We all know that women can’t win, regardless of who you are and how hard you try. Whatever we do, we’ll be subjected to criticism from someone or another. But there is one thing a woman can do that seems to make all of this never-winning-and-always-being-judged thing even worse, though: be pregnant.
The internet has been buzzing about the latest drama between rappers Cardi B and Offset. The rapper, often celebrated for her bold and unapologetic personality, is now at the centre of controversy for allegedly sleeping with another man while pregnant with their child. And in true internet discourse fashion, there are some serious double standards, dehumanisation, and classic misinformation being thrown around left, right and centre.
Cardi B filed for divorce from Offset in August after six years of marriage shortly after announcing she was pregnant with their third child, and when she hosted an Instagram Live session on Wednesday, the 25th of September, Offset showed up in the comments section to write: “U f***ed with a baby inside tell the truth!!”
Not long after the rapper made the comment, Cardi B turned to X to share, “AND DID !!!!!!” which led many fans to speculate that this was her way of confirming Offset’s allegation was true. Others have jumped to the conclusion she was still with Offset at the time, so was cheating on him too
Since then, Cardi B has faced a tonne of backlash and a lot of it has been harsh, with comments like, “Having sex with another man while pregnant with someone else’s baby just to get back at him is crazy, doesn’t matter if he cheated. What happened to self-respect?” and “Cardi B wild gan oo. What do you mean you f**ked another man with your husband’s baby still in you, how does that even work?” flooding social media.
Straight from Paris Fashion Week.
Cheating is a polarising subject, and scandalous cheating stories in the press are bound to draw up discourse. The very idea of infidelity is uncomfortable, upsetting, and even though reasons for cheating are nuanced and complicated, we tend to demonise cheaters in society.
But the public outrage over Cardi B’s alleged affair is not really about cheating at all. It’s about the harmful belief that a woman’s value, particularly a pregnant woman’s, lies in her ability to adhere to a narrow, socially acceptable code of behaviour.
Cardi B and Offset’s marriage has been rocky for some time, with cheating allegations going both ways. It’s interesting (and by interesting, I mean horrifying) that the public are willing to put aside Offset’s cheating and only criticise Cardi B’s decisions simply because she “has his baby inside her”. There’s an uncomfortable undertone of male ownership here.
The baby Cardi B is carrying is hers as well as Offset’s, and will later become a person of their own. People’s insistence on calling her out by saying she had sex with “someone else’s baby inside her” as if it’s an entirely separate entity to her, is ridiculous. What’s really being said in these opinions, whether they realise it or not, is that Cardi B’s growing pregnancy made her choices more shameful, as though being with child should have stripped her of her autonomy and desires.
Some of the criticism seems to be led by misinformation-led moral policing of women’s sexuality. There’s a deep-seated misconception that it’s disgusting or even dangerous to have sex while pregnant with someone who is not the biological father of the child, and that’s derived from the male desire for ‘paternity certainty’– a phenomenon as old as time where women are essentially slutshamed and expected to have sex with a small number of people so that men they may eventually have children with can be sure their babies are genetically theirs.
Because this idea is tightly woven into the fabric of society, we can’t always help but have a gut reaction of disgust when a woman sleeps with “too many” people (essentially where slutshaming comes from). The idea that women must always uphold a higher moral standard, even in the face of betrayal, is exhausting and hypocritical.
In rushing to defend women from the misogyny of being called a ‘homewrecker’, we often forget the pain of the woman whose home has been wrecked – regardless of which party inflicted the damage.
When pregnancy is involved, that sexual scrutiny becomes all the more unbearable. Women are expected to be “pure” and sexually loyal to the father of their child, even if that father has not extended the same courtesy.
That’s because of plain old dehumanisation. The intense reaction to Cardi B’s rumoured affair highlights how we, as a society, view pregnant women not as individuals but as child-carrying containers. As soon as a woman becomes pregnant – famous or not – she’s expected to make any and all decisions through the lens of her child. She’s a baby carrier first, and then a person. This is the same kind of thinking that underpinned the overturning of Roe v. Wade – a monumental blow to reproductive rights in America that has left US women forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term in states where abortion access has been severely restricted. Since Roe v. Wade’s fall, anti-abortion rhetoric has gained traction, prioritising the foetus over the woman carrying it.
Cardi B is being shamed not just because of her infidelity, but because she dared to act on her own desires while pregnant. Her autonomy, it seems, no longer belongs to her – just like millions of other pregnant women who are being stripped of their rights across the world. Sure, access to abortion care might seem like a much more pressing issue than a woman’s right to have sex while pregnant, but none of this exists in a vacuum. The two issues are undeniably connected. We’re trying to live, connect, and share experiences with each other on a backdrop of rampant misogyny and dehumanisation of pregnant women, and that’s an impossible feat.
It’s no surprise that these anti-abortionist ideas are starting to creep into our subconscious and even our opinions about celebrity relationship drama.
You may feel more turned on than normal.
Pregnant women can, and should, have the freedom to sleep with whoever they want, whenever they want, without being policed. The idea that Cardi’s alleged behaviour is any worse because she was pregnant perpetuates the toxic narrative that a woman’s body becomes public property – and open to public opinion – the moment she starts growing a child. This is a dangerous line of thinking that we should all work hard to correct.
Regardless of how you feel about cheating, or about Offset and Cardi B for that matter, we all need to remember that pregnant women are still human. As soon as we start looking at pregnant women like temporary homes for foetuses, we run the risk of dehumanising them completely. Pregnant women still have desires, they still make mistakes, and they still have the right to make their own decisions – sexual or otherwise – because they are still people.
It’s time to let go of the idea that women, pregnant or not, need to be perfect. Pregnancy doesn’t erase a woman’s autonomy, and it certainly doesn’t erase her right to make her own choices –whether those choices are about her body, her sex life, or her future. Cardi B, like all women, deserves to be treated as more than a vessel for life. They deserve to be seen as the fully autonomous, complex people that they are.
“Too sexually active, not sexually active enough; prudish or gold-digging; virgin or whore…”
