the wondrous life of mandirigma jones

I really don’t care enough about this debate to read whatever’s going down on NYTimes.com, and I’d actually weighed in on this, like, three years ago. But I did want to highlight one comment to the Feministe post, which I mostly agree with:

Telling women that epidurals are dangerous or wimpy is NOT FEMINIST. If you have ever advocated against pain management during one of life’s most painful events or dismissed that pain as fear or misunderstanding or exaggeration, you have contributed to one of the oldest forms of misogyny. If you have ever, ever made a mother feel inadequate for bottle feeding, or for using a stroller or putting her baby down in another room, you have made a mother’s life harder for absolutely no reason. Practice AP, I don’t care. ALL parents do the best they can. But ask yourself why so many so called natural pregnancy and childbirth and child raising practices that keep sprouting dovetail so well with age old practices that make women’s lives needlessly painful, difficult and inconvenient.

A quick CYA as I’m about to publish a post on Hyphen about being sanctimonious about breastfeeding in public: I personally don’t give a shit how you feed your baby, but don’t dictate how I should feed mine. Telling me I should not breastfeed my baby in public is, in my mind, on par with judging moms for giving their babies formula. Ugly and uncalled for.

I should also note, the public breastfeeding “debate” is from the same place as the work vs. stay-at-home “debate” or the attachment parenting “debate.” These fake debates aim to shame women about their bodies and choices, and they’re really only debates among the privileged anyway, once again excluding women who don’t necessarily have a choice.