“You have to be enraged. Rage is absolutely fundamental – not anger, it’s not strong enough. It has to be rage.“
Sheila Jeffreys

It is fantastic.

♀

]]> http://feminamist.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/the-right-time-of-the-month-for-activism/feed/ 3 feminamist IMG_2742 http://feminamist.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/happy-homebirth-week-collaborators/ http://feminamist.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/happy-homebirth-week-collaborators/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:31:50 +0000 feminamist http://feminamist.wordpress.com/?p=320 Continue reading →]]> And RIP Independent Midwifery.

Australia’s post feminist utopian society this month has celebrated worse pay gaps than the third world, the continuing contraction of abortion rights, and now this, the death knell for real birth choice in Australia.

“We have just (and yes I mean in the last 24 hours) been advised that Nicola Roxon will put amendments to the midwifery legislation that will REQUIRE a midwife claiming Medicare to work WITH either an Obstetrician or GP. It is not work FOR (ie in their office) but it will be to demonstrate that you work WITH.

As we all know this spells the end of midwifery practice as we know it, and IT IS THE ABSOLUTE END OF PRIVATE HOMEBIRTH.”

All that Sazz presents the scenario with all the righteous indignation that I just don’t have the heart to muster this am…

The other reason that this Sex and Motherhood thing kinda overshadows the more interesting (to me) Sex and Sexual Trauma thing, is that I am a mother, with two 4 y/os and an 18 month old child at home with me, full time.  And a husband who has one of those high falutin’, high paid jobs where you get to flee the home, hearth, hell, the whole bloody country, on a regular and extended basis.  I can’t blame him, there a many moments, nearly every day (to say nothing of night time), when I would gladly put several thousand kilometers of open water between me and my brood.  So I get it, for me the sex thing is a no brainer.  I want it when I want it, and when I don’t, I don’t need to justify myself, just as my partner doesn’t need to either – why motherhood should complicate that simple formula for sexual fulfillment, I do not know.

To tell you the truth, the whole subject pisses me right off.  Firstly because it is a subject, and quite a popular one, secondly because it is seen as a Problem that needs a Solution, thirdly because we all know where the blame sits the most comfortably for this Dire Problem (tip: it ain’t with Dad), and fourthly because all the solutions totally suck arse, which they would, because they got it wrong in the first place.

So what is The Problem?  Apparently, The Problem isn’t that our culture has sexualised motherhood as much as it has sexualised girlhood, but rather that mothers of young children and babies don’t feel like having sex, well not as often as fathers do anyway.  Why?  Well, I think we are finally getting close to understand that now, though I’m not sure why that answer was so hard to come by seeing as 40% of the population are mothers, which means you could ask every second person you meet and get an answer nearly every time, though if she has a couple of newborns slung around her neck rubbing possets into her decolletage and pulling her hair, and that slightly wild, wired look you get after many weeks of surviving on the same amount of sleep the average person enjoys in a night, I would probably save the question for another year or so.

So who is to blame?  Well apparently it has something to do with Eros being redirected toward the children, which is a very pretty way of saying “Mum did it”.  All those loving touches, soft caresses, murmured words of admiration and adoration, being squandered on those ungrateful, undeserving brats that she has so selfishly fallen in love with at the expense of her previously luxuriously infantilised man.  The finger is also pointed at the startling changes that occur to a woman’s priorities.  ”Oh noes”, cries the bereft Mr Husbandman, “My Wifey can’t stop looking after our children’s needs, in order to look after me!!  She should cease her chores, drop the work load and give me a headjob!  We’d all feel much better!  The intimacy we crave would be restored!”.

Somehow we all seem to forget that when a woman gives up her job to stay home to look after her kids, her workplace becomes the home, and her obligations and deadlines stare at her in the face when she is in it, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  To the partners who ask, “Why can’t she slow down, take a breather, and cop a horny feel up against the washing machine in between loads?”, try imagining doing the same, in an open plan office, with both your phones ringing, your email alert blinking, your organiser alarm reminding you that your are late for a meeting, and your boss walking purposefully in the direction of your desk (hopefully not asking to have his bum wiped).

Also among the list of complaints one frequently hears directed toward mothers in regard to their stalled libido, is that motherhood leaves them “touched out”, having overspent their sensual budget on the kids and not kept a nest egg (scuse the pun) secure for Dad.  That motherhood turns them into some sort of OCD freak that leaves them with an unquenchable need to control the chaos of the new addition by enslaving herself to the House and its Work, prefering to do the mopping than go a few rounds between the sheets.  And my favourite, provided by Esther Perel, in her book Mating in Captivity, that motherhood somehow restores her dignity, robbing her of her sexuality with its aura of modesty and sanctity.  Restores her dignity. I don’t even know where to begin with that one.  So the hoity toity, frigid, neurotic cow won’t take it up the ass like she used to??

What she needs isn’t foreplay, says Phd Sex and Relationship Therapist, Ian Kerner, she needs “Choreplay”.  This is that interesting notion whereby a partner/father does what he ought to be doing as a partner/father without being asked, because his partner is knee deep in vomited breastmilk and yellow cake nappies, in exchange for sexual services, well hell, in exchange for foreplay even.  Yep, you heard it here fellas, you can now buy yourself a headjob just for doing the dishes, and she’ll be hotter n hell after watching you actually take responsibility for the fact you now have children!!  This tired stupidity is promoted by nearly every highly paid, syndicated sex therapist I have ever had the misfortune of reading.  Apparently, and mind you are sitting down when you read this, women, science has found that you need to feel relaxed and free of anxiety to orgasm!  No kidding!  You iz doin’ it rong.  So forget that colicky baby screaming in the cot beside you, or the fact that you have a two week backlog of household chores to plow through just to keep you all clean and fed – just block it out, focus on the green fields of the Old Country, relax and cum like a porn star, or at least make him cum like a pornstar.  Just take one for the team, for chrissake, so we can win back that lost intimacy!

Oh and talking about porn stars, here’s another doozy of a solution. Apparently mothers simply aren’t watching enough pornography! Esther Perel rightly points to a place where all mothers really fuck up. For every twenty G rated movie she rents, she only gets one X rated movie. Now imagine how different things would be if that was turned around – it would be a real lift for her to compare her body and her sexual performance with the artificial world of pornography, or to indulge in some mutual rape fantasy with her partner. Or she says, initiate some fun games to get things going, like one of her clients who charges her husband $100 bucks for a headjob to heat things up.  Nothing like the frisson of being treated like a whore to get the juices flowing!

Ok, I realise I’m getting a bit ranty here, so I think I just need to cut this short and go to sleep, but before I do…

Where, oh where, is the talk about how motherhood can extend a woman’s sexuality, enlarge her ownership of her sensual and erotic self, can resolve long standing body image issues, and deepen her capacity for unconditional love and tenderness?  Where is the conversation about how libido and sexual lives and sexual identities fluctuate, change, and grow throughout our lives, living out a seasonality in response to the world around us and within us?  Why don’t we ask more questions about men’s sexuality – why our culture is training men to want, expect, and demand sexual access to their partners whenever they feel like it, rather than to find other ways to explore and understand their own sexual selves?  Why do we think that guilt, coercion, and emotional manipulation in order to enjoy “conjugal rights” are ok when force and violence aren’t?  Why do so many men still feel like there is such a thing as a conjugal right?

And why, oh WHY must we pathologise normal, healthy, and even expected, changes in sexuality, and in particular, in women’s sexuality?  It seems like it is too much to sit back and wait until our bodies, our heads, and our hearts are prepared to reengage with our sexual relationships during times when we simply don’t feel like it.  The current discussion does nothing more than continue to entrench the conceptualising of women’s bodies and sexuality within the confines of masculine parameters, creating the perfect environment for pharmaceutical companies and their researchers to step in with diagnosis (such as the broadly named FSD – Female Sexual Dysfunction symptoms include low desire and difficulty achieving orgasm) and the drugs to solve this Problem, and for sex therapists and psychologists to step in with prescriptions for pornography and nurse’s outfits, or “Choreplay”.  A it isn’t hard to see how dangerous this slippery little slope is.

*  Lastly, a disclaimer – I write this post as a hetero mother, from my hetero experience, and yes, it is heteronormative.

Got that? Doctors and midwives (only certain midwives, not the ones who actually support homebirth) are going to make the decisions about where I get to give birth. Not me, not other women whose bodies are up for discussion, just Professionals. I guess they’re Qualified, right? Sure they’re qualified, they’re qualified to provide a service to those women who require or request their services. Just like a plumber, builder or other tradesperson. If I need plumbing or building done, I’m happy to hire a builder. If I need surgery, or care from a midwife, I’m happy to hire them.

Read more at the link.

In just a couple more hours, patriarchy takes rape universal as our beautiful moon joins the one in three women on this planet who have been beaten or sexually assaulted.  Just as 90% of these women knew their assailants, the moon has also had earlier introductions to hers, when 40 years ago, creepy Uncle Sam ran his light fingers across her diaphanous surface, turning her fine powder to smut.  She will join many of her sisters who, having been previously assaulted, become 5 times more likely to be raped again.

In a couple of hours Uncle Sam, having groomed us all to accept such an atrocity, will blast her apart, forcing his steeled parts through her delicate surface, deep into her visera, exposing her, wrenching from her secrets that were hers alone.

As NASA triumphantly steals her mizuage, her violation will be played across the screens of our perverted culture, streaming through the optic fibers around the globe, as fast as her illuminating light has dawned on us.

She will never be the same.  Her defilement is Imperial pornography, cosmic hardcore, her new crater the cum stain of a coarse nation on her pale morning face.

Like 85% of rape victims, her rapist will not be charged or punished, even though, like many he is known.  Like many rapists, her rapist will be celebrated, toasted, and congratulated.

Luna, Selene, Artemis, my sister, my rhythm keeper, my illumination in dark times, my mother, I weep for our culture, for the arrogance, the recklessness, the failure to learn from the many lessons taught by your companion planet, our Earth.

(Photo Credit: Araceli Herrera for crying woman used in composite, created using The Gimp)

I know, there is a lot wrong with it, and a couple of the lines are not good, to say nothing of the images in the clip, BUT there’s a lot good about it too – and after pushing twins out of mine, it kinda appeals to me

I know – while it celebrates the feminine, scorning the tight pussy mentality of our current culture, it perpetuates the shallow construction of women’s sexuality – the phallocentric concept of desire, the objectification of the rest of the body, the notion that women, regardless of their sexuality, want a big cock.  Ho hum.

Had to edit my post to add this.  I spent 4 hours driving in the car today and even though I had only watched the clip once, there were a couple of scenes and a couple of lines that I just couldn’t get out of my head, they just shat me so, so much.  In fact I was hoping (and just a little afraid) that I would come in here and find an angry, eloquent rad fem ripping the clip to pieces…

Yes, the song is great up to 2.25, I love it, it makes me smile and want to sing along.  Everything after that except for “Vigantic” makes me want to shout a lot and break my beautiful Powerbook.  In fact the bit about the penis imperative is abhorrent and so far from the truth one begins to wonder if maybe a man wrote that part, and the line “It’s like a penis only reversible” is possitively repugnant, and it is not OUR vagina, it is mine damn it, mine, MINE, MINE!!!  As for the bit where the chorus of blokes pipe up about their vaginas being 8 miles wide…  They don’t fucking HAVE one and the vaginas that they have been blessed enough to come out of and the ones they have had the joy of entering ARE NOT THEIRS EITHER!!  FUCK IT!

Why can’t I just have a laugh and move on *sob* I’m a humourless feminist… thank the Goddess.

So, yeah, sorry for inflicting that piece on you all, it is that first two minutes.  It had me sucked in.  Catchy tune too…

Over at Feminist Law Professors, Bridget Crawford has recently asked, Is lap-dancing prostitution? It really is a squillion dollar question, with so much of the world interested in restricting prostitution that involves intercourse in some way or another, while promoting lap-dancing as mere entertainment.  It is a question that just keeps on being raised without ever reaching a conclusion, but one thing is for sure – it just can’t be beaten off.

The legal definition of prostitution goes along the lines of “the sale of sexual favours, or the exchange of sexual favours for money”.  So what are sexual services?  Is arousal a sexual service?  What happens when you “grind” on the lap of a customer and he cums?  Is that a sexual service?

I guess the question could be, “When is a sexual service not a sexual service?”.  The answer to that one is “when it happens in a strip club”.  Our culture has been working over time in its efforts to underplay exactly what lap-dancing is.  We have made stripper shoes a fashion accessory, public displays of nudity a right of passage and pole dancing an exercise class.  We have sold young women the notion that empowerment comes in a diamante g-string, not in political power and smashing the glass ceiling.

Crawford goes on to wonder if the difference between prostitution and lap-dancing can be drawn along workplace safety lines.  Women who sell their bodies for intercourse do face a higher level of risk (one that I would call an unacceptable level of risk), from violence and disease, but lap-dancing is by no means free of risk.

During my own time as a dancer in a “Gentlemen’s Club” (haw haw) I was the recipient of unwanted, let’s call it forced, sexual aggressions.  I had fingers thrust inside my vagina while stripping on a podium in the middle of a crowded club, I was held down and hit on the vagina with a ruler during a “school girl fantasy dance” for a bucks party that was performed in a small private room without surveillance or security, I was forcibly and painfully dry fucked while fully naked by a fully clothed maniac on the same occasion while the 12 other men in the room cheered him on, I was forcibly kissed and had my breasts groped and pinched on too many occasions to count and narrowly escaped penile penetration during another private fantasy dance on another occasion (only that time I was a nurse… urgh).  This all occurred in an establishment that was strictly “no touching”.

Crawford finishes her article speculating about the differences in the way the power balance is perceived in the lap-dancer/customer relationship.  She mentions the “unarticulated belief that the roles of exploiter and exploited are reversed in the lap dance scenario”.  While I agree with her that this belief does seem to have an amazing staying power, I do not think that it is unarticulated.  The belief that women who sell dances are in someway empowered by that experience has been discussed fairly widely by many commentators, Ariel Levy notably took that belief out into the larger world and looked at the way women’s sexuality has been constructed by the media to suit this hollow lie.

Putting aside the questionable notion that dancing on demand and stripping for cash is somehow empowering, I can only guess that this belief is somehow propped up by the idea that a woman flaunting her sexuality without having sex is somehow getting away with it.  That she is flipping the bird at the men who crave her yet can’t have her.  The harsh bubble breaking fact persists – men can buy her and when they run out of money, or she runs out of dances and excuses, they can rape her.  That is why these places are full of bouncers and regularly escort their dancers to their cars.

I’ve got $50 in my pocket – anyone feel like powering up and getting naked for my cash?

No matter how tough life is right now, just thank heavens you don’t live in Ukraine, where they have just banned porn.

Good on you, Derek, don’t suppose you have been airtight on cam for $100 lately mate?  Free speech advocates, democracy proponents and human rights advocates have been up in arms.  Oh and Derek at the Mirror.  There has been article after male centric, customer centric, industry centric article pasted all over the net since, and little exploration of the possibility that the ban may well serve a positive purpose.

Poor Derek is too busy bemoaning the size of his penis and the fact he can’t “click on” real life “hot” girls to think beyond where he can hide is extensive collection just in case the UK travels the same path.  And I suspect that his is the pea sized perspective of his readership as well.

The ban on the possession of pornography in the Ukraine follows laws against production and distribution that have been enacted for some time.  The general cry is that pornography as yet remains undefined, but  2003 legislation describes it thus,

Pornography is vulgar, candid, cynical, obscene depiction of sexual acts, pursuing no other goal, the explicit demonstration of genitals, unethical elements of the sexual act, sexual perversions, realistic sketches that do not meet moral criteria and offend honour and dignity of the human by inciting low instincts.

While the West is calling the step backwards and human rights activists are calling for a veto, I have to say I think it is the type of social progression human rights activists ought to be celebrating.  Perhaps if human rights activists were actively upholding the charter for Human Rights on behalf of more than just half of humanity they would be.  As it is, the right to ejaculate is higher on the list than the right to dignity and respect.

With the Ukraine being a major source of people, including children, trafficked for sex purposes, I hope that the step against pornography has been made with the intention of slowing the flow of women and children.  Olga Pyschulina, of the Ukraine Association Humanitarian Initiative, writes that for the Ukraine, sex trafficking is a rapidly growing problem with close to 500,000 people being trafficked out of the country in the last few years, including girls as young as 12.  According to the International Herald Tribune, it is the fastest growing organised crime in Eastern Europe with “ground zero” being the Ukraine and Moldova.

Personally, I’m tipping my hat to the Ukraine for the bold and incredibly unpopular move.  I hope that the intention is noble, and that the legislation has an impact on the country’s vulnerable women and children.

Recently both have received a pummelling in Australia with a woman being charged for terminating her own pregnancy, and now with the exposure of the draft legislation for the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law 2009.  This document reveals proposed legislation that will effectively ban legal homebirth in Australia.

The underhanded way that the government has gone about it is by declaring that midwives attending homebirth without insurance will be struck off the register, face penalties of up to $30,000 and risk imprisonment, which you could almost agree with, I mean, every one else has it, right?, until you read on to discover that only midwives working within a hospital birthing program will be eligible for insurance.  This, coupled with the laws that make it illegal for an unregistered midwife to attend in a medical capacity, will have the effect of outlawing homebirth.

Nested in the draft is a small section stating that a person may not “incite or direct a registered health practitioner to do anything, in the course of the practitioners’s practice of the health profession, that amounts to unprofessional conduct or professional misconduct”.  Penalties for doing so are high – $30,000 for an individual.  I am no lawyer, but it would seem to me that offering money to a midwife to attend a homebirth may well come under this clause in the draconian system proposed.

These words have galvanised me into action and over the last two days I have made submissions to the Women’s Electoral Lobby group, WRANA (Women’s Rights Action Network Australia), PILCH (Public Interest Legal Clearing House), MPs local and federal and even GetUp.

Apart from the obvious women’s rights issues on the table, with the rescinding of birth choices (and who could believe homebirth could become more difficult in Australia?), there is the terrible truth that banning homebirth will not stop homebirth, it will just stop it from being done with midwives – it will drive it underground  - to the detriment of the health and well-being of women.

The pitiful truth about these proposed new laws is that they are going to serve the wrong people.  They will serve birth surgeons and doctors (read men and more men).  Not women.  Homebirth is a viable and safe birth option, there are many studies that show this and many countries who embrace it as an integral part of their array of birth services.  While very few women currently give birth at home in Australia (less than 1%), in countries who have full government support, the rates are very high – in Holland, as high as 30%.

It may seem like a storm in a teacup to people who are anti-homebirth, but the legislation will effect us all.  Homebirth has been an anchor that has upheld the normal, natural process of birth, an antidote to the over medicalisation of birth and a counter to the spiraling caesarian rates.  But going beyond birth, this is about bodily autonomy, about a woman’s right to the self determination of her health care needs, it is about our personal sovereignty.  Any whittling down of our rights reduces and endangers us all.

As I have mentioned in a previous post – my homebirth was an important part of my recovery from trauma.  It is essential that it remains an option for the many women who want it, and indeed, for the many women so deeply traumatised by their experience of birth in hospital, that they need it.

My daughter, joyfully birthed at home.

Please help Australian women by writing to your local and federal MPs, the newspaper, ring the radio, anything you can think of.  Come and walk with us in Canberra, on September the 7th, in protest of the proposed legislation.

Read more at Joyous Birth (see this page for lots of links), Homebirth a Midwife Mutiny, Homebirth Australia, Hoyden About Town.