Gestation and Patriarchy - What If Men Could Give Birth?

"When men have babies, women and men will no longer exist."

     Though a startling proposition, the above statement from Deirdre M. Condit's article Reproducing Possibilities:  Androgenesis and Mothering Human Identity is certainly thought-provoking.  In the article, Condit tackles the controversial and fascinating idea of ectogenesis - reproduction outside of a woman's body - as proposed by Shulamith Firestone by comparing it with discussions of androgenesis - reproduction within artificial wombs in male bodies - by Mary O'Brien, Nancy Hartsock, and Margie Piercy.  Both Firestone and the androgenesis promoters believe that the material reality of gestation, birth, and lactation produce patriarchy.  However, while Firestone believes that the solution is women ceasing to give birth, O'Brien, Hartsock, and Piercy believe that the solution is men beginning to carry, birth, and nurse children.  Ultimately, Condit sides with androgenesis.

     In reading Condit's work, I was engaged by several of her ideas.  The belief that "one comes more easily to the domination of others when one has not nurtured beings in and with one's own self" was, at least at first, convincing.  I happen to be a fairly nurturing individual, and I do agree that Firestone's proposal of ectogenesis buys into masculinist norms by assimilating women to the male standard.  However, upon second thought I realized that this supposedly feminine aversion to "the domination of others" fails to apply to racism, heterosexism, ableism, religious discrimination, and every other -ism but sexism.  White women have had few qualms about dominating black women and men through slavery, segregation, and continual racial injustice.  Pioneer women in the US westward expansion had few qualms about the genocide of indigenous peoples.  Catholic women in Spain had few qualms about dominating, even eliminating, Muslim and Jewish people during the Inquisition.*

     If Condit is right, wouldn't these women have resisted the subjugation, oppression, and extermination of others due to their "sense of self-connection to the world"?  If "nurturing and caregiving are [the] most fundamental values" for those who gestate, why do women with privilege persistently oppress those whom they can?

     Here we come to my conclusion:  Biology is a part of our composition, and important; however, we are not purely biological creatures, and we cannot treat ourselves as such.  We exist in duration, space, and community, and this context is essential to our actions, ideologies, and institutions.  Though I have nothing against male pregnancy, I do not believe that men being able to carry out the same biological functions as women will eliminate patriarchy.  The system of female domination is far too ingrained in our collective psyches to alter with a voluntary medical innovation.  We need more.

*Obviously, these are blanket-statement examples, and some women did have qualms about the examples I mentioned.  However, my point is that the majority of women were not inhibited by their reproductive capacities from inflicting violence and oppression on others.