fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3794 ]

[ SECRET POST #3794 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3794 ⌋

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So Imma just leave this ridiculous fucking premises right here and see what y'all thing in the morning.
Bon nuit.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/17/telling-women-not-drink-pregnancy-sexist/

Edited 2017-05-24 23:18 (UTC)

While the immediate premise is pretty clickbaity and sets up for outrage, the article does lay out the real issue:

There isn't evidence that light-to-moderate drinking causes any birth defects or foetal alcohol syndrome. It HAS been blown out of proportion. There is a link between frequent and heavy drinking and foetal alcohol syndrome, but not moderate drinking.

So, with that in mind, there IS a fair argument here. Pregnant women are demanded to be paragons of virtue and being pregnant or having a baby already sets you up to receive unwanted judgment, unsolicited advice, and general asshole behavior from others. While on one hand, I think when it comes to kids, their well-being takes far priority over a mother or father's feelings, and I'm not down with "bad mom/dad" culture, I think it's a good point to bring up that we don't need to constantly fling shit on mothers if they occasionally want to relax and have a drink - or whatever - if there is no evidence that it's going to harm their baby.

So yeah, I am comfortable saying that there is sexism involved in the judgment of pregnant women or mothers with newborns. And again, I agree that the baby's safety and well-being takes priority, and it is despicable to jeopardize that. But generally speaking, we could do well with being a lot less judgey toward pregnant women/new mothers.

Actually, a few drinks during pregnancy are okay. I wouldn't say telling them not to drink is so much sexist as overcautious. So there is a point in there, I just don't think it is necessarily sexism at play. Doctors are often overcautious about these sorts of things, and the government certainly is.

Yeah, alcohol CAN cause birth defects, but since there's no real clear line between how much is okay and how much isn't (especially since every woman's body chemistry is different and thus how they process alcohol is different), it seems to me that the safest thing to do is just to say don't do it. And, really, why would you want to take that risk in the first place? I mean, I love wine, but if I were to get pregnant, I would stop drinking. Nine months without any alcohol isn't going to hurt me and it's more than worth it to make sure that there's no risk to my baby.

nayrt

That may be true, and it's certainly fine to play it safe.

But here's the problem. Pregnant women are told to avoid pretty much everything. Loads of common foods, for example, certain exercises, whatever. And it may not even be a significant number of doctors recommending this stuff, in fact, the studies it is based on may be shaky or non-conclusive. But if you're "playing it safe", why not avoid everything?

At some point, the stress and anxiety of worrying about fucking up your baby has a bigger chance of actually fucking up your baby (or, you know, you). Not that it's fine to just go totally carefree, but scaremongering pregnant women is not cool. Neither is shaming them for catching them eating a piece of sushi, or peanut butter toast, etc.

Advice is there for pregnant women because there has been evidence that these things can cause harm or possibly contain things that will cause harm, even if that risk is minimal.

It's not that hard to avoid alcohol, blue cheese, sushi, etc etc. Sure it sucks but most people are happy to play it safe for the sake of their baby. It sure as he'll isn't sexism. What's 'being a paragon of virtue' about not eating sushi for nine months for fucks sake.

Well now I'm glad I have no intentions to ever get pregnant, if it means I should give up blue cheese and sushi.

Oh, I know that, and I'm fine with, what is it now? A glass a week that's recommended? Something like that? I just pull back from the idea that you can't criticize potentially risky behaviour because "Sexism". Like if you have a glass of wine and someone comes over and bitches you our for it, they are being an asshole - not necessarily sexist, but certainly a dick. But if you re onto your second glass and someone give you a look, you gotta live with it. Every glass after the currently recommended limit is a risk, you take a risk that endangers another person even an unborn one - because they are due to be a person who will have to live with the consequences one way or the other - People are going to judge you.

You have one glass more than the legally recommended limit for driving, and then get in your car people are going to judge you, there is no way to known if you've had too much to safely drive, but taking the risk is a bad thing and should be judged as such.

Eeh, seems pretty legit to me.

People discovered that serious alcoholics who spent all pregnancy wasted could cause fetal alcohol syndrome and since you can't really do controlled scientific testing on the exact amount needed to fuck up a fetus by taking large groups and going "Ok, you guys have 1 glass of wine a day, you have two, you have three, you have four.... and we'll see which group starts having fucked up babies" they just went with "Alcohol can cause fucked up babies (if you drink enough.)"

Which has turned into this hysteria that if a pregnant woman so much as looks at a bottle of wine it's going to mess up the fetus. Add to that there's always some study or another that a woman ate tacos on a Wed. and then had a fucked up baby and scientists are looking into a possible connection between tacos and fucked-upedness it's really exhausting to be pregnant and everyone in the damn world is as much an expert on What You Should Be Doing as they were suddenly gorilla experts during the zoo mess.

Yeah, but as you say since we don't know how much is dangerous, and we will never be able to find out how much is dangerous saying "Don't ever judge a person who rolls the dice" is silly to me. Especially on the grounds of being cast out from adult socializing... Like alcohol is a necessary part of adult socializiyou

Also, what about other dice rolling? Smoking, for example? Smoking has the same issue, no proof of its affect on the unborn, should we not encourage pregnant women to give up smoking?

Hell we don't even need to stick with pregnancy, that just a particularly emotive example because there's babies involved, but people roll the dice on stupid shit all the time, should we not judge it? Like unprotected sex with strangers. You know it can be dangerous, but its not assured that if you do it you'll catch something nasty this time, but I net you would think someone was being stupid if the decided to take the risk?

Personally I'm more OK with that because they're risking themselves. I still thing its stupid, but people have the right to be stupid as long as they're only hurting themselves and are willing to face the consequences, but you see why its perfectly understandable to call a stupid risk stupid, right? And in the case of pregnancy, its not just a stupid decision that risks you, it risks another person - assuming you decide to carry the baby. Saying "Judging my stupid risk that could harm so one else is sexist so you don't have the right to do it" is a massive misuse of the concept of sexism.

Alcohol is an essential part of adult socialising... if you're a massive loser.

Yeah, but like... driving a car is amazingly dangerous, should we ban pregnant women from driving? If they eat food it could cause food allergies, do we force them to only take hypoallergenic IV nutrition? At what point do we draw the line of trying to police women's activities, on a scale of 1 being laying in a hospital hooked up to a perfectly formulated nutrient drip for ten months with constant professional monitoring, and 10 being skydiving on motorcycle while drinking a martini.

Additionally, prenatal vitamins have been linked to autism and the father smoking within 6 months of conception has been linked to passing in genetics for obesity. Should men be encouraged to go without smoking for 6 months before they have any sort of PIV sex?

Geez, you really want that booze while pregnant. Sure you don't have a problem?

idk, man... I can see the argument that it's sexist, but I don't agree.

Society polices all kinds of stupid choices parents make all the time, it's not sexism it's just looking out for the best interests of children who can't look out for themselves. If someone yells at you because you let your kid ride a bike without a helmet that isn't sexism. If someone says you shouldn't leave your baby unattended by the pool that isn't sexism. If someone says doing heroin could hurt your unborn baby that also isn't sexism. Someone getting pissed bc you don't believe in vaccinating your kid, that's not sexism either.

I don't think alcohol should get a pass just because 'a little bit is fine' or 'it MIGHT not hurt your baby' or 'but what about the pregnant lady's social life?!'

Like, when you CHOOSE to carry a baby, you are also (hopefully) choosing to put that baby's needs above your need to throw back some shots. And since there is no way to know how much alcohol will permanently harm your child, maybe it's a good idea to avoid toeing that line at all?

idk, I'm not a woman, but I can't even fathom being pregnant and then thinking to myself "hmm, I know there's been decades of research saying that alcohol consumption could hurt or kill my child, but fuck my kid, I want some wine with my dinner."

You're completely right, but the point here is that there's no evidence a little alcohol does anything to babies. The only proven correlation is heavy regular drinking (lots of nights passed out drunk kind of deal). If there's not any evidence of something, why are we shrieking at pregnant women?

I agree that the baby's needs and safety are the most important, but scaremongering or shaming pregnant women for doing things there's no evidence of is pretty nuts.

That actually isn't true, though. I know the article makes it out that way, but there's been a lot of research done that shows the exact opposite, hence why many health groups (including those run by women) say that it's best to not drink at all. There is no consensus on whether or not it's safe, or how much is safe, so the best course is to avoid alcohol.

There's been lots of research into how random FAS can be, it can take one episode of binge drinking for an otherwise sober mother to cause it, it can accumulate over time, or it can not happen at all even if the mother is downing a jug of vodka every day. There's also certain periods of development where the fetus is incredibly vulnerable to alcohol and other drugs. And there's periods of development where the fetus isn't vulnerable and drinking even heavily is probably totally fine, but that really isn't a gamble to take with a child's life.

Calling it "scaremongering" is imo pretty bullshit, since there's no way of a woman knowing how much is safe for her to drink. It's like saying vaccine advocacy is "scaremongering", since not everyone who isn't vaccinated get's polio. And "shaming?" Exposing a child to the possibility of getting a 100% avoidable disease is absolutely shame-worthy.

The trouble is that the reason there is no causal evidence - as opposed to correlational evidence which we have in spades - is that to get that causal evidence you would need to perform experiments which are by any measure utterly monstrous. No were in the world would anyone sanction an experiment so purposefully introduce varying levels of alcohol into an unborn baby.

So the sensible public health decision is to advise no alcohol during pregnancy.

Broadly speaking thats where i stand, i mean for the most part. The current advice isn't No alcohol, its to consume only a tiny quantity of it, which they are working on the assumption will be fine. Its still a risk, but the people working the data deem it an insignificant risk, which I have no choice but to tale them at their word, they are working with facts that I don't have. What I refuse to take at its word is the idea that the facts we have ain't solid enough to justify health advice, and never will be, so we should discard any health advice that makes people feel bad.

*Shrug* I knew at some point someone was going to try say pregnancy is sexist.

I say go ahead! The human race needs to die! :)

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