Signs that you are in a violent or potentially violent relationship with a man.
He tells you -- in words or actions:
1) You are not as smart as him.
2) Don’t trust yourself – you can’t do it without him.
3) You must do only what he allows – it is for your own good.
4) You must do only what he tells you is right and do so without doubt or questioning.
5) He knows better what you need than you do.
6) You can only trust him – and not other women.
7) No one else can take care of you as well he, including yourself, your mother, your sister, your friends, and any other woman.
8) Women do not know as much as men, so other women do not know enough to help you.
9) You can only depend on him, the man.
10) Only he knows what will be best for you and what you need.
Sound familiar? Remember the Welcome to Adventures in Motherhood post a few days ago? The message of the medical establishment from at least forty years ago has been a recipe for the disempowerment and violation of women and their babies during the most vulnerable experience of their lives. There is a entire body of UNDONE mainstream research on the affects of this on trust, intimacy between men and women, addiction, violence, and the myriad of personal and parenting issues in our culture.
Here's the "Welcome" again that corresponds to my list above. My comments are in bold.
Adventures in Motherhood
Welcome to the greatest adventure in a woman’s life.
Childbirth is a natural and wonderful. Your
1) doctor has been especially trained to
He tells you -- in words or actions:
1) You are not as smart as him.
2) Don’t trust yourself – you can’t do it without him.
3) You must do only what he allows – it is for your own good.
4) You must do only what he tells you is right and do so without doubt or questioning.
5) He knows better what you need than you do.
6) You can only trust him – and not other women.
7) No one else can take care of you as well he, including yourself, your mother, your sister, your friends, and any other woman.
8) Women do not know as much as men, so other women do not know enough to help you.
9) You can only depend on him, the man.
10) Only he knows what will be best for you and what you need.
Sound familiar? Remember the Welcome to Adventures in Motherhood post a few days ago? The message of the medical establishment from at least forty years ago has been a recipe for the disempowerment and violation of women and their babies during the most vulnerable experience of their lives. There is a entire body of UNDONE mainstream research on the affects of this on trust, intimacy between men and women, addiction, violence, and the myriad of personal and parenting issues in our culture.
Here's the "Welcome" again that corresponds to my list above. My comments are in bold.
Adventures in Motherhood
Welcome to the greatest adventure in a woman’s life.
Childbirth is a natural and wonderful. Your
1) doctor has been especially trained to
You are not as smart as him.
Generations of the message that a woman can't even know her own body or what a man knows? So much are women marginalized in medicine the study of one of the biggest killers of women, heart attack, has just recently been studied. Medicine and men know as much about menopause as they do birth.
2) guide you through this experience happily and help you deliver a healthy baby.
Don't trust yourself: you can't do it without his help.
Say, what? HE will help HER deliver her a healthy baby?
3) Of course, he will need your cooperation in doing this
You must do only what he allows because it is for your own good. Because women have a tendency to be uncooperative and stupid. and it is
4) necessary that you follow his directions implicitly.
You must do only what he tells you is right and do so without without questioning and doubts.
This is so scary.
This is so scary.
5) There is a good reason for everything he does or instructs you to do.
He knows better than you do what you need. He IS a man - even if it isn't necessarily about what is best for the woman if it's good for him it will be best for you as well.
6) You will find that your doctor is not only your physician and medical advisor, but also a trusted friend who is sincerely interested in you and available whenever you need him.
You can only trust him; not other women.
Today, a woman is lucky in a twenty-four hour labor if she sees the doctor before she is fully dilated or doing her monthy visits, and if her doctor even remembers her name.
Today, a woman is lucky in a twenty-four hour labor if she sees the doctor before she is fully dilated or doing her monthy visits, and if her doctor even remembers her name.
7) You may have many well-meaning relatives, friends, or neighbors who are eager to give advice.
No one else can take care of you as well he can, including yourself, your mother, your sister, your friends, and any other woman.
Women who were born of women from the beginning of time -- mothers, grandmothers, aunties, sisters, and friends who have given birth. WOMEN, not men who have never given birth. Unfortunately, with women as the deliverers of doctor's orders and females learning OB in the male-dominated system, the violation of women by other women is a huge wounding. Unfortunately,
8) much of the time they (WOMEN!?!) are uninformed
Women do not know as much as men, so other women do not know enough to help you.
HOW SO are women less informed than men about birth? and their advice is poor. Women have long been lead to believe this in most areas of life, but EVEN in birth and about their own bodies? So, if
HOW SO are women less informed than men about birth? and their advice is poor. Women have long been lead to believe this in most areas of life, but EVEN in birth and about their own bodies? So, if
9) you have a problem, if you are worried, or you are troubled about anything, discuss it with your doctor);
You can only depend on him, the man.
10) he can help you best.
Only he knows what will be best for you and what you need.
Most of us know by now (thanks to Oprah and Dr. Phil) that this list and form of isolating a woman under the expectation of being her “best” source of help is a dynamic of domestic violence. Did the men of medicine realize that they were doing this? Did they not think about how they would be establishing to baby boys how to interact with their mothers - women?
The following pictures tell the story of one girl’s adventure to motherhood. It could be you.
The following pictures tell the story of one girl’s adventure to motherhood. It could be you.
A GIRL’S adventure to motherhood? A married woman pregnant with her partner's baby is a GIRL until she experiences a medical birth?? I got my records for my second child's birth a few years and was annoyed to see myself referred to as young girl. I was twenty-one and giving birth. I was a woman.
Call me jaded, but I suspect that the systematic effort of medicine to control women's bodies and birth experience is NOT a coincidence. Twenty short years after getting the right to vote, women participated equally in the work force during World War II (were pilots!) and even had a professional baseball league back home. All that ended and women were sent home to have babies, to house keep, and to bake bread -- in pearls and heels. Is it just another coincidence that the late forties and fifties were dubbed, “the knock ‘em out; drag ‘em out” era because of ether and “twilight zone” cocktail and high incidence of forceps use? And, that these years grew to the highest infant mortality rates since medicine took over birth – 1956-1958? Is it yet another coincidence that in the early sixties when women were expressing “hysteria” that valium was dispensed like candy just when women were experiencing violating birth (as you'll see) and were gearing up to claim their equal rights as humans? And, then this coincided with a few hippy, peace-loving women (i.e., Ina May and Suzanne Arms) who wanted to have natural birth and homebirth. Just a side note, but why have the radical feminists (then or now) not engaged in the issue of the historical impact of male dominated medicine on women’s lives?
I think not that any of these are coincidences. Obstetrics is one long effort to control women via non-consenting, non-informed medical research in drugs and technology. Our culture is so paying the price for this.
I am sorry if this post and future ones sharing this book offends those in obstetrics. I know they are good-hearted people who spent years of great sacrifice of their lives to learn what they know and do. I know they are also very wounded themselves, for the same reasons. Every one of us is a participant in creating and maintaining this and every other archaic, traumatizing system in our culture. Someone just has to say it -- "the emperor wears no clothes," so I will. Obstetric medicine is the place of manufacturing physical and emotional depravity in our society. Maybe, and I say this with sincere compassion, maybe the obstetricians today are some of the more wounded?
Call me jaded, but I suspect that the systematic effort of medicine to control women's bodies and birth experience is NOT a coincidence. Twenty short years after getting the right to vote, women participated equally in the work force during World War II (were pilots!) and even had a professional baseball league back home. All that ended and women were sent home to have babies, to house keep, and to bake bread -- in pearls and heels. Is it just another coincidence that the late forties and fifties were dubbed, “the knock ‘em out; drag ‘em out” era because of ether and “twilight zone” cocktail and high incidence of forceps use? And, that these years grew to the highest infant mortality rates since medicine took over birth – 1956-1958? Is it yet another coincidence that in the early sixties when women were expressing “hysteria” that valium was dispensed like candy just when women were experiencing violating birth (as you'll see) and were gearing up to claim their equal rights as humans? And, then this coincided with a few hippy, peace-loving women (i.e., Ina May and Suzanne Arms) who wanted to have natural birth and homebirth. Just a side note, but why have the radical feminists (then or now) not engaged in the issue of the historical impact of male dominated medicine on women’s lives?
I think not that any of these are coincidences. Obstetrics is one long effort to control women via non-consenting, non-informed medical research in drugs and technology. Our culture is so paying the price for this.
I am sorry if this post and future ones sharing this book offends those in obstetrics. I know they are good-hearted people who spent years of great sacrifice of their lives to learn what they know and do. I know they are also very wounded themselves, for the same reasons. Every one of us is a participant in creating and maintaining this and every other archaic, traumatizing system in our culture. Someone just has to say it -- "the emperor wears no clothes," so I will. Obstetric medicine is the place of manufacturing physical and emotional depravity in our society. Maybe, and I say this with sincere compassion, maybe the obstetricians today are some of the more wounded?
TO BE CONTINUED ... most definitely. Pictures coming.
2 comments:
You are dead-on woman! So few want to tell it like it is. I am a little tired of wishy washy ancedotes about positive hospital birthsused to discredit stories of rampant abuse so prevalent in the hosptial system - as if abuse is a rarety because one woman happened to get lucky herself. Come one.
I am truly sick of euphamisms for travesties like coerced c-section ("call it a c-birth and be positive - you have a healthy baby!"), and people implying that a woman is less a mother when she refuses to be anything but a passive martyr within a truly abusive, anti-woman/baby system, and snide justifications like "well what can they do but practice defensive medicine in our sue-happy society" (uhm, perhaps consider the woman and child maybe?!) This constant harkening to legal issues is especially absurd considering much of the abuse women suffer is mental and way outside of the range of achieving justice through current legal channels. If the forcibly harvest the healthy baby you have grown through a slice they made in your abdomen for NO MEDICAL REASON you can do feck all about it no matter how they treated you. They hand you the healthy baby YOU made and tell you to be grateful to THEM and so does most everyone else...while you hobble about with a gash in your belly trying to care for a newborn. That's medicine.
Having experienced pretty serious abuse at the hands of one of the "wounded" OBs, I must admit I lack compassion for them. I lurk on OB boards and see attitudes/opinions/judgements that would turn your stomach on a daily basis. The complete lack of regard for the woman, the baby, sound medicine, truthfulness, human compassion is sickening. They openly LOOK FORWARD to things getting EVEN WORSE for mothers and babies. Go check them out - see there response to the recent ACOG statement against OOH birth - I am not exaggerating.
I also see a few swimming against the tide, sure, but they are really few and far between.
I think it is a system that needs to be dismantled. Now. Period. I realize standing up for one's self and changing a harmful system for the sake of others (often I hear for our daughters)is a very commendable endeavor BUT no woman should have to fight for basic human rights while trying to give birth to her child. No one should have to work within a system so deceptive, harmful, degarding, demeaning and patently UNSAFE when such beauty is possible right outside it, right in our own homes or that of women who actually have our and our babies interest at heart.
The hospital birth system is beyond repair! It is run but lying, debased, arrogant erseholes. Stop talking in circles and just step out of it sisters!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for your blog!
J in Philly
I really appreciated and enjoyed reading your post. I am glad that you like our blog! *hugs* I am so sorry you had to go through what you did when you birthed. That should be a time of joy, not hurt. So many women, like you and me, have so much healing to do because of our current medical system. I totally agree that it needs to be dismantled and rebuilt--better and more compassionate!
Post a Comment