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The state of childbirth today is profoundly, specifically, a feminist issue. Women and babies are routinely tortured and abused during hospital birth, and this abuse is so effectively normalized that women are convinced they have chosen it, have consented to it, or that they need it. This is a direct result of sex inequality, and industrial birth is the most potent example of sex inequality in a culture that obscures and naturalizes sexism with orwellian deftness. The following, is how “consent” works in the context of industrial birth:
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“My point about consent is that it is intrinsically not an equal concept. It was originally created to legitimize the state in its rule over people within it. It’s about the relation between rulers and ruled. This is a hierarchy. It does not belong in an equality theory. Consent exists to rationalize the power of the powerful over the powerless. That is what the concept is for. We attribute to somebody who can’t leave, who can’t stop the situation, who can’t prevent it, who can’t avoid it, we attribute consent to them, in order to rationalize what is being done to them. Consent is seen as valid when sex inequality is not considered. But once sex inequality is the approach to the problem, the concept of consent has no valid role in the analysis.”
– MacKinnon
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