The hilarity of Facebook.

So, I was reading this article the other day, and I wont lie, but it pissed me the fuck off. The woman comes off so smug, conceited and entitled! As I read it, the entitlement for others to cater to her for being pregnant alone is disgusting and quite honestly, ridiculous. Here are some exerts:

“Why won’t women give me a seat on the bus? At eight months pregnant Antonia Hoyle has been horrified by the unchivalrous behaviour of her own sex”

Umm, this is just the title and she’s already bringing up her pregnancy and the fact that nobody gave her a seat. Okay, moving on:

Perhaps past experience should have taught me otherwise, but as I boarded the packed bus yesterday I was sure I would be offered a seat.

After all, with just over a month to go until my due date — and with a stomach the size of a watermelon — I couldn’t be mistaken for being anything other than heavily pregnant.

Why would you be “sure”? Who the fuck are you to expect complete strangers to get up for you just because you chose to stay pregnant? Just because you’re pregnant, doesn’t mean people owe you shit.

Yet nobody so much as looked me in the eye, let alone stood up. Instead, they carried on laughing with their friends, staring out of the window or fiddling with their smart phones.

How is this any of other passengers’ problem?! You’re not some divine fucking creature.

After a couple of minutes, a woman — my age and a mother, too, judging by the buggy in front of her — did talk to me. But not to help. ‘You’d better watch your bag,’ she said coldly. ‘It’s getting in my way.’

Had she asked politely, I would have apologised. But she showed not a shred of compassion for my third trimester fatigue. ‘You could ask me nicely,’ I replied. ‘There’s no need to be rude.’

With a shrug, she turned back to her female friend.

Nobody has to show you compassion just because you decided to sluice! What the fuck kind of shit is that! You put yourself in that position, you chose to stay in that position, nobody else. They don’t owe you shit. Get over yourself.

I wish I could say this kind of rudeness is unusual. Infuriatingly, it’s not. And the worst culprits? Women. Strangely, notions of sisterhood seem to disappear when one of you is pregnant.

Since when does one of my fellow women being pregnant entitle me to exercise some kind of “sisterhood”? Seriously?!

Those you might expect to be most supportive — namely females who have been through the ordeal themselves — are very often the least helpful. I eyed the woman’s buggy and shuffled away from her.

Swallowing my annoyance, I spotted a free seat next to a kindlier looking middle-aged woman. I asked her if I could take it. But she looked at me with blank disinterest. ‘I’m saving the seat for a friend,’ she said brusquely. I was incredulous. ‘But I’m eight months pregnant,’ I said.

You know, being a woman, I hate the fucking “but I’m pregnant” excuse. I can’t stand it. It’s like all the women who have fought for decades to give your selfish ass equal rights did it for nothing. You either want special rights or you want equal rights. You can’t have it both ways!

She finally moved over, but not before the rest of the bus had gone quiet. I felt too humiliated to speak and, despite being 34, did something better befitting of my two-year-old daughter and started to cry. Ashamed of my tears, I got off at the next stop and walked — well, waddled — to my meeting.

You were humiliated?! You think that’s humiliating!? Nobody dissed you, stood you up, or fired you in front of a bunch of people. Get the fuck over yourself. Again!

It was only after a couple of hours had passed that my embarrassment morphed into mounting anger. Pregnancy is not, as popular myth would have it, a romantic adventure full of gentle foetal flutters and burgeoning curves.

Pregnant women suffer heartburn, haemorrhoids, acid reflux and acne. We develop gum  disease, our bladders are squeezed to smithereens and we rarely manage more than an hour of uninterrupted sleep at a time when our unborn baby  squirms inside us.

Physically exhausted and hormonally fragile, we often feel depressed, afraid, vulnerable to the point of childishness and so sensitive that even the simplest of rebuffs can reduce us to tears.

Who’s fault is that? Seriously. I know it’s not mine, or some older woman’s. Why does this woman think that because she’s suffering from something she brought onto herself, that she’s entitled to shit from complete strangers?! I do have to say that I’m happy she’s being fucking honest unlike the anti-abortion people want women to believe, and people wonder why a lot of women don’t want to get pregnant? Pfft! How ironic, many of them claim pregnancy is a picnic in the park too.

So yes, a seat on a bus might be nice, but so would a modicum of sympathy from, at the very least, other women. And yesterday wasn’t the first time I have been treated shoddily by my own sex. A couple of weeks ago, a young mother with a buggy barged past me, ordering me to watch where I was going as our shoulders bumped.

I will say this once. Pregnant women are nothing special. They’ll get treated like everyone else. I, as a woman, am not obligated to give sympathy to women who’ve willingly took on the job of nurturing the near equivalent of a tapeworm.

Shortly before that, I was struggling to carry my two-year-old daughter up some steps to the railway station when a couple of 30-something women waltzed past, without even thinking to interrupt their conversation to ask whether I would like some help.

What the fuck kind of entitlement is that?!? Nobody owes you anything. Nobody has to drop their shit to help you with something you chose to create with your partner. What the fuck kind of mother would let a stranger carry her fucking child!?

My friend Laura, meanwhile, was eight months pregnant when she was sent flying by a fellow commuter on her way to work. Instead of apologising or helping her up, the woman told her to, ‘f*** off, b****’. Station staff called an ambulance and she was so left so shaken that she started her maternity leave early. ‘I still wonder if she felt any guilt,’ says Laura. ‘I honestly can’t imagine knocking a pregnant woman over and not even stopping.’

I have to say that this sounds a bit exaggerated. I don’t think humans suck this much to knock over a pregnant woman and then cuss her out. Somehow, I have a hard time believing that story. Sure, I would help the woman up and apologize, but I seriously doubt anyone would do what the person did to that woman anywhere.

Another friend, Claire, due any day, adds: ‘Men are more willing to give up seats on packed Tube trains. Women, especially older ones, stare outright at my massive bump for a few seconds then go straight back to their magazine or book or simply close their eyes.’

This is probably because women know what and how pregnancy is and obviously, it’s not as disabling as this woman makes it sound. If it was so bad, she should have taken a taxi or stayed her ass at home.

She’s right. Most men, these days, are more chivalrous than ever. They leap out of their seats as soon as a woman who looks like she’s had so much as a second helping of pudding gets on, because they’re so concerned about being perceived as neanderthals. My husband goes one step further and refuses to sit down on public transport at all.

The use of the word “leap” is a gross exaggeration. Men will ask if you want to sit, some will get up and offer the seat, and if you say no, they’ll go back to where they are or offer it to someone else, but they will not “leap out of their seats” for women. This is not a Tex Avery cartoon. And even if guys do offer up or give up their seats for me, it’s not because I’m a woman, it’s because they were taught to be nice and polite to others.

But women don’t feel under such pressure. Of course, I’ve encountered plenty who have been polite over the course of my two pregnancies. But why are many more so rude?

Perhaps in part our own experience of pregnancy and motherhood robs us of empathy. We become so embroiled in the relentless struggle of child-rearing that we develop compassion fatigue for others going through it after us.

No, they’re not rude, they just don’t owe you shit.

Or we become smug and unkind, as new mother Kate believes is the case.

‘When I was pregnant my neighbour asked if I was expecting twins,’ she says. ‘When I said no she said, “some people gain more weight than others”. Women can be jealous and judgmental. Motherhood is increasingly child-centric and as a result has become more competitive.’

Nobody is jealous of you- get the fuck over yourself.

Then there are those who think any type of baby talk is beneath them. I remember wincing with hurt during my first pregnancy when one woman I met dismissed my plans for my baby’s birth as ‘boring’.

Again, you’re not the center of the fucking universe just because you’re fucking pregnant. Maybe the woman really didn’t want to hear about your fucking birthing plan because *gasp* it was boring to her. You’re not some divine creature.

Perhaps there is also an element of jealousy, too. For all my moaning, I know I am fortunate enough to have been able to conceive in the first place when plenty of others who want children can’t.

My presence could serve as a painful reminder to those who long to be pregnant. It is a sobering thought, and one I try to remind myself of when I feel snubbed by my own sex.

How smug, conceited and entitled. Just because another female doesn’t jump at the sight of you doesn’t fucking mean she’s fucking jealous! Maybe she genuinely doesn’t give two flying fucks.

Nonetheless, surely it is time we learned some solidarity. Before I walked off the bus yesterday, the woman who objected to my handbag being in her way muttered in my direction: ‘Your problem isn’t with me. It’s because people don’t give up their seats to pregnant women any more.’

Well, that certainly didn’t help. But I hope she too felt a twinge of regret.

Somehow I doubt it. Don’t fool yourself.

Now, moving on. I actually decided to post about this article in one of the Facebook groups I’m in, and I posted something along these lines:

I feel like this pregnant woman shouldn’t expect special privileges because she’s pregnant. She is not more important than another woman sitting down. Just because she gets blobby and gross doesn’t mean others should have to cater to her. SHE and her partner made the choice to get and/or remain pregnant, nobody else, so why should others have to bow down to her?

Apparently, there are some violent breeders in that group. Here are some comments I received:

its not about bowing down, its about common decency. you have no clue what she may be dealing with. I’m disabled, I have fibro and when i am pregnant its PAINFUL. Yes it was my choice to do that but good goddess wtf ever happened to courtesy? 

and pardon me but “blobby and gross” why do you hate pregnant women so much to make such an insult? My husband wanted to reach through the screen and right hook you over that comment

That was the very first comment of the thread. I was threatened for voicing an opinion in a debate group. I then asked her if she actually bothered reading the article, but she came back and insulted me yet again. She then said this:

its NOT entitlement to expect peopel to be f’ing decent to you.

All I have is this GIF to express how I feel about the statement above. She then goes on to say this:

wtfever…. I’m sorry if I have a general expectation of courtesy from my fellow humans. if you think that makes me an uppity bitch then so be it but yeah i DO expect humans to be decent to each other. sue me

I think I might just have to speak in GIFs from now on regarding this female lol

‘didi piss off, my husband se3e3s Goddess in me when i am re3gnant and so dio i, your hangups ar33e3 your own

Can someone, like, translate this? I don’t understand stupid.

BITCH I KNOW WHAT IT IS I HAVE HAD 9 MEDICALLY DIAGNOSED MISCARRIEGES IN 20 YEARS WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU GET OFF TELLIGN ME I ABORTED MY MUCH WANTED CHILDREN YOU RAVIGN FUCKIGN CUNT

Caps alert lol.

It went on like this for a while. Over 400 comments actually. Some people agree, others went into Rage Mode. I wont bore you with any more nonsense.

If you want to see more of this hilarity, please feel to request it in the comments and I will post screenshots 🙂