The desexualisation of mothers

[ailbhe]

I was recently made aware of the acronym MILF, which, according to a reliable and outraged source, means "Mother I'd Like to Fuck."

Well, isn't that nice?

One of the nicest things about it, I find, is that it assumes that such mothers are in the minority. Otherwise it wouldn't need an acronym; there'd be M for Mothers, and MIKOOB for Mothers I'd Kick Out Of Bed, or similar. And, of course, there's the implied corollary that women who are not mothers mostly fall into the Women I'd Like To Fuck category, because, well, WILF is just catchy.

And because there are, as we all know, Maidens, Mothers and Whores. And Mothers are the safe ones, who do not come with a load of desirability baggage. This goes back about a zillion years to the dawn of the anti-feminist backlash or whatever, depending on whether you believe certain Golden Age fantasties (when women ruled the world and lived in peace and harmony and never died of STDs or childbirth and celebrated their menses and revelled in their menopause and so on). It's sitting pretty at the back of the general subconscious; people react a lot more badly to "young mother (21) raped in park" than to "young woman (21) raped in park" because mothers are suppsed to be inviolate, asexual, aloof - and that's crazy.

Mothers are sexual creatures, just like they were when they started trying to conceive, and for much the same reasons. There hasn't been an immaculate conception for at least 2,000 years; getting around the sex-makes-babies equation takes quite a lot of science and time and effort (usually, ho hum, effort on the part of women, messing around with thermometers and pills and placebo pills and the indignity of infertility treatment).

So it stands to reason that most women with at least one child have had sex at least once. I'm sure you'll agree.

And women with two children of different ages, that is to say, not twins, have had sex atleast twice. Yes?

Wow!

And what proportion of the adult (as in, of childbearing age) female population of the planet, until now, has been women who had at least one child?

I don't know, but I bet it's more than half. That's a lot of mothers having sex. Wahey!

But nonetheless we have this big blanket over the whole thing, like the discretion blanket people drape over their babies heads when they breastfeed in public, so that everyone can tell at a glance what they're doing but can't see anything.

(Breastfeeding is not a sexual act. Breasts are not primary sex characteristics. Someday the world will earn to cope with them. There will be no more breastfeeding in this thinking-aloud.)

And the discretion blanket shows everyone that there's sex there, but that it's at the very least extremely private, and posssibly shameful and secret, too.

So when I toddle off to the doctor and say "Hello Mister Doctor Person I had a baby and now I can't have sex," the doctor just isn't programmed to think "Oh goodness, that's appalling, we must try and fix it." No, the doctor is programmed to think "Oh well, sex isn't all that important to people like you, so we'll just send you on your way."

I get a little more sympathy when I say "But I want to have another baby!" - and I admit, that is the truly devestating part of the whole affair, but it's not the ONLY part - because mothers are supposed to want more babies. I get a bit of understanding when I say "And that means that my husband can't have sex," and the Health Visitors all ask me "Oh, dear, how is Rob coping?" - and they mean "Is he being nice to you or does he hate not having sex so much it's ruining your relationship?"

But almost no-one (the most recent Health Visitor is a counterexample) thinks that it's a terrible thing that I, a healthy 26-year-old married woman with no hormonal problems or disease problems or anything like that just cna't have sex.

Even when I want to.

Possibly ever again.

Because I'm a mother, and because I'm a woman, and I'm not sure which of these is the primary reason.

Comments

[artela.livejournal.com]

WHich means you need to make more fuss and more loudly until they take you *seriously* - ask them how they'd feel if their wife / daughter / girlfriend / etc were never able to have sex again? Or, if they are female, ask them how they'd like to do without it for the rest of _their_ lives. Good Gods - they can transplant peoples faces these days, and fix ligaments in knees, and reattach people's limbs - surely they can sort out something as rudimentary as this?!

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

Well said!

[rosefox]

You could wear this to your next meeting with the doctor.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

that still paints the "m" as an object, not as someone who herself has sexual desire. (i seem to be one of those currently rare feminists who doesn't feel that displaying ones self as an object is not in fact an empowering stance. how silly and oldfashioned of me.)

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

But almost no-one (the most recent Health Visitor is a counterexample) thinks that it's a terrible thing that I, a healthy 26-year-old married woman with no hormonal problems or disease problems or anything like that just cna't have sex.

I think it's terrible. I just spent a year not wanting sex, but I would have thought it was a terrible thing if I could never do it again, even if I didn't want it at that point.

You have the wrong doctor for you, because he is not listening.

[ailbhe]

I *did* spend a lot of the time not wanting sex, because I was in terrible pain for a long time, but... yeah.

It's not just one doctor, by the way. There've been a lot of doctors.

the conceit of it all drives me nuts!

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

heck, i haven't much wanted sex for years now, and it doesn't bother me at all, nor do i think it's terrible if i indeed shall never want it again; i actually like not having to fuss with it anymore -- but that's personal to me, and doesn't extend to other people. it's horrific that ailbhe is getting treated this way.

one size does not fit all. if she wants it, the damn doctors ought to learn to listen. it makes me furious to hear about the run-around she's getting. that's the sort of stuff i usually hear from transsexuals, and it enrages me then too. what is wrong with those people who should be servants of our health, that they're so conceited about knowing better than we do ourselves? yes, some people are nuts and probably need psychiatric help more than they need body modification, but it's pretty damn clear that ailbhe is not one of those -- she just wants something fixed that once worked, and that is supposed to work in human beings. this is not an unreasonable request.

*arrrgh*.

sorry. rant not directed at you, of course, just springboarding.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

While this is an interesting analysis, the person who told you the term should have explained what it means, and the origins of it, because it dramatically affects the interpretation. It's not a sexualizing of motherhood or mothering or breastfeeding or anything else. Nor are you in the target market, despite being a Mom. You're far too young.

The term was coined in the *extremely* popular teen comedy film, "American Pie," that came out in 1999. It was coined to play up as comedic a scene in which one of the teenaged boys winds up in the bed of (or rather, on the pool table of) one of the other teenaged boys' moms. The "Mom," relationship isn't in reference to an infant or any of the infant acts of mothering, but to having teenaged or college aged kids -- say a Mom in her 40s or early 50s just hitting that "empty nest" age. It's the new coinage for the, "Mrs. Robinson," thing: An older, experienced woman who is willing to engage in sexual activity with a teenaged boy, at least partly for the draw of being a "teacher" to his inexperience.

I don't think her actually being a Mom is even necessary to the modern usage of the term at all. Just that she be an older woman who is sexually appealing to young men. (I don't think MILF is ever used to describe women with infant children or in relation to adult men.) In the fantasy one would play out, the only really role of the child would be to provide accessibility or an excuse for meeting, although I'm sure that there are many MILF fantasies that involve no refernce to kids but instead have other excuses for the teenaged boy and the older woman to meet up. However, I think that the grown-kids thing gives the "bored empty nester" element that seems to be important to the genre.

Anyway, I dunno if that changes any of your take on the whole thing, but there you have it. MILF explained.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

_milf_ and their ilk would appear to disprove that the term is limited to the 'older woman' meaning these days.

[ailbhe]

Regardless of the origins of the term that made me think of this, mothers *are* desexualised. So it doesn't change anything that the term originally meant something slightly different to what it means in common usage now.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

True. I was speaking solely to the part about the term, rather than to the rest of the content.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

(I just realized that the wording of both the original comment and the other comment were horribly unclear or misleading about something, and I blame reading livejournal while extremely sleepy: I was speaking only to the MILF term rather than the rest because I agree that the rest is appalling and a big flaw in our culture, not because I think nothing of the rest.)

[ailbhe]

The thing is - apart from the fact that I wasn't aware I had a point, when I started, but I knew I wanted a rant - that the MILF term, and the whole situation, lacks acknowledgement of this concept:

Mother Who Likes to Fuck.

And quite possibly Woman Who Likes to Fuck, but I never had any real problems with that before I was a mother so I wasn't aware blah blah, except that I knew that female sexual disfunction isn't important and Viagra is.

[ailbhe]

Only as much as it contributed to the desexualisation of fatherhood, so, um, no, I don't think it's a major factor, compared with the whole "you're female so your libido doesn't count" thing.

The fact that mothers are viewed not just as mothers to their own children but as Mothers in some great big Mother Earth Club might mean that the taboo is more wide-speading. Does that make sense?

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[ailbhe]

That's probably a large part of the revirginising of mothers, in particular, yes, over and above the trivialisation of female sexuality as a whole.

Coo. My little rant had some idea-seeds in it.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

A good friend of mine, when I announced that I was pregnant again, said that this was the best news he'd heard in ages. Partly because it was a good thing in general and he knew how much I'd wanted it, but also because it gave him hope that a mid-thirties couple with two jobs, a child, and one of the jobs being a high-pressure legal career (all of which are as true for his family as they are for mine) could actually find time and energy to have sex at least once more in their lives.

Not being able to have sex

[rmc28]

I think it's a bloody terrible thing. I hated every day of my own, shall we say incapacity, and I at least have the consolation that it seems to have got better.

Only a couple of days ago someone asked me in conversation how Tony had managed the lack of sex, and were visibly taken aback when I pointed out that I'd been pretty pissed off about it. Because obviously I don't have a libido of my own, only a borrowed one, and even if I did, well being ill would have taken care of that, yes?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I think you know how deeply I agree with your basic premise here, as I'm married to a woman who has no libido, and we KNOW what it's like to try to get medical help for this condition -- we live right near one of the only clinics in the world to even be doing basic RESEARCH on this problem, and it's STILL difficult.

[ailbhe]

What's my basic premise? Because it was all a bit stream of consciousness really. My libido is fine. Roaring, in fact. Grr. Perhaps Lis and I could swap, or something...

[ailbhe]

I know of a few people who ended up divorced because of inability to have sex after a traumatic birth. I've considered getting Rob to threaten something to my health visitor... except that they all know he's as mild as milk.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

*nod* I have to be quite firm with my gynaecologist on the unacceptability of not being able to have sex without being in pain during and for several days afterwards. She finds it hard to understand that, since I have all the kids I want to have, I'd rather have a hysterectomy than put up with the pain or the lack of sex. (I do realise that there are medical and anaesthetic risks involved in the hysterectomy too, and I do take those seriously when we're weighing up the options).

[da-pol.livejournal.com]

I can actually see *some* reason for having "Mothers" in a somewhat separate category to "women" in this case, and it's something of a cultural conditioning.

In our society men are taught that lusting (and that is the word) after women in general is a permissable and to some extent admirable trait - the old "sow your seeds wide" mentality which still endures and in turn causes some of the nastier (dare I say "seedier"?) sides of our society.

However, mothers are special. "Why?" I hear you ask. Well - it's because of a couple of things.

1) The assumption is that if a woman is a mother then she is also a wife, and men are conditioned that lusting after another mans wife is a wrong thing to do, if only because of the retribution the husband could be expected to exact should he find out (because of course no husband in the world will be willing to let his wife have a brain of her own, will he?)

2) There is another assumption which society gently reinforces to some extent which is that a woman who has had a child by a man will be faithful to that man - this is often interpreted as "Frigid towards any other man". Now, this is patently not the truth, but it'll always be a first image for any male who discovers that an "otherwise" lustworthy woman is a mother.

3) Children scare men. A lot. A mother, by definition, has children. Children are an entanglement. They are a responsibility. And they say things to daddy at inopportune moments. A lot of men will see a child as a sentient chastity belt and thus rule out the mother of that child as being a sexual object.

WILF would be pretty much the majority of the female gender.

MILF defines, to a large extent, women who would normally be in the WILF category who have then had all sorts of neuroses and paranoia applied against them and after all of that have then been re-evaluated back up to the category of lustworthy. I'm not trying to defend the MILF thing, but it might be worth considering it as a major compliment - a MILF is a woman with a mobile chastity belt and a threat of extreme physical retribution who it is still worth while in the mans mind treating as a normal woman.

Pity the poor men who have to work with this mindset and work through it and coin catchy phrases to define a chain of neurotic thought processes.

I'd personally like to kick the arse of most of your healthcare workers for their attitudes. Sex *is* important. It's one of the most important acts the human being is capable of as without it the human race *will* cease to exist very quickly indeed.

I believe that it is everybodys right to replace themselves on earth - this basically comes down to a fundamental right for two children per couple. This right is not one which is a legal one - it is a basic human right and everybody should have it. The "You've had a child, why do you want sex?" mindset should constitute medical misconduct as far as I'm concerned - they are implicitly denying you a (possibly *the*) basic human right through sloppy thinking and that's inexcusable.

I'm also a firm believer in "recreation, not just procreation". If nothing else it ups your odds of having another child, but beyond that it's taking part in the most enjoyable (for most) natural act there is. Being denied this is, to my mind, tantamount to losing a basic sense like touch or vision - it's having a part of what makes you human removed and should be fought at all costs.

Society has a lot to answer for here, and the sooner attitudes are relaxed the better as far as I'm concerned - we have a lot of leftover neuroses from the gentry of the last two centuries which just don't apply any more, and arguably didn't apply then. They need to be eroded and removed as rapidly as is safe otherwise the issues you face are simply going to be perpetuated for future generations.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

*applauds*
Well said.