Would you watch?

The first televised natural birth is to be screened live next weekend from a British hospital.

A group of expectant mothers have agreed *snipped* to be filmed giving birth naturally, without pain relief.

I have given birth twice. Both times with minimal or no pain relief. My son was born after 3 weeks slow labour and his spine was lying against my spine. He was born with the aid of a TENS machine and a bit of gas and air. My daughter was quick and easy. G&A made me feel sick so it was only the TENS. Within an hour I was up and walking about. Only to the loo across the corridor but still mobile if I wished to be. But it was an intensely private time.

But staff within the hospital, as well as the Royal College of Midwives, have raised objections, warning that having a TV crew there for a live ‘performance’ makes the birth inherently less safe and will raise the mother’s own stress levels, affecting the baby.

This raises so many questions for me. It’s such an incredible invasion of such an intensely private female experience - I can’t believe they’d actually do it. I’m incensed. I’m fuming - again. I think the word I came up with the other day was apoplectic.

What will they do if there are complications, or a still birth? I sincerely hope that the women involved have a stress free and easy birth with no complications - but what if? My first had no major complications but I was lapsing in and out of consciousness through sheer exhaustion. I know women who have had babies rushed away needing oxygen or treatment. The miracle of birth is a natural event that women have had control over for all human existence. It’s a matriarchal thing that men (doctors and consultants) have complicated with medical intervention where none is needed in an effort to take that control away from us. And now they want to film it too???

I know it’s been done before. Robert Winston did it as part of the Human Body thing. He showed everything from conception to death. I watched it, mostly. It was fascinating. Birth was shown as part of the process. Child of Our Time did it too. The big difference for me is that those were filmed and edited. If the participants had wanted to back out it could have been cut. I remember some of the original couples did pull out, including one who’s baby was stillborn. It was announced with discretion and then we saw no more of them. This programme is scheduled to go out LIVE. The scope for disaster is HUGE.

The programme will be shown next Sunday evening on Channel 5 in a two-hour special *snipped*. It will be extended until midnight if the woman giving birth spends a long time in labour.

How exactly are they going to make sure these women give birth on time? Induction? Unnecessary intervention probably leading to emergency c-section?

A senior member of staff at QMC, who asked not to be named, said: ‘Some of us have very big reservations about this. If they really want to show the wonder of birth, why don’t they film it pre-recorded, and then transmit it once they know everything has gone well and mother and baby are fine?

Exactly! Why do it live? It’s voyeuristic and unnecessary. I won’t be watching.

Thanks Jax!

I read a fair bit. I read more when I wasn’t writing, but I still read a fair bit. Interestingly I’ve read 28 of the list of ………..

The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000

Actually I own a few of them now. I’m sitting here pondering now. Should any book ever be banned? Can the written word be a bad thing? I’m not sure. The words themselves are just words, the books just paper and print. But the ideas inside, there’s a different story. The list of most frequently challenged Authors is interesting too. Even JK Rowling gets in there(top 10 1999 - 2004 - scroll down the page a bit) must be that evil wizarding magic…..

An idea in and of itself is not bad or good surely? It’s human interpretation or implementation of that idea. Then I get myself tangled up in knots - of course some ideas are bad, so the written form must be bad too. But which of us is to judge what is bad and what is good.

I could ramble for ages but I won’t, I have a novel to write and my brain needs to be not oozing out of my ears. I wonder if my books will ever make those lists?

I met up with a friend in Meadowhall for a cuppa and a browse round - didn’t need anything much but window shopping can be fun. In a corner there is the most incredibly pink and sparkly shop - The Little Fairy Shop. That’s bad enough but next door they have - The Little Dudes Shop.

These are shops aimed at children. The fairy one has dresses, wands, wings, stationary, dolls.

This is a magical haven for little girls

Huh? Just girls? The message is insidious. Girls like pink and wear dresses. None of that fighting or standing up for yourself. Play nice and quietly, be a caring good fairy…… Can I vomit?

The dudes one had dinosaurs, monster feet, vampire cloaks, lego - much more interesting stuff.

Feed your little dude’s imagination

So my little girl has no imagination? My daughter can’t ride a skateboard or play knights with her brother? She shouldn’t want to go into space or hunt for treasure? My son won’t want to cuddle anything soft or show his sensitive side either.

How the hell can anything change when this crap is shoved at our kids from such a young age? I was fuming. The shops themselves were bad enough but juxtaposed like that made it worse somehow, highlighted it for me.

These delightful emporia were almost directly opposite an establishment selling t-shirts with slogans on. I know Hallowe’en is coming - but "Witch Bitch" opposite the pink and sparkly fairy shop? There were others, worse, more offensive but I think you get the idea and I can’t remember the wording now. The underlying theme of - I am a woman hence also either available for shagging or a frigid bitch was just plain not funny.

I enjoyed my cuppa and natter, I had a nice wander round and we did pick up some stuff as well. But I fumed and muttered under my breath all the way home.

I love Witchy Woo. Her posts are insightful and usually make sense. This post (Sunday 23.09.06) had me almost clapping at the puter.

When I was at school, admittedly a little later than Witchy, I was one of the first girls to have a go at metalwork. The teacher did everything for me. It was very isolating. Today I still have a fascination with metal and the way it can be shaped but not the skill or knowledge to work with it. I did woodwork too. There were other girls there but they made jewellery boxes. I made a chess board, I still have it. I’m teaching my son to play chess on the board that I made. But when O level options came up I ended up doing Art. I hated art, still do. But woodwork and metalwork were for boys. I don’t remember being told that but the awareness was there. I failed Art after being booted down to the lower level class. I wonder if I would have got anywhere with woodwork?

From school I started teacher training - because that was a suitable career for a woman. It was what my Mum did. To be fair, I do remember lengthy discussions on what I wanted to do with my life with not that many restrictions on what was suitable. But I did feel steered towards the caring, feminine professions. I was 18, I had no idea what I wanted from my life. I have more of an idea now, at 37 but it is still pretty fluid.

I suppose that could be where it started - at school. Then at college I discovered I prefered women to men and that (obviously) made me a feminist. I tried to be a political student but somehow got lost along the way. Feminism was a word, a title that I could apply to myself without really understanding it.

Only now, through talking with other people I regard as Feminist, do I begin to really understand what it means for me.

And I know that this blog is read by some who feel their feminist journey is just beginning so this post is by way of a warning, really. Because once you start looking, you start to see more, and more… and yet more of the sexist injustices and patriarchal assumptions and oppressions of women that simply serve to keep things the way they are - the way the patriarchy likes them - for women as people; no matter how they’re dressed up to appear somehow different or appealing to women/girls. Once your feminist journey has started it doesn’t stop. It does become part of who you are. It becomes undeniable.

Round of applause for you for that Witchy. Thanks for the warning but you are about a year too late. Since I stopped being a little nervous of you and got to know you properly you have opened my eyes and the view is frightening. I’m glad I have you to hold my hand while I look and try to understand what I am seeing.

My journey has been a wander on the edges for a while but is now going into places that are scary, but I can’t stop. Once you have started to tread this path you discover it is a one way street. There is only forwards.

Anyone want to walk with me?

Richard Branson is in the news again.

All very laudable and a move in the right direction but I don’t believe he does anything without a commercial motive. I can’t help but applaud while feeling very suspicious. Everything he does is about money, money and more money. He seems unscrupulous in his pursuit of his own personal fortune.

In some of his megastores they stock porn dvd’s next to the Disney section - what’s that all about then? Hell of a mesage there Richard! What are you saying?

But that’s another rant - this is a green post.

Bio-Ethanol is slowly being put in our petrol because:

Ordinary cars can run on blends of 5% biofuel and 95% petrol, and this is quickly and silently emerging as a standard fuel at Britain’s service stations.

Personally I think the way forward is for people like Branson to cut or eliminate the profit they take from the public transport they own and to make it affordable. Huh? Own? Public? Brain fart there. Drop your ticket prices Richard! Drop them so low that I will consider travelling on your trains. Oh and making sure they run on time would help too.

Example - it costs me about £30 to fuel my car to get from home to my parents and back. The same journey by train is £120, with at least one change and then a bus, taxi or parental pick up at the other end. By coach it’s nearer £60. Where’s the incentive for me to ditch the car? I can comfortably fit me and my kids in, pile it up with the stuff we want to take and it goes door to door at the cheapest rate. Even locally, it costs £3 to get me and the kids into town. I take the car and it’s £2 for parking and I have a nice large boot to bring shopping back in.

I think for me the way to go is dual or flexi fuel cars - when I can afford it - they are so hideously over priced! Flexi fuel cars now include a Ford and a very nice looking Saab. Although I do have my eye on a Honda Civic Hybrid. There’s also the Toyota Prius.

Go on. I challenge you all. Richard Branson, Honda, Saab and Ford. Toyota too. And anyone else involved in the commercial side of this. Drop your prices. Take the cut in profit. Make us WANT your cars, make us want to use your transport networks. Take the hit and lead the way.

If anyone at Honda, Ford, Saab or Toyota perhaps might read this - I’ll gladly test one of your Hybrids for a month or so and then rave about it in here!

Today we needed to go shopping. Now I am pro small local business and the local market. I like to buy from and support the local farmers when I can. But it’s not always possible. So today we went to a large out of town supermarket. I don’t like them but I accept that they’re useful and aren’t going to go away in the near future.

So we watched the Meatrix the other day, all 3 of us. Mummy (37) son (6) and daughter (3). It got my son thinking and sparked off many discussions on farming and factory conditions. Now, he is home educated and just beginning to read. He’s mostly self taught with guidance from me and I am incredibly proud of him. So, as we walked round the supermarket (lets call it Sainsco, no, Tesbury! for sake of argument) Anyway, we were wandering round Tesbury choosing shopping and son pipes up "That says Nestle, we don’t want that." He knows what the Nestle logo looks like so I agreed and we chose something else. Next aisle and it was a sauce for making a stir fry later on this week.

"No, not that one!" Huh, why? We get that one because you like it? "It’s in plastic, can we get this one in a jar. Then we can recycle the jar?" I love this child! He got a huge grin from a woman walking past at this point.

Chicken next.

"This one says Organic. It’s been happy. I don’t want to eat a sad chicken." He got a small round of applause from a family nearby. He said similar about the cheese and milk. He wants to have milk and cheese from cows that see the sun and get to eat grass.

Then we hit the fruit and veg. "What does value mean?" The reply from the Tesbury worker nearby was an eye opener. "It’s the stuff no-one else wants." I wonder if he was meant to say that? Ah well, I won’t tell if you won’t! So, organic apples, spuds and carrots. Then they both wanted bananas. Quandry here and a discussion on the differences between Fair Trade and Organic. We went for Fair trade.

This is the way froward, educating the children to make the choices. In the car on the way home we chatted about how we can change the way Tesbury et al provide their services. If we always buy organic or fair trade then they will provide more and the prices will come down. If we, and everyone we know, tells them we don’t want factory farmed (sad) meat and dairy then better farming will be demanded. If we change the way we shop then others will follow. We can change the world, but only a small step at a time.

Ok, so this is the new Ethically Speaking blog. Well, it could be. I need to play with the settings a bit but I do like Blogsome. It can do more than I know about but I already use it for a different blog. Not sure if I can import my blogger posts though. Will have to investigate.

 So, please leave a comment just to prove you can and then I’ll know whether I want to switch over properly or not!

(ETA - I can’t import Blogger posts as such but I can cut&paste selected posts over if I want. I may do that)

Testing text features.

Links?

Easy enough.  

Quotes? Not hard but a tad more fiddly than blogger…

I’ve put it in my faves….just as a reminder…

Hell, lots more fiddly! But doable. Oh and blogsome has….. smileys!