Lactation professional Prof. Amy Brown was apprised that one of her slides at a recent conference on “holistic” infant sleep could be construed as racist.
Brown predictably responded as she does to any criticism: with fury. But she’d been called out on a tendency that it is all too common in birth and breastfeeding communities: exoticizing poor indigenous women, particularly women of color.
As Alison Phipps has written in The Politics of the Body: Gender in a Neoliberal and Neoconservative Age:
Complementing [the] focus on the ‘natural’, there is a tendency to search for authenticity and origins in the discussion of alternative birth practices. This … often involves the Orientalizing of ‘traditional’ cultures, whether prehistoric or from developing countries.
Natural childbirth and breastfeeding advocates are channeling Grantly Dick-Read’s notions of “primitive” women, but:
… Like the claims of many contemporary activists, however, Dick-Read’s points were made despite the fact that he had not spent extensive time in non-western countries. The lack of an evidence base to corroborate such assertions is particularly problematic when non-western birthing practices are appropriated in the service of authenticity rather than effectiveness.
Which raises the questions:
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Privileged, white natural mothering advocates silence less privileged women who have different experiences.[/pullquote]
Whose experience counts?
Is it appropriate to use the (imagined) experience of others to advocate for oneself?
In a separate paper, Whose personal is more political? Experience in contemporary feminist politics, Phipps attempts to address these questions.
She argues that the way that privileged, white women use experience — their personal experiences as well as the experiences of others — serves to perpetuate their privilege at the expense of others.
…[P]rivileged feminists, speaking for others and sometimes for themselves, use experience to generate emotion and justify particular agendas, silencing critics who are often from more marginalised social positions.
Specifically:
…Rhetorical use of distressing experiences by the powerful and privileged … turns them into a kind of ‘investment capital’ in what Sara Ahmed terms ‘affective economies,’ by mobilising them to generate feeling and create political gain. In the process, structural dynamics are masked; the privileged are able to capitalise on the personal and deflect critique by marginalised groups whose realities are invisibilised or dismissed, even as they are spoken for.
We see this over and over again among natural parenting advocates. Powerful Western, white, well off women ASSUME they speaking for EVERYONE. They use their own personal experiences and hijack the imagined experiences of others to secure what they wish to have. Even worse, they silence less privileged women who have different experiences.
Both the natural childbirth movement and the lactivist movement are made up nearly entirely of white, professional women and their white, privileged acolytes. They seem to believe that their personal experiences are the only experiences that count; their wishes around birth and breastfeeding are the only ones that are legitimate; and that to the extent that other women have different experiences and wishes, they must be silenced if possible and ignored if they dare to speak up anyway.
We are continually treated to the spectacle of white, privileged midwives convening conferences, attended nearly exclusively by white, privileged audiences, telling the birth stories of white, privileged birthing women for the express purpose of ensuring that the entire medical system to cater ONLY to them. In the process, the imagined experiences of black indigenous women (it’s natural!) are mobilized as justification for ignoring the preferences of contemporary non-white and non-privileged women. How dare they want epidurals, interventions of C-sections? They are either ignorant or have been alienated from their natural instinct.
And should any of those less privileged women with different experiences of childbirth and different needs dare to contradict them on social media they are first treated with smug condescension and then shut down entirely by deleting, blocking and banning.
We are continually treated to the spectacle of white, privileged lactation professionals convening conferences, attended nearly exclusively by white, privileged audiences, telling the breastfeeding stories of white, privileged breastfeeding women for the express purpose of ensuring that the entire medical system cater ONLY to them. In the process, the imagined experiences of black indigenous women (it’s natural!) are mobilized (as in Prof. Brown’s slide) as justification for ignoring the preferences of contemporary non-white and non-privileged women. How dare they want formula? They are either ignorant or have been alienated from their natural instinct.
And should any of those less privileged women with different experiences of breastfeeding and different needs dare to contradict them on social media they are first treated with smug condescension and then shut down entirely by deleting, blocking and banning.
What is the Baby Friendly Hospital Iniatitive if not a spectacle of white, privileged lactation professionals ignoring the lives experiences of indigenous women and substituting a mythical “natural” experience that never existed in nature? In reality many indigenous cultures supplement their babies with prelacteal feeds, and mandate days or weeks before new mothers are required to fully care for their babies and themselves. These are the women whose “experiences” are used to support the BFHI policies of avoiding supplementation at all costs and mandated 24 hour rooming in and the closing of well baby nurseries.
Worst of all, as Phipps writes:
This also has a polarising effect which inhibits connections across differing experiences: indeed, we often participate in selective empathies where we discredit the realities of those who articulate opposing politics.
Natural childbirth advocates discredit the reality of women who suffer agonizing pain in labor and severe childbirth injuries. Lactation professionals loudly and obnoxiously discredit the reality of many women who (along with their babies) have suffered from insufficient breastmilk. They have the temerity to sneer that “fed is minimal.”
Phipps analysis is long and complex but the conclusions are straightforward:
…The injuries felt by those who are more privileged, while certainly painful, are not commensurate with the experience of oppression. Ventriloquising another’s personal story is an act of power, especially when the oppression of this Other is wielded against another Other with whom one
disagrees.
In other words, using the (imagined) experiences of indigenous women is an act of power, especially when those stories are used to oppress other less privileged women in one’s own society.
Disclosing one’s experience of violence in a bid to construct and exclude the Other is violence in itself.
There is nothing wrong with privileged natural childbirth advocates discolosing their experience of disappointment at having an epidural, interventions or a C-section. There is something very wrong with privileged women using their disappointment to discredit the reality of women who welcome epidurals, interventions or C-sections. In a very real sense any “campaign for normal birth” is a form of obstetric violence against women who are less privileged.
There is nothing wrong with privileged lactivists disclosing their experience of lack of breastfeeding support. There is something very wrong with privileged lactivists using their disappointment to discredit the reality of women who don’t want to breastfeed, or worse, to discredit the reality of women who had insufficient breastmilk or other serious breastfeeding problems.
It is always an act of power for birth and breastfeeding professionals to use social media to pontificate about AND then silence (through deleting, blocking and banning) women who have different experiences.
