I'm not really shocked my submission wasn't published on Feministcomingoutday.com. I am disappointed however that my voice is foreign and irrelevant because I have birthed babies, fed them from my breast, and while I will stand for a womans right to govern her own reproduction, I talk more about her right to govern her own childbirth.
Ani DiFranco - a Doula - speaks from my soul - "I would definitely choose a homebirth again despite the fear mongering of this patriarchal society, which convinces women that they are incapable of having babies without the intervention of men and their machines. I look at societies where women are marginalized and oppressed their whole lives (even covered head to toe in tarps!) but are still in control of birthing practice, in a whole new way now. I mean, who is really more advanced? To take birthing out of women’s hands and deny us the continuum of eons of wisdom and experience is to eject us from the very seat of our power. I believe that women in hospitals are prevented from being able to have normal, healthy birthing experiences because of the intimidation of being on the clock, being pressured to take drugs to make it quicker, being inhibited in their movement and activities, and alienated by a sterile, fluorescent lit, feet-in-the-air type environment. You know the classic “performance anxiety” of not being able to pee or poo because somebody’s watching you? Multiply that by a million! A cervix is a sphincter after all! Then to add tragic insult to injury women are numbed through their great moment of revelation. I believe the act of giving birth to be the single most miraculous thing a human being can do and it is surely the moment when a lot of women finally understand the depth of their power and connection to all of nature. You think it can’t possibly be done, you think you can’t possibly take the pain, and then you do — and afterward you look at yourself in a whole new way. If you can do that, you can do anything. Check out the books on this subject by Ina May Gaskin. She’s one of my great heroes. P.S. I was in labor for 43 hours. Pushed for five hours. It was brutal and scary and prolonged, and if I was in a hospital, they would have definitely cut the baby out of me. I thank the goddesses that I was at home with patient midwives who knew how to go the distance. The memory of pain always recedes. The memory of triumph does not."
My personal belief is that mothers have always been better at social work than women - and the roots of feminism are in social work -women teaching women...It's amazing though how many women will throw flames if you tell them they have a maternal side. As if their own biology is the enemy.
Feminists of today have contributed to the notion that stay at home mothers are inferior to their working counterparts and until the feminist movement embraces the voices of mothers women will continue to distance themselves from the f word because today's feminist missions do not represent mothers in any way. And for those of you at Harvard who skipped that biology class, WE ARE STILL WOMEN, DAMMIT!!
1 comments:
Preach it sista!
Post a Comment