I’m so lucky I get to do what I do.

I had a fantastic experience presenting at CREGS Summer Institute on Sexuality this week. It feels so good to start of a conversation knowing you’re amongst your people. Zero percent of the room needed to be convinced or explained what patriarchy was, or racism, sexism, white supremacy, or classism. It was also so damn wonderful to be in a room full of sexuality visionaries, gender rebels, superhumans of many stripes. We were definitely on the level.

The topic, birth, as misfit as it might have seemed on the roster, actually felt right at home, both impactful and natural. Talking about birth oppression, as I refer to it, can be heavy. It can be painful to face the ways birthing people are dehumanized in moments that are among their most vulnerable, indelible, and alive. But we must face this to transform it. I’m far from the first person to say these things, but I am honored to join with others, and use my voice and skills and platform for birth justice.

To quote Adrienne Rich, one of my heroes:

“Repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers. The female body has been both territory and machine, virgin wilderness to be exploited and assembly-line turning out life. We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children (if and as we choose) but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console, and alter human existence –a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy, will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.” — Adrienne Rich, 1995, pp. 285-286.

So here it is, the presentation as delivered at the 16th Annual Summer Institute on Sexuality, by the enter for Research and Education in Gender & Sexuality (CREGS) @ San Francisco State University, on June 7th, 2018.  Brace yourself for some mediocre video editing — I’m still befriending iMovie.

TW: There are some images of episiotomy & cesarean section in this presentation. Warnings are given before content is revealed.

 

 

I want to thank CREGS and their incredibly team, including Zed and Bex, for making it happen, for holding such a powerful and authentic space, and for including me in this wonderful event. To learn more about CREGS at SFSU, check them out:
Facebook: cregs.sf
Twitter: cregs_sf
http://cregs.sfsu.edu/

 

Much love! Let me know what you think. And please feel free to share.