Midwives For President

birth.art

2011-05-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

- rethinking birth through art in the age of porn and plastic surgery

An exhibition of contemporary art, ruminating on the subject of childbirth
ACU Gallery // 14–30 June 2011

The impassioned debates surrounding choices in childbirth continue to divide health care workers, scholars, governments and the community.

Despite ongoing media and community attention, birth continues to receive minimal representation in the world of art, over shadowed as always by its notorious and high profile primal counterparts: sex and death.

Sensationalised media portrayals, ‘reality TV’ exposés, and fictitious accounts of birthing displayed in film or television often trivialise the process of giving birth with overtones of emergency, panic, pain or suffering. In the age of porn and plastic surgery the myriad issues facing feminism can be confounding.

birth.art seeks to explore the awkward relationship that has developed between birth and feminism in a technocratic culture and to set a new direction for experiences and philosophies of the maternal. Putting a flag in the soil of cultural expressions around childbirth, birth.art fleshes out ideas about the primary event experienced by each person on the earth. It endeavours to enliven women to courageously rethink the possibilities for their own birthing experiences.

Illuminating birth through a range of media by a diverse group of Australian artists, the work in birth.art reveals the personal and political, exploring the intrinsic beauty, humour, power, fear, insight and inspiration that birth can provoke.

Curated by two working mothers, this exhibition also tackles issues of work/life balance in its very making!

Who:
Featuring artwork by Davina Adamson, Sarah Beetson, Violeta Capovska, Sally Davis & Selena de Carvalho, Deborah Kelly & Tina Fiveash, Rachel Peachey, Al Stark, Arlene TextaQueen, Anne Wilson and Anne Zahalka.
Curators: Tilly Morris and Jasmine Salomon.

When:
14 – 30 June 2011 (exhibition days Weds – Sun, 12noon-5pm)
Official opening 14 June (6–8 pm) with guest speaker and author of the book ‘The Divided Heart: Art & Motherhood’ Rachel Power.

Where:
Australian Catholic University Gallery, 26 Brunswick St Fitzroy, VIC, 3065

For more info, to arrange an interview or to obtain high resolution images, contact:
Tilly Morris / tillymorris@iprimus.com.au or
Jasmine Salomon / jasmineproust@gmail.com

Images above:
(Left) Anne Zahalka, Delivery Suite [Details], Archival Ink Jet Print, 2011; (Right) Arlene Texta Queen, Chaos Happens All The Time, Felt-tip pen on paper, 2011.

This project is supported by: City of Yarra & ACU University.

Firewood & baby sleeps

2010-05-17T17:57:00.000-07:00

Since having a baby recently I have got to know my back alley extremely well.
I see men fixing rooftops, drivers retreat from secluded garages, people arriving home I have never noticed before.
What has become immediately obvious to me, is the way I seem strange to these people performing motherhood in the back alley, pushing my baby on the cobblestones twice daily praying she will go to sleep. I ponder where the public representations of mother are to be found? Certainly in the playground there is a monopoly of prams, an avalanche of children, occasionally a kid being roused on & other such public acts of motherhood. As I push my babe I usually collect kindling that has fallen over the fences from the tall trees, to maximise my time, in the quest to occasionally find time to write, make art or study Midwifery. I think this must be one of the archaic acts of motherhood, walking a babe to sleep collecting firewood, though I have to say the only time I have seen it is in the Gypsy movies!

Garden & Babies.....

2010-04-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

I may be obsessed! But now we have the teenager from the down the street cleaning our house I will have time to Grow a Winter Garden as well as a human!

the Childcare dilemma.

2010-04-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

As always, i have a house to clean and an essay to write but first i must remark upon our 'cross- nursing mothers' childcare cooperative'. It's the way forward ladies!

international midwifery!

2010-04-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

Breakfast inspiration, not sure about the name but i love what these Earth birth are doing.

something from the archives.

2010-03-17T04:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev1F3kPm1D8&feature=autofb
cleanliness is next to Godliness ladies & Gents.

2010-03-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

An interesting thought
If you were in your most vulnerable position you had possibly experienced thus far in your life,
You were feeling an almighty pain take over your body over & over again
and someone offered you a possible way out would you take it? (I would.)
If it were sanctioned by the society of the day to do so?
In birth the only women who avoid this nasty little checkmate, are those who birth at home. Due to an intense fear in our present society and out of pocket expenses, very few women are in this luxurious position of bearing the immense yet incredible pain of childbirth. Women choose to birth at home or in a birth center knowing full well that they will be protected by their inability to ask for drugs. Drugs that unfortunately may impede their labour & lead to traumatic intervention such as; instrumental delivery (which has been described by the very sexy 70yr old michel Odent as archaic), caesarean section (or vaginal bypass as it is seductively called), augmentation with artificial oxytocin (commonplace in some maternity settings) let alone affect a new born baby. In relation to analgesia (or the famous epidural) i concur with Rayes-Greenow when she concludes that:
"although women felt knowledgeable and informed about labour and childbirth pain-management options, they were unable to correctly identify outcomes or risks associated with analgesics."

Rayes-Greenow, C., Roberts, C., McCaffery, K. & Clarke, J. (2006) Knowledge and decision making for labour analgesia of Australian primiparous women. Midwifery 23 (2007, p.139-145) Elsevier.

Hermione Champion of the world

2010-03-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

let me elucidate some moments around the birth of this cherub
an upside down plum cake made from the neighbours tree passed through the window on the very same day
drinking the moet, gave to us by tilly & Elwin when we announced her conception, with our brilliant midwife
Sylva dancing the tango with her to put her to sleep
4 times cooked chicken soup. Lou Lou doing her best reading ever to a fresh in the world hermione.
watermelon & rosepetals in the bath in early labour
Sylva & Hugh jumping in the birth pool like kids to the ocean on a sunny day moments after she was born
the midwife pulling my sit bones open to help her passage through my pelvis
waking in the night to dicuss the meaning of life & family with your lover after being moved by the event of birth, Hugh says no one could murder after they feel the wispered breath of a fresh born babe.

robot birth

2009-07-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

Robot birth.
Sheila Kitzinger birth anthroplolgist, grandmother and scholar has been writting for over a decade on the danger of training medical student's with inanimate plastic women, as it gives them unrealistic expectation of how women should behave during birth.

male midwife

2009-07-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

Once again the hegemony of ignorance and sound bites of Corporate press prevail. Serves me right for reading the herald sun. I think we could perhaps focus on the fact that Denis Walsh is a Doctor of philosophy as well as a MALE Midwife, and from the viewpoint of one who passionate about the meaning of birth, suggest, we need a new kind of feminist cultural thought that is willing to look birth straight in the face with intelligence and a lack of fear and see it for what it really is. If it were possible to discuss the serious denial of the authoritative and powerful experience of giving birth to your child or dare to state their might be something purpose in the truly undisturbed glory that can be unmedicalised childbirth (without being marginalised and seen as unfeminist) i might've seconded the motion to have a serious look at the routine encouragement of analgesia in childbirth(as suggested by Denis) and responded to the Herald sun, Live news and BBCnews. As it is there is a quicklink to the diverse opinions of tracey spicer . I feel confident in the efforts of a woman who could be a modern pin up feminist, middle class, white, educated: to imagine she has access to resources to educate herself, but as a midwifery student and someone who is mildly obsessed with the culture and philosophy surrounding birth, she lost me on her reference to her supportive husband who was watching the rugby through her attempt to give birth naturally."The scene in the birthing suite was a sight to behold - hubby watching the State of Origin while I did yoga moves accompanied by classical music and the gentle waft of lavender aromatherapy oil. After six hours of downward dogs (and a convincing win to the Maroons) I was only 1cm dilated." read on. If this coverage of opinion of the influential feminist pin-up is not enough we also have the inspirational words of Holly Byrnes who is yet another voice in the vast sea of simplistic reflections on childbirth which are mostly self informed, as apposed to researched in any way, shape or form. There are whole cultures that don't have any incidence of post natal depression or troubles breast feeding, why? And why are these women in the media, such as Holly and Tracey reaffirming the pernicious culture notion (in the modern west) that women's body's are deficient and must be managed with great caution? At least there is some opinion out there that seems to scratch a little deeper and is even capable of cross disciplining=feminism & philosophy. Denis Walsh has most likely facilitated a thousand acts of integrious kindness to birthing women but he becomes the happy joke of tabloid media and is basically told to shut up for being a man. The female obstetrician (Maggie Blott) he debates with comes across as kind and educated & the wholesale abuse of women's bodies due to an unintelligent maternity system and a conniving media continues.

barbie & porn

2009-05-24T17:35:00.000-07:00

Catching public transport means one must engage in being exposed to things that one could otherwise filter convieniently out of one's life(the mentally unstable, grief stricken or publicly passionate) For this reason i have always felt that pt is an important pre requisite for staying in touch with the excesses of humanity, and that not sanitizing them out by personal choice and the safe humanity free bubble, of ones car, is a worthwhile political choice when it comes to transport. This is without even beggining to weigh up ecology and the cost that that driving a car has on our sweet little earth. recently i have truely given up my car which means even more form of non car transport; train was recently added to bike tram and legs. So on my trip home from Balaclava to massage a pregnant friend, my curiosity got the better of me and i broke my MX rules. previously i would only read MX if i found it discarded and pre used so as to not count as a consumer and give any support to this weird, free, tabloid exotica resembling some from off press. but as i swayed in unison to the 50 odd passangers with a grief stricken Matthew johns covering their faces i couldn't help but notice an article on porn on the second page. When i got off the train and could not find a discarded copy, so i walked across flinders St station to get one. Porn is one of my obsessions. Firstly because porn along with the advertising industry shape and inform feminine and sexual identity without any intellectual responsibilty. hoping that the thousands of reader swaying in unison were being engaged with genuine debate, intelligent thought, or even real journalism relating to porn i egerly began to read. lets just say my rule of avoidance when it came to MX (as upposed to pt) was warranted. to top off Andy Burns' trite and disengenius piece on porn stars at Cannes and comments that porn star mothers ought to be ashamed of their work to their children(no mention of porn dad's) my met ticket had barbie on it. Perhaps an adventure on pt just doesn't offer the democratic incidental outpourings of the kind of unhinged humanity i remember so fondly.

इन्तुइशन अस औथोरितातिवे नालेज इन birth

2009-05-19T17:04:00.000-07:00

The history of Western obstetrics is the history of technologies of seperation. We have seperated milk from breasts, mothers from babies, fetuses from pregnancies, sexuality from procreation, pregnancy from motherhood.It is very hard to conceptually put back together that which medicine has been rendered asunder. BARBARA KATZ ROTHMAN.New York,1992.

Mothers Day

2009-05-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

Birth is a Sacred Fucking act
It is actually the closest we come on earth to divine creation
The birth of my second child I would describe as holy,
And although’ religious lyrical waxing is the most unlikely of pastimes of mine
I say this because it is the closet and most accurate description of how it felt to me (& possibly my babe)
But lets get this straight Christians make me Cringe like only an inverted Catholic could, so the language is a little difficult
And yet this immense brilliant thing that it is to give birth ought not to be downplayed in the new century
Perhaps now that women die a whole lot less it makes for a less thrilling spectator sport
And even though it has been sufficiently asserted that the lowering of childbirth related deaths actually has nothing to do with
Medical science but a whole lot more to do with common sense such as basic hygiene, better nutrition and general living standards.
It is an awfully big coincidence that since the emancipation of the barber surgeons to their respected and h-onourus position we are hardly even bothering to give birth anymore.
Why is this?

Neverland

2009-04-11T22:39:00.001-07:00

Today i ponder.....
What it would be to experienCe people
who affect my life
principally, new lovers
without the historical & social construction of self that is heavily influenced by the legacy of otherS
the hang upS & bang ups & identifying residue left by the ways we have come to know ourSelves through the receptions and attentions of others
i note my delicious eccentriC 6yr old wrapped in the arms of a sweet boy aSghard whom she has only met once before and drink in this innOcent fresh expression of love, hands to cheeks so close, unmitigated, without a prelude of socially constructed verbal foreplay.
Incoded in the aftermath of a recent love affair is the importanCe of the ways of children, the prospect of allowing neverland to be real.
How is one to keep a hold of all this precious beauty of art as life in ones hand? share it round with children i say. Children should have a monopoly on art and life, they know how it is done just so.

(disney should die!)

Before the light Changes

2009-04-10T21:34:00.000-07:00

Before the Light changes

and all these divine musings
dissolve into reality
i need to remark upon
the fluttering
of sleeping eyelids, so light
rapid eye movement
like the mysteries below
in the deepest of ocean beds
lie like lovers our dreams so
languid lurid lucid and fresh

in this womb room
in enact love for you
this cocoon of the succulence of my making
the Lillies
have opened and bloomed
like voluptuous baroQue goddesses
and you are as sleepy as an oversexed persian queen.

2009-04-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

My mother had a hideous experience birthing my sister in the late 70's in a Sydney hospital. because of this 2yrs later when i came along she decided to have a home birth. The midwife who assisted my mother giving birth was a lesbian, they planted my placenta in the yard of the house that after they moved was bulldozed for a Mormon temple to be built. I am not sure what all this meanS but when i was a kid i had a shirt that said "proud to be a home birth" now it looks to be illegal to have a home birth in Australia. On my 29Th birthday i would like to remind everyone of the long history of the medical control and suppression of the female body. Of the odd hundred years that midwifery has been curtailed and controlled to the detriment of women's freedom & i would like support for indemnity insurance from Nicola Roxon for my birthday thank you very much

birth

2009-03-31T23:50:00.000-07:00

Birth is
repulsive primal instinctive animalistic horrifying sexy agonising brutal fascinating delicious dirty bloody brilliant powerful instructive primal harrowing glorious fetid holy beauteous fecund majestic coquettish delightful ravishing famishing exquisite artistic magnificent archaic distinguishing awe inspiring monumental imposing sonorous resounding heroic solemn splendid noble illustrious consequential momentous historic crucial salient crucial essential ascendant flourishing
for starters

rEadiNG giBeRiSH

2009-03-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

I can't explain all the resonS i adore th english language (a chanCe to be patriot without being racIst perhaps) It may have something to do with with my obsession with the importanCe of poetry.
Whilst my daughter was reading her home reader at the breaskfast table this morning, (very elementary picture recognition stuff since she can only recognise a few letter)s she readS 'the duck is Quacked' me & Sylva cracked up and lynx alsways loves to amuse but i feel as ever as mrs Darling." Oh why must you ever grow up" she says and clutches her heart. These precious odd little thingS. these cantankerous grubs known as children.

a rainbow

2009-03-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

7am

Netball

2009-03-24T03:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight i played netball for the first time in 15 yearS. I realised the reason sport is so brilliant is that it tricks you into not realising you are doing exercise.I LOVE IT. BonkerS frocks definetly kill the bitches, skcuse my french.

proCapitalism

2009-03-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Why do i uppose capitalism?
is the question i am asking myself sinCe thinking of joining the liberty society at ACU, where i study midwifery, and discovering that the organiser is a proud proCapitalist. His blog links to this. http://celebratecapitalism.com/
Making friends at university seems tricker than i imagined! How can two possibly intelligent people have two such different ideas of liberty? And Mcdonald's does make you fat.

BridgeWater bay

2009-03-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

the Ocean is a concept for perfection for me, not icky robotic wrong kinda perfection but the 'one perfect day' style. If you lived a full passionate and beautiful life but Upon your death you were granted one day over that is your 'one perfect day' and how could it be anything other than at day at the sea? the beach is instantly magical at consumption, it makes a merry fool of even the most serious, it promotes nudity and promises pirates. What other geographic concept (apart from perhaps theme night at the hellfire Club) comes up with such a combination? I love the sea. when i go i am lulled for such a little while into believing everything is going to be o.k. It is mostly my favorite feeling.
Today is a less than perfect Sunday, for starters i am no longer at the sea and also my father lives somewhere close to a days drive away and so it makes it a little ludicrous to come over for a Sunday roast which is perhaps the only australian patriotic act that i do love.
I am hung over and emotional, if only i could readily make art.

Feast on Our horroS

2009-03-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

Is there any point to life but grande dinner parties?
The idea was to sacrifice something to Summer, to find me a hot man, to push us out of our usual comfortable social boundaries & to live a night as if we were to die Upon dawn.
DreSS to be killed the invitation stated.
Thank you Cappa, you are the Queen of my feAsting.

love

2009-03-05T02:47:00.000-08:00

hugh says"Love is an asset, love is indeliable stains"

MorGanA's hungarian village sOup

2009-03-04T04:55:00.000-08:00

the pied piper of the industrialised food machine

2009-03-03T00:54:00.000-08:00

In the surreal hot windS of tuesday afternoon Fitzroy north, as i gathered spinach from the garden to feed the teenager and two children in my home tonight i pondered the soft twinkle of the mister Whippy van with its chemically reconstructed lard & it's pied piper chimes looking for trade. even in my suburb that is somewhat overrun with children at school start and finish times it can feel remarkably empty in the streets and one wonders where that cut concept called community actually resides. i wonder how the Whippy man makes his trade now that most the kids are glued to t.v.'s and playing computer games.Part of me was desperately wanting to call the kids out and run stupidly after the little musical van to kill the anxious bordom of the afternoon (mostly fuelled by my exhaustion) but then i remebered the thing that feels like it undermines my good parenting the most is the unglamourous and sugar filled foods of the industrial food machine.

Extreme Sports Parenting

2009-03-02T02:26:00.000-08:00

I have used this term for a while i think because if we come up with something odd & funny it can be a buffer for things we are sensitive about against those whose opinions we want on principle before we even know if we like or respect them.i was once asked(by an artist friend father of two) whilst breast feeding my small second daughter, how i felt about the social stigma of having two daughters to two different fathers.
i was stumped.
i promised to ponder and produce an essay when i worked out how i felt.i hadn't really deconstructed the social politics of this matter yet & yet it was enough to ring in my mind a while later when i was single with two girls looking down the barrel of the possibility of love and pondering all i come with, and whether this might be considered encumberence.i have been in two eventful and beautiful relationships Since i had my girl,s with men who are not their fathers. the relationships are infinitely complex but evidence based practice in the profession of familial loving without biological connection (which is really an overworked possibly unrecognised but a marvellously privileged recreational activity) shows it to be immensely affecting. i have loved a few children as fiercely as my own my boyfriend's daughter Edie and my friends son Orlando, all i can say is it is profound in a way that mothering is not. i live in a rich community of adunts (as lynx says) and kids and there are many kids to love but how you are stretched to love that which you did not make, that is not your own, has always seemed incredibly important to me. i by no means have final say when it comes to my daughters and there lives, i have lived away from my eldest for a year and had her on school holidays, she was away in south east Asia for half my pregnancy with her sister Lynx but though it has sometimes felt like horror (mostly at the prospect rather than in reality) it has also meant i have been able to live my politics and perhaps be a better mother.

blogging & begging

2009-02-15T14:23:00.000-08:00

Is it a double standard that I more readily give money to Aboriginal beggars than white guys? Working at Madame Sou Sou on Brunswick St, we get a fair amount of Beggars, Crazies & Freaks. I love it! I do not know what my opinion & response to beggars used to be but lately I have noticed it change. There has been a few things affecting this change; #1 my attempt to draw boundaries and moderate intelligently my relationship to consumer capitalism, disposable waste culture & cult of the individual (as p.j would put it) Thus aligning my spending with my personal politics (I'm trying!). #2 having gone to the Kimberley and spent time w Gina mob in '07, at Warmun Arts Centre so as aboriginal people aren't so much of a 'concept' anymore to me & #3 recently reading Richard Flanagan's 'wanting' in which the character Mathinnia reminds me intensely of one particular beggar I see often on Brunswick St. It is probably an opportune moment to commit to the embarrassing admission that I am a bleeding heart. Whatever brain chip others got from social conditioning {that allows us to associate people in; 'unfortunate' positions, socially a little retarded, one might say, (though' politically I've been told the word retarded is a little vulgar) coming from a minority group or socio-economic disadvantage or because they happen to be from developing countries that unfortunately haven't caught up to our wonderfully civilised standard and happens to be a different colour and geographically positioned on the globe in anything but proximity to me} I missed out on. Having said that I am nothing of a philanthropist (even if I had the money I most likely wouldn't be able to remove my personal vendetta against the actions of missionaries to perform anything still so closely linked to the patronage and destruction I think the concept of most 'AID' to be.)
Lately watching the encounters between Sou Sou customers and beggars has made me infuriated with humanity, I couldn't quite work it out what allows us the power to actually pretend someone doesn't exist when they are talking to you. It is quite accepted and common to bum a rollie off someone you see has them at a Cafe but look dishevelled and ask for some pennies and you may receive a dose of fear and self-loathing. Capitalism prop us up, keeps us safe, separates us from them... but when an Aboriginal person asks for money on the street something deeper is going on. We pay for our collective cultural shame, sometimes I run across the street to pay for it after I see the woman with the spirit of Mathinnia ask fifteen tables for some change and be collectedly ignored. I pay for it because I've realised those that ignore it are unwilling to admit there's something wrong with Australian history, that they are shamed by the profit of stolen land and though I yearn for a more productive and inspiring exchange than giving coins, I am not willing to pretend there isn't something vastly wrong with Australian's black history.

art Occurance

2009-02-13T21:40:00.000-08:00

i like these boyz, even tho' they stand me up from time to time.

The beggining of consumer capitalist withdrawal.

2009-02-04T23:13:00.000-08:00

Revbilly is my new favourite thing. Thanks to Land of meg for this one!

Planning my withdrawal from all irrelevant purchases immanently, how do I draw the lines of a healthy engagement with consumer capitalism?

JAG sunglasses?

Adbuster magazines?

new hipster Jeans?

imported truffle oil for dinnerparties?

organic smarties?

What is necessary & what is unexceptional indulgence?

if i lived in a slum like most the worlds population would going to a farmers market be a luxury that would define me and my political intentionS?

i Crave the feedback of you my artful community!

Today's spending;

Fly-eating plant $24.95

money to eileen brunswick st begger $4

JAG sunglasses screws $6

Vagioplasty anyone?

2009-01-21T19:28:00.000-08:00

see More here

Birth

2009-01-19T17:04:00.000-08:00

Birth is the heartland of feminine sexuality, This statement is more irksome to a bohemian intellectual than the term ‘sexually active’ is to a blooming adolescent.Yet in our culture we clearly and firmly contain birth within the medical. look outside the ridgedly scienced rule book of the medical astablishment for eco's of birth as sexuality i.e. a google search an walah a universe of pregnancy porn, in which the exploration of sexual gratification is relegated to that of any other fetish, and as with any other
porn women do not escape the noose of being degraded in order to produce arousal in the porn constituency. Why? The Cook at my work asserts porn is good for women because men demand sex less, its feminist in fact.

I mean what the fuck does birth have to do with sex anyway?
Apart from the obvious.

My meagre exploration into porn and thus the disturbing business of real dolls, led me to the plot of intense fear of childbirth in 'Lars & the real girl'. Lars having been born in the act of his mothers death through childbirth needed a non sexual relationship with a real life ‘real doll’ to heal himself and subsequently move on to a real life, breathing, talking, woman. though a moving an illuminating concept (how our own births affect our socialisation and sexuality) the pessimist in my sways towards the belief that most realdolls are having quite a different experince from Bianca, Lars' doll who was not a sexual object at all.

Once we feared death in giving birth, now we just fear giving birth. The myths surrounding childbirth can only surpass those surrounding rape.
And what in the hell does childbirth have to do with rape anyway?

As I discovered recently in a panel named ‘Feminism, aesthetics and the body’ specifically ‘motherhood and the performance of gender’ at this is not art festival as well as at the lass o Gowrie pub watching my best friend play in a band called ‘the bits’ and arguing with a long term Newcastle local called Muzza, that the word cunt is still highly controversial. The feminist panel asserted that it isn’t for men to use the word cunt with the exception of dirty talk when lovingly going down on their girlfriends, just like white guys cant use the word ‘nigger’ unless they have perhaps had some kind of special initiation into black culture, perhaps like
Muzza brandishing a great allegiance to liberty claimed ‘I’ll use the word cunt anytime I like’ which included the presence of his three young daughters and asserted it was something to be proud of and open about (the cunt) and perhaps somewhat revolutionised my idea that I had moral superiority to use the word because I am a woman, a mother and have an education in tom Robbins.

Michael Odent writes that society ought not to allow women to become obstetricians unless they have first had a vaginal birth. Interestingly midwives working in hospitals have often said to me that female obstetricians are generally worse than male obstetricians in relation to woman centred care, that they are less respectful, they ask for consent to do invasive examinations less and that they are less understanding of why a woman would want a natural physiological birth. Is there a chance that a female obstetrician having a caesarean herself would inform her scope of practice?
Are female obstetricians the new chauventist pigs or merely a revival of the barber surgeons?

So why is the word cunt still controversial, when fuck has lost it’s emphasis? Apparently cunt is the new fuck in the world of Australian teenagers.
I mean aren’t we all emancipated and shit what wit feminism and real dolls and
pop-porn.

I would like to assert myself that, the cunt is still contested territory. I mean who owns it anyway? Birthing mothers, porn producers, obstetricians, rapist soldiers, WOMEN?

The war over women’s bodies is a dirty little war and the major armies include consumer capitalism, a powerful medical lobby, motherhood fanaticism, and as always ordinary women and babies.