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
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