Why Are People So Mean to Pregnant Women?

People often ask me why people are so mean to pregnant women. After all, it's not exactly normal to tell a stranger she's fat, grab her body, or inquire about her sex life. These questions often contain hints of disbelief or blame. Maybe I'm exaggerating to get attention. You know, because it's proven fact that frustrating stories are the best way to garner attention. Perhaps I'm doing something to provoke people. In this justification, otherwise normal people can be induced to grab strangers or insult their bodies. People who have never been pregnant simply don't want to accept that sporting a baby bump subjects many women to abuse.

This doubt of women's stories is nothing unusual. Although 1 in 3 women faces workplace sexual harassment, these incidents almost never lead to winning lawsuits. Even police officers don't believe rape victims. Women domestic violence survivors often face queries about what they did to provoke their attackers, even when blood drips down their battered, bruised faces.

A world where women lie about abuse or provoke people to abuse them is a much safer world than one where innocent women face a climate of assault and abuse. Victim-blaming, I think, derives from the desire to feel safe, to find some reason it couldn't happen to you. And for people who have never been pregnant, the abuse women face at a highly vulnerable time may be too shocking to accept. When I share my stories with pregnant women, though, I hear only sympathy, echoes of agreement, and usually an assortment of shocking stories.

Statistics points to the very real nature of pregnancy-related abuse: Murder is the number one cause of death in pregnant women. Pregnant women are 60% more likely than non-pregnant women to face violence. 

So I'm a little hesitant to address why exactly it is that pregnant women get so much abuse. Nevertheless, it's a fair question. Understanding this phenomenon does not require victim-blaming, and greater insight is a necessary prerequisite to ending abuse of pregnant women. I don't think there's a single explanation, and I don't think all pregnant women experience equal levels of abuse. Because feminists have largely ignored pregnancy and motherhood, there's not much empirical research addressing this phenomenon. There's not a right answer--except, of course, that it's not women's fault. Some ideas:

Women's Bodies as Public Property 
The notion that women's bodies aren't entirely their own is not limited to pregnant women. Street harassment--including obscene comments, grabbing women's bodies, making sexual threats, and other intimidating gestures--is a near-universal experience among women, with 99% of women experiencing it at least once. 

Pregnant women get it even worse. Doctors touch them, cut them, even operate on them without their consent. Anti-choice activists want them to be forced to report their miscarriages and bury the remains. Our society has collectively decided that the women who know their babies the best, who love them the most, and who must care for them fr the next two decades or so are inexplicably the least equipped to make decisions about those babies. So we allow pregnant women to be violated in a way that we'd never allow among other groups. Can you imagine a dentist pulling a tooth without your permission and not facing charges? Or a doctor cutting open a man's testicles solely because it makes an operation more convenient?

Pregnant women are steadily indoctrinated to accept these violations. I think this erodes our sense of bodily autonomy, making us less likely to fight back when someone violates us. When people learn that they can grab pregnant women with impunity, they're more likely to do it in the future. That doesn't mean that this grossly inappropriate behavior is in any way the fault of the victim. But it does mean that our society demands that passivity from pregnant women. That passivity allows us to be further victimized.

Unreasonable Expectations About Pregnant Behavior 
Pregnant women are supposed to behave as paragons of virtue, allowing the baby's well-being--and only the baby's well-being--to guide every decision. Women are told to quit working "for the baby," even if doing so means the woman and the baby will starve. They are expected to submit to everything their doctors demand, to never eat their favorite foods, and to immediately abandon even the most innocuous of bad habits--coffee and soda, for example.

Few women can live up to this ideal, and no woman can live up to everyone's unreasonable and ill-informed pregnancy demands. Even the woman who diligently follows her doctor's instructions might offend a stranger by wearing a dress he thinks inappropriate or by showing her husband too much affection. Because we view pregnant women as public property, we think it's perfectly acceptable to comment on their behavior.

Factor in a side of paternalism and you have a recipe for endless unwanted comments. Research consistently shows that people view women as less intelligent than men. They're more likely to listen to the same comments when they come from men, more likely to attribute women's comments to mindless emotions, less likely to believe assertions from a woman. So it makes good sense that our society collectively does not trust women to make good decisions, and that strangers consider it their right to correct women. After all, we're not much more intelligent than children.

I've had strangers tell me my clothing is slutty, that I shouldn't be drinking coffee (my doctor says it's fine), and that I need to spend my time at home. They're often quite aggressive, suggesting that their comments are not the product of concern, but of a desire to control.

I have no evidence to support this contention, but I suspect that pregnant women who act contrary to stereotypical notions of pregnancy--those who assert feminist values, who work, who wear "sexy" clothing, who are unmarried, or who are unfriendly to strangers--are more vulnerable to abuse.

Sexual Shame 
Most women have sex to get pregnant, so pregnancy is like a giant advertisement that a woman is sexually active. Our puritanical society still think the question of whether a woman is a slut is a perfectly valid one. So pregnant women must field an endless list of questions designed to determine whether they're worthy of being pregnant or just whores: Did you plan it? Is your husband happy? Did you use IVF? Are you married?

Women as Entertainment
It's rare for me to go a week without encountering a stranger who instructs me to smile. Many people, particularly men, believe that women should be a constant source of entertainment. A woman who has a person growing inside of her is a ready source of entertainment, so it stands to reason that many pregnant women face demands that they submit to unwanted touches and questions about their sex lives. After all, we're not people, just sources of entertainment.

Worst of all is the victim-blaming. Dozens of people have told me that I chose to get pregnant, and I therefore chose to accept this treatment. That feels a lot like the "she was wearing a red dress" defense to rape.