La Leche League’s Ties to Big Pharma & Trans Science

Gone are the days when natural parenting, birth, and breastfeeding associations were actually natural.

NATURAL MOTHERING COMMUNITIES, PULLED APART

One by one, we’ve watched our organizations be bought out by bigger interests– interests that have sold a line to mothers about the new wave of the future’s “natural” and how it’s just the same (and maybe better).

Enter: Male Breastfeeding… from our friends at La Leche League International, on Facebook. Of course there’s “trans men” (trans identified females) who get pregnant, birth, and breastfeed– and this is supposed to be proof that the male of our species gets pregnant and “chestfeeds” too (because guys don’t have “breasts” or anything– that’s just sick!). But now, out of the other side of the mouth comes “males have mammaries too”, meaning that someone born physically male can in fact “breastfeed” (now it’s a breast, because breasts are only for pretty ladies, duh– even if all sexes have them) with the right support. And, that they should.

Beginning an infant’s life on its mother’s natural breastmilk as the gold standard for nourishment is pretty much the point of natural organizations like La Leche League, but now it bows to a new master– the almighty dollar. Because let’s face it– there’s no money in breastmilk and it was only a matter of time before Big Pharma and the medical industry found a clever new way to wear Grandma’s clothes and get the natural parenting community to walk into a new trap. That trap is the idea that you can only be for LGB rights if you are not questioning of transgender issues and the science behind it.

Right wing women in our natural communities have less problem with this. Women on that side of the field are far less afraid of seeming bigoted or homophobic (or now, “transphobic”), and are willing to admit that where ever nature has been neglected is no longer the place for them. Women on the Left or left-leaning on social issues, however, feel either forced or convinced to go along with whatever line of rhetoric is alleged allyship to trans, out of pressure to not be anti-LGB– no matter how unnatural or science/drug/technology-based the item on the table being promoted is.

What this means, then, is not just a wide split in our communities of support for natural birthing, parenting, and breastfeeding (industry’s good old divide and conquer), but a sudden lack of a home for leftist or progressive women who still remember what “natural” means and aren’t willing to compromise that just to appease the LGBTLMNOP gods. It is harder and harder for these women to find any place to turn to that will be pro-LGB while also admitting that we have some questions about big science and big pharma’s role in the takeover of our “authentic existences”.

For years now (some may say a century, others will say at least decades), natural mothering types have been a mild thorn in the side of industry and big pharma/medicine. But if you thought Dr. She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and her hateful trolls were a problem, they’re nothing compared to Big Daddy Business, who is finally seeing his day. You see, natural parenting blogs, magazines, documentaries, books, websites, etc. were definitely growing in influence, especially with the reach of social media. (This becomes more and more apparent as entities like Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, Google, and more move to block “fake news”, which includes things like “alternative” information on vaccine injury and opposition– for example.) More and more mothers were finding each other for support and questioning the ethics and “facts” of the medical establishment, and finding the old ways. They have been returning to the natural and making healthier humans as a result. Still, while growing, our groups have remained somewhat on the fringe– making the timing perfect for dividing an already-marginal community right in half over what is perceived to be a human rights issue, rather than what it actually is– a question of medical ethics and a duty to the cause of natural and holistic health. An automatic skepticism for anything not organically from the purest available source, as designed.

Before we get any larger or more influential, it would be important to buy out, infiltrate, separate and lay waste to anything we’ve built. This can be done by simply redefining things, or reframing oppositional things as if they’ve fit our criteria all along. This is as deceptive as people arguing that epidural-critical information, for example, is anti-feminist, anti-autonomy, and sexist/patriarchal– and thusly spinning epidurals as being a valuable part of the natural and holistic parenting experience. Sure, it makes no sense on its face, but the spin can be made and would have, if they thought it could successfully anchor within our movements. Much more compelling and harder to deny is anything trans related, because while no one is willing to deny trans people anything lest they be seen as bigots, it has always been okay to deny women things. That’s been going on for a long time and never stopped being okay.

So getting back to LLL’s post in which you learn that men can “chestfeed” but ladies “breastfeed”, because we all have breasts but only ladies have breasts, and because there is nothing at all wrong with cross-sex hormones either in utero for a developing fetus or having to do with the breast milk a baby must consume, your choice is to either ride that wave to be “supportive” or be considered harassing and shown the door. In-line commenters said things such as “this was shared with a TERF page” [TERF stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist”, which is a misnomer and a slur that a woman is called when she seems to critically question anything even remotely touching on trans issues], seemingly missing the memo that it was shared with mothers and breastfeeders in their own communities and circles– it wasn’t shared outside your community, we ARE the community. Yes, my liberal sisters, TERFs are natural mothers too (and perhaps the only left wing natural mothers left). TERFs, as you call them, need breastfeeding support, community around natural birth, answers about big pharma and what they want to pump our kids with “for the greater good”, etc. You could say that being a TERF and acknowledging and revering biological reality is pretty much the origin point of all our natural movements.

Natural parenting movements are now becoming 100% fully supportive of males who may never lactate or have their own children, while excluding defiant, real women and mothers who either need or provide valuable education on natural holistic parenting (some who have done so for years and pioneered the resurgence), all in the name of being “inclusive”. Inclusive to whom? To people who wish to be part of our communities but fall outside the circle of life which they pertain to, while excluding the very women who paved the way for our wisdom to be spread and those newcomers in need of the maternal wisdom to actually use in practical life. The lifeline to mothers is drowning. It’s being intentionally submerged. And I’m not sure all the players involved are even aware of the part they’re playing. (Patriarchy is that much of a mindfuck.)

So how did this happen? The call may be coming from inside the house right now, but before that it originated from an outside source. While some of our leftist sisters have been thoroughly indoctrinated by media messages about “inclusivity” to unwaveringly support anything associated with transgenderism, big business has also been buying up any of our orgs and associations that were built to offer support and education for our natural-minded goals. That’s why actors and PR reps (including men, people with no children, and people with no previous interest or involvement in natural parenting activism) are being hired to give speeches on behalf of MANA [Midwives Association of North America, who has changed their language to make birthing appear to be a “gender neutral” activity and cause], while those who actually know about natural birth or have experienced one are cast out as unfaithfuls and branded with a scarlet T for TERF when they fail to toe the line. And our leftist sisters are either ignoring it or saying “that’s what you get” for disobeying Big Daddy, blissfully unaware that the medical industry now has them cornered and with nowhere to hide. It will be like shooting fish in a barrel, and with some of the women even volunteering as tribute. How many birthing goddess women will be the first to line up to offer up their uterus for donation, for example? Or will cheerlead a female lesbian friend into cutting off their breasts to fit their perception of gender, while still spouting the purity of our breasts’ “liquid gold” on the other hand?

“They came for the TERFs, and I said nothing. And finally they came for me, and there was no one left who would speak for me.”

Because you see, in the end the aim was never about your right to individual liberty. That is evident in the punishment for thought crimes occurring for the women expressing any hint of doubt or dissent– they are not respected or valued for their liberty to do so, they are shamed and shunned. The aim was total domination by industry over your very real, human, female bodies, and in fact all of our bodies. “Individual liberty” was just the red herring to get your endorsement and blind allegiance.

LA LECHE LEAGUE’S ANTI-NATURAL AGENDA

Users took to a post by La Leche League on Facebook which detailed how you can get a male to produce a few ounces of breastmilk to sustain an infant off of. It was full of many women thanking the League for the “education”, “clarity”, and “inclusion”. What there was perhaps more of (although it has been silenced, deleted, and users banned) were women questioning whether or not this was natural, appropriate, or in line with their values for wholesome beginnings.

Get it? Drops of milk from a human, no matter how they are obtained, is considered good and natural. This is how you sanction (I mean, “support”) males putting a neonate up to their nipple. (WHERE is the mother? Either radio silence from LLL, or they offer a host of disaster scenarios to explain the mother’s absence, like we all just got gleefully killed off in a soap.)

Anyone of any sex can breastfeed, with the right medication! Yay?!
(Where is the mother, again?)

Well, goodbye natural parenting! Move over, organic– everything new is old again. Make way for neo-organic, brought to you by the Biotech industry.

La Leche League is no different from other entities taken over by corporate spokespersons. I noticed the admin for the page, a woman named Caroline, had two other interesting occupations under her belt (besides just being in charge of the social media representation of LLL International). One was a PR firm an “Association Management Company” (some vague language about “offering solutions” to companies, etc; her role specifically has to do with “administration in nonprofits”.). The other was a Biotech company.

Myself and concerned others (who are all natural parenting mothers) were over there to ask questions about admin’s tie to Biotech and Public Relations, and where the funding was coming from, but this must have constituted harassment or bigotry because we were swiftly removed from the page and banned from further commenting. (It used to be that people came in promoting technology over nature were trolling… but now those questioning technology over nature are the “trolls”.) Well, it was either that or when I mentioned that babies are real, whole human beings worthy of the best nourishment nature could provide and not accessories to affirm anyone’s gender. Hateful, hateful conduct, to be sure.

As far as we know, Caroline has no previous experience with issues, involvement, nor activism surrounding natural parenting and breastfeeding. We do know that she is Team Ultrasound, “One and Done”, and believes you actually *can* tell who is a boy or a girl based on genitals (despite the PR spin she’s been paid to push).

Caroline would be pleased to help you with the acquisition of your next nonprofit!

Does Caroline herself know that she is a tool for the man, to co-opt and then crush women’s causes? Probably not– she is probably just an empowered career woman trying to empower other women by doing what she is told (which is why women’s liberation does not simply mean seeing more women in careers or in power; this neglects tiers of power and the insidiousness of patriarchy). And as an individual, she is potentially not invested enough in our natural movements to care when this is pointed out to her, making her the perfect candidate, which surely the higher entities understood when hiring her.

They have a profile they go for: peripherally invested in the issue if possible, but not highly passionate and aware as others in the field and with no networking or personal loyalty issues to disrupt the candidate’s work (others in the life who would hold them accountable if they stray off course), competent enough to perform the tasks asked of her, and career-motivated and ambitious. Bonus points if it can appeal to the do-gooder sensibility that pads our egos. She checks all criteria off this list.

So for the same reason medwives and female OBs cannot be approached with some analysis of their part in subjugation, people like Caroline cannot be told they are the bad guys either. No one wants to find that out about themselves, when putting your head on the pillow at night as a hero while earning a decent living is basically every good person’s dream. The ego rejects outside info shattering that, every time. This is how women are played off of each other like pawns to remain useful cogs in the machine. This is how patriarchy has been so successful for so long.

It’s not an accident, it’s a strategy. And one we are falling for and losing.

PERSONAL NOTES, AS A NATURAL MOTHER

Natural parenting advocates like myself organized under the understanding that not all choices are equal. Things are not indiscriminately good just because you chose them [< a philosophy that liberal feminism is actually based off of] which is why we advocate for what we believe is a higher standard. While our fight is for autonomy, it is not without caveats; we condemn the distortion and lies big industry endorses, and we favor the healthy, holistic, and usually less profitable alternatives. We are not fighting for the individual’s right to self-harm anyway as a valid “choice”, as this kind of behavior is already the norm and does not need defending or supporting.

[The genius of transgenderism in politics is, it plays the part of the less heard tiny minority underdog while being funded by the biggest financial and medical players in the field. And no other disadvantaged group enjoys that kind of power.]

We believe there can be no true consent without informed consent, and that fully informed consent is extremely rare. The aim is for increased health and that comes through critical information which is being denied. We also believe that so long as you are sick or enslaved to a sick system, you are naturally less equipped to make the best choices. Making choices under duress or with limited capacity or resources is not a free choice, if a choice at all. Poor choices come from poor circumstances. “Support only” activism works best only for the status quo, and that benefits those in power.

About 4 years ago now I was denounced as a TERF in natural birthing communities for daring to still believe in biology and have labels for it. I was told by fellow unassisted birthers that in a matter of only decades, trans women would be able to carry pregnancies– as if this was a good thing. But these were also people who considered themselves infertile despite having many children and while still at a very young age, and people who would buy and use hormones off the internet believing it would aid pregnancy, and people who didn’t disagree if hospital birthers called their experience “unassisted”. (For all the female autonomy goddess power hype we used to discuss, I am now informed by these same people that “the uterus is not a female organ”, while sexist bunk “brain science” will be held up as some proof that the brain somehow has a sex/gender. Go figure.)

Herein lies the rift. Not everyone in our community always believed in the truth, that words matter and have real meanings, that natural ways are more healing and healthful and deserve to be fought for on that basis, that women have been oppressed for our anatomy, or in resisting industrial control. Many of the women in our natural communities aren’t in service to nature but to self; they are devoted to the idea that the individual should do whatever they want without regard for the potential consequences. They play to the tune of their choices being more healthful when it’s somehow convenient, but they aren’t consistent. I’m not accusing them of not having organic purity, but not having logical congruence– to recognize that things are not automatically the healthy or best way just because you “chose” it. That’s all. These are not people skeptical of technology, they just resent being told what to do by authority. In that case, they were never really with us. It may be impossible to bridge the divide with people who believe in information only insofar as it can serve the self’s current wants and gratification and egoic justifications for things, rather than the duty to provide honest and critical information that is otherwise controversial and hidden over it being inconvenient to the prevailing system.

In other words, if they can be convinced that the system can work for them (despite disenfranchising certain others or rewriting all reality), they will work with the system. That’s an enemy to resistance everywhere, and at the bare minimum, the holistic.

We are coming to the table with vastly different motives. We are not in the same political fight for freedom. We need to find and join with people who are. We need to cast our net wide again to find those people, now, before we are more fully censored.

[There is currently an exodus from Facebook & Twitter by people who have been banned or censored by the platforms. Please come to MeWe like other radical feminists and vaccine critics, etc., have done where free speech and alternative information is not censored and your personal information is not sold. Find our groups. We have already started networking and planting seeds there. It could be the place we still have to communicate with one another as conditions worsen at the presently popular sites.]

I as a lifelong left-wing-aligned female who both resents being told what to do AND is skeptical of technology do not appreciate orgs like LLL resorting to fascist censoring of real mothers and breastfeeders in service to an agenda that props up technology above people. This is not who they claimed to serve when they were founded and serve other interests now, instead.

The tunnel vision of individualists (flying high on instant gratification) will one day come crashing down on them when, to their surprise, technophilia was not the Pleasure Island utopia they thought it would be while they were having fun (and the people who cautioned the warnings have been thoroughly banished). The powers that be are not and never were interested in preserving the liberty and autonomy of the individual, ultimately. That is just the carrot dangled in front of them to get them to submit to controlling entities. There will be no one there to protect them or rescue them if they continue down this path unchecked, but I’m hoping enough of us can now read between the lines before it gets too far, politically. Because it doesn’t end with LLL or MANA– there are more and there will be more, bought and falsely representing us with smiling robotic spokesfolx. Because I unlike my former friends do not believe trans women will carry pregnancies, nor do I think it’s good or necessary. I do not believe taking foreign hormones to lactate or alter pregnancies are automatically good and without consequence. I don’t believe questioning that consequence is bigotry. It’s our duty.

I believe in a matter of a handful of years this genderist movement will have run its course and there will be a conflict between the people and the power entities who promoted these ideas to the people as “liberation”. The reason I believe that is that is it too much at odds with reality, and that includes the tangible realities faced by females and by homosexuals. It also defies the common sense that the majority of the people across the world still have when it comes to a commonly-defined reality. In fact, this agenda even runs opposite to the former friends who became my opponents, who still– despite all their claims, their denial, their campaigning– give their children gendered names corresponding to their sexes (observed genitals). Just like Caroline at LLL and her ultrasounds, people merely pretend to not know what physical reality of male/female is. And they were willing to outcast their sisters and sell us down the river to do it.

Substances and technology worship are used to keep us dumb, sick, and enslaved. I was natural because I wanted a departure from a corrupt establishment, not because they didn’t give me enough toys and I wanted to act out in rebellion. We need to reach our left wing sisters who still realize there is a corrupt establishment and don’t want to be roped back into it. They will be awake enough (and lacking in petulance) to understand what is happening here and resist. It’s going to take maturity and bravery and I know some of our sisters who’ve been silently reading and watching on have got it.

“Autonomy” is not about individual freedom from the facts. And natural mothering is so much more than the illusion of choice.

YOUR MOVE.

I’m obviously very phobic of the future (and what some like to market to us as “progress”), which is exactly what I heard every time I questioned the practices of OB/GYN, Gattaca, artificial wombs, GMO, and testing out synthetic substances on babies over generations. As a woman and mother who resists, I don’t think this was ever a question. It’s what all of us came here to sign up for. The real question is whether being some kind of technophile and biophobe is the only way to prove you’re not a “transphobe”. And if you believe the framing being laid out for you by the media at the funding of big business interests, the answer is not only YES, but yes in lock-step.

I’m just wondering how biotechnology, altering DNA, vaccines, foreign cross-sex hormones, etc., and all these other aspects of Big Pharma and the medical industrial complex have any place in organizations that allegedly used to shield women from this patriarchal overreach and focus on getting back to basics.

And I’m wondering how long you’re going to go along with it. Or if you’re going to say something.


For more on these topics, please Google “transhumanism”, “Jennifer Pritzker”, and “Martine Rothblatt”.

Edit: Some other must-see pieces for you if you are interested in La Leche’s descent–

“Stick to the Script” discusses the document found on LLL policy for dealing with women who make comments about biology or sexism, but the document is later replaced with an anime furry image calling women FARTs.
“Inauthentic Selves” is a lengthy and worthwhile read about where all the sudden money is coming from in the alleged LGBT+, when back in the day lesbians working to combat AIDS had to scramble for donation change after they attended their third funeral that week (paraphrased). Just who the funders are may shock you.

“Pregnancy is Dangerous”

…is a patriarchally constructed lie by omission. It lacks nuance and independent/critical thought, leaving out a lot of details on why people accept this as the truth, whether it is true or not. It lacks analysis.

I’m not going to dive deep into how and why here. If you read my work or read up on birth, you probably already have that foundation. If not, get going (either reading or leaving). I don’t know why we should give two shits what people who will never have kids nor study birth think about pregnancy, like their opinion means half a good fuck. (It doesn’t.)

Right now I’m just going to rant to you about this. Because there are people out there who fancy themselves radical in terms of women’s liberation and other social causes, but are completely infantile progressively on this one– the functions of women’s bodies in reproduction. There are lies and injustices in that aspect of our existence, just as every other aspect of patriarchy/women’s lives. The people who argue about the “dangers” of pregnancy to scare women are far less educationally developed and more unaware when it comes to the very functions of our bodies that define our sex (beyond just popular myth), and they spread juvenile and ignorant bullshit over it to somehow back up their desire to not procreate, which is not necessary and a disservice to the good reasons anyone has to not have children. Worse, it’s a disservice to the women being churned out and butchered by a system that encourages them to hate and fear their bodies during its most powerful moments. It’s misogyny.

Supporting women to be fearful of our own bodies’ abilities and very nature is misogynist.

Let me make it clear:  it benefits men that women are terrified of the natural state of our own bodies as they work naturally. Sit with that. Roll that over in your brain for a minute if you haven’t considered it before. Let that plant a seed. That we will do everything to avoid this bodily state and if not, turn ourselves completely over to subordination to a male-constructed medical system in order to be “safe” from ourselves like lost, sad, helpless little girls who need a knight or a daddy or a hero is the most loud and most widely functioning patriarchal institutional mechanism I can think of. This should make sense to people who acknowledge that women are oppressed for complete control over our reproductive ability.

And please don’t tell me that “women are doctors, too”, as if to explain why an establishment can’t possibly be based on misogyny. Just… don’t.  I have plenty of experience with misogynist female doctors. Playing into the system to your own benefit when it hurts others is called handmaidenry.

If you think what happens to our bodies in pregnancy is unfortunate rather than beautiful or amazing, you hold misogynist values. Freedom from pregnancy isn’t automatic proof of gender role liberation, and it’s the virtue signaling of the new woke feminist. Freedom from male rule is what we’re after, but freedom from our bodies points more to a deep disconnect which is not natural, but was inflicted upon us. To fully embody ourselves is to understand that it isn’t scary to have control, whether or not we decide to become pregnant. And being pregnant without being under male control or male indoctrination about our own bodies is a very beautiful thing.

Let’s get one thing straight– pregnancy isn’t “dangerous”. It’s life. Living is “dangerous”. Pregnancy is, however, made dangerous.

And a woman’s pregnant belly and her whole body is beautiful and strong, powerful– not something to make a gross joke about or be terrified of. Because no, those feelings aren’t valid and I don’t have to validate them in order to be sensitive. I’m not in the business of validating precious feels from bad knowledge + cultural conditioning.

That is programming straight from patriarchy and it’s unacceptable. I don’t care if you have dysphoria, and I don’t care if you don’t want pregnancy for yourself. I strongly believe women who don’t want to be parents shouldn’t. It’s why I’m pro choice. Leave the mothering to the people who want to do it, I say. (In fact, leave the whole topic to those who do it and know what the fuck they are talking about, rather than don’t!) But not because of bullshit fears about our bodies. It should come from knowledge of self, not lack thereof. That’s not a virtue. I will not applaud that. I will challenge and question your prejudices if they are offensive and harmful. This is not the same thing as me forcing you to be something you don’t want to be. Melodrama Strawman. Clutch those pearls, oh everyone is forcing something on me, no one will let me be me– no. You can be you without spreading lies about others. We tell trans women this about womanhood every day. The moment you put that class analysis down to make it about an individual prejudiced feeling when you’ve already been given overwhelming “permission” to be you and no one is trying to change you, you’ve lost the plot.

Challenging your misinformation and misrepresentation is not the same thing as trying to change you.

Unless you’re scared that you will change your mind when you allow new information or another perspective to enter, of course.

 

Why would any radical feminist show something like this to explain why pregnancy is undesirable? It’s untrue, sensational, and misogynistic.

A personal phobia is a personal phobia and should be checked out and unpacked rather than circulated as gospel truth. This isn’t so you will decide to get pregnant, it’s just so you can not be so traumatized and ignorant or hold irrational (yes, irrational) fears. I confronted someone who wasn’t ready to unpack that, but she did spread nonsense publicly and with prejudice … so I spoke for women and the truth. Truth is truth. Lies are lies. And if you spew whatever you picked up without researching further and it’s part of a machine that harms women, you’re doing patriarchy’s work for them.

Substitute any other group for “pregnant women” and imagine spreading an image meant to gross or creep people out about said group, when the image wasn’t even authentic or representative of reality, was designed to be unflattering, and the statement that goes with it is incorrect, and tell me that shit would fly. So why should radicals get a pass when it’s women? What would happen if you did that about black people, gay people, disabled people, or fat people? When you rely on lies, it’s no longer about your feelings. Now it’s about facts and about being honest about groups of people, because class consciousness requires it of us. Pregnant women are women, and they are a class of women that experiences a particularly vicious and brutal form of routine abuse and oppression. And it’s completely socially sanctioned.

People thinking their prejudices can’t be debunked or it shits on their identities and choices (which are more important than facts) IS THE SAME ARGUMENT THAT GENDER IDEOLOGISTS MAKE. “Stop trying to change me, stop oppressing me, by telling me that female is a biological thing, you are hurting my feelings and trying to make me be something I’m not and it’s KILLING ME.” This, dysphoria, fear of bodies, is precisely why young girls are butchering their bodies. So don’t tell me it’s neither here nor there when it all comes from the same thinking. Whether you’re dysphoric over pregnancy, periods, breasts, the originator is the same:  Patriarchy.

They (men, male dominant culture, patriarchy) want us to be scared of ourselves and give our power to them, so they can take care of us. They want to make the choices for us or give us false choices so we feel “empowered”. Don’t ignore women who may be or become pregnant when you are standing up against that tide.

No, feeling dysphoric and spreading bad propaganda isn’t proof that any of these things are legitimately gross or dangerous on their own. They are reputed to be dangerous, it has been made dangerous to be in these states, but they are not inherently dangerous. It is literally killing women (and I do mean literally) to believe this stuff about ourselves. THAT’S why I speak. And I’m not just regurgitating nonsense I heard from out there in the world. It’s my specialty. I know what the fuck this earth goddess biz is. It’s what I do. It’s a passion of mine. You’d think I might even have some interesting things to say or teach about it, if anyone were curious enough to ask and listen. But who cares? these are just pregnant women, and you’ll never have kids. Why learn? Pregnancy is just dangerous, the end.*shrug* Hey, look at this weird belly! Glad I’ll never be like that, I’m so liberated. And empowered. And terrified. And don’t you dare try to change that.

And likewise, to be fair, I need to find my own balance today because my commitment to the truth and outrage at lies is out of hand, has me seeing it as all-important right now when god knows the world is full of this and life goes on and there are things I could be doing instead that would add to my quality of life more. ❤

Mad props to Mercury Retrograde and Merry Christmas.

Mary Lou Singleton- Extended Interview

Radical feminist motherhood was the topic of the last edition I worked on during my time with WLRN (Women’s Liberation Radio News), which I left after finishing this edition. Mary Lou Singleton is a friend and radical feminist, a midwife, a real activist who has been very involved in the fight for women’s reproductive and bodily rights spanning decades. I interviewed her and we discussed a variety of health topics revolving around how women attempt to take care of our bodies in a culture that devalues us as women and as mothers at an institutional and systemic level, which typically goes unquestioned, even amongst serious radical activists.

Mary Lou is a member who has been on the board of directors for WoLF (Women’s Liberation Front) which is suing the US government over Title IX changes removing sex-based protections to include ambiguously, “gender identity”. She is also known for being one of the co-authors to the Open Letter to MANA (Midwives Alliance of North America) regarding their woman-erasing language. She is also one of the contributors to the new book, Female Erasure.

Since WLRN is not hosting the Extended Interview, I felt it needed a home. And, since I run this radical birth (and feminism) blog, I felt that this home could be here, and in honor of Mary Lou’s birthday today. She is a lovely human being and someone worth listening to. I find her to be brilliant in a way that is incomparable in today’s culture of line-toeing and newspeak, where even those who rebel against corrupt systems unwittingly play into them.

She will challenge your thoughts and provoke you to critically analyze your preconceived notions– even if you are already a radical. She talks about cognitive dissonance in liberation movements, how Planned Parenthood is actually a patriarchal organization, abortion access, “doula, inc.”, the significance of undisturbed unassisted birth, hormonal birth control and ejaculatory sex, vaccines and the medical industrial complex that extends into gender and childbirth and every facet of a woman’s existence– designed to separate women from their own fierceness. And, so much more.

For more from Mary Lou Singleton, check out the following links.

Are We Women or Are We Incubators? –Feminist Current
On Sacred Biology (with Michelle Peixinho Smith) – Deep Green Resistance repost from Transition Radio
How the Gender Identity Movement is Hijacking the Fight for Reproductive Sovereignty – Thinking Differently, feminist conference, London 2016
I Was Warned About ‘Stop Patriarchy’ – On The Issues

Modern Medicine Vs. Superstitious Savages

People get so mad when you talk about traditional healing or medicine, natural remedies, or things that aren’t modern Western medicine sometimes. Why? How do you think modern medicine got some of *its* healing properties? Some people seem to think those old methods don’t work, and that’s the reason we have modern medicine… that it was a necessary improvement. Hallelujah, “science”.

 

(Which this philosophy, btw, has a firm basis in white patriarchal empire– to act like other more “primitive” methods are inferior, that wise women are a threat to be gotten rid of… and to steamroll these, using both damning ideology and resource theft, plus rape and slaughter, erasing the cultures and the old ways into oblivion…)

They think these old medicinal methods are only silly myths which are a fad, despite the fact that some have been used for thousands of years. Modern medicine, on the other hand, has kept methods for decades at best. And it keeps changing, seemingly coming in and out of style, with new and improved “evidence”. Depression drugs that lead to suicide, surgical cures for being in the “wrong body”, female Viagra, restless leg syndrome, institutional lobotomies for various forms of “hysteria”, leeching, twilight sleep. Two-thirds of OB/GYN guidelines are not based on scientific evidence but on outdated medical *beliefs* held by doctors, and the CDC shreds documents if they come to inconvenient conclusions about what a vaccine is doing to children. Especially brown children, like the MMR, or females, like the HPV vaccine. Doctors used to recommend smoking. Define fad again?

 

Lack of effectiveness of time-honored remedies was never the issue. These newer methods weren’t devised on the basis that none of the others worked… Manufacturers know they work– they incorporate some of their properties (either synthesized or natural) in their products. These methods were really devised for purposes of mass production of medicines. For industry. For convenience. Because there was $$$ to be made in convenience. And sure they’re full of other synthetics and cause side effects that more natural cures do not, but quit being so sore about it. Lighten up, baby. Get with the times.

Just like a controlling, insecure, power-hungry man to say to a woman (an indigenous woman, a wise woman, Mother Earth, or Mother Nature)– “whatever you can do, I can do better!” He then takes credit for her work even though his special touches fuck it all up. Obstetrics is a glaring example of this. This is the ultimate in institutional level mansplaining and whitesplaining, dominion over our very bodies and well-being…. and how disconcerting that it is not seen as such by more feminists and other activists. The industrialization of the natural world gave us some conveniences but isn’t necessarily an improvement.

 

Think about it– if one single herb could cure and treat a host of ailments effectively, you can’t put a patent on that. You can’t sell it to people if people can grow it themselves. (Well, you can try, like Monsanto, and they are doing their best to own everything under the sun and stop you from utilizing it independently, just like how Nestle wants to privatize water while undermining African breastfeeding by providing them with formula– which requires water, in places they know has… contaminated water. And maybe one day we’ll have to pay to breathe air.) You can’t have a monopoly on the cure if a well known natural cure exists.

 

You *have* to indoctrinate the public into a belief that your way is the only real or proven way, that everything else is “witchcraft” (hello again, misogyny), that people not on board are primitive “savages” (white supremacy and imperialism), and it’s surprisingly easy to do when people are so obsessed with manmade achievements and futuristic living. It feeds the human ego and arrogance, our desire to be godlike and immortal and transcend anything animalistic about ourselves, and it reaffirms the modern industrial lifestyles we’ve been able to assume of laziness, consumerism, leisure, and instant gratification. So it promises us we can be indulgent and we’re superior, and nice and safe and protected too, basically. It promises comfort and no thought.

But in many ways we’re sicker than we’ve ever been. There is a price to pay for that trade off, and for trusting people over nature. For putting the power of our lives in the hands of strangers with careless motives, rather than being strong and knowledgeable within and for ourselves. Maybe if we can resume taking responsibility for our thoughts and our bodies, we could truly grow and evolve as whole beings. Maybe then we’d be strong and healthy of mind and body enough to protect one another. I bet we’d finally find peace there. The question is if we are willing.

Birth Photography: The Elephant in the Room

I’m about to liken birth photography to pornography.

Now if you haven’t already accepted certain basic principles of birth physiology, you’re probably not going to appreciate this post. More details on what those are can be found here, and here.

If you’re still with me, you may be one of those who this is best geared for:  a very specific kind of freebirther, the fringe of the fringe, the most primitive. Hello sister.

I know it seems like I’m once again here to rain on your parades, but as we acknowledge that birth is part of the sexual continuum, and that birth has been hijacked by people who pretend to be helpers who don’t belong there and endanger us, it would behoove us to acknowledge that we are not fully unindoctrinated while we are still allowing outsiders into that sacred, private space out of a fear that we would miss out on something desirable as influenced by current social norms. What we end up really missing out on is a whole lot more.

After all, many people still birth in hospitals partly out of a fear of missing out on some things, certain things they have come to expect. Certain indignations normalized.

A small example:  I remember one of the things I believed I would “miss” was feeling like I was on vacation. Staying in a bed in a room, having food brought to me, being expected to rest, taking a break from the normal routines… That gets easier to break up with when you face that this kind of “vacation” is really a recovery from trauma the likes of which you won’t experience if you stay home and do it yourself. Most of us don’t chop off our arms to get a vacation, either. Well, not if we’re healthy of mind, anyway. Not to mention the fact that you can rest and be waited on at home, too; even though it doesn’t feel like “going away”, your baby belongs at home and your nest is the most appropriate place to nestle.

We’re so used to expecting certain things and having certain norms that we hesitate to part with them or we want to incorporate them into experience, like a tradition. But how many traditions are actually fads? This era holds that birth pictures and video are not to be missed out on, like wedding video and pictures. Only the photographer usually doesn’t stay to capture the wedding night, which birth is honestly much more like. And that’s the (big) difference.

When I say birth is part of the sexual continuum, I’m pointing out something that most natural birthers already acknowledge. That is that the life cycle starts with sex, ideally preceded by two people with excellent chemistry falling in love and having lots of trust (maximum oxytocin overload, pleasurable life, healthy setup for the future). And that is an act that is carried on by two people and two people only. For the act of creation and furthering of the species, this example takes a man and a woman. For them to feel fully secure and give in to the moment and all the beautiful chemical reactions awaiting them, they need to feel privacy.

(Voyeurism is not a part of this chain; it is a socially developed kink. I’m trying to get back to our roots, not away from.)

The people– but I’m going to focus specifically on the woman– need to feel that their guard can be completely let down in order to fully give in to feeling the way they are feeling with each other. That is the only way they can really be free. Part of this primal act being so guarded could be partly due to our instinct to be aware of predators. We would be especially vulnerable to an outside attack in these sensitive moments. It also may have to do with bonding, as anything that would interfere with or leech off of man-to-woman bonding in intercourse threatens the future of the family. The oxytocin in that moment is the seed, spark, foundation of deep trust and sense of love, that promises a strong attachment and furthers the survival and protection of any offspring yet to come. The more solidified and respected that bond, the higher the chances of success for our species on the whole.

(On a spiritual and romantic level, I also feel the privacy is extremely validated, but I will return to focus on the physical to be basic, fundamental, and not digress. I don’t have time to explain my philosophy to you right now, nor do I think everyone might care.)

What naturally follows, if impregnated, is birth. The emergence of the new life from the same portal through which the possibility of life had to enter. And the state of mind of the woman laboring or birthing is similar in that the thinking mind is shut off, giving way to the primitive mind and instinct and body taking over, and that any outsiders to this event are viewed as intruders– which will either hinder her response, endanger it/her, or temporarily stop the process altogether. Birth involves an altered state of consciousness, when allowed to proceed naturally. Birth is perhaps the most vulnerable naturally occurring moment to a human life and we are wired to be aware of the presence of those who do not belong in order to protect ourselves and our young. The same people at the sexual union are the people who are good candidates to be present at the birth. No more, and maybe less. To violate that puts the woman in fight-or-flight mode. There are plenty of references in literature to just how this is harmful to labor and you can read more about it and the Fear Tension Pain Cycle in books like Childbirth Without Fear, and Unassisted Childbirth.

As an aside, Michel Odent has given some great notes on how a man should behave *if* he is invited into the birth space, even if a woman trusts and loves him. Read any of his works and especially Birth and Breastfeeding for more information.

When the primitive, physiological self is allowed to take over for the thinking mind, without fear, in the absence of any intrusion, in sex and in childbirth, the result is ease, satisfaction, proper release of oxytocin for bonding and love and pleasure with whomever the deserving and receiving partner or life mate is, if around. This works for woman to man in intercourse, and man and woman and baby in childbirth, as the culmination of their act of love and the solidifying of the family unit. This was nature’s plan for human longevity, and it’s the brilliance of its design. It is built into us. A strong unit is formed, and strong tribes may form.

A woman needs to be able to tap into that deep place within herself that without societally-based fears and expectations, the likes of which are imposed on all of us regarding birth from a very young age. And she can’t do that as long as you are selling her products. She can’t do that when you’re telling her there is still something modern she will need, something extra and more than what she is that she should want, something she will regret not adding in because other mothers have it and it’s so important, and keep her further and further away from her original design and function. You’re keeping her from her purest and truest self and essence, and if you succeed, she will never know it in this life. Her body is an astounding work of creation, moreso than any camera ever could be. And we hinder that. Because we are delighted by the modern marvel more than the organic miracle. We keep reaching for shiny distractions and no longer respect when it is time to put those away.

In some parallel universe somewhere, there is orgasm/conception photography, for the same reasons as we do birth photographs now.

I look at birth video and photography much in the same way I would look at the concept of artistic orgasm photography. I appreciate the interest in capturing a moment. I appreciate the reverence for the look on the woman’s face, the awe in her rawness. And if I were watching someone have actual sex on video, even if “tastefully done”, I would have to admit it is really pushing it in terms of being a form of pornography.

Because… I’m not supposed to be there. This is private. I may be interested, I may be intrigued, but this is not for me to watch. Those are not my moments, those are not my chemicals. I’m an intruder, and this belongs to someone else. This is sacred.

And you can photograph sex and birth all you like, but you will never truly capture the reality of what the moment would look like if you were not there at all.

Imagine if the things people say about birth photography were said about intercourse photography?

“They’re a real pro, you won’t even know they’re there.”

“They silently stay out of the way and blend in with the background.”

“We have a mutual acquaintance that can really vouch for them, so I trust them.”

“The photographer is my sister.”

“You will be so lost in the moment, you will have no awareness that they’re even in the room. And you’ll be so ‘busy’ you won’t even care at that point.”

What about this is not creepy?

I know birth and sex are not perfectly synonymous, but that’s not the point. The point is that the woman is tapped into the same states of being with her body producing some of the same hormones, functions and effects, having the same physiological needs to make the effort a success. You can spoil one just as easily as you can spoil the other, with these wrong attitudes towards the acts.

And if you honestly believe when looking at any birth photos or vids (or ones of sex….) that what you are viewing would be exactly the same without the extra people and the cameras, you’re lying to yourself. Men who watch porn also think they are watching reality. Granted, pornography is often consciously a performance, while being taped in birth becomes more of subconsciously performing. You are not seeing an unhindered woman. The camera will always add the element of observation or performance, however subtle or inconspicuous it seems to the observer/observed. You are not getting the fullest, unbridled, wild, natural person who is free from being studied, judged, or captured. (Even just think about the language… she is “captured” on film. She is subdued, watched, controlled.) The woman will always be aware somewhere in her consciousness of your presence, because her primitive mind is keen and sharp to detect this as a rule, as a defense mechanism innate to her, and it *will* have an impact on her. And that impact is restraint and tension.

Here is the part where someone chimes in, “You don’t know me. Not all women are the same. Everyone has different needs.” Wrong. All women *are* the same. Let’s look at the hierarchy of needs.

I imagine the resulting photograph keepsakes contribute to the tier entitled “Esteem”.

First we acknowledge that birth is a physiological, physical event. You don’t birth with your personality or your brain, you birth with your body. You are an animal. Then let’s address that the primal body is the one tasked with giving birth as it does instinctively, when not held back or restrained. Then let’s observe that stimulation of the thinking mind, or neocortex, keeps one from dropping deep into primal brain activity, and that the neocortex is stimulated by having company. In this we must admit that the presence of others serves functionally to restrain the primal woman, keeping her in the worst state of consciousness for an easy birth.

Now tell me you deny this and that you’re built differently from other women.

“But humans are social animals! I am a very social person!”

Your baby whom you are giving birth to is a person. This is an interaction between you and they. And sometimes, your partner, if invited to the birth space. These are all people.

What more in the way of social do you require?

You may be a social butterfly, but please note this is a psychological trait and not a primal one. Your primal self is the one giving birth, the one you need to honor, the one for whom all obstacles must get out of the way. If you glance again at the hierarchy of needs, you will note that physiology and safety are first, they are the foundation, and they are of utmost importance. Love and belonging to which I’ll assume the psychological wish to be surrounded by people owes itself, is secondary to those things. (Ironically, if you honor the physiological foundation first, you will find a deepening and intensifying of love due to all the oxytocin shared in earnest between you.)

Our physiology as women is the same. Our needs for safety as laboring mammals are the same: quiet, darkness, solitude, warmth. You can’t claim a psychological preference supersedes these. It is akin to saying, “But I really like the water!” to explain that you can be submerged and don’t need to breathe. You are not superhuman, your body is not made differently. We have basic needs. We need to breathe, we need to eat, we need to sleep, we need to not be obstructed or injured. Once those basic needs are covered, then we are able to move up to other less pressing wants, frequently formed by the thinking mind and not the primal one, such as being social.

If a woman’s psychological urges are so strong that she must obey those first, due to trauma, conditioning, or lack of awareness of the severity of these issues on our bodies, she will choose to be surrounded at birth. This is why I advise anyone trying to freebirth to conquer your psychological issues before birth, and ideally, before pregnancy.

I excuse these the same way I excuse elective Cesareans. Our trauma and where we are at in dealing with it will determine which choices we feel ready to make. For that I have sympathy, but with strong preference to trying to get women helped before their inclinations lead to more physical harm. In short, we all work with what we’ve got.

Your rational mind wants to be in control and will always find a way, always find fear and excuses. You cannot bargain with instinct, though. Instinct will be there whether you like it or not and you will not be able to rationalize with it. I recommend getting out of its way.

And not denying it.

To me birth vids and photography are like the big, voyeuristic, creepy, pervy, obstructing, restraining, intrusive elephant in the room. And elephants are apparently midwives, so that’s fitting.

When most natural birthers are looking at birth photos and vids and picking on things like,

“Oh, that baby is wearing a hat! Poor thing!”

“Look, they cut the cord right away.”

“OMG, how many hands are on that mama? And take off those gloves!”

Or even positive things like,

“Oh look, daddy caught!”

“What a fierce, strong mama in that birth pool.”

“I love your faces! You did it!”

“This is what birth is supposed to look like.”

No it’s not. You weren’t supposed to be there. You are getting a happy, joyous, or victorious fragment of her at best. You are viewing a fraction of her depth and what she would normally be capable of. And yes, even that fraction is beautiful to us, but our pleasure through her is ill-gained and of no importance. What she really deserved matters more. So I wince, like some of you wince and feel triggered when you see unnecessary Cesarean photos.

What repeats in my mind while even agreeing with their comments is, “have you noticed yet there was a camera/photographer there?” How much better might it have been for the mother and her baby if they weren’t some kind of show on display for us? As nice as it may be to have keepsake photos your baby’s delivery, might you be cheating yourselves when it comes to feeling something much more pure and unfiltered? Something potentially pain-free, non-injurious, untraumatized, and even ecstatic? Do you want to be one of those women who says immediately after, “I want to do it again”?

Another way birth is like sex.

The continuum of life, of sex, wants us to be rewarded. Our brains are supposed to feel good about these activities because this supports continuation of the species. Birth, like sex, is not “supposed” to be painful and we should stop promoting that it inherently is. Our pain is frequently connected to fear and control. We and our process and how we perceive it has been controlled and ideas fed to us and we are ruled and overcome by fear. I can only assume that, removing all this, our births would be mostly pleasurable. We will never know because even modern empowered women do not live in a vacuum. All of us are overcoming hostile influences. I want us to keep breaking away from these conventions so that one day our daughters might know this answer.

“And what about you, Elizabeth? Are you so perfect? You didn’t want photos and videos of your births?”

No, I fucked up, too. That’s why I’m here. My whole story is one of fucking it up, then getting it right, and then getting it a little bit more right, some more. If I can keep you from doing what I did and having to learn the hard way, that’s my dream.

My first birth in the hospital I videotaped and there were pictures. All kinds of people were in the room, strange men saw my ass, I vomited on people and cried. Bright lights and hooked up to machines, opiates and vaginal trauma… and I’m sure the recordings were negligible in influence after all that. But I’ve got it on record.

Birth 2 was too traumatic to have any recording devices out. I spent part of it in an ambulance, hoping to lose consciousness. Strange men saw my ass again.

My third birth when I was way more awakened, I went solo. I attempted to record video because I didn’t yet know any better, and the device failed to record, but it still acted as an “observing eye”. I was photographed in early labor which I suppose isn’t that bad while contractions are light. (In the sex analogy, this might be being photographed in a kiss.) I wanted to be alone through most of labor and only allowed pictures after the baby emerged in the pool. (Yes, I do think after-birth pictures in limitation are okay, and in the sex analogy, may be akin to an after-orgasm photo. Risque, a peek into something private, but still discrete. The body has done the hardest work after the moment of birth but you still want to be mindful not to disturb the mother in the third stage because she is still affected by needless interference and chatter.) This was an amazing birth and I do not doubt it could have been even more amazing without mechanical watching eyes. But the picture of me lifting my son out of the water of the birth pool and having achieved this triumph myself is one of the most beautiful images I’ve ever seen and may be my favorite picture of all time. You can see it on the back of my book, In Search of the Perfect Birth.

Birth 4 I knew better and we attempted no recording device and saved pictures for after baby was born. I cherish these because for the first time ever, the reveal of the sex was a complete shock and surprise (literally the opposite of what I thought I knew), and this moment and reaction was caught in a photo. Up until the pushing, this was also my absolute easiest and most manageable birth yet. Dark, solitude, warmth, relative quiet… it was downright blissful during most of it.

I wish you all the same successes and even beyond. We’re all waking up from the trappings of this machine.

A Letter to the President

I voted for you twice, Mr. President, and never once did I think you would use that to reverse women’s rights. Sex segregation is not discrimination, it is protection.

“Gender identity” is loosely defined if at all, hardly understood, not scientifically sound, and only refers to sex stereotype roles.

Biological sex, the societal understanding and recognition of who does and does not reproduce, IS the basis for our private space and special protections. It IS the basis for our historical oppression. Women– biological women– are still a marginalized group.

Why is Purvi Patel rotting away in a jail cell for a miscarriage, but it’s really important males who think they are women get to pee and change next to girls?

If these are our priorities, we have failed women. Male feelings are not more important than female bodily reality.

You have opened the floodgates and now those who wish to loosely identify under the banner “trans”, even if only for a moment, have carte blanche to invade women’s most private and protected spaces. Why even keep sex segregation, then? Why not make all prisons, shelters, bathrooms, and locker rooms unisex? Because I’ll be honest with you, Mr. President… I really don’t care if the person next to me is pretty or feminine, and I’m not put further at ease when my pants are down if the person next to me is wearing lipstick.

Reconsider firmer distinctions and definitions and research on just what “gender identity” and “transgender” and “woman” IS before you wipe out the rights of half of your population who are still struggling for their rights. Please. This is premature and biased towards male-bodied people in a society that already strongly favors men and sweeps women’s concerns, abuses, and bodily autonomy completely under the rug. Thank you.

Not my most eloquent piece, but I think I got the point across.

Gender identity is really a topic for the privileged. Leave it to entitled and mostly well off Westerners to get all caught up in the idea that it’s somehow all-important to your civil rights to pee next to people dressed like you. Meanwhile, in India, actual females “just need to pee” but instead starve themselves because it’s too dangerous for them to use the
bathroom. Identifying as a man won’t help, either. (Because men know what “female” is.)

 

 

Lila Perry, “girl”.

And in terms of our schools, the thought that we didn’t have more important things to do, more important things to prioritize…  We have schools with rats, mold, teachers struggling to take care of their classrooms, lack of funding and basic supplies… and our government decides taking a stand on little white horny video game nerds having access to girls toilets is top priority? What a bunch of privileged, decadent fucks we’ve become. This is deplorable.

 

 

 

 

 

Why aren’t more people asking if transgenderism is nature or nurture? Don’t people even want to understand it before they start mandating things about gender identity into law? How much is biological and how much is based on one’s upbringing and experiences? It kind of matters. If gender dysphoria is a mental disorder, to what extent should society cater to it rather than treat it? It transgenderism stems from a psychological condition, why are females ordered to surrender important space to play along with what may be delusions only? What if there are people who know they are not the opposite sex but choose to live as another gender to fulfill a sexual fantasy?

Autogynephilia is a common experience of heterosexual men in which they are sexually aroused by seeing themselves as women. It can start as private cross-dressing and bedroom fetish, and can later transition to adopting a full-time transgender identification. Although it occurs in homosexual men too, I want to emphasize how common it is with men who are attracted to females.

^ Click the link, or here’s a still. [Oooh… it’s so exciting and naughty to be dressed in public like a woman! So transgressive, so pushing the envelope!!! To a conservative society, that is… If being a woman wasn’t so naughty, would as many men feel compelled to fill the role? Three times more transgender people are male-to-female than female-to-male. Think about that. And many female-to-male people are former lesbians, tomboys, and sexual abuse survivors in a society that is very unkind to them and teaches them that being female requires their submission.]

“I was sipping a cocktail in Manhattan and noticed a man walk in, dressed in a skirt, heels, make-up and a wig. Not too strange for New York, then all of a sudden the guy had a boner. Eeeeeeek!!!”

My theory: this is most likely due to the fact that the oversexualization of women in society (women as glamorous sex objects, submissive to some extent, and pornsick standards of beauty) makes literally possessing womanhood the most intimate way of “getting inside” a woman, or purely embodying sex, as it were. Woman as an object is The Object, is sex itself. (There are other forms of pornography that are unusually and even comically invasive which would seem to support this theory of hyper-intimacy; pornography in and of itself is arguably already intrusive as it gives one an “in” to something they would not be privy to under normal circumstances and from unnatural angles/POV.) Autogynephilia also gives the subject complete control over dictating one embodiment of femininity to create the highest level of personal arousal, where this availability may have been previously absent in interactions with the opposite sex.

Porn culture escalates aggressive sexual domination of women in many facets. This is only one. Male obsessive control over feminine identity and sexuality is the common thread.

 

 

 

Woman Isn’t

If you think the fact that some women will never have children, have never menstruated, no longer menstruate, have had their uterus or breasts removed, etc., proves that males can also be women, you’re a sexist.

Please examine that misogyny as you don’t think much of women. Women are more than their biology, but not less.

(One of the best analogies to illustrate this is this– humans are a bipedal species. Does this mean that people without their legs are not human? Does this mean that the existence of humans without legs proves humans are not a bipedal species? No, of course not. Those are absurdities. And women, similarly, are characterized by their capacity to give birth. Whether they do or do not as individuals is irrelevant. Human doesn’t need to be redefined, and neither does woman. We have working definitions that make ease of communication possible.)

 

Letter from Angela Douglas, trans woman, published in Sister, 1977.

Being a woman is not being a not-man. Womanhood is not defined as the absence of total masculinity. Woman is not something you can define only in relation to seemingly not

Imagine a world where Rachel Dolezal is called black, and she and black people are called “non-whites”.

amounting to man. Womanhood would never be revoked by an absence of those individual biological things, and absence of those things in others is not confirmation of who can or can not claim womanhood. “Woman” is not some dumping ground category to include men who don’t conform to rigid gender standards. If this were true, 90% of the world would be “woman”. Woman is not an afterthought. Woman is not second place.

Woman is not something man-made. It has been a vicious lie that woman is made by man, and society believes. It is male-centric lenses that we see through. Eve came from Adam’s rib, who was made by God in his image. Even Athena sprung from Zeus’s head. Pornified, pedophilic

“I felt like a woman!” reports Stefonknee of his “adopted dad’s” penis inserted man-on-man into his “six year old girl” rectum at the Oasis swingers club. “I was surprised I didn’t think I was going to be pregnant, I was so much a girl. I actually have an erection right now from it so I’m just going to pull my dress down a little bit,” he told the journalists who were covering his journey to girlhood.

visions cloud our mind that a woman has long blonde hair, circular mini basketball breasts plopped atop a chest, bodily hairlessness, painted faces, a dress, and 8 inch heels that force us to walk delicately and keep us from running away. My vagina is not “front hole” and cannot be duplicated by mutilating a piece of scrotum or rectum and fashioning it crudely. I am not a hole. Woman is not a collection of holes. The natural sway of our hips can be mimicked with practice (I was mocked for mine, call it cis privilege), our voices can be coached, and hormones can help you feel more weepy, because that’s what women do. They weep. Sitting in our sexual trauma support groups and memorizing our facial expressions, body language, gestures, can help you recite the true stories that help make up what we really are to society: your victims. If you were also a victim, this likewise does not make you a woman. “Victim” does not mean woman, you’ve got it backwards. “Woman” often means victim.

Man made all of those things and now you believe that is who woman is. That is not what woman is. Man makes robots and dolls to fit these visions and to satisfy male wishes. This is also not what woman is, but many believe it is just as good if not better, an improvement on woman. Surgeons and religions claim they do, but they do not create woman. Nature made woman. ONLY nature can make woman. Man has had this god fantasy for a long time because he fears woman might be a goddess. Man will never stop trying to create woman. Woman is not in his head or in his lab. If you tell him this, it hurts his feelings.

If you prefer the sex object vision of woman as the true definition of womanhood, if you prefer to refer to male thoughts when seeking confirmation of what and who woman is or isn’t, you are supporting misogyny. If you think male-created domination trumps nature-made bodily definition of womanhood, you are exercising woman-hate.

Man and woman are not defined by the acceptance or rejection of stereotypes. Men and women both can be stereotypical or not, and they are still man or woman. Biological sex is not a stereotype. It is reality. It is the only reality.

We have all been conditioned by these beauty standards and these gender roles in the west. I do not blame you if you find the pictures in the magazines attractive, this alleged ideal woman. Surgeons, artists, and photoshop crafts her. It is attainable by anyone, male or female, with access to these tools. However, you and I have problems if you believe the male crafting of woman is the truth. You and I have problems if you think what goes on in a male-centered world for a male-centered brain trumps the truth of being born female in this world.

Woman and man are not personality types. They are body types. They are not Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. They are not who likes pink and frills, and who likes trucks and muscles. Your sex does not dictate your personality. Your personality does not dictate your sex. You can be male or female and like anything you want, present any way you want. Only biological sex can determine your sex. It’s not determined by whether you are sassy or polite, or in who you like to sleep with.

Biological sex is a physical, material, observable, objective reality and what you are born with dictates how society will treat you. We don’t get to pick that. It is innate. Gender as some innate thing, however, is something that requires faith. How does one “feel like” a woman when one has never been one? Why should I blindly believe in that when my eyes and my experience show me otherwise? I’m not a religious person. I believe in myself more than I believe in whatever a man says to me. I’m to understand now that this is bigotry.

I don’t care how you live your life, and I support whatever feels authentic to you. But don’t ever mistake the role, the performance, of womanhood with actually being one. Don’t mistake the costume of woman for womanhood either. These were things imposed on us, programmed into us, and they do not define us.

My friend was a trans woman. This was the last thing she tweeted to her followers.

I notice most people who disagree with that fail to define woman when asked. They can’t but I can. A woman is simply this: an adult human female. No more, no less. Womanhood is not a role to be enforced nor is it a uniform, it is merely a material reality. Who you gonna choose to believe– them or me? Your choice. But who you believe says a lot about you and what you truly value woman for.

No, Attachment Parenting Isn’t Some Evil Plot

I saw this reddit-based propaganda piece written by a man (Jesse Singal) on the wicked, wicked ploy of evil people to guilt mothers into using attachment parenting methods in order to keep them locked away in their woman dungeons for all eternity. It is entitled “Is Attachment Parenting a Plot to Force Women Back Into the Home?”– lol. And who would know better than this man, and the infamous Dr. Amy?– otherwise known as “she who shall not be named” in internet mothering communities– because holy shit, if you say her name three times, like Beetlejuice (or Bloody Mary), she appears, along with her flying monkeys of Oz (her devotees), so badly so that modding internet mothering communities is a troll-infested nightmare. Not to digress too far, but let’s face it– Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and childbirth/motherhood has no shortage of women who are suffering (whether they know it or not) from PTSD and understandable accompanying rage which could be directed any which way by heady narcissists of the internet age. So, I started to respond to the piece and found my words quite lengthy, not at all appropriate for a tweet or even a series of tweets. Which brings us to this post.

(For those who don’t know, “attachment parenting” is just a fancy new way of labeling natural and instinctive mothering and parenting techniques, usually with the gentlest methods. It means picking up a baby when it cries, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, baby-wearing, natural birthing, etc. There is nothing truly new or invented about it. And no two mothers do it exactly alike or even necessarily adhere to all of the components. Mothers often stay at home to fill this role. And make no mistake, language matters; naming these methods using only new buzzwords like “attachment parenting”  without further understanding is a clever psychological reversal that disguises the fact that woman is being separated from that which would have come naturally, to be replaced with reliance on “expert advice” to the contrary, stemming ultimately from patriarchal institutions. Creating doubt in a woman’s self and instincts is often packaged and sold to us as “equality”, and any feminist can attest to.)

Before I get into that, I just want to say that this is going to be just another case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, for women. No matter what women choose, it will be vilified, in case any of you needed reminding. Nothing is woman enough or feminist enough, unless it comes from a man or his institution, of course (and then it’s job well done). And so, pitting woman against woman is a divide and conquer strategy from those who want women to forget how amazing and strong and worthy they are of love and also basic human rights, and who truly do have ultimate mothering and parenting authority in the natural world. It’s a way of keeping us perpetually down. Now on with my response.

Dr. T is a horrible person who rallies angry, traumatized women together to attack and troll women who do things differently and those who have lost children. There have been numerous private groups of hers and her followers, some of which you were actually forced to show your ID in order to be accepted (I am not joking), so the worst of the worst is not visible to the general public. The scathing violent tendencies, the plotting to destroy lives, etc. However, what IS published is typically bad enough. (Yes It Is Your Fault That Your Baby Died At Your Homebirth. — and she has the nerve to pontificate on “social control of a woman”?) And I know about these deeds because I was one of the tormented (my crime: planning an unassisted birth and talking about the subject of freebirth publicly with other women). My friends were other targets of hers (some of these include mothers of stillborn children. I can think of at least 4 of these women off the top of my head– I know them in part because our shared antagonism by this woman brought us together over the years). She also believes single mothers, lesbians, and mothers who leave an abusive spouse are selfish.

 

Will the Real Dr. Amy Please Stand Up?

And attachment parenting is just parenting. It’s just natural, instinctive parenting. There is no plot. It’s just what happens when mothers prioritize mothering over other forms of modern existence, as much as is in their comfort level. Many are religious and traditional but many are feminist and radical.

If Dr. T is so keen on staying in the work force, why did she spend all that effort to go to medical school and barely practice herself as a doctor only to become a stay at home mom to her own children? Then she took up internet doctoring and was charging people for answers, and is now writing books demonizing women who choose natural mothering choices, despite the fact that she did barely practice and is out of practice in her profession by at least two decades?

How feminist is Dr. Tuteur?
She is using a lot of feminist-seeming arguments about women in the work force and the societal guilting of women in motherhood, but she laughs at phrases like ‘birth rape’, insists all Cesareans are good if not all completely necessary, and flat out denies the abuses women endure under current obstetric rule in childbirth today. In her views of modern medicine and specifically obstetrics, patriarchy is suspiciously absent. That women seemed traumatized by their hospital births seems to be something Amy is really confused about the existence of, having no comprehension of the connection between serious bodily injury, detachment from baby and hormonal flow, and psychological harm to the mother or child. Her two-dimensional understanding of childbirth sounds very masculine: ‘you got a healthy baby, and that’s all that matters, so what are you whining about, selfish women?’ In her book, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting, one of her many stabs at midwives indicates that they are “merely replacing the patriarchy with the matriarchy”, outing herself as not actually very feminist, at all.

She also doesn’t believe in intuition or any concept of “women’s wisdom”, and thinks those are essentially myths. To my mind, this is woman-hating. In her world, the only true thing is listening to your doctor. And you’re only smart and worthy of being left alone if you do exactly what he or she says. Amy doesn’t see her own hypocrisy and instead decides it’s the open breastfeeders (for example) who sing the virtue of the practice who are doing the bad deeds, because these actions somehow shame other mothers who don’t breastfeed and this makes them feel bad. For all the bashing of the romanticization of primitive/natural living/parenting, her allegiance seems to be to technology as this infallible lifesaving thing, despite the fact that it frequently stands in direct opposition to the natural world and is in fact responsible for numerous atrocities, and void of the recognition that the rape of the natural world and of women and mothers is more aggressive and harmful than *women who make other women feelz bad by doing*. Most radical feminists will understand me when I say that “biophobia” is deeply patriarchal.

I’ve been dealing with her for years after being targeted, and from knowing her story and watching her strategize, I am aware that she projects her bitterness and regrets onto others to make a name for herself and feel better about her own choices, both professionally and personally, as a former doctor and as a mother. She is relentless and vicious. She has Google alerts plus voluntary scouts seeking out baby loss stories and she goes at mothers immediately fresh in grief with her minions, armchair diagnosing whether or not they “killed” their babies when tragedy strikes. She’s like Westboro Baptist for natural parenting, birth, and baby loss. ( <— this mother is a radical feminist btw. Imagine losing a baby and having some internet psycho “doctor” sic her hundreds or thousands of rabid fans after you to harass you and potentially dox or harm you and your family? All because she disagreed with how you gave birth, how you parent, and because she crowned herself the long distance expert in your child’s cause of death?) She and others have believed women like me shouldn’t be published, don’t have a right to voice our opinions or stories… I think we’ve all seen how no-platforming affects our freedoms as women. And when they can’t get women like me censored, they come en masse to try to hurt us in the reviews.

If I try to separate myself from what I know are her motives and try to focus just on the argument, I could see how aspects of attachment parenting CAN be used as a method of guilting women into staying at home.

That said, these parenting methods are not a fad, they are (many of them) primal and predate our modern conventions and senses of what now constitutes “normal”.

I’m tired of her representing Dick-Read as a eugenicist, too. I’ve READ Childbirth Without Fear, has she? I doubt Jesse Singal has read it either while he allows her to defame the author, not that Singal cares or has any reason to care, has any close personal connection to its contents or why it matters. It’s a great book and has helped generations of women have painless natural childbirth, liberating them from sadistic medical cycles that were stopping women from even wanting children (like after I had my 2nd born). Grantly Dick-Read’s critique is on civilization. White “civilized” women have been convinced they are not animals, which is a lie which has caused them undue torment in childbirth. Other “less civilized” women were having more ease. The man toured the globe. He was a doctor who reported what he witnessed. If anything, it is more damning of racism and classism and Western civilization. But Amy will twist that to whatever suits her warped agenda.

Grantly Dick-Read admired women and spoke highly of them and wanted to see them freed from pain. His reverence was so poetic it brought tears to my eyes on repeated occasions. Amy speaks ill of women constantly and seems to find glee is personally causing them pain. Their contributions to the world in terms of pain and suffering and disdain versus liberation and honoring is starkly felt. Hearing their words is the difference between love and hate.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
I hesitate to embrace the message of Singal’s piece. Because even without the people Amy is trying to shit talk (which is like, 90% of her notoriety– gaining fame by attempting to defame others including some blatant lying on her part), these methods of parenting are instinctive and time honored. If modern women choose otherwise, fine. But Amy cares nothing for you, what she does is preys upon women’s feelings of pain, “mommy wars”, having felt guilted, inadequacy, the sense of being pit against each other unjustly, and uses it to her own personal advantage. She’s a really disturbed individual with more issues than Time, so taking anything she says seriously is a folly you choose at your own risk, and it’s anything but woman-loving. She doesn’t have scruples, she has personally invested grudges to legitimize the back story of her life to herself, the likes of which in its fullness may be a nut we never truly crack.

If only men and those who cater to male rule would stop interfering and let women do their work, in peace.

Intactivism Needs Feminism to Survive.

Yelling at women precedes all of these and hasn’t stopped one of them. Blaming women has preceded all of these and hasn’t ended one of them.

 

I once had a nasty run-in with Men’s Rights Activists in the intactivist movement. On this one conversation I was alarmed to hear that the men present believed in “female privilege”, because baby girls’ genitals allegedly are left entirely unmolested from life’s onset. Based on the history of circumcision I mentioned circ was patriarchal and women, mothers who defy the system, would be the reason intact boys become the norm.

One man absolutely lost his shit and blubbered misogynist insults at me until he blocked me out of rage. Another brought me to tears by saying something that happened to *me*, to my body, never did happen and that I was lying (it was extremely personal to say and nothing I had ever told another living soul besides my husband, so the level of violation was deeply felt– I obviously should never have trusted that kind of personal experience to anyone like this person but I was trying to correct their assumptions about female experience and privilege), after he spent some time condescending to me and my friends (who, up until that time, thought we were a vital part of intactivism– our boys are whole). <— That man now has a major role of power within Brother K’s Bloodstained Men movement– a movement I previously thought deserved my respect.

Now notice I didn’t say ending routine infant circumcision was a cause I left behind…! (And, neither have the feminists who’ve been speaking out against this behavior. We all still believe in stopping RIC.)

He then deleted all his nasty comments, kept mine which were full of justified anger and now out of context (looks crazy, hysterical, of course), and messaged me to *privately* apologize and told me that he’s actually a really *nice guy*. No, he’s not a publicly make it right kind of guy, he’s a scream at you for effect and then hide the evidence kind of guy.

You know, a coward.  A blowhard. A bully.

These men I referenced from that convo are all childless, by the way. But they had fun telling *me* about birth because “their girlfriend did it natural in the hospital”. (Mansplaining galore…)

This was the turning point for which several of my natural parenting friends and I realized that the intactivist community didn’t value us. We didn’t belong. Even though we were the mothers, because we were females and we had disagreed with the sexist attitudes we suddenly encountered, they may as well have hung a “no girls allowed” sign– what could *we* possibly know? We were just mothers who’d saved our sons and the sons of friends through information, support, and love.

Now this was a shock to me because my observations of Brother K and his movement up to that point were positive. He seemed like a cool hippie dude. What were all these awful woman-haters doing in this group? Had I missed it and they’d been there all along?

Why I Am No Longer An Intactivist – Whole Woman

We are the ones having the gentlest births, the gentlest parenting, the most mother-led-instinct in the home, and yet you would alienate us? We are the reason it is working. We are your truest hope, beyond all other tactics you’ve tried. We are the most educated and passionate, well-rounded on all these societal interlocking topics, and we are on the front lines. We are the feminist natural mothers.

Since then, the rise to power of that one abusive and self-pitying rageaholic has been noticed. We left groups and put certain people on block but still, these things came up. Avoidance of this brand of male aggression was futile.

I’ve seen more and more anti-woman, anti-feminist dealings, more talk about female privilege from the boys club and their handmaidens, and the new frontier– confronting birth and pro-woman pages, of all places, to ask their stance on circumcision. And not just as their own post, or as a message, but as a derailment of the original post on other important topics. I’ve seen this in at least two places on Facebook that I can recall– on The Girl God and Birth Anarchy. The first responded graciously as is her gentle nature. (Because, you know, it’s really important when discussing that all our gods were men and that girls matter too, that we check to see if we’re properly caring for male genitals.) The latter did not. And I was pleased with both responses; no one owes the sexists in intactivist circles anything. The intactivist questions were a tangent out of place both times. It was awkward and disrespectful to observe. It was like being accosted by religious fundamentalists as you were minding your own business.

This tactic is cowardly– for two reasons. One, they are hitting up sites that are very much anti-circumcision in the first place. You’re preaching to the converted. Two, they are hitting people when they are down. This was clear on the Birth Anarchy page, in which the post they attempted to make about themselves was about a woman seeking justice after a forced episiotomy.

Birth Anarchy: The Sexist Shit Show of Intactivism

Only cowards make an enemy out of a gentler friend and don’t target the real enemy. Because it’s strong. It’s daunting. You would rather this mission never be accomplished and the movement eat itself than to tackle the real enemies. It’s then about getting out your own power and feeling like you can dominate someone. It’s easier to follow the disgusting pig narrative that we have “pussy privilege” — a true embittered cry of the resentful MRAs — than to band together with like minded souls for the common good. That makes you an enemy to intactivism.

Because your intactivism only works if you act like the ultimate victim. That means you have to first tear women down.

I watched an intactivist woman tell me women “allowed” circumcision to happen. Allowed! We didn’t invent it, we didn’t enforce it, it wasn’t our idea, our husbands still hold more control and power than us in society and in our homes,  and it certainly doesn’t benefit us sexually or otherwise– but yet, through all this, the onus was on us… we had allowed it. These are the women in the intactivist movement and why they get along so well with the MRA type men.

Make no mistake, I’m not asking you to be nice, intactivists. Just not to be pigs and assholes to innocent women. I’m not asking you to not be pissed about circumcision. Get mad! It’s terrible. I’m telling you how ineffective it is to shit on women who are recovering from traumas and act like that is justice. I’m warning you that you are barking up the wrong trees and it looks impotent-bully as fuck. Laying the blame at mothers’ feet and targeting 18 year old new parents right after delivery is hardly taking on the big dogs. It’s just cowardly aggression, like a Rottweiler going after a chihuahua. Sure, it’s easy to go after smaller, weaker targets.

I want to say I still love what you do but you are alienating THE most important people for the progression and longevity of your movement. They are the lifeblood. Your short-sightedness and blatant disregard for the strong women of what would be this movement is lacking in both compassion and smarts.

More mentions of mothers than daddies, and doctors. Doctors do the cutting, doctors invented it, doctors profit off it. Daddies insist it be done for bullshit macho male reasons and beat their wives into submission. But okay, moms, this one’s on you.

And for all their bodily integrity nonsense, and not trusting doctors, and supporting the natural flow of goodness and letting nature be and do it’s job, I’ve watched them have no problem with women in their movement getting cut up in Cesarean sections with the same familiar retort: “I’ve done my research”.  Oh, intactivists, where have we all heard that before!?

This is not best for babies, though. And it is not best for women. It’s meant for emergencies and that’s for good cause. But cheer that on all you like if you don’t mind being hypocrites. Or maybe it’s only baby boys who are sacred, and fuck what happens to their mothers? However, mothers who’ve been traumatized by birth are far more likely to submit to cutting their sons out of defeat or depression, or sometimes lack of consciousness. Mothers disrupted from their natural oxytocin are more likely to feel a disconnect from their child, have a harder time bonding, PTSD, PPD, difficulty breastfeeding… and I know some MRAs think that is good for boys ultimately. I do not. They think it will teach boys not to love women too much, which attachment to a doting mother would inspire. Yes, an injured woman will continue the MRA cycle of violence well.

Now, it would be brave if you were going to places you suspected were pro circumcision. It would be brave if you were going after the people who were doing the cutting, and the people who unapologetically profited from this system. Those things would be confronting the problem. I have to wonder what limp-dicked mission you hope to accomplish by badgering vulnerable women who already very likely agree with you. Attacking gentle and wounded women is the easy way out. It’s for people who are deeply insecure about their dicks, which MRAs are.

One of MRAs pet causes is routine infant male circumcision, which is quite unfortunately and unconnectedly a shared cause of modern gentle parents, especially feminists who believe in mothering on instinct and leaving warlike male domination behaviors in the past. Circumcision is indeed a relic of male aggression in a thriving patriarchy, even though MRAs try very hard to continue blaming women for this. But I’m not here to convince you of that history, just to make you aware of the infiltration of one of the only true things a men’s rights activist has to bitch about (circumcision), and how this cause will continue to remain limp in their hands. Again, many of these men are childless.

And why does that matter? The future is with mothers and their children. It is the in tune Earth Mothers who are procreating, procreating a LOT, and doing it with ultimate gentleness and love. Whole mothers make whole babies. Keep babies whole and women have a better chance of staying whole and then they in turn keep their babies whole… etc. The future does not lie with angry men shouting into the wind about their dicks. The future is not with the street signs, blood theatrics, and the streetside hostility. You will reach people and get attention and change some minds, but no, the primary change does not occur there for the future generations. I’ll tell you exactly where the change is happening. It is on the front lines. It’s with the mothers who instinctively know they want to keep their sons safe, and believe in it. They are trying. I was anti-circumcision instinctively before I heard any of the statistics. I would have been anti-circ with or without these guys. And I was lucky that I had the personal empowerment such that I would have fought any male partner who tried to contest me. Not all women have these things. Beating them up will not gain them these things. Beating them up even when they are being good will not gain anything.

The MRAs have large amounts of single men, deadbeat fathers, involuntary celibates, and many of them will never be fathers. Those who are, are very controlling in the household. I actually know one who insisted his wife circumcise their son(s). Male control is obviously a dead end street. Male control is the reason for circ in the first place.

Ha, not a chance! ^

Women, softness and compassion of an Earth Mother, are the future. Feminists are the future. Your movement will never survive without feminism. Without feminism, decisions and power will always revert back to warlike males (see: Heather Hironimus) having turf wars and dick waving contests. Your movement is only succeeding because young mothers talk amongst themselves in private groups and share knowledge and stories and support. You said you don’t need us but it is we who do not need you. If you think this is war, and a war against the women mentioned in this post, know that all you do is perpetuate male violence.

Rape of all types is a manmade invention.
Sexual rape, birth rape, and surgical rape.
Control and aggression aimed at women and children destroys the world.

The world will be saved by a Western woman. -The Dalai Lama, 2009

Restoring peace means restoring power to women. 

Men,

You invented war. You can either keep waging wars or you can listen to women. 

Respecting life starts at the source– the womb, and the Earth. Without this, you are emptiness.

Male violence is the worst problem in the world. Name the problem.

Taking the Woman Out of Childbirth

For those of us who have been fighting for women’s liberation and autonomy, in and out of the maternity field, Woman is a powerful word. It’s something we fought to feel good about, as we reclaimed our bodies and our freedom. But the world is changing. Politics are changing. Before women have fully finished liberating themselves, the definition of their selves has changed. But I ask you this– how do you liberate a people who were oppressed specifically for their reproductive power  (which is what sexism is) if you cloud the language of who exactly they are trying to liberate and from what/whom?

Vagina. Uterus. Menstruation. Goddess. Women. These were our power cries. Now, we are told, they are offensive and exclusive. Well, yes, the oppression of females has been a pretty exclusive club for eons. That’s kind of the point. We weren’t oppressed when we stated we were women, nor were we left alone if we chose to state we were men. We were oppressed whether pretty or ugly, fat or thin, able or disabled, white or black, straight or lesbian. Reclaiming the goddess and being proud to be a woman and all that comes with it– including growing and nourishing a child from our own bodies, was and continues to be an uphill battle and pride movement (like all other pride movements, including black pride and gay pride). But now it’s time to throw that all away, because there’s a new sheriff in town. And it’s finally made it to the frontier of the birth world, the last place we would ever expect or hope woman-talk to be scrubbed from the pages of history.

Here is an interaction I had on a birth page on facebook that has in the past supported feminist, woman-based, radical birth autonomy.

    Now I’ll expand those replies for you.

They said it was trans erasure while literally erasing women.

Is it time to have a literary cleansing, or maybe burn a few books? We want to make sure the populace feels nice and safe and cozy. I know how traumatic “she” and “woman” can be… !

The birth page said the above, sorry I forgot to mark it in editing.

99.9% of the time childbirth literature does mention women and mothers, because it’s you know… sane. And for as much as many trying to be good trans activists argue that defining a woman by their genitals is wrong, we have now effectively reduced women to their parts in literature. “Uterus-haver”. “Vagina owner”.

The above quote begins me again. ^

For the uninitiated, TERF is a word used now that is supposed to mean “Trans exclusionary radical feminist”. However, it is always applied to women who don’t feel they exclude trans people and even fight for their rights. What they don’t do is throw women or any other minorities under the bus in the process, and that’s a problem for some people. The slur is placed on people who acknowledge that biological women and trans women (or biological men and trans men, less frequently) are different groups with their own unique needs. All are oppressed under patriarchy.

Basically, people who stand up for women and don’t erase them. And this doesn’t even mention how so many TERFs are also trans people, gay, lesbian, and otherwise “queer”. TERFs are your most radical feminists. Other “feminists” are very liberal, fun, party time, choosy choice, patriarchy-catering. College professor approved postmodern manfeminism. You know, bullshit. Playboy and blow jobs for everyone.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.

Like when you say you love women, but you actually don’t, and are complicit in making them disappear.

“My reality is not the same as other’s reality”. My reality is that women are oppressed and need to name themselves and wield the language to empower themselves. My reality says we shouldn’t take that away. Is this not reality to you? Women are used to hearing that their realities are super unique or fantasy (“imagined”), and that they have no shared interest together as a class, or that there are more important people to consider. That’s called gaslighting.

Transphobic? I’m not transphobic. I’m not afraid of trans people nor am I pro discrimination against them. I am just not for discriminating against women. If that makes me transphobic, that is repulsive. I shouldn’t have to choose between if I love women or trans people. If you are going to force my hand, I’m going to continue to prioritize women. Misogynists will hate that. But I believe we don’t have to have contests. Call me crazy, but I think we can stand up for many groups at once, without acting like one is not oppressed or one is so much more oppressed than the other.

No one is going to argue that trans people are oppressed. I care about their oppression and recognize that they are in an oppressed minority. In fact, they are very much a minority– a small sampling of the population, while females themselves make up over half the world’s population while still being oppressed!

My feminism is about female-bodied people and the fact that having a female body is the defining factor in why women have had it so hard historically. A woman until fairly recently was “an adult, female bodied human”. Now we are supposed to toss that out. Don’t even say the word. Don’t talk about genitals in relation to oppression. Huh?

That’s like saying “stop bringing race into racism”. And I know people like that, you know, the ones who “don’t see color”– they think the people who recognize racism are the real bigots.

“People are whatever they say they are”– fine with me socially (more or less), but medically? This means you might have a vagina and uterus and might be capable of giving birth, choose to use these functions of your body, live as a man at the same time… and yet be mad that the books describing this say “woman”? Was this news to you? I ask you, what is so important about rejecting a female identity, only to grow a fetus in the womb you know you have? How much more female does it get? Is “woman” such an ugly thing that pretty much THE defining quality of womanhood– the capacity to give birth— is still okay as long as you don’t call it anything “girly” like “woman”? Like they’d assume the walls of your womb, when they say (retch) “woman”, are pink and frilly? In other words, if you adhere to gender norms like pregnancy, what exactly do you find so offensive about being referred to as a “woman”? I thought you wanted to reject the norms and roles of womanhood in the first place? And if you want to be really forward or progressive in carrying and birthing a child while not having a womanly gender, shouldn’t you also be mentally sharp enough to know that you are the exception and not the rule, and all of society isn’t going to stop and change their lingo just for you? While bucking the system, are your feelings actually that fragile that the majority of human female existence offends you on a personal level? I want to know who is more triggered by the word woman than the undeniable, active reality of giving birth out of your uterus and vagina after your egg received sperm? Has anyone ever heard the sticks and stones adage? When labels are more meaningful than reality! My god. We can cope with actual, lived events– we’ll just call ’em something different! That ought to do it! There, safe and sound, no triggers. Phew! Thank god we took care of THAT!

I fully support gender nonconformity, but not fantasy as the forced reality, and not woman hate. To act as though men or males give birth too is fantasy– it can only be true on a very unique socially-designated technicality. To be opposed to the word “she” while doing what all mammal “she’s” do is woman-hate. This whole thing is an exercise in heavy denial, not inclusion.

You see, there are 2 definitions of woman. The first is the traditional one that makes sense for most of us which I mentioned before– an adult human female. The second one is mostly new and refers only to the gender role of “woman”, and not the sex. The gender role, however, is the superficial surface one created by patriarchy. It’s everything we’re supposed to be (because of our sex). The one that says looking pretty, being fragile, wearing dresses, cooking meals, and sucking dick are womanly things to do. Therefore, if you like those and the color pink too, you are a woman. (Radical feminists reject that– as if being a woman were that simplistic and offensive.)

I personally believe either woman definition is fine when it comes to how a person chooses to self-identify. I believe you can refer to grown adult female humans as women in a generalized manner and it shouldn’t hurt any feelings. (Do you know how many lesbians get referred to as “sir”? Life goes on for them as usual, and surprisingly few suicides over it.) And, also, you can refer to people who assume the societal role of woman as “women” and “she”. To me, a trans woman can easily be she, her, woman, and Sally. So what exactly is the fucking problem?

The problem is that some folks want it to be only definition 2, not the other, and your lack of submission to these new terms means you are being an offensive bigot.

Trans men and non binaries and women give birth. Mostly it is women, if woman is merely some role people do or don’t take on. If we mean woman in the biological sense it has meant throughout history, it is only women who give birth– identity politics and hurt feelings aside. And mature pregnant persons already know this.

I would never call a trans man a woman, even while they are giving birth. I would never want to disrespect them. There’s no point to it. But, I also don’t expect all of our childbirth literature to refer to social constructs (gender) instead of biological realities (sex) to appease feelings of a really minute part of the birthing population. Birth is about biology, not personality! And I don’t feel that we are leaving trans people out when we say women give birth any more than we leave out amputees when we admit that human beings are bipedal.

MANA, Midwives Alliance of North America, started replacing their language, erasing woman and she for pregnant persons. But any organizations under the thumb of The Man, Medicine Inc., as they are– can kiss my ass. Your NAME is fucking MIDWIVES. Just as the old tradition. Midwife means “with woman”. Change your fucking name if you’re only “with person”, you wolves in sheeps’ clothing.

So you see, even the supposed naturalistic and woman loving traditions are giving the big “fuck you” to womankind. I say supposed because they’re still very medicalized and not traditionalists and don’t advocate actual and total birth freedom, but I digress.

I used to think “wombyn” was silly, new agey (even if I am a little myself), and pretentious. Now I see it as a radical protest and I may use it a little more, just to see how it feels. Just to piss these misogynists and men’s rights activists off. Because that’s what they are. I AM a goddess, and goddesses give birth. It was birth goddesses we talked about throughout time and in recent birth movements, not birth gods. Those are the people who prefer the label “obstetrician”.

Do you have any doubt this is The Man’s Patriarchy? And you call this the right side of history?

Here are some more examples from their page, their double standards, their hypocrisy, where they did not scream “transphobia” at every pro-woman reference, they did not scrub all the she’s out of existence. But like she said, she’s only human– just give her time and maybe we won’t have to hear the goddess celebrations in relation to female bodily functions anymore. Women aren’t taboo or oppressed, they just need to shut the fuck up because trans.

How absurd it all is. One thing is for sure– no one knows just what woman is any more, but we know we need to be really careful how we use that word, lest we offend. We need to keep our big mouths shut and stop asking questions, stop asserting girl power and our authority, and just do what we’re told. “Feminism”.

What about black men? Why are we talking about breastfeeding, it’s so cissexist! Men nurse too! What about fatherhood! Etc.

Jesus, Honore de Balzac sounds like a real transphobic prick. He and all of civilization.

Breast milk? Fathers give birth, too. This is a hate crime. “Natural” news? I’m triggered.  WHERE was the trigger warning?

Taking the women out of birth is a political issue.

Women’s rights as female rights in an ongoing, crucial battle are so obvious when we talk about the misogyny they face in the patriarchal institution of medicine. All of their abuse, the abuse and trauma done to their female bodies, arguably happening for all of recorded memory as rulers and leaders advocated ownership and taming of our bodies, is about to have its language of protest dismantled. This is what they call “cis privilege”. As a woman who knows she’s a woman and has been treated as a female her entire life, I apparently have it. Our rape, molestation, kidnapping, murder, domestic violence, lack of rights in education and to our own bodies is now privilege. Think about that. Think about everything females go through in and out of birth. How you will dare to call the sexism we face privilege, I will never know. That any woman or female bodied person or female born person would ever want to deny us this power speaks loudly of internalized misogyny, perhaps even more acutely among those who “do not identify as women”, as if any of the rest of us are perfectly happy with that designation in this fucked up society. So ladies, hand birth back. It isn’t ours anymore. We had a nice run, sort of. Almost.

I love everyone and I don’t care what you wear or who you fuck.  But stop trying to keep me in my place. The time for women being polite and quiet is done. We can all be free; stop being against my empowerment and undoing the things which attempted to give it back to me. That was my progress. You’re taking away the keys to women’s progress.

A child builds a sand castle.  A second child who didn’t have a chance to make one for themselves yet arrives and knocks the first one’s down and starts building on top of the same site. On a beach full of sand. And they call it that first child’s sand castle too. They try to call that sharing. It isn’t my sand castle. It’s yours. Well I worked hard building that castle and I didn’t build mine on your heartache, so why do you hate it so much? Don’t smash everything I’ve done and call that equality.

Stop erasing women from the books. It’s unnecessary and it’s erasure. YOU WILL STOP TAKING ME OUT OF HISTORY. I am saying “no”. No means no. Listen to women when they say no. Do you get it yet? Do you know whose “side” you’re on?