More Freedman, less sense.

Mia Freedman posted a follow up of sorts to her horrendous Birthzilla article. The follow-up was an improvement, and addressed how her grief is intertwined with her viewpoint. It also seemed to shift the focus to freebirthers, and women who have had their pregnancy classified high risk but refused medical intervention. It was still obviously flawed but definitely an improvement.

However her comments like the one I have put below highlight my ongoing concern (also quite funny that that my tabs include google searches for 'i am mr darcy onesie' and 'taking screenshot'):

I just feel like banging my head against the wall, how is a women taking control and choice in birth -and, to be perfectly clear -over her own body- classified as some sort of wackadoodle quest for a 'birth experience'? Women who choose non-interventionist births usually do so because they understand the risks associated with interventions. Freebirthing is extremely rare. Again the whole thing is inferring a false binarism, natural vs medical, bad vs good which is both unhelpful and ignorant.

And. Then. Freedman. Posted. This.

I just can't even. The (simplified) logic seems to be as follows - women cannot even have a sip of wine or a slurp of raw egg during pregnancy but once in labour they can be pumped full of narcotics and it will not affect the foetus. Bitch please. 

How is the choice of a woman to not use pain relief during an induction evidence of a quest for 'birthing experience' which places the foetus at risk? Miranda Kerr received medical care during her pregnancy, and she definitely did not free-birth. I thought the 'birthzilla' label was for women who judged the way other women gave birth - pot, meet kettle. So women who had medical interventionist births can judge women who did not, but the latter cannot question the former. What the feckles.

As I have stated before, the birthing woman should know well before the birthing process of the risks involved in birthing interventions including pain relief. Labour can and should be an informed process, even though as people sneer it does not always go to plan, well it does not always go to shit either. In the end, the labouring woman can choose pain relief -even if she knows her foetus might be affected - because she needs it. I believe that most women are capable of making rational choices regarding their health. Why doesn't Freedman? Why does she feel her grief legitimates her scorn? 

Furthermore, as a critical postmodernist and a WANKER, I dislike the use of the term 'natural' as it is usually used in a dimorphic sense - because what is natural (or biological) is also socially constructed (and cultural). It is perfectly natural to bleed to death. Sexism is natural. The urge to throw the baby out the window is natural. Or is it? 

Natural and scientific knowledge are interconnected and with all experiences, including the birth, at times people have to sit with uncertainty and cannot control the outcome. This does not mean that people should not critically analyse the information they receive. This does not mean they should blindly accept what doctors, midwives, naturopaths, doulas, their mothers and friends have to say on the subject, but neither does it mean that all discussion should be shut down. This does not mean that the range of experiences in birth cannot be discussed because it is boring, shitful women's business and everyone used to die 100 years ago so shut up women why don't you just SHUT UP!

Freedman's messages are inconsistent, and they are bullshit. And I am going to hit her where it hurts: I don't think Caitlin Moran would approve*. 

*I haven't finished her book though, maybe this shit is drawn from Moran. Only time will tell. 

Only women bleed

On account of Mia Freedman invoking Caitlin Moran in the name of feminism every five seconds, I felt I really had better read Moran's book. It is funny indeed, and once finished perhaps I shall review it. But I probs won't, because who can be feckled? Anyway, I was laughing at this:

The blood on the sheets is depressing – not dramatic, and red, like a murder, but brown, and tedious, like an accident. It looks like I am rusty inside, and am now breaking. In an effort to avoid handwashing stains out every morning, I take to stuffing huge bundles of loo roll in my knickers, along with the useless sanitary towel, and lying very, very still all night. Sometimes, there are huge bloodclots, that look like raw liver. I presume this is the lining of my womb, coming off in inch-thick slices, and that this is just how visceral menstruation is. It all adds to a dreary sense that something terribly wrong is going on, but that it is against the rules of the game to ever mention it. Frequently, I think about all the women through history, who’ve had to deal with this ferocious bullshit with just rags and cold water.

No wonder women have been oppressed by men for so long, I think, scouring my pants with a nail-brush and coal-tar soap, in the bathroom. Getting dried blood out of cotton is a bitch. We were all too busy scrubbing to agitate for the vote until the twin-tub was invented.  - Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman

So incredibly funny. I remember that panic over periods, which actually never really stops --  I have been thinking about menstruation about 38373 times a day recently because I still haven't had a period, over one year after the birth of my first child. WHEN WILL IT COME? WILL IT JUST RUSH OUT ALL OVER MY PANTS? DEATH DISASTER DOOOOOOOM. 

Then this morning I read this fabulous article, and was particularly delighted by this passage:

Ours is a culture where everything to do with our menstruating selves is kept secret. From the earliest age girls are taught how to ensure that it's all done secretly and odourlessly and far, far away from men. We're expected to plug it up privately and get on with the job. And when it's all over wer're supposed to carry on as always, lest anyone discover the sins and smells of our femaleness. 

Furious agreement, and I started to think - why? Why is it still a shameful secret? It is 2012. We should be wearing rocket packs and we should not feel bad about menstruating. Are the two linked?


Recently we were watching New Girl and Jess whispered to her housemate's new girlfriend, 'there are tampons hidden all over the house' and I chuckled and explained to my husband that when you have your period, you must be organised. Toilet trips are strategic, made only to the toilet stall you know has the sanitary bin, tampon/ pad hidden in your sleeve (because you can't take your bag, then everyone would know). Multiple sets of tight underpants to keep the pad close to your body. In teenage years, I felt embarrassed by the mere rustle of the pad wrapper. At the time I spelt woman like 'womyn' and I still thought periods were the worst sort of biological trap. I longed for the red tent celebration but felt too ashamed to ever mention it, even to my closest friends - I don't think I even said the word period until I was about 19. I have two sisters, I went to an all girls school, and periods were discussed only when some poor wretch had blood on the back of her skirt and probably changed schools to avoid the shame of it.

And I actually did have a PE teacher who advised me in year 9 to 'plug it up' when I tried to get out of swimming. No wonder I then went round the corner of the Tuckshop, bashed at my ankle with the handrail until it was red and then limped back to defiantly announce my injury precluded me from participating. For serious.

So anyway, I was rejoicing in reading about menstruation but I did think the article  somewhat entrenched in biological essentialism, and so I scrolled down to the comments for some academic critique:

Fucking Dale Bloom! His inane commentary is ever present on The Conversation and he is a definite contender for BaBa's inept political commentary of the week. Of course he would go the whole 'feminist conspiracy' angle - yes, a feminist did write the article - but no, his comment does not make sense. 

Thanks for keeping it real, Robert Corr. You've cracked the code. 

SIGHSIGHSIGH.

I don't really know why but it made me think of that line in Bridget Jones's Diary:

As Tom never tired of telling me, in a sepulchral voice, laying his hand on my arm and staring into my eyes with an alarming look, 'only women bleed'. 

p.s. amazing photos of women having their periods without 'plugging it up'. 

Because breastfeeding beyond infancy is worse than rape, incest and gore

I read this article. And. It is OUTRAGEOUSLY bad. I thought it would be funny and satirical but dude has not a clue:

Tywin Lannister, father of Tyrion (the antihero dwarf played by Peter Dinklage), is one of the unheralded dads of “Game of Thrones.” He’s fiercely loyal to his children and apt to say things like, “Family is all that lives on.” 

I was guffawing at the absurdity of Tywin Lannister being seen as an 'unheralded dad' when I read on to this:

Young Robin Arryn’s breast-feeding was voted “Most WTF Moment in GOT” at Fanpop, and it’s easy to see why. There’s something unnerving about breast-feeding to begin with. Oh sure, it’s beautiful and natural and it saves money on formula, but it’s a fundamental repurposing of a woman’s body: What was once A is now B (and maybe a little bit of A if the kid’s asleep). The hijacking that starts in pregnancy continues until — well, for Robin, it appears to have gone on way past my wife’s rule: “If he’s old enough to ask for it, he’s too old for it.

CUE FURIOUS FIST SHAKING. The author is clearly the unthinking posterboy for the capitalist heteropatriarchy. Seriously, otherwise how could someone write sincerely that breastfeeding is the 'fundamental repurposing' of breasts? That it is 'unnerving' and 'saves money on formula'? Artificial milk being, obviously, the reassuring biological norm. Thus the author trots out the pseudo-feminist rhetoric where the baby is the creepy bodysnatcher who seeks to desexualise the mother and prevent the father from his rightful 'A'. Especially if the baby can speak - because breastfeeding transforms into a perverse, sexual act when communication is involved.

Moreover, on a poll where the other options include 'Twincest', 'Ned Stark Loses His Head' and 'Everything The Mountain Does', the winner was 'Robin Arryn Loves Milk'. Even though in most cultures other than our demented, misogynistic farce of one the normal weaning age range is TWO to SEVEN. Clearly, breast-feeding beyond infancy is worse than incest, execution and mass murderers.

THIS ARTICLE HAS UNLEASHED THE DRAGON. RAAAAGGGGEEEEEEE.

Mamma mia, here we go again

I had made a solemn vow to myself that I would stop hate-reading mamma mia, and it was going quite well until one of my favourite bloggers, bluemilk posted this which of course made me re-enter the rage haze, which then gave way to the shoulder slump and the sad face and the looooong sigh. I usually cope by watching Keeping up with the Kardashians or some other ghastly visual filth but this time I decided I would use the time to write a TL;DR blog post.