Pregnant woman kicked out of a bar for being pregnant

24 thoughts on Pregnant woman kicked out of a bar for being pregnant

1. Gah! Pregnancy sure was a reminder to me of just how little respect society has for mothers. All of a sudden, I was public property. A waiter refused me a rare steak once. Apparently, pregnant women are not allowed to make any decisions on our own. Something about ‘baby brain’…

   (By the way, I’m pretty sure that there’s little evidence to say that coffee is dangerous for pregnant women, especially in ‘normal’ amounts. But I was told not to drink it during pregnancy anyway, ‘just in case’.)

2. Yeah, they’ve basically gotten rid of the coffee warning and advise that you keep it under two cups a day. (Damn straight I drink my two cups.)

   One of my BFFs used to accompany her husband to the bar when she was big-pregnant. It was the funniest thing to see her sitting there, happily holding her belly, and socializing with the crew.

3. I think this is a (slightly less harmful) part of the mentality that seems to make perfect strangers in this country feel unusually comfortable in policing the actions of women, especially pregnant women and new mothers. I can’t tell you how many blog comments I’ve read on this that were a rousing chorus of “well, she shouldn’t have been in a bar in the first place” followed by an encore of “oh, he was just trying to protect her baby.”

   It takes us down a dangerous road when people start making decisions for adult women in the name of “fetal safety.”

4. The minute a woman finds out she is pregnant, she should be whisked away by the government to a secret, sanitized and 100% healthy location, where she lives with all the other pregnant women in the country, eating only the most healthy food and doing the most healthy activities, as overseen by a male dominated panel of experts. That would ensure that the next generation of children is perfect right?

5. UGH! Glad to see society hasn’t advanced in nine years…with bars refusing to let me in while I was pregnant…

   My doctor recommended that I not give up coffee while I was pregnant because the caffeine withdrawal would be too stressful on the baby and that I keep it to two 8oz servings a day…which I was sure to have (and I am sure I splurged). It didn’t hurt my Kid, nor did the glass of wine I used to have after my bartending shift (oops! How did I get into THAT bar? OH THE HORRORS A PREGNANT LADY SLINGIN’ DRINKS!) every once in a while… my doctor recommended that one too for other reasons.

6. “Can I ask you a personal question?” The bouncer asked, “Are you pregnant?”

   Lee said yes. (At 8 months along, she figured there was little doubt). Then the bouncer asked her to leave.

   Is anyone else amazed at the absurdity of this bizarre, nonsensical follow-up? He asked if he could ask her a PERSONAL question and then made a PROFESSIONAL decision based on it.

7. There is no evidence that drinking coffee leads to more miscarriages.

   There is evidence that women who drink more than 210 mg per day are more likely to miscarry, but correlation =/= causation. In fact, it is likely that the causality is reversed. Women who suffer from nausea during pregnancy are less likely to miscarry. And women who are nauseous have that valve in their throat relaxed–and drinking coffee and eating chocolate makes the valve relax more–so it can be very, very unpleasant. In short, if a woman cannot tolerate more than 210 mg per day, she is more likely to be in the high nausea/lower miscarriage group.

8. Here’s the ideal retort:

   “Don’t worry. The only way I could possibly get hurt, or this establishment could possibly be held liable for anything, is if you touched me. Have a nice evening.”

9. What a story. I suppose I should have added “AND NEVER LEAVE YOUR HOUSE UNLESS YOU’RE GOING TO A PRE-APPROVED LOCATION” to my guide.

   Of course, then people will scream at you for not getting enough fresh air or exercise and turning into a “fat blob”, etc.

10. i don’t think that anyone should be kicked out of bars if they’re doing anything that isn’t illegal. i find it curious, though, to think about this post in conjunction with maia’s post awhile back that garnered so much negative criticism for her decision to bring her child out with her to a bar. i wonder what’s going on with the feministe community when it policed maia so heavily for that, and if they weren’t doing the same thing that the bouncer did to this parent.

11. I was wondering the same thing as transartorialism.

12. Because they’re not comparable? I want to be clear that I’m not taking a position, but first:

    There’s a difference between can and should. mai’a was not kept out of a bar. Most people wouldn’t argue whether she SHOULD BE ABLE to access a bar, even if they think she SHOULDN’T. There’s a big difference.

    Second, a living, breathing child who can learn from the inappropriate shit that happens at bars is probably a little different from a fetus.

13. I confused my maias – ignore the apostrophe

14. I don’t see how it isn’t comparable. Both of these are situations where mothers are being kept out of spaces where they want to be. Both of these issues are about a mom not being “a good mom.” Both criticisms of these moms come down to “the good/health of the child.” And as for “inappropriate shit that happens at bars,” inappropriate things happen everywhere, and drunk people cursing and being obnoxious is definitely not the worst thing that children are exposed to just by being alive in the world we live in. But anyways, I now know that people are going to recreate the really problematic shit that happened in Mai’a’s thread after this comment, so whatever.

15. I want to be clear that I’m not taking a position,

    Nonsense. It’s pretty clear from your two responses that you are taking a position; a position that stems from a specific definition of what a “bar” is—and that ignores the definitions of what a “bar” is in and among other communities (let alone what a “bar” is in a Muslim country).

    Like transartorialism and bfp, I see the policing attitude as coming from the same place: how dare a mere woman decide what is and isn’t appropriate!

16. I was thinking the difference between the two thread is that feminism has come to grips with bodily autonomy. But we still struggle with where the “trust women” lines are when it comes to childrearing (see the recent foreskin thread for example).

    BTW, this does not mean I’m trying to reignite any parenting wars, its just a simple observation about feminism struggle with the intersections between the lots of other -ism that come with of raising kids in a fucked up universe.

17. Yeah, this is not the same thing as what happened with Maia’s post. I think the major difference is that Maia is a rich white American lady who wants you to babysit her kid while she shops at the mall, her daughter was leered at by drunken men while Maia got her drink on, Maia made her daughter had to sleep in everyone else’s alcohol-induced vomit, Maia is ungrateful for feminism, and Maia wants to take all of our rights away. Not to press my point, but there are more facts to consider as well: Maia cuts off children’s heads to adorn her white picket fence, Maia hunted and killed the last living sabertooth tiger, and if Maia looks you directly in the eye you’ll become petrified so you should only look at her via a reflective surface such as a mirror or pool of water.

    In short, I think what we learned from that whole episode is that Maia is part android and part demon, and that we are all terrific feminists.

18. transartorialism: I don’t see how it isn’t comparable.

    Uh, then you ignored the content of my comment. Again:

    1. Maia wasn’t ever illegally kept out of a bar. She was judged by drive-by commenters. She COULD patron a bar, everyone judged whether she SHOULD patron a bar. The women in the post COULDN’T patron a bar. This is illegal. To compare: it’d be like people judging whether someone SHOULD strike up a conversation about religion in the workplace to a situation where someone was fired for having the conversation. You can think that this person shouldn’t (or should – whatever) talk about religion at work, but getting fired for talking about your beliefs is wholly illegal and unethical, regardless of whether you would do it in hir place.

    2. Fetus v child is a big fucking difference. I’m not going to expand on this anymore, because I honestly don’t believe that I need to. It should be obvious that we will treat policies towards fetuses and children differently because they ARE DIFFERENT.

    Really, the only way that it’s comparable is that it involved a woman who was at some point inseminated, a bar, and a Feministe post. Pointing out that a woman was judged by someone for her actions (without acknowledging that the “someone” is wildly different in each case – and THAT MATTERS) is honestly moot because that’s what it means to be a woman in society. Nothing you do is going to please everyone, and those people will tell you what you should/shouldn’t do now and in the future.

    @La Lubu, I was using the idea of a bar as presented in this post. If we’re adding different definitions of a bar, then that just furthers the point that these two situations aren’t directly analogous. Second, I didn’t take a position on the topic at hand (i.e. what should women do with their own children or pregnant bellies) because, to be completely frank, after those extended comment threads (not just maia’s – there have been others), I’ve realized that I honestly don’t give a fuck what other people do with their children.

19. PrettyAmiable: I confused my maias – ignore the apostrophe  

    No, I don’t think you did. Mai’a of the infamous parenting and mama posts is Mai’a of guerillamamamedicine, AFAIK.

20. La Lubu, I was using the idea of a bar as presented in this post.

    Me too, but I thought it was worth mentioning that folks here stomped all over mai’a without even stopping to consider that the cultural concept of the bar she was in was quite different from the standard definition of “bar” in the English-speaking world. Even so, there’s bars, and there’s bars. “Bar” in the US tends to mean “place where alcohol is served”—but other than that, there isn’t any defining characteristic. Bars where I live are almost all casual places that serve food as well. The bar is where you go to get a good burger (or gyros, polish sausage, chili, tamales, y’know, “bar food”), shoot some pool, listen to the jukebox and socialize with friends. Doesn’t sound so inappropriate, does it?

    In fact, according to the post, this was a “neighborhood bar”—which in Illinois, including Chicago, means a bar that fits my description above. According to the post, the woman in question was not drinking alcohol (another common feature of neighborhood bars—not everyone there drinks alcohol; some people go for the food and/or friends).

    So. Transartorialism is onto something with: Both of these are situations where mothers are being kept out of spaces where they want to be. Both of these issues are about a mom not being “a good mom.” Both criticisms of these moms come down to “the good/health of the child.”

    Both are about policing women based on arbitrary assumptions, both are paternalistic, both rest on the historical associations in the English-speaking world about both alcohol and women, and both rest on the historical barring of women from bars. Both are about women transgressing the space “allowed” for women.

    I was surprised to see this post here, too. I thought the standard reaction here would be along the lines of “geez, couldn’t they have gone to a coffeehouse or something? Why a bar?” based on past reactions to previous posts.

21. My mom took me to a bar that served great hamburgers for a report card treat once. I think I was 10. They were delicious. When my brother comes to town, he and I will still go there.

22. In Virginia it’s illegal to sell alcohol to consume on the premises in a place that does not also serve food. Thus all bars are appropriate places for dinner so seeing kids around is a total non-issue.

23. Ouyang Dan: My doctor recommended that I not give up coffee while I was pregnant because the caffeine withdrawal would be too stressful on the baby and that I keep it to two 8oz servings a day…which I was sure to have (and I am sure I splurged).  (Quote this comment?)

    I used to work at a coffee shop, and I always remember one time when a visibly pregnant woman came in and ordered a cup of coffee. She didn’t specify so I went for our default kind, and a coworker leaned over and whispered to me, “You should probably give her decaf, she’s pregnant.” I just stared at the coworker, continued pouring the regular coffee, and then gave it to the customer. My coworker looked embarrassed and I like to think that maybe she learned a little something about judgement that day. But maybe not.

24. EXCUSE ME
    I was totally onboard with the whole thesis of this article until I got to the punchline –

    “There are certain things for which you are not able to discriminate against someone, and one is their gender…And only women can have babies.”

    As an ftm, I have a fully functional uterus [AFAIK] and while I’m not planning to take advantage of it any time soon, I COULD be subject to this same kind of scrutiny and its NOT because of my gender.
    Posts like this just serve to reinforce the kind of experiences of Remy in this post. And while this may not be as blatant as “You’re just not really trans unless you use hormones,” its still a subtle reminder that when its convienent, I’m not considered a “real” man, and thats BULLSHIT.
    MY choices about what steps to take in my transition are just that – MINE, and no one elses.

    I am ALL for not discriminating against people who are pregnant, but unless I see a better rationale than “only women get pregnant” this is just another post erasing my experiences, my choices, and my person so FUCK THAT

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