I briefly mentioned in a larger post this study about the way that teenage girls might cave to pressure to get pregnant from abusive boyfriends, but Lynn Harris at Salon has a longer, more interesting post on it and I want to revisit it specifically because of interest expressed in comments on the issue. The phenomenon is a textbook case of what Carol Hanisch meant by “the personal is political”. What might seem like a personal problem—a boyfriend who views pregnancy as a good way to strengthen his personal power over you—is actually connected to a long history of pregnancy and motherhood being wielded against women to relegate them to second class status. From a teenage boy poking holes in a condom to keep the girlfriend he slaps around from leaving him to politicians who pass laws banning women from getting abortion, you have an entire system of men who exploit this particular female vulnerability to hold women down. What the condom-manipulating boyfriend wants therefore can point to what the Republican asswipe introducing yet another bill restricting women’s reproductive rights wants. The boyfriend wants you too burdened with child care and too linked to him to stand up and walk away. The politician wants the same, for women to be so busy trying to get around this obstacle of not being in control of something so basic that we don’t have the time or energy to stand up and start agitating against other kinds of oppression (like all the free labor women provide).
The fact that individual men try to force pregnancy points to the fact that forced pregnancy isn’t nearly as cute a “we just LOVE BABIES” thing as the anti-choice movement makes it out to be. Individual men who get this idea aren’t anomalies; they are directly plugged into a culture that interprets pregnancy and intercourse as ways men dominate and control women, and they want that power. It’s also, of course, tied to violence.
The study was based on interviews with a racially and ethnically diverse group of 61 girls from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods. All had histories of intimate-partner violence; 53 of them were in abusive and sexually active relationships at the time of the interview. Of those girls, 26 percent reported that their partners were “actively trying to get them pregnant by manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control use” or simply sweet-talking them about “making beautiful babies” together…..
“Our study suggests that those providing care, especially reproductive care, to adolescent girls need to ask questions that reveal the complexities of partner violence, specifically whether a partner is actively trying to get her pregnant when she doesn’t want to be,” Miller said in a statement. “Our data argues for including questions, for instance, about whether a boyfriend is flushing birth control pills down the toilet or saying he used a condom when he didn’t. And pregnancy prevention programs should include discussions about reproductive control as a form of abuse in relationships.” (Miller herself is still haunted by a teenage girl who came in for a pregnancy test and who was, two weeks later, shoved by her boyfriend down a flight of stairs. “I wondered what I had missed,” she says.)
Again, the micro mirrors the macro—anti-choicers want to sweet talk about how great babies are that it’s just natural to force women to have them when they don’t want, and when the sweet talk fails, the force, in the form of political action and abortion clinic violence, follows. Carrot-and-stick dominance.
The sad coda to this is that these things, sex and pregnancy, are often desired by women for reasons of their own. As well they should be. It’s sad to see the patriarchy poison things that are, when truly desired, beautiful things by using those things as tools to control, dominate, and abuse.
40 Responses to “Flushing birth control pills and poking holes in condoms”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
This is a fantastic post, and one I’m sure I’ll be referring friends to time and again…
OMG, is there alot of work to be done to unring this bell. No baby or its conception should be a game piece or a bargaining chip. Thanks, Amanda- I had never heard of MEN deliberating skewing their relationships in such a manner until recently. A 180 degree reversal of the old “woman getting pregnant to trap a man”*, eh?
(*please don’t attack- my MIL did this 60 yrs ago. The first child, conceived when MIL was 19, to force her 35 year old rich “Boston blue blood family” boyfriend to marry her and the other 2 children, a decade later when he started to stray. He finally divorced her a few years later. My husband is her youngest son; I believe his account and reasoning)
Thank you for pointing out that the anti-choice movement is based far more on hating and controlling women than non-existent “unborn babies.”
It should be noted that racism plays a role as well. White supremacists in the Christian Right always have wanted to force white women to have more white babies. Some, like Pat Buchanan and Adolph Hitler have said so openly, while most quietly share that agenda.
The neediness of the males who poke holes in condoms to hold onto their girlfriends is breathtaking. Damaging one’s own future to abuse and control someone else is just plain insane. Our society is brainwashing everyone to be emotional basket cases, and women are paying the lion’s share of the price.
And to make things even nastier: pregnancy is right up at the top of the list of “reasons” for abusive men to kill the women they’re abusing. Get her pregnant so she can’t leave, then kill her because she trapped you into supporting a kid.
Libhomo - Damaging one’s own future to abuse and control someone else is just plain insane.
I think that to the abuser’s mind, the kid is her problem - he can walk away at any time if he wants. The kid ties her to him, but not him to her.
…“we just LOVE BABIES”…
“We just LOVE BABIES!!…But we have no intention of being the ones who raise them.”
(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
I think that to the abuser’s mind, the kid is her problem - he can walk away at any time if he wants. The kid ties her to him, but not him to her.
That’s exactly the case, especially when you factor in that the abusers often want to make sure the women in these relationships either don’t work or work menial, low-paying jobs, so they never feel like they have the option of leaving. The guys I knew like this also generally had the backing of their families, especially their mothers, frighteningly enough. The mothers were as abusive as their sons were, and often treated the abused woman as though she were bringing this upon herself. Talk about a fucked-up set of circumstances.
It isn’t just boyfriends. My first husband pulled the same trick with the condoms to try to keep me from leaving him. Every time I’ve heard someone start moaning about the supposed legions of women out there who lie about or sabotage their birth control to trap a man into staying with them I puke a little in the back of my throat.
You know, I just watched Knocked Up the other day…It was interesting, but I just couldn’t help seeing it in the way psuedoNiceGuys would percieve it. That movie really is a cool scenario for that sort of person…
To be more specific, I’m recalling the whole “I thought you put your condom on!” “No! You said to just get on with it, and I thought it was the sex and forget about the condom!” Or something like that during the recriminations scene…This post brought that scene back into mind…
Reading the old thread for Knocked Up was pretty illuminating with this current post.
My ex boyfriend was the abusive type as well as nagging for babies - Mind you I was 17 and he was 27. That alone should have been sign enough that something was up, but I was young, inexperienced and desperate to move out of my small redneck town. He was my ride out of hell. (into a hell of another kind)
He constantly pestered me to stop the pill and ‘have a kid’ to him. Steadfastly I refused. I think myself lucky he didn’t resort to the flushing of pills etc. He often did say that if I wanted him to settle down (ie stop cheating on me and emotionally abusing me) then I needed to have a child with him.
Just by-the-by I am a childfree woman, and always have been, even though at 17 I just didn’t realise it.
I have since completed my university degree and am now a psychologist. He destroyed my already limited sense of self worth (due to other OT things) and it has taken me years to get to know ME again.
Those morons need to be told about family court and the pressure that poor women are put under to reveal the identities of fathers in order to get access to survival oriented social services.
I thought the same thing, shah. I said it when the ads came out. It’s a credit to Apatow as a screenwriter that he circumvented that reading with his characterization.
Those morons need to be told about family court and the pressure that poor women are put under to reveal the identities of fathers in order to get access to survival oriented social services.
And thus the fathers’ rights movement was born. Abusers have figured out how to manipulate the court system to continue abusing women who leave them, and they have political organization called “fathers’ rights” to back them up. These groups encourage men who’ve lost control over women to regain it by manipulating custody battles and child support battles, by continuing to sue their ex-wives for custody first, then to manipulate visitation, then to terminate child support, and when that doesn’t work, to return control of the woman’s life by linking child support to itemizing how it’s spent. “Fathers’ rights” activists have sued (and won) to prevent their ex-wives from moving away, from getting new jobs, from having new boyfriends stay the night, and even have tried to get court orders to stop them from smoking.
In other words, anything for control. There was a recent case of a man who shot his ex and the judge who ruled in her favor to death. He was hard for the cops to find and bring back to justice; it was assumed that some FRAs were hiding him.
It’s a sad state of affairs indeed. However it is worth remembering that these things happen both ways. The only case of sabotaging birth control that I have heard of round here is a woman pricking a condom to get pregnant. When she managed she admitted it, and the man stayed with her. And as for pure emotional pressure to have children, that can definitely go both ways.
Of course there is more at stake for women here. But the bigger picture is that it is wrong for anyone to try to coerce a partner into having a child, for whatever reason.
Louise, I don’t suppose you’d consider getting your MIL’s side of the story, would you? Or are you just getting it from the men?
I have to say I wouldn’t believe this shit if I had not witnessed it. My neighbor was recently arrested for beating the manager of our local convience store. Seems the manager wouldn’t fire neighbors ex-girl friend and baby mother. See if she got fired she wouldn’t have any money to support the child and she would have to come back to neighbor.
Ginmar, I think Louise’s family’s story is less about “trapping a man” than “preserving her livelihood.” (not that I have the slightest clue as to anyone else’s family but mine, and even then…)
Of course, it’s the same action, having a child to maintain financial and personal ties that one or the other would rather have broken, but I would hesitate to downplay the kind of panic that can set in when a partner who provided what sounds like her sole means of support threatened to leave.
While I’m just guessing here, I figure that the “FR” wing of the MRAs got really going pretty much when various jurisdictions made some serious attempt to actually hold men who ran off accountable, rather than simply badger women into humiliating themselves on the public record as a quid pro quo for meager public assistance.
This was, as I recall from some research I did on the matter as well as media exposure at the time, a big part of the DLC “New Democratic, End Welfare As We Know It” themes of the early ’90s–basically an allegedly kinder and gentler repackaging of Reaganesque Republican themes of the ’80s.
I have the impression that the haphazard lurching toward greater accountability was a convergence of left and right-wing activism; the latter seeking to deflect a drive by the former for more comprehensive public assistance by beating the drum of “personal accountability” in a punitive mode, aimed mainly of course at lower-class people. It fit in the general trend in the late 70s-now of right-wing uprising against the welfare state. I suppose the creeping Big Brotherism of corporate invasion of privacy allowed more effective tracking down of individuals wherever there was political will to do so.
My point being that the status quo ante was not that men were generally stand-up guys who did stay married or paid their support; they found it easy to cut and run and often did so. Later this got more difficult sans special connections; hence MRAs, who seek to maintain the patriarchial status quo.
Certainly the story of how Natasha wound up being a single welfare mother (until she eventually lost custody due to being hospitalized after systematic neglect by her care provider) fits that pattern. Her boyfriend, father of her daughter, was from a Catholic family, and they, along with Natasha’s kin, were all dead against her having this baby. (To be sure Natasha’s disabilities meant she was running unusually high risks, but she told me later that she felt that this fetus, her first though not her last, was the only one that “called” to her, asking to be born.) What he did was run off and join the USAF. The military, so I’m told, also has a paper policy of very strongly encouraging its personnel to support their offspring, and I gather from the story Natasha told me of the time he eventually showed up, five years later, and threatened to take the child away with her, that he had been strongarmed by his officers when they found out. But this certainly didn’t result in any support arrangements, certainly none that would have left Natasha in charge of the child she’d risked everything to have.
I’ve known women to pull the pregnancy maneuver, but I wouldn’t say that it’s to “trap” a man. Usually it’s more that the man is expecting fidelity and commitment from her, she’s pouring herself into the relationship at his encouragement, but he’s maintaining a provisional status. We all know what I’m talking about for sure—hell, a lot of married men don’t consider a wedding ring time to shut down shop and quit actively looking for something better. (Yes, yes, women do it too, I’m sure, but I’ve not seen nearly as much from women.) A lot of women who are desperate because they’re being told one thing (I love you, be with me, give yourself to me) while detecting that the guy feels that as a man, he’s entitled to continue shopping around while keeping her in limbo so that he doesn’t have to go without sex, companionship and some housekeeping.
So more a reaction to a trap. A man who expects a woman to commit to him while he keeps his options open is laying a trap—when he finds someone new, he’ll move on without a bump, but meanwhile, she has to piece her broken life back together. I’ve seen it happen a gazillion times. I would definitely advise someone who has this sensation that he’s keeping his options open to do the same back to him instead of try to manipulate him into a stronger commitment. Put one foot out the door, or better yet both, if that’s what he’s doing.
I’ve known women to pull the pregnancy maneuver
FWIW … I’ve never known a woman to actually do this. I do know a woman (a former friend of mine, and you’ll soon see why I got fed up with her behavior) who habitually claims to be pregnant to whomever she’s involved with at the time. She even once claimed to have saved sperm from a condom to impregnate herself.
So I guess these sorts of odd behaviors do exist, and, given our sexist hysteria in the first place, that some women do such crazy things leads some people to think that all women are just one step away from getting knocked up to keep a man in place.
I really don’t think that a woman “tricking” a man into pregnancy comes from the same place that a man intentionally getting a woman pregnant comes from. There is a strong desire to keep the relationship together, but women have been raised in our culture on a steady diet of “love can change someone” and “parenthood causes magical anti-asshole hormones to appear in a man.” I suspect there’s a lot more pregnancy to change the quality of the relationship rather than simply to keep the relationship going.
I could be totally wrong about this, but that’s my gut feeling.
Plus, there is the simple observation that a woman invests a whole lot more into pregnancy, and is so much more likely to be held accountable for the child forever after, so that the downside of a cold-blooded calculation for a man is much more dependent on cultural attitudes and the nature of existing social mechanisms than it would be for a woman. This discrepency alone is good grounds for supposing women generally are much more careful about pregnancy than men would be, leaving ethics aside.
Society of course tries to tip the balance the other way by endlessly propagandizing women that their major mission in life is to have those babies, and creates an often false sense of security that it will work out OK if they have them.
Well, I don’t get out much so I can’t testify from any personal knowledge about these alleged hordes of pregnancy-trap setting she-devils. All I know is, all the women I’ve met and gotten personal stories and perspectives from, running the whole gamut of ideological and social positions I’ve actually heard from, wouldn’t do such things for various reasons.
I wouldn’t have imagined lots of boys and men deliberately trying to use pregnancy as a hook, but I sure do know about the mentality that takes pride in “making babies” and it sure isn’t hard for me to believe in these sperm-wielding thugs. Real-life anecdotes I have heard (always from women) certainly come much closer to this than the reverse scenario MRAs are always going on about.
Barack Obama, for instance, wrote a memoir about his long search for his paternal roots in Africa, and I couldn’t quite finish it in time for the Sonoma County library book club discussion of this volume mainly because I found that obsession of his kind of off-putting in view of the fine and interesting qualities of his mother and maternal relatives. Which to be sure I know of mainly from reading the early chapters of his book, which does discuss them. But the book is about tracking down his father’s kin and heritage.
60% of child-support payments are either not paid at all or significantly backlogged. So, this whole “women trap men for child-support” bullshit of the MRA’s does not reflect the statistical reality. Its easy to get out of child-support and in many cases one only need to move from one state to another to avoid payments (unless you work for the government or the military who can garnish your wages directly wherever, but it still takes legal leg-work and now they are charging women money to pursue child-support payments, so more and more aren’t even attempted).
And so we’re back to square one, which is where women were thirty years ago: you could get awarded child support in court, but nobody would collect it and the hubby wouldn’t pay it because the bitch didn’t deserve it.
My cynicism is such that I’ll believe that some number of women exists who would “trap” a man with a pregnancy for any number of reasons, all of which are rooted in her desire to control him (by contributing to her well being, by staying in a relationship with her, whatever). The question to me is not do such women exist, because there are enough just butt stupid and selfish people out there of all sexes and genders that I’m sure some number does. Some number of women do all sorts of awful things — kill late-term pregnant women to cut open their bodies and steal their babies, participate in the rapes of other women, kill their children and blame the murders on people of color — we know that some women are awful and stupid and immoral. Just like some men are awful and stupid and immoral.
But so the fuck what? The question in any situation is whether the number of women or men who might do some specifically awful thing is meaningful in any way, and, if there is such a meaningful number, whether or not the awful thing being done has something to do with the way that men and women have different power within our society.
I don’t think women who might “trap” a man into pregnancy exist in anywhere near the numbers that are claimed by self-serving MRAs, because men are more guarded and women are more sensible about what they would stand to lose from single motherhood than the “bitch set me up” narrative implies. I also think that the number of men who might force a woman into pregnancy are undercounted, because such an exercise of control is consistent with the behavior of intimate partner abuse and because intimate partner abuse is undercounted.
Plus, the political narratives of poor women and victims of intimate partner violence are stacked against counting women who get pregnant as victims — if they’re poor, then they just want more welfare, so abuse isn’t allowed into the narrative, and if they’re not poor and victims of domestic abuse, then they deserve being punished with pregnancy for having been so dumb to have gotten pregnant with an abuser. Those narratives and stereotypes get reinforced by the media all the time, so acknowledging a reality in which women are forced into pregnancies they don’t want requires an active rebellion against such messages, a rebellion in which few non-activists are willing to engage.
ginmar, I’ve known the woman in question for 20 years and have seen her burn through every person she has touched. Friends, family, all of her children, 2 very wealthy husbands that she deliberately went after for their wealth and connections. Simply because she is a woman does NOT make her incapable of being a narcissistic manipulator and user. She’s almost 80 and has been like this her entire LIFE.
I understand your point, however. For the record, her only daughter has no contact with her mother whatsoever, and most of her grandchildren wouldn’t even recognize her face-to-face. Our contact consists of polite letters and phone calls only and has been that way for over a decade.
But back OT, because Amanda’s post is important and terrifying in its scope. It’s a triple whammy- not only do teen girls need to be educated about all birth control options and domestic violence; now there is this combination of the two for a third issue. Alot of work to be done, especially in the currently hostile social enviroment regarding birth control in the first place…
I remember there being a study several years ago (maybe 5 years ago?) that demonstrated that a significant number of under-18 pregnant girls had boyfriends who were much older. We’re talking about a 35-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl.
Forced-birthers love to bring up the specter of an older boyfriend bringing an underage girl in for an abortion, but it’s far, far, FAR likelier, statistics-wise, that he’ll deliberately impregnate her and then pressure her to keep the baby.
Yep yep yep.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that women who deliberately get pregnant to trap a man (yes, it happens — women can be assholes, too) are actually propping up the patriarchy and playing their appointed role to force the man into his appointed role.
If she hadn’t been getting the message her whole life that she was worthless without a man, she wouldn’t bother to try and force one to stay with her.
I love this post btw, I put it on my facebook for everyone I know. I really think everyone i know should read this.
At any rate, I’ve only ever heard of one gal trying to get pregnant to apparently keep a man and it was a rumour… However, I’ve known tons of men trying to knock up the gals they were with. One was a friend. She did get pregnant but lost the guy and aborted within the first 8 weeks. This shit does happen. It’s completely a control issue. “Insecure man seeks young girl to own and screw around on”. ack. Furthermore I completely agree with what Amanda said about men “always keeping their options open”. For the longest time I couldn’t trust a single man because I suspected they were “keeping their options open” rather than being honest. Ah well lucky me, i found a good egg in the end.
At my university it is one of those secrets that everyone knows that there are about a dozen male professors who got their much younger undergraduate lovers pregnant and used this as leverage to extract themselves from their families and start new families with younger women. I have no idea whether or to what extent there was mutual desire for a child involved in the pregnancy. It’s just jaw-dropping how often I’ll meet one of my nebbishy 50-ish colleagues from some distant department and he’s with a 33yo hottie with a toddler.
This isn’t really germane, since I don’t think there’s a lot of abuse going on in these relationships — just total cluelessness. However, it bears notice because it makes me wonder who gets what out of relationships and how much it varies from person to person. Most of the wives seem reasonably content with their lot, but it’s hard for me to put myself in the position of a young woman who wants to have a baby with her professor, and marry him even though he’s so much older. Maybe it gives them structure.
It’s really weird reading this article next to the John Q TV ads. I mean, you’ve gotta make a living, and I really dislike it when people hold a blogger responsible for the content of her ads, but it’s just weird.
While some pregnancy-trap setting women probably do exist (I haven’t met any personally, but I’ve known enough manipulative people of both sexes to suppose just about every kind of manipulation can be found somewhere), I think that some people may be inflating their numbers by taking any case where a woman is knowingly imperfect in her birth control use as a knowing attempt to get pregnant. For example, a man and a woman, in the throes of mutual lust, both have sex without using or bothering to ask about birth control. Some people would assume the woman can’t have just gotten carried away by desire, the same as the man; she must have intended to get pregnant. Or a man mostly uses condoms, but sometimes gets careless; he’s careless. A woman mostly takes her pill, but some days forgets; she’s sabotaging things.
Lynn Gazis-Sax:
Absolutely. If a woman does not wish to have an abortion after failed birth control, or doesn’t realize she’s pregnant until it’s too late, it must be because she wants to victimize the man. Because it’s all about the mens.
Men also sabotage condom use so they can go “bareback” without the woman knowing. If she gets pregnant, no skin off his nose.
ginmar:
That’s not universal, of course, many men do pay. My brother paid on time every month even when his wife moved with the kids across the country. But he probably could have skipped on it with little consequence had he not been a mensch about it.
JoAnne — I don’t think that a man would sabotage a condom to go “bareback,” because it seems that the whole point of bareback is that the sex isn’t desensitized from a condom. Putting a pinhole in a condom isn’t going to increase the sensation of sex, it’s purely to keep the girl in line by getting her knocked up.
Does anyone have any statstics on this? Because I’ve never heard of men trying to force girlfriends into getting pregnant. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen ever, but is it really a huge problem?
In the example — a man gets a woman pregnant so he can control her — this guy faces the prospect of having a kid he doesn’t want and being legally responsible for 18 years of child care. I don’t think many men logically want this. I think the vast majority of men who have sex with women they do not want to have a long-term relationship with are not thrilled at the prospect of pregnancy.
That’s assuming some rationality on the part of the man, but how many men are so unglued that they want to create this major obligation for themselves? Again, no doubt there are such men, but it would fall on the edges of human behavior.
@nyr
Could you please read the post before commenting. She gave you the statistics in there. She also has a second post, linked above, where spoke more about this subject.
As for child support, did you just completely ignore all the commenters saying that it’s usually easy for a man to get out of it if has a mind to?
If women are victims of their own perceived gender roles in society, men are victims of society’s expectations as well. It’s not some deep sociopathic undercurrent, it’s a biological imperative. If you want to stop this behavior, you’d do best to stop trying to condemn the culture and start trying to educate boys on how to become men.
Seems like there’s way too much disdain for men who do bad things and way too much compassion for women who do bad things. There’s no need to morally condemn anyone if you want to take up the argument that people are victims of their own environment. And definitely no need to give anyone who’s disingenous an excuse they can use to justify their own bad behavior.
I know two women who purposely got pregnant by lying about being on birth control. One is my father’s girlfriend and the other is my old best friend’s gf.
My child’s biopop raped me and that’s how he came about. My parents said I deserved it. I was trying to get away from him and he was stalking me–even though I spent most of the time with him covered in bruises on my arms and legs, they said I wanted it and said things like “what did you do to deserve it?” Afterwards, it was HIS mother that counseled me because he wanted another one and I didn’t. I went on the pill and lied about it. My father also tried to convince me to have another, because it wasn’t fair to my first if I didn’t. Later, when I got away from the wife beater, my father said it was better to have a violent father around for the baby than none.
My biggest problem with the people on here who are trumpeting about she-devils is that it completely undermines the issue. Not that you can’t get off topic without me complaining, but when you say, BUT LADIES ARE MEAN TO MEN TOO, you ignore the issue faced by women who are forced into pregnancies and conflate the two problems, of which I would say the most problematic is men forcing gestation on women. When a woman gets pregnant and gives a man legal responsibility for a child, she is only (I’m not trying to undermine this behavior, just point out the differences) infringing on his monetary responsibilities. If a man forces a woman to get pregnant, she can die from it. Pregnancy is not pretty, and it is certainly more dangerous for a woman than taking money from her. To compare the two undermines the physical abuse that is present in the issue at hand. Forced gestation is barbaric in a way that manipulating a man’s finances is not.
It also ignores the reasoning behind this abuse (as indicated in the OT). This reminds me of blogs that mention female genital mutilation, where some person (usually some persecution-complex male) will protest, BUT MALE CIRCUMCISION IS BAD TOO! It is; I completely agree. But to compare the two refuses to address the motivation behind genital mutilation, a motivation which is not there when circumcising a boy, and that is male domination over women and their bodies. The motivation in this issue and in female genital mutilation is extremely troubling, and that’s what we should be focusing on.