Is this not relevant?

In response to a comment by mcbirdie on her post Is this not offensive?, I offered a comment, OOP replied, and I responded.  This is a further response, via OOP's reply to said responsive comment.

THE ORIGINAL TOPIC

Why is it such a struggle to consider the topic of whether or not this advertisement is in fact sexist to a degree which is offensive and then whether or not it is acceptable that we still advertise in this fashion? It just seems like so many people need to take it to the direction of the oppression of men, the proper definition of feminism, and a dozen other unrelated issues. Is is that the question is too difficult or so simplistic that the answer seems obvious?

Okay, first let me address your concern about the original topic. I have yet to comment on that, as I have not decided for myself where exactly I stand on the issue. Do I find the advert sophomoric and objectifying, yes. Am I offended by the same advert? I'm not sure that that is the emotional quality of my experience, and I haven't yet come to a place of understanding as to why.

My interjection was merely to offer an alternative to dismissing the argument of one standing against feminism as an unrelated distraction, by showing that they, in fact, are using the very historical, political, and methodological arguments they seek to debunk to make their case against feminism and/or women's concerns about objectification. That parental leave or the seriousness of rape are contemporary gender-discrimination issues (the gender of the individuals effected notwithstanding) is the very reason that those of us identifying as feminist continue to make such noise about these issues, and justifiably so.

Insofar as people seek to justify their acceptance of something that is undesirable on the grounds that they or their gender category have to accept things undesirable happening to them, this is a related issue. Connecting with the universality of oppression (whether gender oppression or any other form) gets everyone on the same page. From there, we can choose to be apologists (people get a raw deal, deal with it) or meliorativists (people get a raw deal, do something about it).

The problem is, when anti-feminists take the apologist stance, they don't do it from a place of connection, but from a place of competition. They're reading feminism as a zero-sum us-vs-them game. It isn't. We can turn their arguments around and show how they're operating ultimately from the same needs for a fair and just society as we are, or we can dismiss their arguments as a distraction, and thus play the very same zero-sum us-vs-them game.

THINKING ABOUT EQUALITY

I feel like this is the sort of thing that people start saying when they've spent so much time thinking about the theory of equality that they forget that equality does not mean the same. I mean, by your token, why don't we just schedule all new fathers in for a bit of surgery when their partners are in labour? I'm sure with a bit of creativity the medical profession can come up with a way to make the pain equivalent.

So here we get to the question of "the proper definition of feminism". I suggest that there is no such thing. The feminists I speak with readily speak of feminisms, not simply feminism as a singularly defined term. There is no proper definition, but there are definitions.

Failing to acknowledge this plays into the hands of those who will not willingly recognize objectification when it is staring them in the face, because to do so would be to concede to feminism as they insist it be defined, as if there were no other definitions out there.

When we do acknowledge which feminism we are speaking from, our logic is clearer, and we have the opportunity to show that not all feminisms are the feminism that some would rail against. If not debunking a straw man, we can at least avoid fishing for red herring.

My own feminism is not a feminism of equality. Yet I can and do use the tools of a feminism of equality because those tools are useful and effective. I also use the tools of other feminisms.

INTERESTS OF SOCIETY

For instance, you seek to undermine my argument by suggesting satirically that men should have a medical procedure following the birth of their child so as to have equal bodily suffering. Here I would draw on the feminism of embodiment.

Equality does not mean the same. I agree. Here's the thing, child birth and child bonding are not the same. Child birth does not equal child bonding. Rechal, meanwhile, introduced a point about nursing. Nursing does not equal bonding, either. They are all related, but they are not the same.

Here we have three interests of society. First, the interest in childbirth. Second, the interest in nursing. Third, the interest in parent-child bonding.

The first interest is perhaps the most significant: no children born eventually means no society. The second interest concerns the lifetime health of those children: so long as we believe (as I do) that human milk is superior to other alternatives in maximizing the health and disease resistance of newborns. The third interest regards the behavioral health (what used to be psychological health) and lifetime societal contribution of children: we all benefit from children forming secure attachments and long-term healthy relationships with their parents.

To this, I would add a fourth societal interest (the relevance of which will become apparent below), the interest in employers benefiting from the knowledge, skills, and abilities of their employees.

Now, historically the first three interests have been bundled under the concept of "maternity leave", while the last two, I would suggest, are caught up in the fraught concept of "paternity leave". This bundling confounds distinct interests of society, and conflates bodily sex with cultural gender. This bundling is less and less defensible in an era of same-sex marriage, surrogacy, breast pumps, and yes, even paternity leave. Heck, it was problematic even when the only recognized non-traditional family arrangement was that of adoption.

Let's take gender out of this. Imagine we have a pair of parents. (We'll limit our consideration to two-parent families.) These could be a man and a woman, two women, two men, a transexual in transition and an androgene: it doesn't matter for my argument here. Actually, what matters is that the gendered "one man, one woman" model is not definitive of "a pair of parents".

THE INTEREST IN CHILDBIRTH

Our first interest concerns the delivery of a child into the world, and by extension, the nine months of pregnancy leading to this. Female-bodied persons willing to undergo the physical effects of pregnancy and child-birth are arguably necessary to society, at least until a societally-acceptable technology enables us to gestate and bring to term human life by other means. This interest is reflected in the historical understanding of maternity leave as a time for the mother to recover from both pregnancy and giving birth.

(Before that, termination of employement due to pregnancy and/or childbirth arguably even more tightly bundled the interests of childbirth, nursing, and bonding than they are now. We have inherited this bundling of motherhood as all of a piece from the patriarchal injustice that preceded it.)

However, what if the birth-mother is not either of our pair of parents? What if our couple, for whatever reason, chooses to have a third party carry and deliver their child? In this case, the benefits society grants for recovery from childbirth are by right those of the birth-mother, not either of our pair of parents. As it is the birth-mother who underwent the physical labor of pregnancy and delivery in which society has an interest.

This in no way detracts from society's other interests. Society still has an interest in nursing and in bonding, and while the birth mother might contribute initially to the former, it is our pair of parents who engage exclusively in the latter.

This is why I argue that maternal medical leave should be held distinct from parental leave, and should be based on the health consequences of individual pregnancies. Now, I would note here that any attempt to negotiate concerns of both health and employment is fraught with problems. Anyone who has any experience with a workers compensation board knows that one's right to fair treatment is often hard won, if won at all.

Nonetheless, even baring any improvement in such systems, a regime that grants medical leave apart from parental leave would be preferable to a regime that requires that female-bodied persons who are both bonding with their new child and recovering from the birth of that child to balance both these interests within the same time frame as a co-parent who had no such physical trauma. Birth and bonding are not equal, and should not be treated as if they were.

THE INTEREST IN NURSING

Let's consider again the case of a pair of parents who choose to have a surrogate carry and deliver their child. Now, imagine that one of our pair of parents is female-bodied (without considering the body of the other parent), and chooses to voluntarily undergo a procedure to induce lactation, so that they can nurse the child upon delivery by the birth-mother.

This nurse-mother would not benefit from maternal medical leave, as it was not their body that carried and delivered the child. However, this does nothing to negate the physical sacrifice they are making to nurse the child after the birth.

Again, this has historically been bundled together with childbirth and bonding under the concept of "maternity leave". Again however, as birth is not bonding, so too nursing is not birth. That one typically follows the other does not mean society's interest in both need necessarily be treated as equal. Children can and are raised without a nurse-mother. Society has an interest in this happening less often than more often, but that interest is separate from the interest in childbirth.

Thus, in our scenario above, the nurse-mother who does not actually give birth would still be undergoing physical strain for which some measure of benefit should be available. Unlike maternal medical leave, however, here I would not argue for a health test to determine term of benefits. Nursing is too intimate and personal, in my humble opinion, to be treated like recovery from a C-section, and unlike such an obvious trauma, the effects of nursing on the mother's body are far more nuanced than would merit, again in my opinion, micromanagement of leave accounting.

Here, instead, I would argue for a graduated term-based benefit scheme. Say society values its interest in nursing during the first three months of life as worth 26 days of nursing leave, which works out to about 2 days per week during the first three months. The same society might value the next three months of nursing at only 20 days, or about 1.5 days per week. Again, as we're not bundling the interests here, such nursing leave would be independent of either maternal medical leave or parental leave.

ALLOPARENTS AND WORKING MOMS

Another scenario can help to explore this. Imagine one of our pair of parents is the birth mother, but there is a medical reason that she cannot nurse her child. Perhaps she is diagnosed with cancer in her third trimester, and while the baby is safely delivered, her doctor advises that she start chemotherapy immediately to maximize her own chances of survival. Chemo would make her milk unsafe for the child, and so nursing is not an option for her.

However, a relative is willing to voluntarily undergo the same procedure as our first nurse-mother, above, inducing lactation so that they can nurse the child on the birth-mother's behalf. Let's bracket for the moment the slippery slope that this portends toward commodification of bodies, and assume that we're looking at a society that deems surrogate nursing to be no more objectionable than surrogate pregnancy. Here, the nurse-mother, who was not the birth-mother, nonetheless is making a physical investment that, in society's own interest, should be recognized in terms of nursing leave, irrespective of who benefits from maternal medical and/or parental leave.

Now, let's imagine a society that does not want people other than the parent of a child inducing lactation. The birth-mother is still in chemo, but now no one is nursing the child, instead the parents are giving the newborn formula or some other substitute from the outset. Well, now there is no physical strain put on any individual body to nurse the child (the physical strain of chemo is a separate issue), and so no nursing benefit would be available, but this doesn't take anything away from maternal medical and parental leave (and any other medical leave due with respect to the cancer treatment), as these things are not equal.

One last example to fully explore this model. Let's imagine, again, one of our pair of parents is birth mother, and following maternal medical leave, she chooses to return to work, her partner taking the first round of parental leave. The birth mother, however, takes a breast pump to the workplace, so that the child will continue to receive at least some of the benefits of nursing. The fact that the nurse-mother is working does not mean that there isn't still a physical consequence of continued lactation for her body. If society values nursing over substitutes, then the benefit of nursing leave would accrue whether or not the nurse-mother returns to work.

Perhaps she takes one day off a week to rest and recuperate, perhaps she banks all the time for her period of parental leave. However it is worked out, the nurse-mother would recieve benefit irrespective of benefits received for recovery from childbirth or caring for their newborn.

Indeed, even if the nurse-mother only returns to work after exhausing all maternal medical and parental leave, if society values their continuing to provide their own milk to their child, then a nursing benefit would still continue to accrue for however long said society was willing to incentivise continued lactation.

THE INTEREST IN BONDING

The more recently historical movement toward paternity leave speaks to the importance of parental bonding, irrespective of whose body or bodies are involved in birth and nursing. A male-bodied parent neither gives birth nor lactates, but they still form an attachment with their child that impacts upon that child's subsequent development and maturation. Birth and bonding are not equal. Nursing and bonding are likewise not the same. That we historically have bundled all three does not mean that we must continue to do so. Thus, while a male-bodied parent deserves neither the benefits of maternal medical leave or nursing leave, society still has an interest in their having the benefit of parental leave.

Here society's interest in parental leave for both parents is equal, irrespective of the body of either parent. Both members of a pair of same-sex parents should derive the same benefit, regardless of their body sex, as both members of a different-sex parental pair. Society's interest here is in bonding (and coincidently, infant care), not in the bodily sex of the parents doing the bonding.

Regimes that bundle the first three interests come in two forms, so far as I'm aware. In one form, maternity leave and paternity leave are treated as fixed blocks of time irrespective of medical necessity. A mother (perhaps even if not the birth-mother) of a new infant gets a fixed period of maternity leave, irrespective of whether she had an easy pregnancy or nearly died due to complications. A father gets a fixed period, often much shorter, irrespective of the needs his family may have for additional care due to the physical trauma of a difficult pregnancy.

In the other form, citied to by the OOP in the case of Finland, the parents together share a single block of time, so far as I understand sequentially (although were it to be concurrent, it would still be problematic), and without regard to complications in pregnancy and/or delivery or the extra physical stress of nursing if one partner can and does do so. Here, it as if rather than unbundle bonding from childbirth and nursing, the attempt instead has been to bundle both parents into a single body, one of which is always at their desk, further confounding distinct societal interests.

Here we don't even need to look to such historically new issues as surrogacy or same-sex parenthood. Consider the case of adoption. Perhaps more than any other scenario, society has an interest in the formation of a healthy bond between an adopted child and their adopted parents.

Let's assume the adopted child is already old enough to have been weaned. Neither parent undergoes the stresses of childbirth to bring this child into the world. Neither parent will naturally or artificially lactate to nurse this child. Yet they both need time to bond with this child. This is true whether they are a traditional partnership representing two genders or a same-sex partnership. Society doesn't benefit only from the mother bonding with her child, but from both parents doing so, even if neither is a "mother".

The parental leave that would be due under these circumstances has nothing to do with recovery from childbirth or with the physical stresses of nursing. Bundling these interests only means that a nursing birth-mother with a C-section scar plus internal scars due to near fatal hemorrhaging and an adoptive mother who only feeds their adopted child Gerber products would derive the same maternity leave benefit (or, in the alternative only the former would, the latter deriving no benefit), even though they are not the same. Their partners, meanwhile, would most likely derive a different, shorter benefit, if any at all. Even though society's interest in their having a strong bond with their child is the same.

THE INTEREST IN KSAs

Knowledge, skills, and abilities: the stuff you seek to represent on your resume. Society has an interest in these. When an employer hires you, the expect to derive benefit from your KSAs, and insofar as they do derive such a benefit, society benefits from the economic productivity that results.

In the case of maternity leave, historically, the contention has been one of how to value the interest in KSAs against the value in the bundle of childbirth, nursing, and bonding. Paternity leave, more historically recent, has only weighed the value of KSAs against the value of bonding (and coincident care). The result is that even in societies where there is a system of maternity leave, there is little or no system of paternity leave.

Say we have a policy of three months of maternity leave and three weeks of paternity leave. If we were to weigh the bundled interests irrespective of gender, this would indicate that childbirth and nursing, together, were valued as worth 10 weeks of leave, without regard to trauma undergone during childbirth or stresses endured during nursing, and without regard to whether the bonding-mother was birth-mother or is nurse-mother. The mother is deemed woman, and thus gets a block of time without regard for her individual circumstances.

Meanwhile, we have bonding leave valued at three weeks. Perhaps that's what bonding of each parent with the child is worth in this society (although it seems insufficient to me). Which would be fine, if is were not confounded with medical conditions and nursing stressors. When it is, we have unequal situations where a life-threatening pregnancy and an atypically easy pregnancy are both valued as the same, even though the reality is that the latter birth-mother is in much better physical condition to bond with and care for their newborn than the former birth-mother, and so gets far more bonding benefit from bundled maternity leave than either the difficult pregancy birth-mother or the partners of either birth-mother.

By unbundling these interests, we can still have a block of time, extended within reason to allow for recovery from physical (or even mental/post-partum) trauma. This does not require a medical intervention to have fathers undergo equivalent physical trauma, as OOP opined, as the interest in childbirth is distinct from the interest in parental bonding. Intentionally traumatizing the partner's body in no way serves society's interest in childbirth.

UNBUNDLED BENEFITS OVER TIME

However, the other unbundled benefit schemes would not require a block of time. The nursing leave benefit, as already noted, might be taken piecemeal over the course of many weeks, during which time the nurse-mother's employer benefits to a large extent from the nurse-mother's KSAs, where they would not if the nurse-mother were staying home during an undifferentiated bundled block of time, while the nurse-mother still has an opportunity to recuperate from the stresses of nursing, even if indirect nursing via some technology. Here, societies interests in nursing and in KSAs (including maintenance and continued development of the human capital represented by those KSAs) are both served.

(I don't know that there are not already parental leave schemes that allow for such flex-time or partial-return-to-work arrangements. My understanding of the cases I know of is that it is typically a one-size-fits-all model where the birth-mother stays home for a fixed block of time, and then that time expired, returns to work full time.)

Likewise, if both parents received parental leave benefits, distinct from maternal medical leave and nursing leave, these benefits would not need to be treated as an undifferentiated block. Rather than one parent taking off for three weeks of parental leave and then the other parent doing the same, one could imagine a non-birth parent taking their parental leave concurrently with a birth-mother's maternal medical leave, giving both the birth-mother and the child the care they need when they most need it. This needn't even be done all at one time. Fifteen days of paternal leave might be spread over one or more months, again allowing the non-birth-parent to relieve some of the strain on their partner during their recovery while still delivering benefits to their employer.

Again, this has nothing to do with the gender of either parent. A pair of female-bodied parents would derive the same unbundled parental leave benefits irrespective if either was birth-mother, nurse-mother, both or neither.

Of course, there would be an opportunity for coercion on the part of the employer to have the employee-parent conform to a leave schedule that suited the employer more than the employee-parent. No system is perfect, but unbundling the various societal interests in the very least ameliorates the all-or-nothing return to work as if somehow after x months there is no further societal interest in parental bonding (and care) except if one parent can afford to give up a continued relationship with their employer.

Another variation on this would be a staggered work arrangement, where both parents reach agreements with their employers to work a two or three days a week during the term of their respective parental leaves, such that both parents have time to bond with and care for their child even as both parents' employers benefit from the KSAs of their employees.

As with the nurse-mother benefit discussed above, the employees likewise derive benefit from being able to stagger work and bonding, as they are able to keep their KSAs relatively current and carry projects important to their careers through to completion even as they are both being allowed time to bond with their new child.

SUMMING UP

As I've stated at the outset, I have not come to a definite conclusion as to how I feel about the advert mcbirdie offers for comment. Nonetheless, I believe that when the argument turns to how men get a raw deal, on account of being men, this is entirely related to the advert. This argument seeks to dismiss gender-discrimination by citing to other cases of gender-discrimination, and those of us who identify as feminists dismiss such an argument at our peril.

Likewise, it is important to be clear about which definition of feminism we're working from, especially when our interlocutors would dismiss our arguments about gender-discrimination by attacking feminism as they would unilaterally define it. When someone claims that you have no basis to be offended by something that is gender-discriminatory, and they wrap this claim in an attack on an idea of what feminism is or one gender's concerns are, it is useful to discern how their definition and our own may differ, so as to avoid talking past one another. This is Lakoff's argument about fairness.

Finally, my argument about unbundled leave comes from an understanding that equal does not mean the same, which is why I prefer to make arguments from within a framework of embodiment. Different bodies, individual bodies, have different capacities and suffer different hardships. A two-sizes fit two-genders model that assumes all mothers have the same bodily experiences does a disservice to mothers and to women, at the same time as it creates at least the appearance of gender-inequality.

Unbundling the interests of society and structuring benefits to reflect the bodily realities of individuals with respect to each interest, while entailing a more complex regime, would both better serve society's interests and obviate arguments about men getting inequal treatment with regard to parental leave.

The advert that spawned this discussion does not exist in a vacuum, but rather in a complex society with many such adverts and many other gender-discriminatory practices besides. An attempt to discuss the advert in a vacuum does not serve anyone's interests, except those who would seek to debunk our concerns about one little ol' advert as insignificant. A discussion that recognizes how the advert is embedded in broader and deeper biopolitical regimes of regulating bodies may seem to be a distraction, but it is anything but.