Working to dispel the taboo
What is a doula? Ask the Google.
dou·la
/ˈdo͞olə/
noun
a woman, typically without formal obstetric training, who is employed to provide guidance and support to a pregnant woman during labor.
“from admission through delivery, a doula stayed at her assigned patient’s side”
a woman employed to provide guidance and support to the mother of a newborn baby.
“my mother-in-law hired a postpartum doula to help me for a couple of weeks”
So what do we find?
That’s not a “taboo,” it’s a fact. Men can’t give birth; just a fact, ma’am.
Tell us about yourself, Mac Brydum.
“That Doula Guy” is Mac Brydum.
Specializing in comprehensive doula support, including labor support, postpartum care, infant sleep consulting, and lactation support.
Mac enthusiastically offers LGBTQ-inclusive, empowering, compassionate care for ALL families.
Also offering consulting for professional organizations on LGBTQ inclusion.
Don’t you want him for your lactation support?
But the last line gives it away a little – really he’s about the LGBTQ inclusion, and really what that means is the T inclusion. What’s best for women in childbirth isn’t his concern.
It’s so irritating, and so male-entitled, this move to have men take over everything women do. I’m making an educated guess that doulas are women because women don’t actually want to hire a man to hold their hand and cheer them on at that particular project. They’ve had to accept male doctors for generations because women doctors were so scarce, but there’s no reason they should have to accept men doing the female support person job too. No doubt some women will sign Mac Brydum that doula guy right up because women are expected to be sweet and accommodating, but a man who knew how to give a shit about anyone other than himself wouldn’t make women feel obliged to make him feel “included.” Women in labor shouldn’t have to be “inclusive” in that way.
I think that there is a bit more to it than that.
I have heard it argued by a respectable female academic (whose name escapes me) who was researching the subject of mediaeval witchcraft (over 40 years ago now) that the ‘witches’ hunted down, murdered, burned at the stake etc were in large part midwives, and preferred by pregnant women of the time for assistance in childbirth over the members of the (exclusively male) medical profession. That profession was just getting going, and its craft guilds remain to this day among the most powerful and conservative entities on the modern political scene.
The midwives commonly had direct personal experience of their own in childbirth, plus their midwifery experience. Childbirth was a dangerous time for both mother and baby, as in the days before modern medical gear or even the need for formal training and registration, any Tom, Dick or Harry could set up shop as a medico; and commonly did.
Moreover, the midwives were highly regarded and so sought out for advice on other life matters, and so inevitably came into conflict with the exclusively male clergy, as well as with the quacks of the day.
Jo Gibson was the name of the witch researcher, but I cannot find her work in Google Scholar, so perhaps it was never published. Which is a shame, IMHO.
I’m guessing you didn’t know Brydum is a transman…
https://www.romper.com/p/male-doulas-want-to-assist-in-childbirth-but-would-you-hire-a-man-9571100
…because I assume you wouldn’t count both transwomen and transmen as men invading women’s space.
This is an area that doesn’t upset me at all. There’s nothing wrong with a man putting his services out there as a male doula. I’d assume no women would want to hire them. If they do, that’s their choice. A surprisingly one to me, but whatever.
Always good to know what doesn’t upset you. Thanks for keeping us posted.
You’re welcome!
@ Omar
#1
Also, midwives didn’t deliver babies right after handling corpses.
Christ on a bike, is he an alien trying (and failing) to fit in? “I too am a human female, I have not reproduced yet, but I plan to use my body parts to gestate and birth a baby of my own in the future”
This is…so dehumanizing, I can’t even wrap my mind around it. And dehumanizing himself? Wow. Though I will admit, I was raised to denigrate and to some extent dehumanize myself; I had to unlearn that through a long painful process. I think that is part of our training as women, and we don’t realize it, and our mothers don’t realize it, and their mothers didn’t realize it – just handed down generation after generation because it is what is believed normal.
The ‘wife’ in the word ‘midwife’ is the one who’s having the baby. The root is ‘mit weib,’ roughly ‘with the woman,’ so, at least in theory, a midwife could be male, even a physician if they had some particular qualification for attending births.
In decades past, the word ‘doula’ hadn’t been resuscitated and such lay attendants were called Birth Coaches. My ex wife helped start a collective of such helpers and worked with dozens of women back in the 70s.
As John alludes to…er, as to which John alludes (I corrected it for Ophelia), doulas and midwives are different things (there seems to be some conflation of the two here).
Iknklast, Catwhisperer was taking words written about Brydum and hypothetically having Brydum speak them. Byrdum probably didn’t actually say it that way (but who knows). I’d guess it’s a woke* author awkwardly trying to explain that Byrdum still has his original female parts without using the “female”. You don’t want to upset the men with uteruses!
(* I originally wrote “woke” with sneer quotes but then decided they’re implied at this point.)
What do you mean “there seems to be some conflation of the two here”? I put the definition right at the top: “a woman, typically without formal obstetric training, who is employed to provide guidance and support to a pregnant woman during labor.” That is obviously different from midwives, who do get formal obstetric training. Why do you say there seems (to whom??) to be conflation of the two? Why do you always assume we need you to clarify things for us?
That makes it more dehumanizing, IMHO. When you speak this way about other people, you are in at least one sense rejecting their humanity, even if you don’t intend to.
I plan to use my car parts to drive to the store at some point in the future. See? It sounds bad even associated with mechanical objects.
TRAs complain about dehumanization, but they are constantly dehumanizing others. “Uterus-havers”. “Gestators”. “Assigned female at birth”. All of these are dehumanizing phrases. Saying “a man cannot be a woman” is not dehumanizing, it’s merely clarifying categories that are both recognizably human.
I wish people would figure out how language works, and soon.
Because you wrote about doulas and in the comments people started talking about midwives, seeming to me as if they perhaps thought they were the same thing. But possibly I misunderstood and nobody thought that and instead just started talking about midwives as a related subject. If so, apologies for an unnecessary clarification.
I didn’t think I always did that. Here I did it because there did seem to be some conflation, and also it was an excuse to make a joke about you being annoyed about the fake rule not to end phrases with a preposition. I thought maybe you’d find that amusing. But you seem very displeased with me lately, so I should have known you wouldn’t.
Well, no, I did like the preposition joke. I also liked the implied sneer-quotes observation.
Now I feel mean, probably because I am.
Ha, that’s all right. I’ll take it as penance for the actual crimes I’ve committed here (repeated infractions of drive-by commenting, etc.).
Thank you for not making it “drive-by commenting.” Ha!
I had kidney stones about 10 years ago. Sure felt like I was giving birth, and nurses told me it’s pretty close. Does that count?
Bruce, I had kidney stones once. I gave birth once. I think they are comparable, but…it still doesn’t give you the feeling of nine months of swollen feet, tender enlarged breasts, morning sickness, difficulty perambulating because your belly is so big, not being able to get your belly under your desk…and the next 18 years of raising the little beast. (I didn’t keep my kidney stone around; I sent it out for adoption immediately).
iknklast: Picky, picky, picky!