Call me feminist because I care about women

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
-- Rebecca West

The thing about the “home birth debate” that really, really bothers me is also a concern I have had for years throughout my professional career-life and adult life as a woman.Women hurt other women deeply. No where is this more evident and more damaging than in birth.

I know I have hurt other women in the process of just trying to live my own scrambled life of pursuing a career, raising children, divorce, remarriage, divorce. I have tried not to. I try to respect others’ differences and needs – and I see we are all women trying to make it in a world that is still controlled by archaic, patriarchal systems.

Men who dominate patriarchial systems are also controlled by the systemizing of birth and are at the mercy of brain imprinting from their own labor and birth when their mother was drugged and violated in their birth.Today, many women cringe at the word feminist. Certainly we women all like the benefits we women enjoy in America -- careers as airplane pilots, engineers, physicians, lawyers. Women can own property and can s tart a business, selling property even. A woman can conceive, give birth to and raise a child alone without that child being openly ostracized as a “bastard.”

The list goes on and on for what a woman is now able to do that women of age fifty years ago never dreamed of. Professionally, we are no longer nurses, secretaries, and teachers unless that is our calling. Our elders - our sisters, the feminists made that possible for us.

They fought and sacrificed for our rights, our equality, and our CHOICE. Nursing was one of the jobs that opened many doors for women. Women, as the subordinate group acquiesced to those in power in order to be there in the workplace and to advance the profession. There has been a large price to pay for woman being more like men in the world and having birth taken from the control of women. Women in medicine and women cared for in medicine are very wounded.

Women hurt each other in many ways because of their wounding. Women use words and emotions to fight – beginning very early in life. Women KNOW what will hurt the other person, and when they too are wounded, they will use it, knowing how deeply women feel their feelings. I wonder a lot about the lack of trust between women.

Our lives as mothers are so vulnerable. No other time in life are we as vulnerable as when we are bringing our new baby into this world. No other time in life are we in need of nurturing and support of other women, protection from men, and so vulnerable to harm, disregard, and control. As mothers, no matter how old our child is, no other aspect of our lives can bring us to our knees like the disrespect or disregard for our selves, our decisions, and our lives with our children.

You can call it New Age or whatever you wish, but it seems to me that in this human world everything works upon a concept of balance between the masculine and the feminine. This life is about balance and partnership, respecting the other within the self. Jesus was conceived by God, of the Heavens and born of a woman, an earthly woman, Mary. This makes Jesus and each of us a spiritual, human being. My Native American ancestors refer to Mother Earth and the Father Sky that we each embody. We are each of the earth and the heavens. Born of the male and the female. There is no doubt in my mind, as history shows this over and over, that when these are out of balance, terrible things happen. Historically, in our culture where the feminine is disregarded women have been treated brutally in birth, and they still are since the introduction of male dominated medicine.

Even though American women are treated better and have more rights than anywhere in the world, we still have astounding incidence of domestic violence, rape, and a pornographic industry based on violence (sexual) and exploitation of women. Apparently, when societies were more balanced or even matriarchal, those cultures were not as violent. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think the majority of women today in the US who tend to devalue the feminine, are capable of running a non-violent matriarchal society. Women have taken on too much of the male persona and denied their own feminine. This is what allows them to betray other women emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Far from being capable of creating supportive, nurturing and creative collectives, my experience of many women today is that they are very traumatizing to other women. Nowhere is the traumatizing of women by women worse than in the current medical care during birth and in the debates about birth -- everywhere it is being discussed.

The lack of compassion and regard for other women is astounding. Rather than explore and heal her own inner woundedness, women are trying to fight in this world for her place in masculine ways that harm other women. I see the profession of midwifery as an attempt to return the self and the world to balance. It is a necessary action of healing something that has been very wounded in order to return the world to balance. I do believe that what is necessary is for every woman to heal her feminine self.

I know many women who support and desire natural birth and homebirth, who seek diligently to stay out of hospital’s harm. It almost always leads a woman to healing her feminine self, embracing a more natural life in many ways, and becoming more aware of the planet some call Mother Earth – because the earth nourishes us and supports us.

"Peace on earth begins with birth"