Give Birth Like a Feminist. Milli Hill

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      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Introduction

       Chapter 1

       ‘Am I Allowed?’: The Birth Room Power Imbalance

       Chapter 2

       Birth: the Land that Feminism Forgot?

       Chapter 3

       When Women’s Bodies Became Men’s Business: A History of Birth

       Chapter 4

       Loose Women

       Chapter 5

       Women’s Bodies: Unfit for Purpose?

       Chapter 6

       Birth and Culture: ‘Fish can’t see water’

       Chapter 7

       Birth Rights are Women’s Rights are Human Rights

       Stand and Deliver

       Resources

       Footnotes

       Endnotes

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       Introduction

       Birth is a feminist issue. And it’s the feminist issue nobody’s talking about. This book aims to start that conversation.

      As I’ve gone through the process of writing this book, I’ve had a few moments where I’ve wondered, why me? My inner critic (don’t try to tell me you haven’t got one of those) has said to me, ‘Milli? Do you really want to open this particular can of worms? As if talking about childbirth wasn’t treacherous enough, now you want to drop the F-bomb?! Are you nuts? That is literally the worst combination of topics. You are going to get burned at the stake – well, metaphorically speaking, at least.’ My inner critic is such a gas.

      It’s true, it’s not always easy to talk about childbirth, and it’s not always easy to raise feminist issues. People can even argue about what feminism actually is, but to me it’s simple: feminism just means noticing when women are getting a raw deal, and taking action. And this is where the problem lies with childbirth. Not enough people are noticing that women are getting a raw deal, and not enough people are taking action. We’ve become blinkered to the massive imbalance of power in the birth room, and somehow come to accept that birth is inherently unpleasant and undignified, or even traumatic, degrading and violating. ‘That’s just how it is!’ Well I want this book to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way, and as feminists we must no longer tolerate this state of affairs.

      Feminism doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to be exclusive. Giving birth like a feminist doesn’t mean giving birth a certain way, just as doing anything else – career, relationships, parenting – ‘like a feminist’ doesn’t require a one-size-fits-all approach. You can give birth like a feminist in any setting and in any way, from elective caesarean in a private hospital to freebirth in the ocean. All that’s required is that you have somehow moved from a passive place where you view birth as something that happens to you and over which you have no control, to a place of understanding that you may get a raw deal in this experience if you don’t wake up and get yourself into the driving seat. Essentially: take charge, take control, and make conscious choices.

      When I speak at mainstream maternity events, I am often shocked by the fact that telling women and their partners that they have rights and choices in the birth room so often seems to come as a revelation. Many people have no sense of themselves as autonomous or powerful in their labour and birth, nor do they feel that there is anything they can do or not do to influence the way their birth unfolds. They are often misinformed and, to compound this, their belief СКАЧАТЬ