Pregnancy, Weakness, and Chivalry
Your thoughts on when/if deference is derogatory
There’s a great review of The Dignity of Dependence in Unherd today. Valerie Stivers put my book in conversation with Corinne Low’s Having it All. And this is a great summary of what I’m doing:
In an atmospheric and discursive book, she explores the possibilities of the female body: its comparative weakness; its unpredictability and changeability via menstruation and reproduction; its fuzzy boundaries through gestation and the shedding of maternal cells into the bodies of her children. The modern world perceives such vulnerability, connectedness, and variation as anomalous, a departure from a standard of how things should be. But this is a misconception, Sargeant counters: they’re not just the female norm, but the human one.
I’m really excited to see reviews come in. And if you got an early rogue copy. I’d love for you to share your thoughts on amazon and/or goodreads when you finish!
Over the summer, I highlighted a thread from Nicole Ruiz on the way the secret weakness of pregnancy could be an explanation for chivalry. Here full thread is here, and here’s how I glossed her argument (including the bit that makes people flinch).
pregnant women have intense needs, including times when they don’t look pregnant
folks should defer to their potential weakness without being asked
ergo: women should be treated as weak by default
That last doesn’t quite sit right, even though it’s true that women can carry a secret burden and benefit from deference.
When equality feels premised on interchangeability, asking for a major social asymmetry means compromising your claim to equality. A lot of our social contract depends on not acknowledging there can be real differences, and real costs to the differences between men and women. I wouldn’t necessarily say that women are weaker, but that we’re less buffered. We are more intimately exposed to others’ need.
I asked you all how you responded to Nicole’s thoughts.
Bethany wondered how to balance her very real strength and her periods of greater need:
If I were to get in a Tardis and go to Regency England, I’d be mistaken for an Amazon. I’m an athlete and regularly do strength training, and whenever I read a Jane Austen novel, I’m struck by how the women can’t do anything physically demanding. It seems like they’ll go on a walk and faint. I’m getting married in May, so I can reasonably expect to potentially get pregnant within the next three years. If my first trimester is terrible, I’ll be silently wishing for that social deference from men, but at the same time, I don’t want to go back to a world where it’s assumed I am and will always be too weak to do anything physically demanding. This is part of why I’ve, in the past, reacted negatively when receiving unsolicited help carrying things from men (moving a mini fridge from a college dorm). Yes, I’m physically weaker than male athletes, but I’m not a Regency lady. Is there a way to show sex based social deference that acknowledges a woman who might be weak today due to invisible causes like early pregnancy/menstruation can still do things like lift weights and run marathons on other days?
Hope brought up another major asymmetry:
Another, more enduring, angle on this is "menstrual leave" where some women would say that a day off a month if you need it is simple and humane, where other women would say it gives up equality for all women.
Taken another step, there is the feminist argument against periods and for around the clock birth control, because why should female students or athletes ever sacrifice anything if it could be avoided? Environmental pollution is a drawback, but with a little intuition many women could step back and admit that that doesn't seem right.
This comes up in The Dignity of Dependence, because some women want to help their sisters in exactly this way—by eliminating periods except when you’re trying to get pregnant. Here’s how I respond in the book:
A period can be suppressed, but there will always be snags that can’t be sidestepped. The question is whether each one will be seen as a defect in the person experiencing the interruption or as a need that the community around the person can and should help them meet. But if there’s no room for changing rhythms in life, then a woman’s body will always be considered pathological by default.
Godoth offered a man’s perspective. He tries to offer help on the sly, to avoid inadvertent insult:
As a man this is, respectfully because I see your point, exactly what I’m concerned about in offering help to women who seem like they might need it. Even if they do, I know that I’m risking a faux pas. I try to offer anyway, but my experience is that if you do, you have to be prepared for a lot of soft, and occasionally hard, rejections of your aid—which I think for many men reinforces the idea that they should not offer, because most women will not accept and will not appreciate it.
Whether or not my perspective is true, I think it’s shared by a lot of men. We see a struggle, there is a notion of chivalry, and there is a societal mood that it is insulting or demeaning, and so many will—with politeness in mind—ignore a struggling woman so as not to insult her by even implying she might want or need aid from a man.
In the past I have asked my wife to ask other women if they need help—without mentioning me—and then instead of my wife stepping in, I will. This often seems to go over better. But it’s somewhat a trial for my wife, who is far less outgoing and far more sensitive to rejection than I am. I don’t want to put her through that.
Jordan notes one way things have gotten better (then worse)
For me, all of this really drives home the deeper injustice of return to office orders. Earlier this year, I was sick with a pneumonia that lasted two months. I was significantly weaker than normal, and couldn’t manage to do most of the regular household tasks, like cooking and laundry. However, my main job which involves writing was not beyond my capacity (albeit maybe at 70% of normal productivity). It was only possible for me to keep working because I could work from my bed.
Generous policies around WFH inherently create situations that accommodate vulnerability, because they offer more flexibility.
And MF pointed out that, at work, it’s a company’s choice to not have slack available:
Well, this is why lean hiring is bad for everyone. Building redundancy and slack into your personnel IS IN ITSELF an accommodation for individuals going through variable productivity periods (i.e ALL HUMANS). It's also better for safety (in industries where that's a concern). It isn't just a women's issue.
Huh, this resonates with a really striking moment from the book I just finished, Kathleen Hanna's autobiography Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk. She was being lowkey stalked by an ex--he was just constantly LURKING in the hallway outside her apartment, "leaning against my door for days at a time." She was good friends with Kurt Cobain, so one day this happened: "I was working at my desk drinking a beer when I heard Kurt shouting in the hallway, 'Why don't you just leave Kathleen alone?!' I opened my door to see Kurt about to physically fight Luke. I pulled him away (with the help of a hammer I had in my hands) and into my apartment."
She later glosses this as, "He was the first feminist man I ever met who never thought being an ally meant you couldn't defend a woman in bold strokes because she was supposed to do it all for herself. He never flinched."
If Bethany timewarped herself to the Regency period she’d most likely be coded as a working class woman not an Amazon! The fainting fits were a luxury good not afforded to the lower orders of society who were doing a great deal of heavy lifting on a daily basis.