Man's got his woman to take his seed

I'm a little late on this one but I didn't want to miss noting it. It ties up so many things I say about women's reproductive rights, woman abuse and the extreme elements of the men's rights movement.

Read it and weep:

Young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage birth control or coerce pregnancy — including damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives — and these efforts, defined as “reproductive coercion,” frequently are associated with physical or sexual violence, a study by a team of researchers led by UC Davis has found.

Published online today in the January issue of the journal Contraception, the study, “Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy,” also found that among women who experienced both reproductive coercion and partner violence, the risk of unintended pregnancy doubled. The study is the first quantitative examination of the relationship between intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion and unintended pregnancy, the authors say.

“This study highlights an under-recognized phenomenon where male partners actively attempt to promote pregnancy against the will of their female partners,” said lead study author Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the UC Davis School of Medicine and a practitioner at UC Davis Children’s Hospital. “Not only is reproductive coercion associated with violence from male partners, but when women report experiencing both reproductive coercion and partner violence, the risk for unintended pregnancy increases significantly.”

More here.

Among the reasons men would want their partners to bear children: "It ranges from things like wanting to leave a legacy, to a straightforward desire for attachment, to having absolute control over her body," Miller said. "There are all of these elements to it."

Aisha Mays, MD, director of the Teen and Young Adult Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital who was not involved in the study, said pregnancy coercion is a growing problem that has been around for "quite some time" but is just now being recognized as a major health issue.

"It's about power and control," Mays said. "It's another way of saying, 'this girl's taken, this girl's mine.'"

Mays said she has seen cases in which a young mother who has a child with another partner will be forced by her new boyfriend to have another baby with him.

It's also a way for males to make their partners more dependent on them, according to Amy Bonomi, PhD, MPH, of Ohio State University.

Still more here.

While many pregnancy prevention efforts place the responsibility for unintended pregnancy on women, especially among teenagers, this study shows that these efforts are not only wrong, but dangerous. They ignore the possible role of of abusive partners in pregnancy.

It also contradicts the popular notion that men are the sole victims of contraceptive sabotage. We often hear stories of women deliberately missing their pill or lying about using contraception entirely to coerce their partner into a more serious relationship due to pregnancy. Less commonly known or discussed is the fact that men also participate in birth control sabotage to manipulate their partners.

None of this surprises me, not anymore. Not after having seen so many mens rights blogs that minimize the rate of woman abuse, or pretend that it is no more serious than what men suffer, all the while complaining about ''radical feminists'' who ''push'' for abortion.

I'd love to link to some of these sights but they are so vile -- and many are also filled with Nazi iconography as well as Holocaust denial -- that I will pass.

I wouldn't want you thinking I am a femi-nazi or anything.

One a somewhat related note, there is a known connection between animal and wife abuse. Sometimes a husband will torture his wife's pets as a form of abuse. Sometimes, a woman can't escape because she is afraid to leave her pets behind.

Which is why this story out of Calgary disturbed me:

A drop in donations and a reduction in revenue from animal adoptions has forced the Calgary Humane Society to make cuts to a program that helps identify domestic violence situations through incidents of animal abuse.

The society has cut its Violence Prevention Program co-ordinator position, a social worker who educated the community about the connection between animal cruelty and family violence. The co-ordinator also helped victims of abuse get their pets and themselves into a safe situation.

<SNIP>

So far, the society is continuing the program itself, including emergency boarding for families experiencing some sort of personal crisis as well as pet safe keeping, which temporarily houses animals for people seeking safety from abuse.

"Some of our other staff have added a couple of extra duties to their roster," said Jones. "But it's too bad that we don't have a social worker on hand to help these people. Our staff really aren't trained to look after domestic violence situations."

Please consider a donation, either to your local women's -- or animal --shelter.

P.S. I thought a chained dog might be an apt image for this post. But I totally lost it while looking for one. So much unspeakable cruelty. Just unbearable.

Comments

[Blondi Blathers]

Just found your blog and am glad to see someone else is shining a light on the abuse of women that is prevalent in our society. It's so underground sometimes that it's even difficult to see; it's accepted as the norm. Makes me mad.

[Jim M]

Are all dominance battles in the animal kingdom male vs. male, or not? I stopped believing that humans were at the top of the food chain after the first mosquito bite, but it took longer to notice the superior social harmony of the animal kingdom compared with human civilization. Are we the most advanced species of life on earth or just the one with the most destructive power? Is a "radical feminist" same as a radical terrorist? Why is it safer to be a female animal than a female human? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnuul7s0eEI