That's awsome! Go Ani!!!!!

Well, my feathers could hardly be ruffled by a celebrity touting empowerment through home birth.

and I thing she said the following quite beautifully:

"It was brutal and scary and prolonged, and if I was in a hospital, they would have definitely cut the baby out of me. I thank the goddesses that I was at home with patient midwives who knew how to go the distance....I would definitely choose a homebirth again despite the fear mongering of this patriarchal society, which convinces women that they are incapable of having babies without the intervention of men and their machines....I believe that women in hospitals are prevented from being able to have normal, healthy birthing experiences because of the intimidation of being on the clock, being pressured to take drugs to make it quicker, being inhibited in their movement and activities, and alienated by a sterile, fluorescent lit, feet-in-the-air type environment....You know the classic “performance anxiety” of not being able to pee or poo because somebody’s watching you? Multiply that by a million! A cervix is a sphincter after all!...."

On the other hand, I find the following to be sexism in empowered women's clothing:

* birth is "the epicenter of a woman's power"

*"To take birthing out of women’s hands and deny us the continuum of eons of wisdom and experience is to eject us from the very seat of our power."

*"I believe the act of giving birth to be the single most miraculous thing a human being can do...."

And to all of the above three statements, I say, speak for yourself. Birth will not be the epicenter or seat of my power. Had I not gotten pregnant now, I would still have been an empowered women. I would have still have had my heart, my mind, my voice. I have seen many women come into great joy through motherhood. I have also seen many disempowered, frazzled, lost to artistic work, plunged into decades of (if not lifelong) poverty through motherhood. Walk through any major museum notice the paucity of women's work on the walls: child rearing takes time, energy, liesure. And women do themselves out of all of the above through motherhood. There are miracles to be made by the few, the proud, the non-reproducing women. there is great power in them. I do not feel supported by celebrities locating women's power in their pants or in their wombs. I locate it in our laptops where we write our books, on the canvases we paint, in the peaceful walks we take with friends, in the money we accrue in not bearing children, sometimes simply in the courage to not reproduce, to travel, to be, in our god given hearts, minds and spirits — as well as in motherhood.