skipair writes:
The women who do this are not psychologically healthy. They cannot function in a romantic relationship because they cannot maintain rapport, cannot show empathy, and do not allow themselves to be treated well. Their desire for arificial insemination has a double meaning - to releave the pain of not having a loved one, and to say fuck you to the men she has come to hate.
This is a fine illustration of the historically patriarchal
bias involved in psychologizing the woman. She is not "normal" unless her behaviour and aspirations match her highest possible functioning in the social order: to want/need men, romance, relationship, children, etc. Psychology makes room for a natural drive to "autonomy" for human men (and excuses/elevates same) but makes or assumes no such provision necessary - or even capable - for human women.* Psychology has only one kind of model from which women can earn a certificate of health. As with men, these normatives held up to ourselves actually
create the sick-beds rather than rout them out. You might take note of the words you use to describe "normal" woman and how many of those items and actions are really just things you need from her, and cannot live without. You're in a panic at the thought of losing them. So much so, that you will imply she is
insane for not participating according to specs.
Great fear is the undercurrent of your declaration, too. Once again, if men do not insert themselves forcefully into the behavior and circumstances of women -
make her think she is hardwired for dependency, cannot live without him (and in fact in many cases,
make this a physical fact involving safety, resources, shelter, opportunity, etc. withheld from her until she submits to this arrangement), then men have no currency to secure their own needs (sex/paternity) in this scheme. If it is "not normal" for a woman to go through the child-process without "rapport" with the man (i.e. artificial insemination), then what all can we say regarding the sexual behavior of men that is "not normal" ? Inside the brain that makes this most declarative of accusations is fear, fear, fear.
Like every patriarch, you want to
manage women, sex, and procreative practices, for at the heart of your bottom, you know how much you have to lose if you leave
her in an original condition that
can be indifferent to paternity/identity. The least you can do is keep access to resources she needs away from her; restrict her free movement and opportunity; and keep up a steady stream of sciences and psychologies - not to mention derogatory social dialectic - that
all bends itself toward
management of this resource that many are too terrified to admit is person, and one with a peculiarly powerful strain of natural autonomy that men will never have. Fear grips the throat of the man who bemoans the dissolution of the Family; blames women for destroying marriage; sees in his dark continent a whole collapse of world order and a return to utter chaos. This man is the metaphor in living colour. He faces his natural redundancy unconsciously, but head-on. He knows what is at stake for him in paternity/identity, not to mention any opportunity to be involved in the loop at all (have sex).
Perhaps men are the slaves, original and still, and patriarchy is his own long-running
ressentiment - labyrinthine, tissue-thin, and in need of constant maintenance.
*Many women, however, are or become aware of just how tissue-thin is the rhetoric of her
need for him, for having a man; for
pleasing a man; or having final satisfaction only in marriage and/or coupled w/children - it does not take much to tear through this tissue of lies and bad faith.