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Interrogating Social Conceptualizations of Childbirth and Gender, an Ecofeminist Analysis

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Interrogating Social Conceptualizations of Childbirth and Gender, an Ecofeminist Analysis INTERROGATING SOCIAL CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF CHILDBIRTH AND GENDER, AN ECOFEMINIST ANALYSIS by Jeff Nall A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL December 2011 Copyright by Jeff Nall 2011 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to sincerely thank my wife, April, for her enduring support, encouragement, love, and, particularly as it relates to the subject of this dissertation. Moreover, I wish to thank my children, Charlotte, Julian, and Lucy, for their love and philosophical daring. As Zamyatin wrote, “children are the boldest philosophers….” I also want to thank Dr. Caputi, Dr. Brown, and Dr. Cameron for their time, patience, understanding, and guidance. I have learned so much from them during both their courses and the dissertation writing process. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Caputi for opening my worldview to the ideas of so many of the thinkers in this work; and for her countless hours of reading and commenting on my work, and offering, at crucial moments, encouragement. Finally, I want to express my great appreciation for having been awarded the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters’ 2010-2011 Provost’s Dissertation- Year Fellowship Award. The funding that accompanied this award was essential to the completion of this dissertation. iv ABSTRACT Author: Jeff Nall Title: Interrogating Social Conceptualizations of Childbirth and Gender, An Ecofeminist Analysis Institution: Florida Atlantic University Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Jane Caputi Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Year: 2011 This dissertation draws on feminist theory and ecofeminist philosophy to examine the connections between understandings of women and nature and the construction of pervasive conceptualizations and practices of childbirth. It also examines the relationship between conceptualizations of men and masculinity, culture and nature, and childbirth. In order to conduct such an examination, this study explores the dominant Western discourse around gender and childbirth. Specifically, the work aims to identify prominent characteristics and themes related to childbirth in both popular culture, such as Hollywood films (Knocked Up, The Backup Plan), documentaries (The Business of Being Born), birth guides, magazines, news articles, websites, and scholarly, medical and alternative healthcare discourse. This work seeks to consider how various conceptualizations of childbirth are used to legitimate, or, alternately, to undermine, patriarchal gender norms such as emphasized femininity and patriarchal (hegemonic) v masculinity and, more generally, what ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood calls “master consciousness” (Val Plumwood 1993), a way of understanding the world that is reliant on an unjustifiably dualistic thinking and that is responsible for fostering social practices of domination. In particular, this work seeks to determine to what extent is our conceptualization of childbirth, and subsequent practice, based on potentially erroneous presumptions about the hierarchical division between the realms of culture and nature and masculinity and femininity? Perhaps most importantly, this dissertation sets out to consider the implications of alternative conceptualizations of childbirth emerging in the context of the natural birth movement. Specifically, I aim to determine whether or not these alternatives interpretations of childbirth counteract patriarchal gender categories and the culture/nature dualism. vi DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my best friend and wife, April, who has not only shared her friendship, love, intellectual kinship, and support, but also showed me the creative power, beauty, and meaningfulness of birth. I also wish to dedicate this work, in part, to midwife, Lori Nelson, whose wisdom and insight literally transformed my worldview. INTERROGATING SOCIAL CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF CHILDBIRTH AND GENDER, AN ECOFEMINIST ANALYSIS Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: How We Know: Radical Feminist and Ecofeminist Approaches to Knowledge ........................................................................................................ 10 Chapter Two: The Conceptual Tenets of Medicalized Childbirth, An Ecofeminist Analysis.............................................................................................................. 45 Chapter Three: Medicalized Childbirth, Birth Simulation, and the Death of the (Autonomous) Mother, An Ecofeminist Analysis of ‘High Fidelity’ Birth Simulators in American Culture ........................................................................ 72 Chapter Four: How Cultural Representations of Childbirth Normalize Patriarchal Gender and the Culture/Nature Dualism .......................................................... 103 Chapter Five: Birth Resistance: Revolutionary Representations of Childbirth .............. 134 Chapter Six: Scholarly and News Media Discourse around Homebirth ......................... 168 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 194 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 202 vii INTRODUCTION Ecofeminist philosophy, a branch of environmental ethics, begins from the supposition that concepts significantly mediate our experience of the world. Consequently, ecofeminist philosophy focuses on the conceptual connections between women and nature (Karen Warren 1998, 263, 266) and, more generally, what it sees as the long-standing but problematic conceptualization of the human self as fundamentally above, outside, and opposed to the natural realm (Plumwood 1998, 298). This dissertation draws on feminist theory and ecofeminist philosophy to examine the conceptual connections between women and nature as understood in pervasive conceptualizations of and attendant practices of childbirth. Specifically, the present study focuses primarily on childbirth for the fact that it presents the researcher with a unique cultural event to examine. Another reason for this focus is that many of the cultural artifacts herein examined focus principally on childbirth. This concentration should not be mistaken for a disregard for the importance of the approximately nine-month period that precedes the mother’s eventual birth event. Rather it should be understood as a kind of pragmatic decision all researchers are forced to make, determining the boundaries and concentrations of one’s research. 1 This work aims to show that the ecofeminist theory of master consciousness and dualistic logic, particularly as developed by Val Plumwood in her germinal text, Feminism and the Master of Nature (1993), provide new insight into these conceptual connections. In addition to examining this issue through a fresh theoretical lens, this work seeks to contribute to the existing literature by implementing an interdisciplinary scope allowing for a uniquely rich consideration of the social conceptualizations of childbirth that bridge medical, scientific discourse and popular culture discourse. Here “discourse” is understood as “an overall form of knowledge” and “the arena in which social relations, practices, and behaviors are constructed and maintained” (Janet Cramer 2009). This work contends that these spheres of human thought significantly reflect one another, indicating a powerful social consensus about how to understand childbirth, which in turn often shapes actual human experience of childbirth. The work seeks to provide analysis of new, largely unexamined understandings and representations of childbirth and gender found in popular culture, including Hollywood films such as The Back Up Plan. Finally, it also seeks to offer an interpretation of the sedimentation of master consciousness into medical teaching tools such as “High Fidelity” birth simulators. I begin this work, in chapter one, with a discussion of feminist epistemology that serves to ground the subsequent examination. The chapter explicates salient components of feminist and ecofeminist theory including the understanding of the power ideas have to shape human experience. It articulates the feminist critique of the traditional understanding of objectivity, which states that in order to attain knowledge we must transcend our embodiment, emotionality, and conduct “value-free” research, and provides feminist theory’s revised understanding of the idea, namely that since it is impossible to 2 entirely transcend our human subjectivity, including our values, a more plausible and honest form of objectivity urges the subject to acknowledge rather than obscure his/her values and preconceptions. The chapter then proceeds to identify core tenets of feminist methodology including the recognition of the interdependence of emotion, ethics, and reason (Collins 2009, 285). The work then explains how Western thought is gendered, the various forms of feminist responses to such gendering, and where ecofeminism, particularly ecofeminist philosophy, fits in. I discuss Val Plumwood’s theory of master consciousness, a conceptual framework that begins with a presumption about what constitutes ideal humanity, and proceeds to both systematically over emphasize difference and interpret difference as grounds for subordination. This chapter
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