I was censored on a mainstream forum for the word “birthrape”. Apparently it’s so offensive it has to be struck from the record and cannot be viewed. Members complained that their eyes had alighted on it. Aside from the obvious stuff about how societies use policing mechanisms enforced by their members to keep people walking in line with the dominant paradigm, what really interests me is the micromanagement of that process which we do ourselves.

Women censor themselves before they speak out about their births.

They don’t say they hated their birth because “people will think” that they aren’t happy with their baby.  So women refrain from speaking the truth which is that their baby is the greatest gift they’ve ever been given but the birth really sucked.

We censor ourselves at every turn to maintain the status quo.

 The only benefit to this exercise is that the cycle of women lining up for the slaughter continues as even the women who are brutalised are busily excising the part of their minds that alerts them to the experience of pain. We do it all the time about other stuff though, I just picked the birthrape analogy because I know it well.

Women often say stuff to me that’s prefaced with, “I know this sounds a bit weird” or “You’re going to think I’m nuts” or “I know I shouldn’t but” and yet I have yet to hear anything really shocking like “I know I shouldn’t assault my husband but I do”. It’s usually, “I know I shouldn’t be upset by how much my family abuse me, but I am.”

We’re constantly apologising, censoring, removing other people’s responsibility, being responsible ourselves for how everyone else feels and how they feel is much more important than how we feel. It really impresses upon me how much we’ve internalised the messages we get from the patriarchy about how we should behave, even to the point of micromanaging what’s in our own heads so it doesn’t pose a challenge to anything or anyone.

How scary, to walk around with a megaphone spraying in your own head that doesn’t have your own best interests at heart. Imagine the power of women who have stopped trying to control their bodies by obsessing over how it looks and what fuel you give it, and who turn off the megaphone and just say what comes out of their heads and speak honestly their powerful truths. Imagine if all the birthrape survivors stood up and said NO MORE!