the thing is like. i get that it’s scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body
but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.
the lies around pregnancy - that it’s inherently safe, that it doesn’t do you permanent damage, that it’s only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like
all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that
there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are
but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo
this is a process that permanently changes most people’s bodies, and that’s even if the pregnancy doesn’t do them like. severe illness or injury
and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that
bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent
the number of people who are pregnant and don’t know about what induced labour entails and what post partum bleeding is horrifies me
Here is a story about the depths to which pregnant people are seen as a vessel for a baby, and the importance of finding prenatal care that assumes you are a human and not a baby holder:
When I was pregnant I was in a million forums for pregnant people because (cough adhd hyperfixation) and I had something called SPD (Symphysis pubis dysfunction) (not Sensory Processing Disorder though I also have that) which is where your pubic bones separate early (more or less) because they get all loosey goosey as your body gets ready to crank that baby out.
Except my pubic bone got confused and got misaligned at like 3 months pregnant. I could barely walk. I couldn’t roll over in bed. Doing something that required me to shift my weight from one foot to another like opening a door knob was like an excruciatingly painful knife being stabbed into my pubic bone, I can’t express how intense and blinding it was.
So I am in one million baby forums like “am I dying what is happening why is there a knife in my pubic bone” and all these people are like “I have that too! my doctor says it’s normal and not to worry because it doesn’t hurt the baby. I just deal with it by laying in bed for months in excruciating pain and think about how lucky I am to be having a little miracle growing in my body.”
So lol nope. I went to my midwife and they are like, “Oh squeeze a can between your knees look up a physical therapy youtube on SPD” and I did that can-squeeze thing and it CURED THE PROBLEM in ONE DAY. I had been SUFFERING, y'all, it felt miraculous.
And I was so full of rage (flames, flames on the side of my face) that people are being told “Oh, it’s NORMAL just deal with it” “It doesn’t hurt the baby.” Like, look, yes it’s NORMAL but it’s 100% treatable!!! SPD (again, not Sensory processing disorder) affects 1 in 5 pregnant people.
I was lucky to have amazing midwives (need a gender neutral term for that profession, but they see pregnant men and women)(side note highly recommend midwives if you are gender nonconfirming/a man/etc) and I have DOZENS of examples of shit like this.
(Another example is post partum friends being like “oh I am peeing my pants 900x day after giving birth” and my doctor says it’s NORMAL so I just dealt with it for decades. My midwives were like “Oh that’s normal and also physical therapy cures that in like 2 sessions”)
When my sister was looking to get pregnant she was given the best advice. She was told that being pregnant is an experience akin to being in a moderate sized car crash, in terms of risk and lasting injury.
Some people in moderate car crashes are very lucky, and walk away with zero injury. Some are very unlucky, and die. But most people fall into the third category, where they’ll be injured at the time, then heal, and then for the rest of their life they have some minor and liveable complication from the injury. Like a knee that lets you know when the rain is coming, or a back that doesn’t like seats without lumbar support, or a shoulder that never quite gets its full range of motion back.
The vast majority of people survive and thrive, like. But their body is never the same again. And people should know that when they make the choice of whether to put their body through that or not
my mom had a complication postpartum that caused pain and swelling in her left leg. at the time she was told it was “milk leg” and that it was normal and she’d be fine, but it never went away or got better. she finally found a doctor recently who was willing to do some tests and found out it’s a condition called “May-Thurner syndrome” and had surgery to fix it
she’s been suffering with this since she gave birth to me. I’m 38 years old. she had that surgery last week.
there needs to be more dialogue about the things your body goes through during pregnancy. “that’s normal” or “everyone goes through that” need to stop being used to shut down conversations about the horrific, permanent damage that can be done to bodies during pregnancy and childbirth. just because it’s “normal” doesn’t mean it needs to be endured
Childbirth is widely recognized to be one of the most excruciatingly painful things a human can experience and often causes permanent damage or disability, on top of risk of psychological trauma and extreme depression or psychosis from rapid changes in hormones.
Anti abortion, pro-natalist, “traditional” types just pretend none of this exists and make up a version of reality where people giving birth will magically not be distressed or traumatized by, for example, needing their genitals ripped open and stitched back together, because childbirth is Natural and Supposed To Happen, so the pain, injury, and risk of disability or trauma don’t “count” as those things in the same way they would if there was a violent accident.
Having listened to a lot of pro-lifers speak
I think some of these folks think women are automatically not going to be traumatized or feel horrified or really suffer in a fully human way, from pregnancy and childbirth, because that’s what women are For.
And to accept that women can feel and perceive pregnancy and childbirth to be just as distressing and traumatizing as any equally excruciating, physically violating, potentially lethal or disabling event, would explode their entire worldview, because that’s the Point of women, that’s what a woman Is, a thing that is Supposed To do that.
So even if they are women themselves, they convince themselves that God/nature has miraculously made pregnancy and childbirth an Exception to typical human reactions to things.
So when somebody says “That sounds awful and I would do anything to stop that from happening to me.” they think that this feeling will be erased by a magic cloud if the person actually got pregnant.
Acting like people aren’t capable of feeling the full range of emotions about something because of their biology is really dehumanizing! Just because somebody has the capability to give birth, doesn’t mean their minds cannot experience it as a nightmare, a torture, or a trauma.
It is the same horrid dehumanization of insisting that every woman will have a magic switch flip in her head that will throw every previous opinion in the garbage and make her want to have baby baby baby baby.
I just….I just learned that there’s a word in the English language…for when you run into someone to hug them with all the enthusiasm and strength you have….I learned that it’s called glomp.
My God, English has so many words to describe physical intimacy, I’m in love
OP, do not remind me.
If you weren’t there for the days of Green Deviantart then you’ll never understand my physical pain at reading this
I hate 2 say it but being a part of a “weird” subculture does not meaningfully inoculate you against a conservative moralizing impulse. You gotta unlearn that. Saying “cringe is dead” is not enough, you have to actually be okay with things that discomfort, perplex and/or disgust you.
Additionally, if you have an impulse to exclude or punish people for making you uncomfortable, examine why that is.
