[Fwd: Re: ignore this, it's about women and sexism ...]]]

[Katha Pollitt]

Miles Jackson wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 25 Nov 1999, Katha Pollitt wrote:
> 
> [to kKelley]
> 
> >   Well, you write that you are obsessed with having another child in the
> > next five years. Don't know exactly how old you are, but doesn't the
> > deadline -- and the obsession -- relate to your female biological clock?
> > If you were a man, you could be a bit more relaxed. Especially since as
> > a single person, you as a man could find a young fertile woman and have
> > that second child after you got tenure!
> >   Don't you think it matters that girls sexually mature earlier than
> > boys (or, if you prefer, boys mature later than girls?) That a girl can
> > be impregnated at eleven or twelve? By any old creep who rapes her?
> > These are not mere "health care" matters. They are biological matters
> > that structure our political concerns.
> >
> > katha
> >
> 
> This reasoning to me is the danger of naturalizing the distinction
> between men and women.  Do you really believe the only reason why
> a woman might want to have a baby is a "biological clock"?  After
> years of indoctrination, mass media images, social pressure from
> friends and family, role models, religious doctrine, the only
> possible, plausible reason why a woman wants a baby is . . .
> biological.  As usual, the biological here is just a
> way of erasing the importance of the social and how our
> identities and desires are shaped via social relations.
> 
>

Miles, perhaps I phrased it poorly.  I didn't mean that women have a
"biological clock" that tells them they want to have a baby and want it
now.  I meant that women know they can run out of time to have a child
if they wait too long. If they don't want to have a child, it doesn't
matter. (And I suppose I should add that I don't believe all women want
to have children, or that wanting to have a child is in women's genes,
or anything like that). If, however, a woman does want to have a child,
declining fertility, a physiological event, is something she is likely
to take into consideration in a way that a comparable man does not have
to, to the same extent, in the same way.

  Maybe someday children will be grown in bottles and none of this will
matter. but right now, it does. 

Katha