Rant

Ok, I know I’m pregnant and therefore a little more volatile emotional. This isn’t about my pregnancy (one would hope no one ever makes this mistake with me). This is one of those ‘unspoken’ injustices that women face whilst pregnant. Something that makes my blood boil.

In the US a woman was refused a single glass of wine, on the basis that she was pregnant.

EXCUSE ME?!?

If you have ever been in public with a sizable baby bump you will have experienced the way society seems to consider you public property. People stare. People ask improper questions. People touch your belly without permission. People [try to] make decisions for you. It is ridiculous, ludicrous and at times offensive.

For some reason society at large hasn’t come to grips with what we won waaaay back in the 60′s; A woman’s body is her own. Full stop. No debate.

Adults are considered capable of, and responsible for, acknowledging and managing risks in their lives. To drink or not to drink. What diet and exercise is appropriate. To drive or not. To base-jump or not. What drugs (prescription and otherwise) to consume. How much sleep to get. Each of these decisions have risks, health implications and consequences.

We trust each other to make these decisions daily. Unless you are a pregnant woman.

Should we prevent pregnant women from buying Nurofen because it can seriously harm a developing foetus? Should Sushi Train discriminate against pregnant women? Should Coles prevent you from buying soft cheese if you have a baby bump? Some essential oils are considered an abortifacient, so should pregnant women be denied perfume in case they catch a whiff of Clary Sage?

Yes I am getting extreme. I am trying to make a point. My pregnant body is still mine. When my child is born it will be entrusted to me, it’s mother. I am capable of making proper decisions about my body and my baby. You wouldn’t dream of interjecting about what foods a mother feeds her baby, or what she consumes whilst breastfeeding so extend the same courtesy to her when she is pregnant.

Of course there are 2 sides to any story;

Do you feel a misplaced sense of responsibility for pregnant women (or the children they are carrying)?

Or do you wish people would leave well enough alone when you are ‘expecting’?

*This is the blog that sparked my wrath and I got the pic here

More certain, not more prepared

I was a super prepared mum-to-be. Borderline obsessive. My midwife commented a number of times during my labour that I was simply ‘too composed’ for a first time Mum. My birth was so tranquil that no one knew when I had hit transition.

I had done my homework and yet there were a million things I was totally blindsided by. The baby, for one. His Daddy placed him on my chest and I was shocked. Where the hell did this little person come from and why was everybody looking at me, waiting? Then there was the placenta. I have to birth that too? Now?! Can’t I have a rest first? Then there was the size of the placenta – it was over 2kg (that is over 4 pounds)! Then there was the blood, the hemorrhoids, the discomfort of the first feed – I thought I birthed a baby, not a damn vacuum - and the contracting uterus.

Then after it all, everybody went home. And left me alone, in a dark room, with a newborn baby. Suddenly my preparation came sharply into perspective; I was about to climb Mt. Everest in a sundress and my supplies consisted of glossy magazines and a picnic basket. I was beyond screwed – I had screwed up. I hadn’t had any sleep in over 24 hours, I had exerted more energy than I knew I had and I was now responsible for a human in its most vulnerable state. I did the only thing I could do.

Me: You can’t go. I have no idea what I’m doing!

Midwife: (Smiling) You will be fine.

Me: No, seriously, no-one would have trusted me with a newborn yesterday – what’s changed?

Midwife: Try to get some rest. When he stirs breastfeed him. Change his nappy if he needs it. Press the call button if you need to.

That night certainly wasn’t the last I have laid awake confused, overwhelmed, scared as a parent. There is no terror more potent than fearing for the health/safety of your child. And yet, I signed up for round two. Am I more prepared, you ask? No, not really. I have just come to realise there is no greater privilege, joy or fulfillment for me than to utter the first words I said to my son; ‘I’m your Mummy. I’m going to take care of you. And you can be anything you want to be.’

Big Scary Adult Stuff

I clearly remember coining that phrase when I was 20. Big. Scary. Adult stuff. I was faced with the prospect of letting myself truly love for the first time, and I was shitting myself. There was definitely something between us – but nothing like I had felt for boyfriends before. We danced around it. We let it fester. We de-constructed it brick by brick and hurled them at each other – me out of fear and him out of frustration – we were on target and we drew blood. When he put it to me – we try this time or I’m walking away – I froze, sheer terror gripped me and I ran from him into the pouring rain.

The only way I could explain my reaction, my angst, my ineptitude was Big Scary Adult stuff. My friends immediately related. I felt unprepared. I was taught advanced calculus but not this? I was overwhelmed. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I felt alone. Even if I had the words to ask for help, who would I ask? I was terrified. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I know a lot is at stake.

I hoped the Big Scary Adult Stuff would ease. But the truth is that Big Scary Adult Stuff multiplies. I prayed that I would wake up a competent adult one day and feel capable, brave and knowing. The truth is that I am more of those things every day and the adult stuff just gets bigger and scarier. Being vulnerable and open is hard; watching your vulnerable and open child be rejected – is anguishing. Not knowing how to help yourself is painful; being helpless to loved one is excruciating.

The more I grow into my adulthood – if I can indeed claim to be an adult at 26 – the more compassion I have for myself and the more reverence for my elders. The shit just grows bigger and more terrifying; facing it daily with grace THAT is the definition of adulthood.

I did give him and answer in the end. He showed up hours later dripping wet in my office doorway, in his vintage leather jacket and faded jeans. Perhaps if I had chosen the blue pill, the stuff I’m facing now wouldn’t be so big or scary.

What big scary adult stuff are you facing?

*photo credit

Making room at the table

Standing in the ruins of gender roles, nuclear families and male dominance I am experiencing a backflip that I never would have anticipated. I am a woman. I am a feminist. I am a mother of a son. I love my husband. I have been vocal and active in women’s issues since I was old enough to participate, much younger than many would have liked. Injustice irks me. I have a stubborn, and at times irrational, belief that the world should be fair, equitable, respectful, even and just. This was the fuel in my feminist fire.

Now 20 years later I am faced with the repercussions of a movement I have wholeheartedly supported since I was 6. The changes feminism & affirmative action yielded (increased rights for women, increased participation in the workforce, autonomy over their bodies, a belief that they can be anything they want to be) are positive and necessary but they aren’t the only consequences. Gender roles are crumbling and the traditional patriarchal power of the male is diminishing our men are lost and looked over or lashing out at women in insidious or overtly violent ways.

Since the 1980′s when women’s liberation started gaining exponential ground a few other things have been charging along aside it. Violence against women has increased since the 1980′s and no one has a clear indication as to why. The media’s generic ideal of beauty has steadily become less and less attainable while it has become more expensive and more painful to achieve. Popular culture has adopted a soft core porn sensibility and pornography has become more extreme casting women in scenes where they are sexually abused, unfulfilled and humiliated. Marriage is on the decline, perhaps because women feel less obligated to play their part, but perhaps because more women are tertiary educated and successful and thus find it difficult to find a suitable mate.

Why is it harder to find a suitable mate? This is my major concern as a mother of a son; as women have made giant leaps forward our men seem to be floundering. Boys are left in the dust by girls is all levels of education from primary through to tertiary. Statistically men were hit harder in the GFC than women and of the industries set to boom in the coming decades most of them employ a vast majority of women. Whilst women are more likely to become depressed than men, men are less likely to seek help and more likely to suicide as a result. Parents are, for the first time in history beginning to prefer girl babies than sons.

So whilst women still have ways to go to reach equality, I think all of our children would be better served if we looked to create a bright and equal future for girls and boys. Because the rights of one group should never come at the cost of another. If we haven’t learned this, then history has taught us nothing and we are no better than sexists and the bigots that fought to preserve the good life for white men alone. I have every intention of teaching my son how to respect a woman, how to appreciate her for what she is and not how she compares to props in porn videos, to listen to what she says and to acknowledge her boundaries. I will also be teaching him how wonderful he is in his own right, how to work, live, love and compete with his equals (male and female), how to ask for help when he needs it and to not accept injustice on the basis of gender.

*image credit

Is objectification a prerequisite for sex?

“I have no problem with women objectifying men in ads, or men objectifying women in ads. Because, really, the only reason we [humans] are still here after 65 million years, is because someone has been shagging.”  - The Gruen Transfer.

I’m sorry, did I miss something? Since when was objectification a prerequisite for sex? Is it because I am a woman that sex to me is more than visual attraction and physical possession?

Need I be terrified that men today subscribe to this theory that in order to perform a most intimate act, which is at its heart prone to our deepest vulnerabilities, they must first objectify their partner and presumably protect their manliness? Have I got it all wrong? Please tell me I have it all wrong.

I understand that sex isn’t always a beautiful thing. Sometimes is it about pure base attraction, heat, pheromones, friction, sweat and climax. Great sex for the sake of great sex, is still great sex. But can it really be great if it is essentially one object fucking another? Barbie and Ken in the sack was never the hottest idea.

Something tells me that our pop culture adopting the values and aesthetics of soft porn may have something to do with this theory. And really, the Gruen Transfer is a show about advertising and we all know that the advertising industry have been justifying the proliferation of the male gaze and over-sexualisation with the simple catchphrase ‘Sex sells”. The prude in me asks; at what cost.

Everybody with two grey cells to rub together knows that the brain is our sexiest organ. If it weren’t then natural selection over the past 65 million years would have produced an aesthetically superior race by now. And that simply isn’t the case. So, how is it that a comment about objectification on a national TV program so flippantly accepts objectification as a part of sex?

For me all I hear are warning bells. Are our young women growing up understanding the in order to be attractive (and receive physical love) they must come pre-objectified; spray tanned to within an inch of their lives, hair highlighted, teeth bleached, hairless except for that on their heads, carefully styled to appeal to the narrowest possible idea of sexy? Are our young men growing up understanding that in order to be a man they must act like the degrading assholes you see in most porn these days (professional or amateur) and order women around, ‘take’ all three orifices available, include ‘light’ bondage and spanking and end ejaculating on her face?

How oh how can we restore intimacy to sex? I think it begins by reversing the over-sexualisation of our youth, introducing instead real sexual education (i.e. something more than sex is bad and dangerous don’t do it), by adding erotica to challenge the stronghold [mostly] degrading porn has on the ever-growing market, and by individually asking more for our partners. If it is normal these days to objectify, demean, humiliate in our sex lives then I say let’s do something radical like honour, respect, and worship in our sex lives too.

*Photo credit

Uncomfortable bedpartners: Motherhood and Feminism

There is nothing about this subject that isn’t controversial. Everybody has an opinion. everybody has a mother, everybody knows mothers, everybody has direct experience with working mothers, stay at home mothers and children. Everybody has a vested interest in the next generation being large, healthy and productive members of society.

Despite everybody’s vested interest, we are willing to lump the responsibility of raising the next generation in the laps of the few willing to take on motherhood. Any yet, despite this seeming imbalance everybody seems to have an opinion, a judgement on how those mothers are carrying out their role. That makes ‘Motherhood’ dangerous territory.

With, quite literally, millions of people judging you and your performance as Mother and no KPI’s to guide you, except for pleasing everybody and their disparate demands of what Motherhood should look like (and even what motherhood feel like), being a ‘good’ mother is inherently impossible and ultimately guilt ridden. How can it not be when we fail in every single moment, by someone else’s standards?

Feminism and motherhood have always had a rocky relationship. Motherhood really is at the heart of many of the difficulties women as a collective face. These difficulties have led to imbalance and feminism seeks to eliminate the imbalances in society based on gender. So, Motherhood seems to be the elephant in the room. If women didn’t have burden of motherhood then their participation in the workforce would be higher, it would be more continuous (no pesky maternity leave to contend with), we could just tackle equal pay and housework and everything would be dandy. Oh, except if women as a collective didn’t have the capacity to bear children we would be men – and masculinity as the sole focal point of society is what Feminism is fighting, isn’t it?

Feminism is fighting for the rights of women; for the recognition that women are equal to men, irrespective of the inherent differences between the sexes. Irrespective of our responsibility to birth the next generation.

I am a feminist. I am a mother. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. It is possible to be a ‘good mother’ and a ‘good feminist’. We just need to get on the same page. Feminism doesn’t just serve women by eradicating ‘gender roles’ and making way for women to enter the workforce. Feminism serves women by highlighting the injustices women face in gender roles and in the workforce and working to eliminate these injustices.

I was sent a link by the lovely Elle from GenYElle to an article in The Australian about Elisabeth Badinter’s book Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, that will soon be translated to english and available in Australia. Badinter raises some excellent issues that plague motherhood. But, for me, many of her conclusions are ill thought out and some downright selfish. She points out that extended breastfeeding ‘deprives [couples] of their romantic relationship, and especially their sex life’ as though we are comparing apples and oranges. As though romance and WHO recommendations for child nutrition are equally important.

The decision to have a baby naturally is also not always a ‘moral’ either; there is more to natural birth than elevating oneself in the eyes of fellow mothers. Natural childbirth has drastically lower complication rates for both mother and child. And I see nothing unliberated about making an educated choice about our bodies and following it through with conviction. I agree with her assertion that we over police women during their pregnancies, but stop short of suggesting it is a sound or even liberated decision to smoke or drink whilst pregnant. It also strikes me as odd that she is almost flippant at the ineptitude of fathers ‘Of course men are deficient. So we expect the state to fulfil its duty as equally responsible for the wellbeing and education of the new child.’ What the? Isn’t it the role of feminism to encourage equality?

All in all Badinter raises issues that I believe need to be discussed. Society at large needs to be aware of the real experience of motherhood. The truth of motherhood that isn’t all sunshine, lollipops and Huggies ads. Liberation is being valued and recognised for who we are and what we contribute, not putting our wants (alcohol, partying, romantic trysts) before the needs of our children.

Having said all of this, I simply cannot wait for her book to be released so I can read it in its entirety. It is no doubt a book worth reading.

The gold is spoiling my grass

I was once told the story of an old man. I have no idea where this story comes from, so if you know let me know so I can attribute it here.

This old man is negative, grumpy, set in his ways. He wants more money; everything is expensive, prices are rising and he longs for the days when he was a boy and prices were reasonable. One morning he wakes to a pile of gold bullion stacked in his front yard. His response ‘Oh gosh darn it! That gold is ruining my grass!’

I realised a moment ago that I am that man! I was reading the honest and inspired blog of Ronna Detrick Renegade Conversations. Ronna wrote the following:

I don’t want to stay dry in my relationships. I want them wild and messy and juicy. By that admission, this means they will be hard, confusing, potentially disappointing, and require much vulnerability and risk. At this point in my life I don’t want safety or surety. I want passion, abandon, fiery integrity, brutal truth, and raw beauty. I want to get wet.

First let me say Wow! Fearless honesty should always be applauded! My relationship is wild, definitely messy and juicy (in the personal growth sense) right now. It is hard, really hard, deep, slow work. And to do the work we have had to face paralysing fears, speak searingly painful truths and embrace a vulnerability I have never known before.

What a powerful re-frame. ‘Wet’ is a magic new paradigm. I am not ‘going through stuff’, ‘in a rough patch’, ‘falling apart’. I am jumping into the depths of my marriage, our love, with both feet. I am getting wet.

Not my usual thing, but it’s ‘unspoken’ so I’ll say it…

Ok ladies, it is time to talk about your pelvic floor. Before you freak and go all ‘but I’m not a mother!?#!’ on me listen to this:

Your gorgeous stiletto heels &/or your beautiful babies will be the reason you are using Tenna pads at 50.

Yup you heard me right. Your shoes, those beautiful peep toes and pumps can cause a weakened pelvic floor. This takes ‘bladder weakness’ from the Mum category and places it firmly in the woman category. So unless you want to be avoiding running, laughing, heels and all kinds of fun womanly things listen up. And the answer is NOT ‘do pelvic floor contractions to the point of exhaustion‘ like so many books prescribe.

Your pelvic floor is a sling of muscles between your sacrum (pointy end of your spine) and your pubis synthesis (the part that just aches for no reason in pregnancy) the front center of your pelvic bones. It should be like a trampoline; taught, but not tight to the point of toughness. Think of it like a man’s guns (yeah that got your attention); you want to see the muscle ripple when he picks something up, and you want the muscle to yield and feel softish to the touch. You don’t want him to feel like a brick wall and look like an ape.

Now for this trampoline pelvic floor to happen you need both ends of the muscle to be working in different directions. Think of a hammock. You know the lovely things that you lay in on a tropical holiday sipping a pina colida? Well that hammock is tied to two strong coconut trees, right? Right. Fortunately you don’t have coconut trees in your nether regions, so you need to rely on strong muscles acting on bone. In this case the answer is a strong pelvic floor, achieved through a reasonable number of kegels and strong glutes, achieved through squats.

So, ditch the guilt that you aren’t doing your quota of PC contractions and do some PC contractions in a squat. You can find the pictures about how to squat properly here and the video that explains everything (IS safe for work) and isn’t freaky at all here.

*Image credit

Dinosaurs beware! The feminists are coming.

Men, heroes, archetypally go out in the world and take on dragons, armies, pirates, rescue damsels, explore foreign lands, build empires, and launch crusades. It is the way of the hero, the masculine, to learn and grow through external challenges.

Women, heroines, archetypically heal the sick, create life, nurture, love, celebrate and teach. It is the way of the heroine to learn and grow through personal challenges, issues of relationship and of the heart.

Masculine energy finds its greatness by breaking free of the everyday while feminine energy manifests its greatness by fully connecting to the everyday and the divinity to be found there.

I am not to say that a woman’s place is gathered around the hearth and the man’s is to be out hunting and exploring the wider world. Such a simplistic conclusion assumes that a woman is totally feminine and a man solely masculine. Each of is has an intricate mix of both energies. We are each masculine and feminine, ying and yang. Which is why it insults all of us when the feminine attributes of humanity are disrespected.

Feminism should never have been about giving women the opportunity to prove that they could be heroes and do what men do best, just as well as men. Unfortunately, however we had to combat the erroneous assumption that women were both different to and lesser than our male counterparts. Now that it is [mostly] recognised that women and men are equal it is time to move on to the real role of feminism; equal recognition, respect and reverence for feminine attributes, roles, decisions, contributions, stories and perspectives.

So to those people who still believe raising children is less important than spending 8 hours a day in an office cubical – you are a dinosaur. The face of feminism is changing. No longer are women who rally and burn their bras the iconic feminists. Today feminists are just as likely men as women and they effect change on a personal level, one person, company or situation at a time. Dinosaurs beware! The feminists are coming.

*Photo credit

When did we disown our tears?

“The energy that moves life is the force of the Feminine.

She is unstoppable . . .” David Deida

There is something very feminine about tears. We rarely admit it, but there is something very feminine about tantrums. It is equally feminine to stand chin out, defiant, protecting ourself or someone we love. It is feminine to want to sparkle and feminine to fold into ourselves and shy away from the world for a time.

The feminine wants to connect and she pines and yearns for that connection. When the connection is lacking she naturally goes within. She withdraws, ponders, searches. Or she lashes out; resentment, anger, fury, rage, payback. We disown all these reactions, constructive and destructive alike. We play nice, we eat, shop, drink, run… we do whatever we have to. (Another blog for another day the need to ‘do’ when ‘being’ would suffice.)

How much of ourselves do we lose, do you think, every time we resist our nature? How much energy do we waste trying to make the ebb and flow of our selves fit into a PC box?

At what point did we disown our tears? What is it that we have prioritised higher than honouring ourselves? What do we fear our tears, our vulnerability, our wildness will threaten? This is such a revealing question for me. I don’t risk losing love by surrendering to my nature – my friends borderline expect it from me and my husband rises to meet it, as opposed to shying away from it. Rationally I know this. Breathing it in and letting it permeate my cells… such a transformation is, well, fucking scary.

I think for me, my tears and wildness risk losing me the labels ‘nice’ and ‘together’. That my inner chicken shit prefers me to play at half throttle and remain in the box that says ‘strong women don’t cry’, ‘you are responsible for how others feel about you’ and ‘emotions are to be controlled or leveraged in the form of EI‘. I think I am afraid of constantly justifying my desires and explaining my moods. Terrified that my intuition is fearless. Anxious because I am sure my feminine nature is a hard task master that will lead me down unconventional paths. She has in the past.

At some point the fear of vilification mutes the bright colours that streak our world. I want to be living in full colour. Hell fire-engine red is my colour! My inner feminine is ready to be juicy, open, sassy, fearless, exuberant, vivacious, unapologetic, radiant, magnetic, wild and free.

I am claiming my tears, my funk, my tantrums, my seething rage, my desire, my lust, my vulnerability. Lets see what happens when I abandon myself to the flux of the feminine force – I’ll keep you posted

The other emotions

Anger I can do. Frustration and I are friends. ‘Meh’ isn’t an emotion, it is more a mode. But you know exactly what I mean when I say that is how I am feeling.

The world is ok with the good emotions (for the most part). We can handle the fiery emotions. But we cannot even name the other negative emotions that plague us. You remember these?

Loneliness, Anxiety, Rejection, Jealousy,

Mourning, Resentment, Regret, Helplessness

We have a collective delusion that these emotions are ‘icky’, that they are shameful, that we have no right to feel them. We subscribe to the notion that someone in a happy relationship should never feel lonely. That a confident person never feels anxious. That it is only acceptable to mourn when a loved one passes. Even then many don’t allow themselves to ‘indulge’ that emotion. Socially regret is frowned upon – if you have regrets then you are obviously not living life to the fullest.

It’s crap. Total bullshit! A life fully lived spans the full gamut of human emotions. Disowning some of our emotions results in us suppressing them, ignoring them, bottling them up, looking for a fix. We never settle into them, accept them, honour them.

Recently I have felt lonely, anxious, rejected, mourning, resentment and helplessness. I am not a sad sack. I enjoy my life. But I am fully human. And I am a more balanced adult when I own all my emotions.

What emotions have you owned or disowned recently?

Lets talk about … My fine line

There is a fine line, at least in my pretty little head, between submitting to someone else’s will and choosing to find happiness in someone else’s happiness.

You might need to read that one again. It is a really, really, fine line.

This is a really complicated issue. At least for me. The concept of submitting to the will of another is abhorrent to me. It makes my blood run cold and every single cell in my body rebels against it. As a woman especially, I harks back to millennia of women without an avenue to exercise their own will. Similarly though the concept of finding happiness in someone else’s happiness reeks of the feminine mystique, of 1850′s housewives socially trapped into living only for their husband’s and children.

The key here, I guess, is choice. Choice is what we have been fighting for, isn’t it? Somehow some choices still seem to betray myself, my gender. The difference between an enlightened, empowered choice and a choice that flies in the face of my freedoms and rights? Awareness.

Conscious choice makes all the difference. Conscious choice is the only thing that makes the life of a modern wife and stay at home mother different to that of her 1950′s counterpart. I am choosing fulfillment in my role as domestic goddess. They had no other option.

I chose to marry because it was important to my husband. Not out of fear. I chose to remain at home raising my son, because it is honestly the hardest, toughest, most fulfilling thing I have ever undertaken. And I don’t back away from a challenge. What makes my choices, in my mind, revolutionary and rebellious and empowered is that I am aware of every choice I make. I put my life under the microscope and analyse who I am in the face of my freedoms and choices.

I walk a fine line. My priorities and daily tasks are essentially for my family. My self inquiry, my honesty with (and about) what goes on for me in my heart and head in response to this, that is my saving grace. Conscious choice is the difference between oppressed and living breathing empowerment.

I bet I am not the only woman steadily walking this line. What lines do you walk?

(excuse the late post, I am trying a new parenting style today and it is labor intensive.)