A very convincing argument (albeit an unintended one) in favor of elective C-section:
I don’t think I adequately appreciated the ways that the juggernaut of childbirth could transform a woman’s relationship with her vagina, altering her entire body’s feelings about her pelvis and genitals.
See, by Sunday afternoon I was thinking clearly enough to notice a kind of “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” mental block around my entire pelvis. My brain was definitely in self-protection mode, after just the small, brief trauma of having the uterus penetrated with something less than half an inch in diameter.
With childbirth, the fundamental MEANING of those body parts would change, from sexual to… well, women with different cultural backgrounds/baggage would construct different narratives to account for it, but essentially, they’d be transformed into a lockbox.
For a sexually healthy woman who perceives her genitals as, first and foremost, a source of sexual fulfillment, the prospect of her vagina turning into a lockbox surrounded by a police line is horrifying.
Of course, the number of women who derive no enjoyment from sex and who will gladly offer up their vaginas to be shredded to bits in order to have some sensation in their genitals for once is huge. This means that vaginal childbirth will never go out of fashion.
Clarissa's Blog 
“I don’t think I adequately appreciated the ways that the juggernaut of childbirth could transform a woman’s relationship with her vagina, altering her entire body’s feelings about her pelvis and genitals”
I think this greatly varies from person to person. Besides, the long-term changes cannot really be predicted based on how you feel two days after giving birth for the first time (hint: really really sore).
Btw, I have nothing against elective C-section. I personally I am too afraid of infections to undergo any surgery if I can avoid it, but it seems to be a good and safe option for many women.
Having said that, vaginal childbirth is quite painful and the recovery is unpleasant. But it passes and you do bounce back. I don’t think having kids changed my enjoyment of sex or the way I view my genitalia in the long run. Overall, I think gaining weight due to my high-stress, all-consuming, sedentary job had a more negative effect on my sex life than my three vaginal births.
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Okay, you have picked up by now that whenever you put up a post about how childbirth shreds ones vagina, I need to come back and comment how vaginal childbirth need not, by definition, shred anything at all, and that it mostly has to do with the kind of vaginal childbirth one actually has, right? 🙂 And how both our cultural OMG-ness about childbirth and our highly intervention-laden hospital childbirth norms contribute unnecessarily to the shreddage? Not to be argumentative, but just to place the counterpoint experience and informed opinion out there?
I think one’s relationship with one’s vagina would only go in these profoundly disturbing directions if it (the relationship, not the vagina) were maybe not entirely healthy to begin with. Or, more to the point, why the hell does this woman think her psychologically unpleasant experience adjusting to her IUD need have any ramifications for how other women might perceive childbirth? Talk about projection…yes, this is horrifying, but I don’t think it has anything to do with childbearing at all. I think she’s got issues.
Okay, me and my happy healthy satisfied productive very sexual vagina are going to bed now…:-)
–J
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“I need to come back and comment how vaginal childbirth need not, by definition, shred anything at all”
-Yes, it need not. But it very often does. And even one chance in 1 million is too huge of a risk to run for me.
I know dozens of people who could not even SIT for weeks after, let alone have sex. Horrible!
“And how both our cultural OMG-ness about childbirth and our highly intervention-laden hospital childbirth norms contribute unnecessarily to the shreddage”
-When there were no hospitals, women simply died in childbirth at a very young age.
“Okay, me and my happy healthy satisfied productive very sexual vagina are going to bed now”
-Say hi to the vagina from me! 🙂 🙂
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Clarissa: If I recall correctly, the medical guidelines say that one’s not supposed to have sex for six weeks after childbirth, but after that normal relations can resume, assuming both parents can actually find the time and energy. And six weeks isn’t that long, really. So it’s not like childbirth rules out sex forever.
(For the record, not a mother, probably never going to be one. Just chalk this comment up to the information junkheap that is my brain. Seriously, I am full of random information.)
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With an elective C-section, it’s different. Which makes an elective C-section great.
” assuming both parents can actually find the time and energy”
-If people can’t find “time and energy” for sex, they should really not be having children together. Those children will suffer so much as a result that what’s the point of that anyways?
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Also, ugh. That blogger’s story sounds like what I felt after my last cervical exam. I had cramps for two days.
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We had punitive cervical exams back in Ukraine which made you feel this way. That was the invention of the Soviet system aimed at making women hate their own bodies.
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Clarissa: With older children, I’d agree, but infants are black holes of parental energy. It isn’t unusual for parents, especially first time parents, to be unable to resume normal relations for six months, because they’re so busy that they just fall asleep any time they have the opportunity to lie down. And most of the time, the parent’s sex lives- or lack thereof- do not affect the children in any way.
I think it’s just that my doctor’s totally incompetent when it comes to that facet of her practice. She’s a general physician, not an ob/gyn. I’d switch doctors, but I think I’d end up with a worse one. As for ob/gyns, well, it’s 20% well meaning people, 40% fundamentalists and 30% perverts. Not great odds.
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“And most of the time, the parent’s sex lives- or lack thereof- do not affect the children in any way.”
-You keep coming up with these hilarious statements that always brighten up my day. Thank you for existing! 🙂 🙂
(I’m not being sarcastic or anything).
” As for ob/gyns, well, it’s 20% well meaning people, 40% fundamentalists and 30% perverts. ”
-And now there is a significant percentage of ob/gyns who peddle botox, laser treatments for wrinkles (on your face) and shady weight-loss practices. Mine even prescribes this garbage that supposedly makes your lashes longer. Like I need to hear about Botox and wrinkles when I’m seeing my ob/gyn. Very annoying!
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Well, from observing a lot of parents with very small children (anywhere from -5 months to 2), I’ve noticed that most of them seem seriously sleep deprived. I suspect that they prefer to sneak in a few minutes of sleep whenever they can and they prioritize it over almost everything else, including sex.
Also I find it weird and horrifying to think that parental sex lives *should* have any effect on the kids. As long as the parents are happy and affectionate toward each other in public, that’s enough, yes? Children don’t need (or want) to know if their parents have sex. And under no circumstances should a child (even a legally adult one) hear the details of their parent’s sex lives.
And it might be a little astonishing to you, but there are perfectly healthy adults who don’t think sex is a priority, or even a neccessity. It’s a desire, not a need.
Seriously? Why would an ob/gyn even suggest plastic surgery? Doctors of any kind tend to be inordinately concerned about their patient’s weight, but advocating for plastic surgery is a new one. I think about the only time I didn’t hear about my “weight problem” was when I had to consult an urgent care physcian and then a neurologist about a medical event.
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‘Also I find it weird and horrifying to think that parental sex lives *should* have any effect on the kids. As long as the parents are happy and affectionate toward each other in public, that’s enough, yes?”
– Of course, not.
” Children don’t need (or want) to know if their parents have sex. And under no circumstances should a child (even a legally adult one) hear the details of their parent’s sex lives.”
-Who’s disagreeing? But there is no greater fortune in life than to grow up in a family where the parents are passionately in love. And no greater sadness than to grow in a family where they aren’t.
“Seriously? Why would an ob/gyn even suggest plastic surgery?”
– Apparently, many of them now can’t make enough money with simple gynecology, so they augment their income through advocating plastic surgery and Botox.
” I think about the only time I didn’t hear about my “weight problem” was when I had to consult an urgent care physcian and then a neurologist about a medical event.”
-Imagine if you also had to hear about your “wrinkle problem.” I was floored when I had to answer how I feel about my “crow’s feet” on the ob/gyn’s questionnaire. My first impulse was to say that I never managed to look that far inside. 🙂
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Could you explain that first line to me? As a rule, adults who engage in PDA (we are counting kids as part of the public here) aren’t frosty toward each other in private. And even without displays, most kids know that their parents love each other.
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I know dozens of people who could not even SIT for weeks after, let alone have sex. Horrible!
Yeah, so do I. But they are all people who got epidurals, Pitocin, episiotomies, constant fetal monitoring, and delivered on their backs. Unfortunately, that’s most birthing women in the US these days–if you don’t have a Caesarian, you have a highly medicalized birth, and those of us who’ve experienced the alternative are still in the hippie weird fringe minority. (We get disparaged and verbally taken down, but our vaginas are AWESOME! 🙂
-When there were no hospitals, women simply died in childbirth at a very young age.
Well, there’s a lot of debate out there about whether it was vacuums and forceps and episiotomies (oh my!) that led to mothers’ increased survival, or more the discovery that if the docs and midwives disinfected their hands, the mothers would not develop puerperal fever anywhere near as often. It’s all pretty anecdotal one way or the other…what’s not really anecdotal is that the United States has very poor maternal mortality statistics relative to other developed countries, and we are also have way more medical interventions than pretty much everyone higher on the list than we are.
That all said–yeah, there’s something that happens for that first month or two where sex just drops way down on the priority list for a while. It comes back, much faster than one’s waistline, most of the time…I kind of figure that postpartum libido drop thing is one of those handy little evolutionary tricks that keeps us slightly sane AND keeps us from getting another one too soon, you know? And just like everything else, there’s nothing to say it happens to everyone; I’ve always figured the docs say 6 weeks partially because it makes them happy to think they know what “normal” is and because it gives people permission to not want sex for a while after birth…I figure if one’s body is happy and ready to go earlier, that’s the body’s signal that it’s good to go, and the hell with what the doc says. In my case it wasn’t ready till maybe 8 weeks, and as others have mentioned we were for the time being too sleep-deprived to care, and once we started to care again there was no problem. 🙂
Which reminds me…it’s Christmas eve, the kids are asleep, and we’re not…I think I’ll get off the computer and head for bed. 😉
Merry Christmas!
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“Yeah, so do I. But they are all people who got epidurals, Pitocin, episiotomies, constant fetal monitoring, and delivered on their backs.”
– No, not all. My sister’s best friend was against any kind of medicated birth, everything completely natural, etc. Two weeks later, she was happy to report that she could kind of sit for an entire minute.
I was against planned C-sections, too. Until I saw my sister fully recovered, walking around, lifting the baby and feeling very happy just HOURS after the baby was born. The story of her delivery is a story of joy and happiness. From every single woman I have met who delivered vaginally, I always hear, “Of course, the pain is horrible, it’s like no pain you’ve experienced before, but you get over this eventually.” I simply can’t understand why anybody would knowingly subject themselves to horrible pain.
Merry Christmas to you, too!!!
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As for pain; well, pain thresholds vary from person to person. And sometimes, pain is good. There are people who *thrive* on pain in certain situations, and some who just get doped up on adrenaline and other hormones. Childbirth is, to some people, worth fighting through the pain for. Others, like your sister just want nothing to do with it, and that’s okay too.
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That’s my point exactly. They thrive on pain because that’s their only way to connect to their genitals.
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Again, not really. I still find your fixations funny.Childbirth, as I understand it, doesn’t just affect the genitals, it’s a full body thing. Personally, I feel really satisfied when I get through a workout that leaves my entire body aching.
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Yes, childbirth has nothing to do with the genitals. Nothing whatsoever. Babies fall out of one’s ear, you know. 🙂
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I said it isn’t JUST the genitals. Yeesh. Yes, it centers around the vagina, but every single major muscle group is involved in pregnancy and childbirth.
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There must be other ways of getting a full body workout in this day and age.
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“Centers around the vagina”? 🙂 🙂 Funny choice of words.
OK, I’ll explain once again since it seems hard for you to grasp. What bothers me about vaginal childbirth is that very very often it is accompanied by the tearing of the vagina. What happens to major muscle groups doesn’t bother me, so I don’t discuss it. Is that clear now?
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Yeah, there are. But again, not a mother, don’t really understand the whole thing, but I still don’t think it’s all about ‘relating to one’s genitals through pain.’ Then again, Clarissa has quite a fixation on genitals, so it makes sense that she’d think that. I’m more scared of surgery then pain, honestly, but the process of pregnancy squicks me out so badly that I doubt I’d ever go through with it.
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Pretty clear. But I have to wonder: would you be as bothered about slipping a disc or pulling a muscle in your back, which would be a lot more inconvienient then not being able to have sex or sitting comfortably for a few weeks? Or spending a week groggy and flat on your back because you reacted badly to the anasthesia? Both situations are rare, but both could happen.
My point is that every woman is different and you can’t generalize from one woman’s childbirthing experience to say that x (Ceasarian) is better than Y (natural childbirth.) Although I will say, I’m a bit surprised your sister was willing to risk trusting her doctors that much.
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“But I have to wonder: would you be as bothered about slipping a disc or pulling a muscle in your back, which would be a lot more inconvienient then not being able to have sex or sitting comfortably for a few weeks? Or spending a week groggy and flat on your back because you reacted badly to the anasthesia?”
– How can a person slip a disc during a scheduled C-section?? Of course, psychologically healthy people feel more traumatized by the idea of the damage to the genital area than to pulling a muscle.
“Although I will say, I’m a bit surprised your sister was willing to risk trusting her doctors that much.”
– She has a very good and healthy relationship with her father.
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*Eye roll* Pregnancy does a big bad number on one’s back. And,again: there are perfectly healthy adults running around who view sex as completely and utterly irrelevant to their lives- and others who might view a sudden back blowout or a week of grogginess as much more inconvienient then a few weeks without sex.
Familial relationships have nothing to do with professional relationships. I have a great relationship with my dad, but I don’t trust most of my doctors as far as I could throw them. You seem to think that trusting one’s male relatives means extending trust to all men one meets in one’s life. For an adult, that’s really naive.
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“*Eye roll* Pregnancy does a big bad number on one’s back.”
-If you rolled your eyes less and paid attention instead, you’d notice that we are not discussing pregnancy. We are discussing delivery. And you know why? Because there are no alternative ways of being pregnant. There are, however, alternative ways of child delivery. Which is what we are discussing.
” there are perfectly healthy adults running around who view sex as completely and utterly irrelevant to their lives- and others who might view a sudden back blowout or a week of grogginess as much more inconvienient then a few weeks without sex.”
– And after this statement, I know for sure that you are a talented stand-up comedian. Healthy adults who find sex irrelevant is the joke of the month. 🙂 🙂
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So? So does delivery. Even during surgical births, there’s quite a lot of damage that can be done. Feministe had a story a few months ago about a woman who underwent CPR during a surgical birth and had a rib broken. (The doctor in charge also did an oophectomy- a surgical sterilization, the whole story is pretty horiffic.)
I’m actually completely serious. Google ‘asexual.’ I’m not one, but I see sex as a luxury, not a neccesity.
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“I’m actually completely serious. Google ‘asexual.’ I’m not one, but I see sex as a luxury, not a neccesity.”
– And that sounds extremely unhealthy. As for this asexuality thing, we discussed it on this blog at length: https://clarissasblog.com/2009/06/06/asexuality/ The completely unhinged, hysterical freakazoids who came to yell abuse on this blog as a result proved my point that lack of a rich and healthy sex life is extremely detrimental for one’s health a lot better than I ever could with a hundred posts.
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Holy trainwreck, Batman! Actually, some of the commenters on that were pretty reasonable. But they just told you things that didn’t conform to the ideas you hold onto like a barnacle clings to driftwood.
I think part of the problem is that you keep trying to convince yourself you are normal, and that anyone who deviates from the norm is horribly damaged by lack of psychological knowledge/ mythical patriarchy/mythical society etc. It might be better not to measure everything by your version of normal and concede that different people have different metrics of normal and there’s no ideal way to behave. I figured I wasn’t normal a long time ago; normal is boring anyway.
Being celibate isn’t going to kill me 😀 If I manage to scrape up enough money/ lose enough weight, I might be able to work my way around the risks of pregnancy or STDs.Now, those could kill me. In the meantime, I have plenty of other fun things to do, all of which are probably just as fun as sex.
Now if you don’t mind, let’s get back to the topic.
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“I think part of the problem is that you keep trying to convince yourself you are normal”
– You are not reading carefully. I said many times that if anybody calls me “normal”, I feel offended, while “strange” and “weird” are the greatest compliments I can receive.
“and that anyone who deviates from the norm is horribly damaged by lack of psychological knowledge/ mythical patriarchy/mythical society etc.”
-Seriously??? This isn’t even funny. Have you not noticed how much flak I’m getting from people for telling them that “society made me do / think / believe this” is a lousy excuse that isn’t fooling anybody?
“If I manage to scrape up enough money/ lose enough weight, I might be able to work my way around the risks of pregnancy or STDs.”
– This is very mysterious. What do money and weight have to do with it? Or do you think that thin people run a smaller risk of contracting STDs?
As for lowering your risk of getting pregnant, you need to get seriously anorexic to do that through weight loss.
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Regarding the issue of asexuals, I’m quite prepared to believe they exist, but I’m very much disinclined to trust anyone who makes an identity out of something, especially their sexuality. It’s a truism that many in Western society are looking for a way to feel they are special. They make identities out of all sorts of unfortunate things. This is pathological in itself.
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That was my point exactly. But when people saw that I was trying to take away their favorite hobby-horse of identity-building, they got very nasty. Seriously, what’s more ridiculous than building a community around not wanting to have sex?
” It’s a truism that many in Western society are looking for a way to feel they are special.”
-Yes, because feeling special through cultivating your individuality and achieving something to distinguish yourself is a lot of hard work. Why not create an identity around the fact that you were born with two moles on your left forearm?
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It relates to the false religion of postmodernism, whereby we can all achieve inner sanctity by embracing ‘the Other” in all of his petty differences. Of course, we still get to project our horribleness onto those who are genuinely other — like the white Africans. That is the benefit of belonging to this religion.
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“Of course, we still get to project our horribleness onto those who are genuinely other — like the white Africans. That is the benefit of belonging to this religion.”
-Exactly. And that’s extremely convenient, isn’t it? The Other becomes nothing but a space where one can enact one’s own dramas and conflicts. And when that Other fails to comply, the sense of outrage is huge.
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Yes-and unsurprisingly, it is a form of imperialism –only now enacted on a psychological level, rather than in broader physical terms.
It’s interesting that the black Zimbabweans, whom white (but not black) Westerners require to hate me, rarely do anything of the sort. Most of the time, we are quite chummy. This shows they are not fulfilling the postmodernist, Western agenda for me.
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Clarissa: I have to have money and lose weight to have a chance at attracting a partner; and more money = less worry about being able to afford/find birth control and not worrying that the people who handle my insurance will cut me off if I visit the doctor too often.
And I also need enough money to get an abortion, or for two to live on if I, by some miracle decide to become a mother. Hospital births are expensive, and babies are even more expensive.
I think a lot of the ‘flak’ is because you don’t believe that there is such a thing as society. People who actually *live* in it get a bit annoyed when you write off something they live in and encounter every day as a myth. For example, let’s say ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Zimbabwe’ are mythical. Discuss.
As for the asexual community; people can build communities around anything. Bands, anime, comic books, games, politics, feminism..and yes, being asexual. (Who are, once again, capable of both being in perfect psychological health and being totally averse or *meh* about sex. I know you won’t believe me, but then you’ve had way too much exposure to Freud. Also, by the way, ‘hysterical’ is a made-up term designed to dismiss women.)
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“I have to have money and lose weight to have a chance at attracting a partner”
– You are planning to pay for sex?? Surely, things are not as desperate as all that? As for weight, wanna bet I weigh more than you do? 🙂 🙂 And both of us put together weigh less than my grandma who was a veritable femme fatale and had men going crazy about her until her death?
‘As for the asexual community; people can build communities around anything. ”
-Yes, and that’s tragic.
“I think a lot of the ‘flak’ is because you don’t believe that there is such a thing as society.”
– The existence of societies is not a matter of belief. It’s an objective fact of reality.
” For example, let’s say ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Zimbabwe’ are mythical. Discuss.”
– As I already said, ANY nation is an imagined community. What else is there to discuss, unless you have an original reading of Anthony Smith, Michael Billig and Benedict Anderson? The topic has been done to death.Any community whose members don’t all know each other personally is based on a set of myths and nothing else.
“Also, by the way, ‘hysterical’ is a made-up term designed to dismiss women”
– If the term “queer” can be reappropriated by the gay community and the word “bitch” by the feminist community, why should I be prevented from doing the same for the word “hysteria”?
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On the issue of whether “Zimbabwe” is a made up community: It is and it isn’t. Right now, we have a movement whereby one of the traditional ethnic groups wishes to secede:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mthwakazi-Nation/162801343740250
Originally, colonial politics defined the boundaries of Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe). The group that now wishes to secede was violently subdued after the anti-colonial war. It is said that 20, 000 were killed in what might be described as a genocidal act on the part of the guerrilla faction that came to power.
Even though the nature of identity is being disputed within Zimbabwe itself, it is undeniable that there is a common history shared by the peoples of Zimbabwe, based on the historical fact that boundaries were defined. Whatever people in Zimbabwe have experienced — and whatever they now think and feel, based on what they have experienced — is different from what those in the Republic of South Africa will think and feel. National boundaries have a psychological meaning simply because they are a historical fact.
Some of the ways that national boundaries define and help to shape and form community (sorry, Clarissa!) is in terms of what kinds of media are permitted within those boundaries. During the years of Rhodesian rule, those within the national boundaries were time-locked, in that ideologies that were not right wing and Christian were not permitted to permeate the borders. There was strong media censorship and this affected the cultures developing within the national boundaries. I would say, in general, Rhodesians were stuck in the time of about 1949*. Then suddenly the national boundaries were open to the media and other influences. “Modern” ideas began permeating in, albeit at a snail’s pace. Many white Rhodesians panicked and became converts to extreme forms of evangelical Christianity, as the American missionaries began filtering in, past the old boundaries. When I left Zimbabwe in 1894, I would have to say I could not have been less prepared for the 1980s. Our media censorship had made us unaware of how much the rest of the world had moved on.
—
* When I went back to Zimbabwe last year, I found elements of the society still hadn’t moved on from 1949. For example, a pantomime I attended had as one of its jokes that Germans were very funny because they did the Hitler salute.
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No, but all the packaging- clothes/makeup- is expensive, and requires money for upkeep. Men prefer small and slender women, and while there are chubby chasers, they tend to be a little skuzzy.
What do you mean ‘tragic?’ I regard it as a good thing that people with nothing else in common can carve out a space for themselves even if they’re miles apart; that total strangers in a bar can chat for an hour even though they came to see two different bands; that I have two awesome Swedish friends because of an online tagboard. Our community doesn’t exist anymore, but we still keep in touch. So what if I’ve never met them in person? Communities don’t have to exist in meat space- that’s old analog thinking.
So nations are imaginary? That’s like saying history is trivial and doesn’t need to be learned. So I guess politics don’t count, and all those ancient martyrs that died for their countries were just deluded? It’s really amazing that you can deny the power of nationalism and at the same time proudly proclaim how different you are from those sheeplike Americans.
Because it’s a made-up term, and has no positive connotations. Queer can also mean ‘extraordinary,’ and I’ve known a number of awesome bitches of the female canine variety.
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“Men prefer small and slender women, and while there are chubby chasers, they tend to be a little skuzzy.”
– Erm, still sitting right here. All chubby and very happy. 🙂 🙂 And the adoring non-skuzzy husband is doing the dishes. 🙂
Please believe me when I tell you that weight, clothes, and makeup have nothing to do with personal, romantic and sexual success and happiness. These are all excuses you use to avoid confronting the real reason why your personal life is a desert.
And this is the last time I respond to the weird statements about the necessity of make-up and expensive clothes + a slim figure for romantic and sexual success. You want to keep zombifying yourself with these silly lies, feel free. I’ve wasted enough time on this already.
“So nations are imaginary? That’s like saying history is trivial and doesn’t need to be learned. So I guess politics don’t count, and all those ancient martyrs that died for their countries were just deluded?”
–Please read Benedict Anderson. Then, you can proceed to peruse the work of everybody who studied this issue in the past 30 years. It feels very weird to repeat such basic things. It’s like explaining the multiplication table, seriously.
” It’s really amazing that you can deny the power of nationalism and at the same time proudly proclaim how different you are from those sheeplike Americans.”
– What makes you think I deny its power? Didn’t I repeat a bizillion times that “nationalism is a way of getting to people die for a piece of painted fabric enthusiastically and for free”? This is like a mantra I keep repeating. It gets people to die, got it? That’s powerless, in your opinion?
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It’s true. I rarely wear any cosmetics and my husband and I are still in the honeymoon stage of our relationship — ten years down the track. It’s all about attitude and health.
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People have asked me so many times, “I force myself to go to the gym twice a day, torture myself with dieting, spend all of my money at a salon while you stuff your face with chocolate croissants all day long. So how come when we go out together, nobody ever approaches me while you immediately get approached by a crowd of guys??”
And when I’d respond that it’s precisely because I don’t force or torture myself and only do what gives me pleasure that people are attracted, nobody’d believe me.
Nobody wants a tortured, miserable victim of dieting, salons and super high heels. Most people, however, are extremely attracted to a happy, sexual, sexually and psychologically healthy person.
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My personal life isn’t a desert, it just doesn’t have any men in it. Men are pretty superficial anyway, so meh.
Can we get back to the topic? I wanted to know why in this one instance, you regard doctors as a good thing, when practically every other post regarding illness is: illness is imaginary! Have sex or read Freud instead! Seems a little odd, to say the least.
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Because pregnancy and childbirth are not an illness.
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Well in that case, one shouldn’t need to visit the doctor at all, right?
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If one achieves such a high degree of compensation, then, of course. That is very hard work, though. It’s much easier to hand your personality over to a bunch of magic pills. Who needs all that personal growth, self-awareness, compensatory mechanisms, psychological hygiene? Just substitute your personality with a prescription, and you are done.
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I’d like to remind you that you are really privileged in being able to carve out time to navel gaze. Most people don’t have time, or the money, for psycho analysis and need the quick fix. In some cases, waiting could prove lethal.
Anyway, we were talking about pregnancy, not your hobbyhorse. Do you know who caused most of the deaths in childbirth from the 1700s until the 1900s? Doctors. I know I mentioned this already, but there were two doctors in Africa that performed a cesarian on a Kenyan woman: she came out of it with her tubes tied and a broken rib because one doctor was performing CPR and the other took it upon himself to decide she didn’t need any more children. I’m sure they would do the same thing in the West if they thought they could get away with it.
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I will not engage in any discussions of anything with people who start their utterance the way you just did. People who do so are rude, intellectually limited, and hugely boring. Go privilege-scratch someplace else.
Note to all: the moment I see the word “privilege”, I stop reading.
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Ok, but I’d still like to see your explanation about the situation above. Do you think doctors should be ignored in all situations, or just in matters of the mind?
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“Do you think doctors should be ignored in all situations, or just in matters of the mind?”
– I have no idea what this question means so I cannot answer it. In my own life, I strive to avoid any form of medication as much as possible. I achieve this through practicing psychological hygiene methods. It doesn’t always work, but I’m healthier than most people my age, physically and psychologically. I also believe that EVERY disease, sickness, illness or infirmity is psychosomatic. This is a foundation of my worldview that I impose on no one but that I am entitled to share on my own blog.
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I also tend to believe that many — certainly not all — diseases are psychosomatic. A kinder, better way of saying this is that our mind controls much more than we give it credit for. It can be very useful to tap into the power of the mind, rather than dosing oneself on pills. Furthermore, I wouldn’t trust someone who adopts the solution of taking pills to remedy their psychological states. These are people who lack in fundamental insights about themselves and about the world. If they don’t understand themselves, how can they be relied upon for friendship?
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“These are people who lack in fundamental insights about themselves and about the world. If they don’t understand themselves, how can they be relied upon for friendship?”
– I so wish I’d realized this sooner than I did.
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