From the committee proceedings investigating the current legislation to outlaw independent midwifery. Get yourself a transcript.


I would just like to remind the committee that the leading cause of maternal death in this country is suicide.

- Hannah Dahlen


Professor Dahlen aside, Have you all noticed how much shitting on birth trauma there is at the moment?



Home birth wingnuts shouting down major steps forward for midwifery

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

The reaction from homebirth advocates has been little short of hysterical. Roxon has been vilified across the blogosphere and deluged with letters and emails. One blogger, perhaps not understanding the meaning of the word, called Roxon’s failure to publicly fund homebirth “socialist”, which would make it the first socialist reform Miranda Devine has ever supported. While not all homebirth advocates are as extreme as Joyous Birth, which uses the term birth rape, there’s plenty of wingnuttery out there.


I won't dignify Miranda's unspeakable act of violence against women when she laughed at birthrape in her column of spew.


http://shedidsaidworewhat.wordpress.com/

Warning: going here to see the gross misrepresentation of violence against women may cause conniptions. Hint: just cos you say you're a Feminist (while defining disagreements between women as "shitfights") doesn't mean you are. It might just mean something very different apparently.

Why is birthrape routinely dismissed as a few women whining about the use of lifesaving intervention? Further hint: birthrape isn't medicalised birth, it's doing things to women's bodies without consent. Little things like cutting open of vaginas often without anaesthetic (even people who like medicalised birth can read studies to indicate this is a dumb idea that benefits no one), shoving hands and fingers into women's vaginas without consent, or even cutting women's bodies open after a series of coersions, humiliations, and again without consent. Doesn't that provoke the slightest flinch in you?

Is it really that hard to understand? Consent. We're talking consent. The right for women to decide what happens to their bodies. Consent.


This isn't feminism, this is Big Daddy talking through women who think they're oh so funny and up to date with their "feminism". The feminist part of that pile of shite kinda escapes me.

The boring old furphy that talking about women being raped in hospitals is somehow watering down the other ways in which women are "really" raped is so offensive to everyone concerned. Who knew a definition of rape was based on the venue?! Oh but of course because once women couldn't be raped at home because husbands can't rape something they own, right? And once women who were raped in the street just deserved it. Would it be rape if a doctor raped a birthing woman with their penis instead of their hands? I dunno, I'm confused. Maybe it's rape when women say it's rape? And maybe instead of a stupid kneejerk reaction fuelled by a stack of internalised misogyny and birth mythinformation just maybe some women (who think they're feminists while clearly totally missing that boat) could listen to what the women are saying and take that on board instead of deriding our attempts to prevent a basic attack on human rights? You may not realise it but we're also concerned with your basic human right to at some point in your life choose to add parenting to your life and bring that baby from your body without also being raped at the same time. Trust us when we say it's a less than edifying start to parenting when you have PTSD.


Why are birthing women separate from Other Women when it comes to talking about rape? And consider too that many women who birth have also been raped in ways that fauxfeminists are comfy with and which are allowed to be labelled rape as well as birth being something most women do in their lives. So apparently the time you can't say "Yes means yes, no means no, however we dress, wherever we go" is when it's in a hospital, in a hospital gown. Please, make free with our bodies when we're birthing because it's not rape, it's lifesaving intervention and we're just too silly to know the difference. Just like those Other Women are too silly to know when footballers rape them in front of the team? Or is that rape you recognise because it involves a power imbalance and something being done without consent? Gee sounds remarkably like birthrape to me except maybe you trusted that when you went to a hospital you'd be safe in the hands of Trained Professionals who never do anything unnecessary. Then a crowd of strangers stood around and egged the perpetrator on while deferring to them in the hierarchy of who's present in "delivery" suite and you lay there paralysed with fear and a hole that was punched in your back in order to introduce drugs of a serious nature into your body.


With women shitting on us like this, who needs RANCID? Old fashioned feminism? Yep, the kind where human rights are respected and we don't label birth as somehow different from other parts of women's lives
IBTP.

And then to Crikey.

Why don't women read Crikey?
Crikey seeks women for conversation, companionship and fun times.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/08/20/crikey-seeks-women-for-conversation-companionship-and-fun-times/


Here's a hint: positioning men as the centre of the universe and laughing at political activism by women doesn't really attract women who care about politics. Doing it like a personals ad. That's just dumb and creepy. And not even particularly giggleworthy. Boring.

Bernard Keane's impressively offensive "article" on homebirth ("Home birth wingnuts shouting down major steps forward for midwifery") is so full of lies and misrepresentation it's almost bizarre that anyone thinks it passes for opinion and it sure isn't Fact. I'll vent spleen here where it's expected that people will behave with a modicum of honesty about their vested interest and be called on it when they don't. To pretend that doctors shouldn't have so much say in birth while totally dismissing what birthing women (you know, the ones whose bodies are up for discussion here?) are saying about birth is the ultimate bullshit.

Way to go speaking out for the oppressed, chaps. Tell us what we think, tell us how to think it, then lightly dismiss everything we've said anyway. Classy. See the point kinda is, Bernard, that a step forward for a group of professionals who will work in a hierarchical medical model to make sure surgeons have the final say over women's bodies is not actually a step forward for birthing women. It's nice for those midwives, although it doesn't apply to the only ones offering genuine midwifery and it thus doesn't mean that women are going to be celebrating. Only women would be expected to celebrate something that shits all over them while people like you continue to define what we should want and do in terms of our own bodily autonomy. Got that? MY body, MY birth. Not yours, not your right to whine about how some of the girls aren't toeing the line when you clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about.


I'm just a "homebirth wingnut" and "hysterical" woman so you can bet I won't be going back to Crikey now. Dudes defining politics for me I don't need. I'm just a laydeeblogger on soft topics, yanno, like birthrape (something many men AND women love a laugh at coz it's sooo funny when women are assaulted, hey?!), legislative changes to women's human rights in this country (oh that's right I'm just part of an unrepresentative tiny vocal minority shitting on "everyone's" great joy at the current appalling changes to midwifery (s)care in this country) and other boring shit like that which dudes wouldn't want to read about since it doesn't apply to them, as they see it. Except it kinda sorta does since every time someone's human rights are chipped away we are all just that little bit more impoverished in the world we inhabit. It's only when you position yourself as lords of creation that you can afford this perspective.


And what's with the denial that birthrape exists? Who does that serve, Bernard? It doesn't serve women. People once denied that rape within marriage existed, or that adult men would rape small children, but it didn't mean it wasn't happening and it has come to be (somewhat) accepted as a possibility in recent years. But the women who spoke out were shat on in the same way by patriarchy lovin' dudes who love to laugh at violence against women. Ha ha. So funny. Seeking to score points against an oppressed group by laughing at their protests that violence is done to them? What the FUCK?


What other sphere of politics (yes I know there are vaginas involved but it is actually politics, dudes) involving this level of oppression is so celebrated and accepted in the wider world? Crikey wouldn't get away with using any other group's experience of oppression in this way but women, hey fair game. Especially women who choose bodily autonomy and criticise a hospital system which routinely coerces and forces poorly evidenced (at best) and actively harmful interventions on people who access it. Except it's not "people" it's "women" and thus it's totally fine. Birthrape is not funny, dudes, any more than any other kind of assault to the human body. If you wingnuts were following the legislation you'd have heard that the greatest killer of birthing women is suicide. That's pretty funny too, right?


The rage I feel when women's lives are dismissed, laughed at and belittled in this way knows no bounds. And to have a few stabs at pretending to be cool and down with feminism'n'shit by saying that male obstetricians ought not have so much say in birth is patronising crap indicating absolutely no adequate critique of anything related to women and birth.


Crikey, you disgust me. I cleared my cookies and will never go back. IBTP. And Bernard Keane.