childbirth, it is NOT worth it for most women to have kids. Men have made it so.
Look at how many affluent men callously discard their ‘brood mares’ for younger, trimmer, thinner women whose bodies haven’t been ruined from pregnancy when childbirth leaves the wife’s body as “damaged goods”, unable to conform to trophy fuck-toy expectations. And what do discarded women get out of the deal? We get denied good jobs, denied child support, denied alimony, denied even enough of subsistence from welfare to live on and told that we’re “leeches who aren’t contributing to society.”
Men are not happy unless they’re making sure that women’s lives are made a living hell. If that were not so, then most men would not be so goddamn selfish as to refuse to wear a “jimmy hat” for women who don’t want to get pregnant. Or if men were not too damn selfish to get a vasectomy and freeze their sperm instead of presuming that they have a right to deposit their excreta inside women’s bodies as a unilateral contract of “consent” and condition of sex. This is the “consideration” and “respect” for our needs and feelings we women get from men — women whose bodies that men feel entitled to “have” for their use and pleasure and rarely, if ever, ours.
Patriarchal ideologies permeating this society hold that women who give of themselves sexually to men (even under duress and coercion) to satisfy male “needs” are “sluts” that deserve to be raped and deserve to be punished with the torture of forced childbirth through “pro-life” laws and public policies that result in women being denied access to abortion and reliable contraceptives that women can use and control — rather than have to beg and plead and fight with men to wear condoms (without poking holes in them deliberately to impregnate women as a form of abuse, manipulation and control, which many men do).
Women who opt out of having sex with men because of not wanting to be impregnated are derided as “prudes” or castigated for being “lezzies” and “dykes” (what’s wrong with being a lesbian anyway?).
No way in hell should the “responsibility” of motherhood be imposed through the violence of male-supremacist laws on ALL women, whether we want to go through it or not, as punishment for having sex — for meeting men’s sexual “needs” and gratification while our own are rarely, if ever, met — without hazard pay on top of a full salary plus a guaranteed livable pension for the very real work and sacrifice that motherhood is!
Even if adequate compensation DID get enacted for childbearing, maternity is a tour of duty that should NEVER be forced. We don’t force men to join the military and compel them to serve in combat without pay (plus they get all kinds of benefits and extra advantages in the job market after completing their tour of duty, which is a hell of a lot shorter than 18+ years!).
Given the War on Women and how many “good guys” have shown their true colors by defending, excusing, and justifying patriarchy, lesbianism is starting to look like a much more attractive alternative. My “sole purpose” for living is NOT to be some selfish, ungrateful bastard’s brood mare and disposable fetus container, or some “Shallow Hal’s” penis sheath and sperm receptacle, thank you very much!
Tags: feminism, forced childbirth, male privilege, maternity, motherhood, patriarchy, pregnancy, sexism
September 26, 2012 at 1:19 am |
Brava! Just bloody, brava!
September 26, 2012 at 10:50 am |
I too never wanted children and faced the same BS you did…Now I am 43, fighting cervical cancer and STILL!! my Uterus is Healthy Organ…reallly???? Jesus. I have an IUD, thank the non-existent god, Even as a little girl, I never wanted a BABY, It just seemed…unnatural to me. I have had MALE doctors tell me it was MY DUTY to have kids. UMMM HELL NO! I have had an abortion, and I do not regret that, at ALL. THANK YOU RU486!!
October 2, 2012 at 2:18 am |
Sing it, sister! Childbirth always sounded horrific to me. No interest.
October 17, 2012 at 1:19 am |
Yeah and obstetricians are sadistic on top of being utterly clueless.
Do you think the death threats laboring women issue their no-help bedside dumbasses result from a moment of clarity?
December 14, 2012 at 4:45 pm |
I agree with everything you said. Society treats our bodies like they weren’t ours and like it’s a natural thing for every woman to want to be a mother. However, as a sufferer, I must say that tokophobia is very real, even among women who want to be mothers. I´ve always wanted to be a mother but childbirth is my worst nightmare and I know many women who feel the same way about it. I would not go through with it unless it can be guaranteed that I would have a C-section and I think it’s disgusting that some countries don’t even allows us to make that decision about our bodies. My body, my decision – it’s as simple as that.
December 30, 2012 at 8:37 pm |
Planned Parenthood can refer you to a supportive physician for a tubal ligation. I used to work at a reproductive health clinic (not PP) and we had an excellent physician who did tubal ligations for any woman who requested one.
I agree with you and your reasons for not having children. Also, I would NEVER bring a child into this phallocentric, classist, polluted world. My maternal instincts go to mothering my kittehs.
January 20, 2013 at 7:51 am |
There is no Planned Parenthood within 100 miles of where I live. And if you’re a poor woman and have no insurance and no income, that puts the kybosh on the private physician referral.
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