Women Give Birth
Transcript
Women give birth.
Females gestate and deliver new life in all mammalian species.
Our bodies are made to do this.
That doesn’t mean we should be reduced to our capacity bear offspring or that we must have babies or should even be expected to want to.
But the biological reality is that life wants to perpetuate itself and the way that happens in humans is through the womb of the female, the mother, the woman.
Not pregnant people of all genders. not the birthing parent.
women.
Women become pregnant. Women build a child in their womb. Women give birth.
And women suffer under systems that dehumanize us and disempower us and take away our autonomy and our choice and our ownership of that process. All over the world. And among developed nations, especially in the United States.
Patriarchal, capitalist, medicine dominated by expediency and profit-motive are already robbing us of our connection to each other and to our bodies and to our babies. And as beautiful amazing communities of women fight to take that back we have another front to contend with. One that takes away even our ability to talk about our bodies. To name who we are and what we’re doing and what’s at stake.
Women don’t get pregnant, people with wombs do.
Women don’t grow babies with our own bodies, uterus-havers do.
Even doulas, midwives, lactation consultants have been duped into adopting this alienating, dehumanizing language that robs us of the ability to define our class, to gather our sister or to stand with each other in solidarity.
Pregnant people. Birthing people. Chestfeeding. Front hole.
I have never known more that I am a woman and that all women are my sisters and that we must struggle together to take back our bodies and our wombs and our power in pregnancy, birth and parenting than I do now as someone immently facing a hospital delivery in the United States of America. I havenever known more that I needed other women than when I was unexpectedly pregnant and terrified and my OB practice and planned parenthood offered almost nothing to help.
But my friends did. Midwives did. Every mother I met did. Doulas, childbirth educators, women I barely knew at my church, Aunts, my grandmother, Women from my past who lie on other continents. Women I barely know who only exist to me as a facebook profile. Women i passed on the sidewalk leaving a friend’s apartment. A former acquaintance of my mother’s who lives in another state and heard I was pregnant in passing. Nurses. Third cousins. Strangers from youtube.
My cry as women went out and women held me up. Women are holding me up. And if you are a woman I will hold you up. Your voice. Your body. Your story. Our language.
Women give birth. We need to be able to say that. Women nurse our children at our breasts. Women grow embryos into fetuses into babies in our uterus’s and our mothers and sisters and midwives and wise women guide our sons and daughters into the world as they support us and help us to be brave and remind us who we are and that we can do this.
Women. Females. Mothers. Don’t let anyone take those words from you. Don’t let anyone take your body from you. Women give birth.
Video Info
I was going to make a video just about the term ‘chestfeeding’ since its come up a bunch lately while i’ve been pregnant and I do have both personal thoughts and an analysis of that term. However, the larger issue is our ability as women to talk about our own bodies and our own experiences using accurate language that doesn’t obscure the sex-specific nature of what’s happening to us.
Women give birth and women suffer the consequences of male-dominated medical model obstetrics and crappy social services for new moms in the US. Maternal mortality affects women. Breastfeeding challenges affect women. Access to WIC affects women. We need to be able say that. We need to be able to come together with our sisters and fight for change while also building alternatives.
How can we do that without the language to say who we are and what we are going? Women. Females. Mothers. Not birthing people of all genders. Women.
(if you haven’t seen my other videos, I am a currently pregnant, disabled, reidentified woman who lives in the united states and relies on medicaid and other public assistance. My denunciation of online harassment of women and acknowledgment that I have always been female, even when I IDed as trans contributed to an online and IRL witch hunt against myself and others in our former political organization. I have come to understand that women are a class and we are oppressed globally on the basis of our biological sex. This has its roots in private property and male inheritance and is congruent with the writings of Engels, Marx and others. Nothing has made the need for female solidarity clearer to me than pregnancy. Inclusiveness does not mean we cannot name our experience. In order to take back birth and motherhood and save the lives of women and children in our country it is imperative that women speak out and that our language not be obscured to the point of meaninglessness. Women give birth.)
Thanks for the comments and subs! Please excuse my tired, late-pregnancy, heat-wave, sunblock face 😉
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Are we Women or are we Incubators? Midwife Mary Lou Singleton addresses language policing among midwives
Trans Exclusionary or Woman Exclusionary? Erasing Women From Birth
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