Until the advent of modern medicine, childbirth was one of the leading causes of death for women; a conservative estimate places the historic rate of maternal mortality at 1 for every 100 births. Even now, at least 800 women die worldwide every day as a consequence of childbirth.
Throughout human history, more women have died giving birth than male soldiers have died in war. As a result, in many places, women had shorter life expectancies than men…
Every woman who dies in childbirth dies as a result of sex with a man. Vaginal intercourse with a man was—and in many places still is—one of the riskiest activities in which any woman could engage. Though the pleasure in the act may have at least occasionally been equal, the risk never was. Women had no more right to refuse their husbands than a low-ranking soldier had to disobey an order from an officer. Tennyson’s famous line applies as much to marital sex for women as it did for British soldiers in Crimea: “yours not to reason why, yours but to do and die.”
Throughout Western culture, when women died in childbirth they died not only as a direct consequence of sex with men, they died giving life to children who would carry their husbands’ name. While even in more violent eras, relatively few husbands would be called upon to lay down their lives for their wives, every pregnant woman knew she stood a fair chance of dying so that her husband’s family’s name could go on. If we look at all of recorded human history and ask “Who died more often for whom?” the evidence is that women made the ultimate sacrifice more frequently…
Maternal mortality rates have plummeted in recent centuries, though they remain stubbornly high in many parts of the world. And despite the epidemic of gun violence in this country, very few men today are called upon to put their bodies between a bullet and the women they love…
It’s time to let go of the myth that men have traditionally endured more physical danger and suffering than women. In Euripedes’ Medea, the title character remarks that she “would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once.” For all women, that’s a historically honest and accurate risk assessment.
We may not have a Tomb of the Unknown Mother at Arlington, but the suffering of women’s bodies has been at least as important in guaranteeing our collective survival as men. In any discussion of sacrificial heroism, that truth deserves remembering.
(via uteropolis)
Published
Big Mean Sweaty Dyke 