*

A really great way to quickly identify a man who does not respect women, is by whether or not he presumes to have the right to dictate, express preference, or even comment on his partner’s birth choices.

*

If you’re a pregnant woman, and the father of your child is attempting to curtail, control or even influence your birth decisions in any way, this is misogyny in action.

*

As an adult human female person, you are under no obligation to even participate in conversations that are not predicated on the truth that you are the authority over anything that goes into, or comes out of, your own vagina.  Even with men that you otherwise love.

*

No one except the mother knows what is best for her baby. Women own birth. Feel free to use this as a mantra.

*

Sadly, establishing the boundary that we own our bodies and our genitals—especially during the process of growing and birthing a baby–seems to be a rare thing among women.

*

It’s so rare, that when the odd woman does stand up and say “No, actually, I am the decider, and no one else”, people tell us that we’re mean, nasty, reckless, crazy, contemptible, and *terrible* wives (as if erasing ourselves for the sake of being a so-called “good wife” is an especially laudable accomplishment).

*

Marital rape is no longer considered socially acceptable in most parts of the world, yet many women still seem to think that they owe their husbands or male partners input into the circumstances of their birth process.  Why?

*

Because the subordination, infantilization and hatred of women is so normalized, and so prevalent, that we don’t even see it when we do it to ourselves.

 *

The phenomenon of women unconsciously expressing self-hatred, or woman-hating is referred to as “internalized misogyny” and every single woman engages in this behaviour to some degree.  Misogyny is one of the most universally successful teachings.

*

When we capitulate to the suggestion on the part of our male partners or medical professionals, that our bodies are anything but our own, we are expressing internalized misogyny.

*

 The internalized misogyny involved in order for a woman to say “well it’s his baby too!!!” in regards to the child who will pass through no one’s vagina but hers is very worrisome to me.

*

Woman-hating is not just given voice implicitly through the fundamental structure of the allopathic medical system.  It is explicitly enacted and perpetuated when nurses and doctors focus their attention on men, or speak to women through their male partners during prenatal consults.

*

Sometimes this happens with relative subtlety.  Imagine a woman, sitting in her doctor’s office, and telling her doctor how her birth is going to proceed.  She finishes what she has to say, and the doctor turns to her husband.  “Do you feel comfortable with this, Bob?”

*

It’s not that fathers’ concerns shouldn’t be heard (by someone), or that the quality of a woman’s relationship with her partner is not important.  It’s that the hospital is an environment in which there is already a glaring power discrepancy, which results in women being routinely abused, violated and ignored.  Focusing on men’s wants and needs especially in the context of hospital prenatal encounters, undermines women’s sense of self, adulthood, and authority, and it implies that that it is our obligation to come to an agreement with our male partners about our birth choices, which is wrong.

*

No one else has to agree with what a woman decides for her pregnancy and birth.  When a medical professional (already imbued with power over this woman) centres the feelings, voices and opinions of a woman’s partner during a prenatal session, this erodes the confidence women have in our choices, and it creates a climate in which hospital personnel can (and do) leverage the cultural supremacy of men to coerce and undermine women, when women’s decisions diverge from the narrow set of “choices” deemed acceptable within the allopathic system. This is a form of gaslighting (the process by which a person’s sense of self, confidence, and ultimately reality is dismantled by an abusive individual or entity).

*

Sadly, I’ve seen this happen most often under the guise of “family-friendly” policies, or “inclusivity”—concepts that again play on the degree to which women are socialized to prioritize the feelings and desires of others (especially men) above our own.  I’m all for inclusivity.  But that concept comes to a dead stop at my epidermis.  I have no obligation to anyone when it comes to access to my body, or decisions that affect my body. Relinquishing control over my body is not “inclusive”, it is self-abnegating, self-destructive and abusive. The suggestion that women should be open to hearing or considering the views, opinions, preferences of their partners when it comes to birth is a grotesque parody: tokenism and “equality” in a situation that can never be equivalent.

*

I informed my husband within a few hours of meeting him that I give birth at home with no interference from anyone, and if this struck him as a problem, I wasn’t interested in having coffee with him ever again, let alone getting involved. I really respect him for basically being up front about the fact that not only did he have zero grounds for even having an opinion on the topic, but that he also didn’t really care that much.

*

In my fifteen years of involvement in the natural birth community, including being present at hundreds of births, it is my observation that most men don’t care too much about birth.  This isn’t an accusation, or a bad thing.  Men have no context for caring about birth, compared with the wholesale investment that birth demands of women.  Some men profess an opinion about birth as a way to proclaim their progressiveness and virtue, which sadly fits into our current climate of liberal feminism in which men continue to insert themselves into conversations that don’t pertain to them, crying “reverse sexism” and “misandry”.

*

I tend to think that for some men, a big show of concern over the birth choices of their partners has more to do with a desire to exert control than sincere worry about whether or not the mother of his child is going to kill their baby or herself.  If we take the latter at face value though, it sort of boggles my mind that any woman would tolerate the insulting paternalism of a man assuming that women are too incompetent or stupid to figure giving birth out properly without imploding. Humans are mammals.

 *

Over the decade we have been married and making babies, my husband’s quiet appreciation of the way I have chosen to birth our babies has increased along with his understanding of just how nonexistent his authority is over the process.

*

As it should be.