Some more thoughts on midwifery and oppression

As usual, DarkDaughta’s posts always get me hopping and thinking and make me want to write a post of my own. I really should do it more often.

She starts her recent Thursday Thirteen post with a rundown of the politics related to childbirth and race, as it is in the mainstream as well as the fringe homebirthing “community.” I’m loving what she says, and of course agree with her on the thirteen unnecessary interventions that she lists.

I think a lot about the kind of midwife I want to be. Since I’m not currently studying, all I can really do in that department is read and explore my own thoughts. Honestly, though, I don’t think that gaining experience will change my fundamental attitudes, especially the ones that have always been with me. I’m having some trouble lately integrating my radical ideas with my ingrained personality, and I’m working on that a lot too—I think it relates intimately to my eventual goals and how I’ll practice.

DarkDaughta also recently posted about being “nice” and I have to say that “nice” is exactly how I’ve been very effectively socialized to be. There’s a fundamental split in me right now—part of me has always rebelled against patriarchal values, but I’m also deeply committed to making others feel good and never getting in anyone’s way. As an adolescent, I examined the values I was learning about, like those in Christianity, and automatically knew that they weren’t mine. I’m not sure exactly how I, a good little girl who never had tantrums in public, who went to church every once in a while and lived in a totally white-bread environment, realized that I didn’t think being queer was bad, thought women should have equal rights, didn’t think that blacks or Asians or Mexicans were worse than “us.” In fact, at an age where my school was telling us not to have premarital sex, I instantly resolved to, then waited until I was in college and in a committed, patriarchally sanctioned het relationship. I knew I was bisexual, but didn’t act on it, and was then slapped down when I tried to mention it to a parent. I was a rebel in hiding, and still mostly am to this day. I do think that the fact of my hiding my “unacceptable” views (to this day, my family doesn’t know I’m not Christian) showed to me that I wasn’t rebelling for rebellion’s sake, but in fact was acting on deeply held views that held strong through the years.

Thinking about something and acting on it are of course drastically different. Until I actively enact and support my own views, I feel like a hypocrite, and I don’t even make myself useful by writing and convincing others to act. I know that I have a lot of potential and amazing skills that could really make a difference, once I figure out how to allow myself to do it.

Finding a balance between rebelling and following the rules, being passive and being active, is a major personal goal of mine as well as something I consider crucial to being a midwife. My vision of being a midwife is distinctly not that of having power over someone. Only the birthing woman should have power over herself, only she should be making the decisions, calling the shots on what happens to her body, her baby. A midwife should be someone of equal stature, who is simply a trained professional offering her perspective and the knowledge of experience to give advice when a birthing woman has questions. Perhaps she is somewhat like a nature guide—pointing out signposts and interesting species that you might miss if you’re not familiar with the trail, but not actually doing the walking for you. Ideally, this is the level of status that all medical professionals should be at, not the current status of “saving” women from their own incompetent bodies, by mutilating them further.

I don’t know, but I hope, that I will be able to manage to keep to this level of power while working with women who have less privilege than I do. I don’t know if the dynamic is too unbalanced to be fixed, but it has to start somewhere. Thinking about the decolonizing aspect of black women taking back their births is inspiring. The idea of meddling, of assaulting, of physically violating black women’s bodies during such a sacred, intimate time as birth is horrifying to me, and echoes the violent oppression of the past that is continuing to haunt us in its remembered form today as well as the too-frequent actual repetitions that take place. The right to bodily integrity and to decisions over one’s own body is a fundamental one that is directly opposed to slavery. The idea of the medical establishment, or even one insensitive midwife taking over that power, even briefly, even “for her own good” smacks of white patriarchal oppression. All women, but especially black women, need options so they are not trapped into this system, and the options need to be available to everybody.

A fabulous organization that is working on this is the International Center for Traditional Childbirth at www.blackmidwives.org, which I was happy to see featured in this month’s Mothering magazine. They have a doula program, they travel to Africa to train midwives there, and they have a mentorship program for black women who want to become midwives. I intend to donate to them when I can and perhaps get involved in some way, once I have more to offer.

Hmm, I just deleted a rant about a post on another midwife’s blog because I thought it might be crossing the line into way too mean. Is it ok for me as a white, privileged person, to call out others for their privilege? Still working on that I think… if you’re interested write me.