#patriarchal and paternalistic birth practices

[battleangel]

Amerikkka, the beautiful, the land of the free & the home of the...

👁Highest obesity rates

👁Highest gun mortality

👁Highest opioid use, addiction & fatalities

👁Most overprescribed nation on earth

👁One of the highest prescription rates for antidepressants & benzodiazepines

👁One of the highest rates of domestic violence

👁One of the richest countries yet highest incidence of poverty among "advanced democracies" - millions are houseless, food insecure, without medical insurance & lack of a living wage

👁Work hundreds of more hours vs employees in other "developed" countries

👁Excessive environmental abuse (biggest carbon emitter - 3 times worse than China, 2nd in air pollution only to China, water pollution, landfills, food waste, deforestation, natural resource depletion, industrial destruction, destruction of ecosystems, species conservation, deforestation, nuclear accidents, overpopulation, etc.)

👁National obsession with status, consumerism, materialism, overconsumption, fast fashion & addiction to shopping

👁One of the top economies but has a record high of $17.1 trillion in individual debt (student loans, mortgage, auto & credit card)

👁One of the highest costs of living in the world (housing, healthcare, and education)

👁60% of food consumed in US contains additives, preservatives & artificial sweeteners, considerably higher than the rest of the world

👁Tens of thousands of toxic chemicals & synthetics in household, cleaning, body care, makeup products with very little testing, regulations or studies on health and environmental effects

👁Hypersexualized, "pornified" culture that glamorizes sexual objectification, sexual violence & dehumanization while also being sexually repressed, uneducated, unable to establish, determine or decide on boundaries or verbalize when they have been violated, toxic masculinity, rape culture, inability to verbalize desires, inability to discuss sexuality openly and honestly, unhealthy, forced & contrived repression that leads to fetishization, dehumanization, objectification, sex addiction, etc

👁70% of teens & young adults are addicted to social media

👁Over 90% of time in America is spent indoors -- complete & total disconnect with nature

👁Only 7% of Americans practice mindful meditation -- total mind/body disconnect

👁Americans are obessed with "exercise", "the gym", "being fit", "bikini bodies" & "fad diets" yet only 20% work out regularly and the US has the highest obesity rates in the world

👁Dystopian obsession with beauty with the worlds highest plastic surgery rates

👁One of the 10 worst countries for racial equity

👁One of the most paternalistic & patriarchal countries on earth

👁Religious fundamentalism & paternalism is embedded in all aspects of society & culture & wielded as a tool of control

👁Concepts and societal ideals of femininity, motherhood, paternalism, fundamentalism, conservatism, religious dogma, chastity, modesty, purity, the cult of woman as a sacrificial lamb and the mother as a dehumanized symbol of selflessness and sublimation are all used to control and deny women's bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom while poverty is feminized and more women than men in the US live in poverty, work minimum and low wage jobs, are overrepresented in service jobs, make less per dollar than men for the same work and have no access to paid maternity leave or universal childcare yet they are the ones in many states forced to have children they dont want, many as single mothers, with little or no social safety net with no exception depending on the state for rape, abusive partner, coercive partner, mental & physical health of the woman, the woman's childfree or antinatalist beliefs, the woman's employment status, whether she has health care, whether she has a phobia of pregnancy and/or childbirth, whether she would be traumatized being forced to give birth if she doesn't want to be a mother, when it is her livelihood, career, finances, living situation, body, mental and physical health, physical appearance, sexual health affected moving forward if she does give birth yet the choice in many states is taken away from her yet only the woman has to live with the consequences, never the lawmakers taking her choice away

👁Prison industrial, military industrial, psychiatric industrial, pharamaceutical industrial, medical industrial & educational industrial complexes

👁Obsession with graphically violent media (movies, TV shows, videogames) & combat sports (NFL, UFC, etc.) yet boobs, penises & vulvas cant be shown on TV and dropping the F word can get you fined by the FTC

[ao3qhq]

A rant about Scopolamine

The most recent chapter of The Dark I Know Well briefly mentions the use of a childbirth drug called Scopolamine, which induces a state known as ‘twilight sleep’.

tw: birth trauma, episiotomy, medical trauma, medical malpractice, restraint, medical abuse, forceps, and non-graphic images of medical birth.

No one asked for this, but I have a lot to say on the topic, so I decided I would give a bit of a ted talk on it. (Continued under the cut).

Scopolamine provides an amnesiac effect, meaning that you will not remember the events that occurred while you were under its influence. A team of German doctors developed a technique in the early 20th century for combining Scopolamine with Morphine to both lessen labor pains and wipe the process of the birth from their test subject’s memories. 

Unfortunately, Scopolamine can induce delirium and hallucinations, and people would regularly become violent and hysterical while under its influence, thrashing, screaming, and accidentally harming themselves or others. For this reason, the German doctors began putting their patients in states of sensory deprivation, which lessened the risk of this. Their laboring test subjects would be blindfolded and have their ears plugged with cotton soaked with oil. They would additionally be bound to a crib-like bed with leather straps in case these measures did not work and they became violent anyways.

While the technique was initially met with skepticism, the demand for pain-free childbirth was so high, and rave reviews were piling in from satisfied parents, so eventually American doctors caved to the pressure and travelled to Germany to learn the technique. 

However, the widespread implementation of it was poorly done, and as the subject pool grew, more and more people began coming forwards with negative experiences they had had while birthing under the influences of the drug. 

The German doctors had two separate groups of test subjects. Those of a “Nervous Temperament” (translation: upper class women) and “Women of No Great Intelligence” (translation: poor women). American doctors almost exclusively observed the second group, and the techniques they learned and brought back to the states were brutal, often downright sadistic.

While the doses of Scopolamine and Morphine had been highly monitored, and individualized to each test subject in Germany, American doctors approved a standardized dose of the drugs that every patient received, to disastrous effect. 

Additionally, with less doctors and nurses available for monitoring per patient, sensory deprivation took a backseat to restraint. Laboring patients would be shackled to hospital beds, often also while wearing straightjackets. The standardized dose of Morphine was rarely enough to make a dent in the pain of contractions, and the confusing effects of Scopolamine made it so people in labor had no ability to understand what was happening to them, nor why they were in pain. This rendered them unable to get into the ‘flow’ of labor, which is generally understood to be the best way for unmedicated births to procede without trauma. 

And since they were bound to beds and receiving morphine, labor dragged on often into a days long process. (Morphine, like most sedatives, causes contractions to fall out of a regular pattern, which makes labor stall and freedom of movement is essential for encouraging the baby down into the birth canal, which puts pressure on the cervix and increases dilation, as well as speeds the pushing stage). During the days in which they lay bound in hospital beds they would be refused food, and would often be neglected, laying in puddles of their own urine, vomit, and feces for hours on end. 

(image cropped so as not to violate tumblr’s terms of service regarding nudity)

By the time that they were ready to push, most laboring patients were so hysteric and so confused that they were unable to respond to the urges of their bodies and the instructions of the doctors and nurses, meaning that high forceps deliveries became the norm, where the doctor would cut into the flesh of the perineum to widen the vaginal entrance (known as an episiotomy), reach into the vaginal canal with two spoon shaped blades (forceps), and pull the baby out by the head, pausing physical damage and trauma to both parent and baby. 

In addition to the effects on the parent, morphine is a drug that can cross the placenta, meaning that it can be passed to the baby through the bloodstream. Therefore, babies were born more and more often dangerously sedated, which impacted their respiratory efforts. This is what caused the practice of hanging baby’s upside down from the feet and slapping them on the buttocks, in order to shock them enough to combat the effects of the sedative. 

The pain did not end there, though, for when patients woke in the postpartum, they would typically have massive birth injuries to recover from, and have no memory of delivering their baby. Many people recall having a baby brought into the room and feeling no connection to it, going so far as to say they were not truly sure that they had been brought the correct baby. This caused huge issues in bonding, and created a skyrocket in recorded cases of postpartum depression (although it was not known by that name). As twilight sleep became more and more popular for births, more and more people began experiencing traumatic flashbacks to their birthing experience, remembering the pain, confusion, and mistreatment in excruciating detail. 

Luckily, Scopolamine began falling from popularity around 1915 following the death of one of its most prominent supporters while birthing under its effects, and the practice became rarer and rarer. However, many hospitals did continue to administer the drug for childbirth well into the 60′s and 70′s, often not gaining consent nor even warning their patients that the drug would be given, or how it would affect them and their mental state. As such, patients and their partners began to wonder at the odd bruising caused by the restraints, and would ask about it in the postpartum. To keep this from happening, doctors switched to using restraints lined with lamb’s wool, to minimize bruising. 

It is easy for us now to look back and condemn the paternalistic practices of twilight sleep birthing, but to suffragettes and first wave feminists, the promise of a pain-free childbirth was too good of an offer to refuse. Prior to this, there was no option for any sort of medicinal pain relief during labor, aside from a general anesthetic administered during c sections (which were, at that time, rarely performed due to their high mortality rates). Many doctors were even adamantly against the advent of pain control during labor, citing the bible and claiming that women were made to suffer the pains of childbirth in repentance for Eve’s sin, and to circumvent that would to be to go against the will of God. 

And while we are lucky that in today’s world there are now a wide variety of pain relief measures available for those who wish to use them during labor and birth, twilight sleep marked the shift of birth from the home to the hospital, sweeping aside centuries-old traditional birth practices and disregarding the knowledge of the birth process that midwives had handed down over generations. This brief period in American history left a remarkable impact on the birthing culture, and has lead to a practice of attempting to ‘control’ birth that still persists today, taking the process out of the home and out of the parent’s hands, and reducing choice based on a standard of practice that has often been proven to be doing more harm than good. 

Even though The Dark I Know Well is intended to be set in the modern age (or in the nearish future), the patriarchal setting and disrespect of women it portrays would logically extend to its birth practices, which is why I chose Scopolamine for use in lower upper class births.

[postolo]

Sabarimala Temple Verdict| Constitution Bench to pronounce its verdict on the “ban on entry of women” into the Sabarimala Temple

Supreme Court: The 5-Judge Constitution Bench comprising of CJ Dipak Misra, Rohinton Nariman, A.M. Khanwilkar, Dr D.Y Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra JJ., is likely to pronounce its decision on the “ban on entry of women aged between 10 to 50 years” into the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala. The decision was reserved by the Bench on 01-08-2018 after  8- day long proceedings.

During the hearings, the Bench had the following opinion in regard to the issue:

CJI Dipak Misra: Where a man can enter, even a woman can go. What applies to a man, applies to a woman.

Nariman J., The only reason is the paternalistic notion that during 41 days women cannot keep the Vratam, no other temple prohibits women.

Chandrachud J.: Tagging religious belief with menarche is absurd. Exclusion on the basis of age of a woman is irrelevant, tagging age with menarche is even more so.

Chandrachud J., “In a patriarchal society, women are made to go through a certain social conditioning from birth, on how to behave, what to say, what to do, etc.”

The following questions/ issues are expected to be answered in today’s decision:

Whether the exclusionary practice which is based upon a biological factor exclusive to the female gender amounts to “discrimination” and thereby violates the very core of Articles 14, 15 and 17 and not protected by ‘morality’ as used in Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution?

Whether the practice of excluding such women constitutes an “essential religious practice” under Article 25 and whether a religious institution can 30 assert a claim in that regard under the umbrella of right to manage its own affairs in the matters of religion?

Whether Ayyappa Temple has a denominational character and, if so, is it permissible on the part of a ‘religious denomination’ managed by a statutory board and financed under Article 290-A of the Constitution of India out of Consolidated Fund of Kerala and Tamil Nadu can indulge in such practices violating constitutional principles/ morality embedded in Articles 14, 15(3), 39(a) and 51-A (e)?

Whether Rule 3 of Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules permits ‘religious denomination’ to ban entry of women between the age of 10 to 50 years? And if so, would it not play foul of Articles 14 and 15(3) of the Constitution by restricting entry of women on the ground of sex?

Whether Rule 3(b) of Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorization of Entry) Rules, 1965 is ultra vires the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Act, 1965 and, if treated to be intra vires, whether it will be violative of the provisions of Part III of the Constitution?

The Judgment of the Constitution Bench is awaited.

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