In order to understand what objectification really feels like (as opposed to “Somebody stared at me on the bus, I feel totally objectified), try getting pregnant. I understand that I’ve been around for a while and after 37 years that gets old while a baby is new and exciting. I would, however, prefer for people to remember that there is a person placed around that baby.
“The skin on my legs cracks and starts gushing blood,” I tell my doctor.
“Oh, it’s OK,” he informs me brightly. “This is not harmful to the baby.”
And it’s good that it isn’t harmful to the baby, I celebrate this with all my heart. But it is harmful to another human being who currently acts as the baby receptacle – ME.
And then people wonder why I keep coming to work with this enormous belly. Because at work I’m a competent human being who is valued for her intellect and not an unwieldy, problematic body that needs to be shuffled around, medicated, and handled in a variety of weird ways.
“Oh, you don’t enjoy feeling like a thing?” an Argentinean friend mocks me. “Just wait until you breastfeed.”
Yes, there will be much whining in the next 19 days.
Clarissa's Blog 
Your post reminded me of what I recently read about Jodie Laubenberg, the Texas lawmaker who pushed the recent anti-abortion bill that Wendy Davis filibustered. A few years ago she supported some measure that would make it harder for low-income pregnant women to access prenatal healthcare by arguing that the fetuses aren’t born yet. Not only does that go against her “pro-life” stance that fetuses are people, it also completely erases the mother from the picture, as if prenatal healthcare doesn’t also affect the person carrying the fetus.
Anyway, it might not have occurred to your doctor at that moment that an expectant mother would be having any “selfish” thoughts that aren’t connected in some way to the kid.
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What the doctor is forgetting is that the baby will not be able to pay any bills for many years to come. 🙂 🙂
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Well, you can be both an aquarium and your doctor’s ATM machine. Still an object 🙂
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🙂 🙂
I see you really get me. 🙂
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I never regret my choice not to be a parent less than when I read anecdotes like this. ;-
Because I really don’t think I could display the “appropriate” level of self-abnegation required to be a fetal aquarium. At that I would irresistibly have blurted out, “Sod the baby, I’m bleeding!
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Sometimes, I wonder if the availability/popularity of “Alien” in a certain country correlates with a drop in the birth rate. Since I know you don’t do SF, Clarissa, it’s a movie where the alien antagonist has pretty heavy sexuality/pregnancy overtones. From what I know of pregnancy, and from what you’re posting here, the alien monster is small fry :P. Hope all these symptoms dissapear quickly and painlessly in 19 days.
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found article http://www.popsci.com.au/science/3-ways-to-save-psychotherapy
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Great! Thank you, this works perfectly for the post I’m writing.
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A parody of pro-life stance in a picture:
http://maryxmas.livejournal.com/3478496.html
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