so im taking womens anthropology. and right now we are learning about birth, cross culturaly. which i am finding interesting. it is making me realize how depended on technology we are in this culture. oh my god it even starts when we are born. in the book we are reading there was even and interview with a nurse and she herself said that working in the delivery ward is like working on an assembly line. its all about go go go. get the women preped. get the baby out. make sure they are both healthy and then move onto the next one.
but that is not really what has me thinking. even though i could go on about how we are stuck on technology for hours. the ironic thing is that this is comming from the girl who has a cell phone, ipod, laptop and a car....so maybe i should not talk.
the thing that did strike me in class today was the fact that the author of the book that we are reading said that the whole studying of birth gig is best left up to women. she basically says that women will do a better and more efficent job. and if thats not enough the part that annoyed me was that even girls who dont want kids...or never plan on having kids. would do a better job studying the birth process then a man who is intrested in, or wants kids. i might be wrong but this sounds alot like sexism. okay i will agree that women my have a better advantage studying the whole birth and pregnancy process then men do.
they have this advantage becasue women will actually be allowed into the birthing hut in some cultures and areas around the world. well men are forbidden just because it is the culture, or becasue for a pregnant women who is giving birth is just really uncomfortable with the idea of a strange guy being there. well she may be less uncomfortable with a strage girl being there. do in that way i can see why girls would have an advantage. but i still do not belive that it should be said that guys would do a bad job.
for one. lets take north america, look at how many of the doctors here actually are men. in this culture where we are tought that it is not gender that gets you were you wanna be but it is intrest, hard work and education. so that means that women had the opertunity to be doctors and yet there are alot more men then there are women. so...men must be interested in the birthing process. and men must wanna study it, some men,. and men must be educated in how the body works and what to do. if this were not the case i dont know about you but i would seriously be questioning this countries doctors. even my doctor specializes in pregnant women. and my doctor is a guy. so you know what..i think this shows that yes guys can be interested and yes they can do an excellent job studying the birthing process if they were interested and deticated to what it was that they are studying.
One more point from me and then i will stop the rambling of this topic. there are so many different aspects one can take when studying the birthing process. yes, there is the actual birth but that is just a small part of it. there is also the whole other nine months. thoes nine months that the women is growing, and changing. the husband or partner is as well. he may not being going through all the physical changes that the women is but things are chaning. some fathers say that it even though they have been married for a while it is not untill their wife is pregnant that they start to realize that it is not all about them anymore, they are going to have a family that they feel that they have to protect and look after. a male may not be able to go into the birth hut, but well that is happening he could talk with the men. get the mens perspective. see how the men are growing and changing well the women is growing. couple grow together, or at least that is what i am always told. and what appears to happen.
so why is it then that we only have case studies on the women during the birth process? what is going on with the husbands and the other men in the family. i know a women carrying a baby for nine months, that whole process of another human being created out of what seems like nothing is facinating. what she goes through, and what she deals with.
but when has anyone done reserch on the guys? how they are changing? what they are going through? and how they deal with it?
how do these two people grow toghether
2 comments:
"but when has anyone done reserch on the guys? how they are changing? what they are going through? and how they deal with it?"
I would be utterly fascinated to read about stuff like this. You see piles of books on the woman's side of things, I suppose because of the concept that she gets pregnant, is the host for the baby, then births it -- men are "only the catalyst" in a lot of people's minds. But you never see books on how the maternity process effects the males, especially in different cultures.
I agree about the doctor thing. We've had the same family doctor since before I was born, over eighteen years, and he was the doctor present at my birth! I will concede that female doctors who have born children might be more empathetic and knowledgeable than the males, since they've gone through the process themselves -- so I would class male doctors and female doctors who have never been pregnant in the same category.
(An addendum to this is that every woman's pregnancy is different, so even female doctors who have born children may be even less empathetic than male doctors. A female doctor who had an easy pregnancy might be condescending towards a woman who's undergoing rough labor. So its very individualistic.)
I'd love to read that book when you're done with it -- it sounds like we'll both have good and bad things to say about it.
"i might be wrong but this sounds alot like sexism. [sic]"
One thing I've noticed about some aspects of Feminism is that sometimes it is itself ironically sexist. The Feminist movement was never about raising women above men in the social hierarchy, it was about putting them on equal footing with men. When I hold a door for someone, it is not because they are a woman, but because they are a person. Chivalry died with Womens' Lib (and rightly so) as a facet of the old patriarchy. Same rights, same responsibilities.
The more radical members of the Feminist movement, such as those that decry the male sex as a mistake of nature, do nothing to progress our society into a new understanding. Instead, they perpetuate the same condescending view that men had of women, only now it is the reverse.
Admittedly, the Feminist movement does still have work to do. Men still hold more jobs in higher positions of authority and are still paid higher salaries (on average) than women.
It is true that men and some women will not have the same intimate knowledge of pregnancy and birth that others will. But this does not mean that they can be any less objective in their studies of the subject. In fact, I would argue the opposite.
~The Muse
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