Some Reactionary Commentary on the film Orgasmic Birth by someone who read the pamphlet and checked out the website.

I must be feeling a bit better because these (very similar) articles in The Age by an Avril Moore made me a tiny bit angry. Just a little bit. A twinge.

Maybe, because I've seen the film and helped host the Melbourne screening I'm taking the whole thing a little personally.

Or maybe I'm just cross because she spouted her drivel having not seen the film.

Nope, it's neither of those things, it's this: This Avril chic is using her painful births to trump all the women who report a painless or ecstatic birth. She has blithely silenced the voices of women who report beautiful birthing experiences, dismissing their accounts and replacing them with her own. Isn't that one of the things the patriarchy is supposed to be good at? Disregarding the reported experiences of women? Telling us what it is we are supposed to be experiencing? particularly when it comes to childbirth? Tisk tisk Avril, BAD feminist, naughty!

Avril called the "natural birth community" backward when she accuses them of deferring to men. Avril complains that, "this 'woman-centred' approach to birth, all dressed up to empower labouring mothers, remains unapologetic in its deference to men" simply because one woman reported a reduction in pain when she smiled at her husband.

Wow.

Some readers may remember that I happen to know quite a bit about pain, and I'm pretty sure that what Avril knows could be stamped on a paracetamol capsule: Times New Roman, size 10 font - "Birth, it hurt when I did it!". It is not unreasonable to suppose that smiling at someone you love during labour could reduce pain. Distraction is an age-old technique for reducing pain, meditation forms part of the armoury against chronic pain and there is plenty of other evidence much of it published in reputable journals, that focussing on pleasurable things works wonders for pain. In infants, physical pain response is reduced when they are given sucrose to suck on, distraction with something nice is a time tested pain reliever for young children. If smiling at your husband distracts you and gets some happy chemicals pumping in your brain then wonderful! It's hardly what I would call deference.

She cites other examples of deference too. Ina May Gaskin dares to dedicate her first book to her husband and apparently two homebirth doctors in the 1970s were OMG! blokes! Avril, in the 1970s most doctors were blokes, you played the odds and won there, and my honours thesis would have been dedicated to my husband (if it had been dedicated to anyone) that doesn't mean he told me what to put in it.

Avril's contempt for Ina May Gaskin beggars belief given her credentials. Avril has experienced three births, Ina May has been present at over 1200 and pioneered an extremely effective low intervention solution for shoulder dystocia. Avril, 3, Ina May, 1200. I think Ms Gaskin is winning in the experience stakes. Also, as a writer, Avril should know that a book like Spiritual Midwifery doesn't run to four editions if it's full of hippie clap-trap.

If Avril had seen the film, she would have known that the women in it are a far cry from shutting up and smiling submissively at their husbands. They are not only very much in charge they are very noisy indeed, it's just not the kind of noise that we expect to hear having been fed hysterically screaming women by mainstream media. It's animal, it's beautiful, and if you heard only the sound track you might think you were listening to quality porn - for real.

I gather, Avril, you were more of a screamer? REALLY focussed in on that pain, did you? Good on you! Whatever works dear.