I know, I know, when dudes/partners say “We’re pregnant” it is supposed to be regarded as a triumph in sympathy and unity, a sign that dudes finally get it — you both made this baby, and he is so committed to the child-rearing that will ensue that he’s willing to completely violate the semantic rules of biology to prove it. Why, used to be, dudes didn’t even have to be in the room when you delivered! That’s how disconnected from the experience of gestation they once were!
Not everything new is good, OK? Not everything in the spirit of the thing is good for the thing, dig? And not everything that “basically means” something means the same something you think it does. This is one of those things. So when you say “We’re pregnant” but you mean “We’re having a baby,” or “We’re expecting” it is not the same. Because if you can say “We’re Pregnant!” and then literally turn around and mainline heroin while eating deli turkey, sushi, doing shots, and punching yourself in the gut with no risk to the fetus, you aren’t pregnant.
And so when Mila Kunis did a little funny monologue on Kimmel recently about how dudes should stop saying we’re pregnant because they’re not actually pregnant, I was like, yup, speak it, Kunisaurus:
“Hi, I’m Mila Kunis with a very special message for all you soon-to-be fathers. Stop saying, ‘We’re pregnant. You’re not pregnant! Do you have to squeeze a watermelon-sized person out of your lady-hole? No. Are you crying alone in your car listening to a stupid Bette Midler song? No. When you wake up and throw up is it because you’re nurturing a human life? No. It’s because you had too many shots of tequila. Do you know how many shots of tequila we had? None. Because we can’t have shots of tequila. We can’t have anything. Because we’ve got your little love goblin growing inside of us.”
Quibble: 1. I prefer to think of it as a love hyena. 2. She misunderstands the whole squeeze a watermelon-sized person out of your lady-hole thing — it’s pushing really, not squeezing, and, sorry, but your lady-hole gets temporarily watermelon-sized, too — but her message is clear: Our experiences are different. Call a spade a spade.
And it’s OK for our experiences to be different, and really important for us to acknowledge that they are. Pregnancy emotionally happens to everyone but physically end emotionally happens to a woman (yes I know about sympathetic pregnancy but that is still not the same). Whether or not you are, or aren’t, or want to be, or don’t want to be, or wish you could but can’t etc etc is a defining aspect of being in a female body. Um, what do you think the main source of female oppression is? Softer skin? No, it’s pregnancy.
Pregnancy, AKA a critical fucking distinction in our bodies, is a huge part of why women have, on the whole, been discriminated against. Pregnancy renders woman immobile, dependent, vulnerable, and it has been used as a reason to not trust them, to outright murder them, or to simply refuse to give them good jobs and/or raises.
This is not said to diminish a man’s experience during his wife’s pregnancy or to suggest it doesn’t matter, doesn’t affect him, doesn’t vastly alter his life, sense of himself, understanding of the world, feelings about the universe, his relationships, identity and all the things that having babies come into the world does for all of us. It’s an enormously important role. But it’s a supporting role, ultimately, and there’s just something a smidge glommy about a dude’s well-intentioned but entitled, oversteppy desire to call an experience unique to women his own by virtue of being there when it happens.
Not surprisingly, a dude who has never been pregnant has fired back (humorously) to Kunis’s monologue:
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