Write a peer conversation post to the following discussion to dig into the topic of womens bodies.
Including one direct quote from the reading attached.
Femininity is a quality of acting in a typically womanly, girlish, or feminine way. Different cultures have different ideas of what femininity looks like, as well as different ideas of what childbirth looks like. Birthing choices have become reflective on tensions embedded in femininity causing conflicting ideas in relation to dignity, purity and the messiness of birth Because femininity is constructed in opposition to physical exertion, the strength and endurance to engage in bodily work is coded as a masculine attribute.women then face a paradox when confronting the physicality of vaginal birth: do they embark on the messy, intense, possibly painful and decidedly physically exertive experience of labor and vaginal delivery, or do they adhere more closely to the politics of passivity prescribed by normative femininity?(Does Labor Mean Work?). These assumptions, contradictions, about womens bodies have come to be reflected on understanding of moral and normal construction on a womens selflessness. Allowing it to be a core trait of femininity and motherhood, especially when it comes to enduring pain, as it is typically looked upon as accomplishing the rite of passage to motherhood.
Medicalization is the process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems often requiring medical treatment, that is why pregnancy and childbirth have become increasingly medicalized around the world. The social ideals are managed and overlooked by medical professionals that typically involve a high degree of technological medical intervention and contact with clinics and hospitals. The concept of medicalization is helpful in making the contingent social and institutional process known, death, depression, and short attention span are other examples of processes or conditions that have undergone intense medicalization. In general, medicalization comes with both benefits and burdens, and the medicalization of pregnancy and birth is no exception. Increasingly few obstetricians would claim that intense medicalization straightforwardly promotes good birth outcomes for mothers and infants; rather, almost all would acknowledge that while medical interventions have lessened many risks. Though there are the conceptions that medicalization does come with burdens bad consequence is that, insofar as the institution of medicine focuses on human beings as objects (i.e. as bodies), the medicalization process potentially undermines seeing ourselves as subjects; it potentially undermines our subjectivity. When we argue, say, against the medicalization of badness e.g., against treating criminal behavior as the symptom of a psychiatric disorder we are arguing against the view of ourselves as objects at the mercy of forces beyond ourselves, and for the view of ourselves as subjects who can choose,(On Good and Bad Forms of Medicalization (Links to an external site.)).
North American births typically involve a variety of technological techniques, including labor-inducing drugs, spinal epidurals, fetal monitoring, and in roughly one third of birthsurgical delivery. Prior to birth, most pregnancies will involve medical interventions such as genetic testing, ultrasound screening, prescriptions to control various symptoms and risks. Some dimensions of the medicalization of pregnancy do not directly involve medical interventions. Both inside and outside the clinic, pregnancy is treated as a medical event requiring intense risk management, monitoring, and appeals to expert medical knowledge: pregnant women are expected to regulate and monitor their eating, drinking, fetal kicks, weight gain, sleeping position, emotions, exposure to basic household products, exercise, sexual activity, and many other aspects of their lives according to standards established by medical professionals. Society has begun to encourage us to imagine pregnancy and birth as inherently high-risk, pathological processes that it is irresponsible to undertake without large amounts of expert help and surveillance. As well as the fact that medical professionals become the primary managers of reproduction, pregnant women’s epistemic privilege is undermined, and they are arguably reduced to playing passive roles in their own pregnancies and births It may also shed light on why most women expressed a sense of trust and faith in their doctor []; I trusted them. I handed control of myself over to them. I was completely in their hands. (Fenwick et al. 398). That normative femininity devalues a womans ability to endure pain, to work hard, and to prevail in the face of adversity and instead celebrates a womans rescue from difficult situations has material consequences for her bodily experience of birth, (Does Labor Mean Work?). There have been some to argue that medicalization has rendered pregnancy in general, and labor and birth in particular, more alienating and stressful for women, burdening them with constant and complicated responsibilities from risk management and bodily and behavioral. That is why for me personal, I dont see any fault on women for wanting to put all their trust and faith in their doctor, as childbirth is overwhelming and scary, no women should ever be judged or put at fault for putting their trust in a health care professional that has gone to medical school precisely for this, not to mention had delivered babies time and time again. Among this, there are people pushing back against the medicalization of reproduction are those that insist that pregnancy is a natural process that generally needs no technological assistance, and advocate natural childbirth, free of labor-inducing and pain medications and attended by midwives rather than doctors. I could not disagree with that statement anymore, as it is a womens body and a womens choice to determine whether or not they feel mentally and physically up for delivering their own child with or without drugs, or assistance. As in the end, the women is giving birth, whether it’s natural or not the women feels the pain, the soreness for months and years after, not the man and not even the doctor. It is the women’s about her body, it’s her choices and her decision, not anyone else other than herself.