“It’s natural.”
That’s often the beginning and the end of many arguments about the relative merits of C-sections and epidurals vs. unmedicated vaginal birth. It’s also supposed to be the beginning and the end of any argument about the relative merits of breastfeeding vs. formula.
The declaration “it’s natural” is presumed to have cricital advantages over other claims: being inarguable and reflecting science not morals. As natural childbirth and breastfeeding advocates delight in saying, “Facts are not attacks” and the claims that unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding are natural are certainly facts.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Is rape best because it is natural?[/pullquote]
“It’s natural” is also imagined to have prescriptive value. If it’s natural, it must be good because it is what we are “designed for.” Millions of years of evolution can’t be wrong, can it? That’s why we should “normalize” unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding. It is culture that has caused them to fall our of favor, but culture must bow down before nature.
So if unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding are best because they are natural, what does that tell us about rape? Rape is natural, too.
If we define rape as forced copulation, it isn’t merely natural among humans, it is natural throughout the animal kingdom.
From insects to birds to higher animals, reproduction in many species depends on the female choosing her mate. This evolutionary strategy involves females judging males for fitness based on species specific displays like plumage. The peacock with the most elaborate plumage is more attractive to peahens because they are fittest evolutionarily. A peacock with elaborate plumage will pass on its “fitter” genes to the peahens’ offspring.
In other species, males fight to demonstrate their evolutionary fitness with the winner claiming the right to mate with a specific female or all females within a harem. The strongest male is winner in more ways than one; not only does he get the mating opportunities, but he is able to spread his genes into more offspring. In evolution, the individual with the most offspring wins.
In species where females pick or accede to males based on fitness, rape represents an important evolutionary strategy for less fit males. Instead of leaving the choice of mate to the female, the male who forces copulation on a female who wouldn’t otherwise choose him is given a chance to spread his genes that he wouldn’t otherwise get. If he is a successful rapist, he will father many offspring. Rape offers this male an extra opportunity to be an evolutionary winner. So rape isn’t merely natural in such settings, it is a winning strategy.
If unmedicated vaginal birth is best and breast is best, then rape must be best, too!
That can’t be right, can it?
It can’t and it isn’t and the reasons demonstrate why unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding aren’t necessarily best, either.
Evolutionary fitness is all about leaving the most offspring who survive to adulthood. Nature is agnostic as to how that is accomplished.
For example, if the successful moose rapist leaves more offspring than the moose who battled all the other males to win the right to mate, the rapist is the winner. Moreover, he didn’t have to risk his health or his life for the opportunity to mate.
Similarly, nature doesn’t care how a mother and baby survives childbirth, only IF they survive childbirth. Nature doesn’t care whether or not a baby is breastfed, only that the baby is FED.
While specific strategies may be evolutionarily better overall, ignoring those strategies may be better for individuals.
Letting females choose their mates may lead to greater success for a species as a whole, but each individual within the species is struggling to pass on his genes and success for him might require rape.
It makes no difference to the individual woman or baby whether unmedicated vaginal birth or breastfeeding is a successful strategy for the species overall. To them, it only matters if they survive. If C-sections and formula increase the chance of survival, then they are better.
What is adaptive in one setting can be maladaptive in another.
Rape may be an evolutionarily successful strategy among animals. It is less likely to be successful in human societies that have laws to prevent cuckholding. While a rapist in human society might be successful if not caught, he might be killed in a society that punishes rapists with death.
Unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding were the most successful of all possible strategies among human beings until the advent of technology. Now that technology can improve upon or even replace natural processes, refusing to use lifesaving technology is maladaptive.
Just because a tactic is evolutionarily successful doesn’t make it good, particularly when considering the victim.
Males stand to benefit when they rape. The species as a whole may benefit, too, since valuable traits that aren’t connected with display or strength may be carried on. There does not seem to be any benefit at all for the female who was raped; she is deprived of the opportunity to make her own mating choice and she was violated and perhaps injured. Just because rape is natural, doesn’t make it something we wish to emulate or even allow.
Similarly, unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding can be natural, but that doesn’t make them best nor something we can or should wish to emulate; that’s especially true because the natural deprives women of the opportunity to make the choices they deem best for themselves.
The bottom line?
Natural isn’t best, even in nature.
It’s good for some, bad for others, and therefore nobody else’s business what a woman chooses for herself.
Just want to chime in with a fantastic ceserean story. If it was a major surgery, you could have fooled me. I was slow on my feet for 3-4 days, but left the hospital after 48 hours & didn’t bother filling the Rx since I was doing fine on Tylenol & ibruprofen. I took otc pain meds around the clock for 1 week then at night for another week.
I’ve had two ankle surgeries in the last 3 years, and an appendectomy as a child (pre-laparoscopic). My ceserean was by FAR the easiest surgery I’ve ever recovered from. I wasn’t inconvenienced at all. If anything it was nice to not have to do any laundry or housecleaning while mothering a newborn!! And the extra night in the hospital meant a lot of one on one learning from nurses that made bringing home baby a lot easier.
The women in my mothers group who delivered vaginally talk about the worst pain beyond anything they’d ever imagined. The c moms talk about how nice their surgeons were. Any pregnant lady reading this should absolutely consider a primary elective ceserean. They’re the bees fucking knees and I kinda think it’s straight up patriarchy to pressure women to do it au naturel.
Slightly OT-a little male midwifery mansplaining: pain is a rite of passage, you women demanding pain relief aren’t real mothers.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/12/pregnancy-pain-natural-birth-yoga
Oh, my, that made me angry. Of course the usual retorts of “Why doesn’t someone jam a grapefruit up his rectum and then explain that the pain is good” occurred to me, but more practically speaking someone needs to explain to him that attending women at their most vulnerable means trying to ease their pain.
I was rather struck by the way the headline says ‘medical chief’, then professor, then doctor, and ONLY then tells you he’s a midwife. So not only has he never experienced the pain of childbirth, he’s not qualified to place one or prescribe one. I accept that one doesn’t necessarily have to experience pain in order to empathize with sufferers (I’ve never given birth, but it definitely looks hard work to me), but its the tone deafness that gets me-generations of women have been saying that its painful and I need help, but there are still stories of women being denied that. Midwives refusing to call an anaethetist until ‘oops, its too late now to site one’.
The article is a few years old now, but the thinking is still current, and still exemplifies the senior midwifery mentality of natural=good, medicalised=bad. The RCM is full of them, renaming labour pain as ‘power surges’, claiming that its the fear of childbirth that causes the pain, not actually having your pelvis spread open, and gleefully agreeing with Milli Hill that because you’re only contracting one fifth of the time you’re in labour, you shouldn’t need epidurals just to cope for those few minutes.
“he’s not qualified to place an epidural or prescribe one.”
Interesting. Here in the United States, midwives (CNMs) can order epidurals for their patients as easily as doctors can. No cosigning by a physician needed.
Here’s what I wrote about Walsh at the time: http://www.skepticalob.com/2009/07/updating-sexist-claim-that-pain-is-good.html
That was before I started reading your blog-should have known you’d have an opinion on him! I wonder who the argumentative guest poster in the comments was?
A friend of mine sent me the link-we were discussing the imminent arrival of the new royal baby and how she didn’t want her baby delivered by ‘men in suits’. Duchess Meghan strikes me very much as someone who believes in unmedicated birth assisted by yoga practicing dolphins, with a chorus of doulas led by Gwyneth Paltrow chanting positive mantras and channeling goddess power…..
My OB surgeon was a woman and so was the resident she was training. Why does Markle assume OBs are male? All the doctors in my dr’s practice are female. And they’re awesome at their jobs.
Most of the ones I’ve worked with are women. Male obstetricians are becoming rare. On the other hand, male midwives are becoming more common-not that many just yet, but definitely more around than there used to be.
Attention, trolls.
Saying something is NATURAL is not the same as saying it is GOOD, or BEST.
Now do you get it??
That’s why I use terms like saint, Holy and righteous to describe what’s Good.
Most of the people are getting so angry over this post because either they dont know how to engage in critical thinking or they love drama I expect the latter is the more likely reason. here is another statement that most of them would probably flip out about. Water is natural, water can kill you, water is very dangerous.
OT: I was at a birthday where one kid (a close relative of the birthday girl) kept making it all about himself under the benign eye of his helpless mother, father, and grandmother. They had worked themselves into such slavery to the kid that it’s just painful to watch. But the thing is, I don’t care about them. They’re someone I know while the birthday girl’s mom is one of my best friends.
When I heard the phrase, “But he’s a kid, what can I do?”, accompanied by a smile meant to show how adorable her kid was one time too more, I made a disgusted face and the mom looked so injured, staring at me like the perfect little victim. I don’t care. I kept showing my disgust every time she showed how OK it was for her kid to misbehave quite openly. You don’t get to barge into someone’s house and make it all about your kid when the birthday kid is someone else. AND there is difference between “he’s a kid” and “he should never be restrained and challenged because I’m parenting positively.” I’m about as much as positivity as the next person but when a kid is spoiled, bratty, loud, obnoxious, uncontrollable, and generally a pain in the ass for everyone around, destroying someone else’s house under Mommy’s adoring eye, I don’t care HOW their parents achieved it.
OF COURSE he was breastfed (and failing to thrive in the beginning.) At least this time his mom refrained from offering to give some of her milk (from her current baby) to the birthday girl – my friend’s ONE YEAR OLD birthday girl who was born in 30 week.
Yup.
Positive parenting isn’t about never saying no.
And, as my mother wisely pointed out, you also want your child to know how to say no, and to know that will be respected. So they will know how to behave if someone tries to exploit them.
I have known a couple kids like this and I cant stand them or the parents who do nothing about it. Also in my opinion having been taught manners is more important than having been fed breast milk.
I read the title of this post, and so thoroughly agreed with the sentiment, that I kept scrolling.
It just… it just didn’t even stick out to me… yep. Rape. Rape happens. Just like all sorts of other heinous things happen on this planet. No argument from me there.
But being triggered is what gets people engaged and outraged and posting and linking and clicking and responding….. I wasn’t triggered, because I could just agree. I get your point, and I’ve read enough of what you’ve written over the years to understand that you are not promoting rape on any level.
The outrage is revealing something, but I’m not sure what.
A dis-ability to read, and think and comprehend? A non-desire to understand another person’s argument? A propensity to feel emotionally triggered and to react to that emotional trigger, truth-be-damned?
These folks can’t separate the meaning of the word ‘natural’ with concept of ‘inherent goodness’ and so when they read “rape is natural” they can only respond to the ideas in their own heads about what the word ‘natural’ means to them.
Which, if they could calm down from the emotional frenzy they’ve engaged in, maybe they could see your point.
Why is an academic calling for censorship? Because Hannah Dahlen can’t address my claims so she’d rather censor me. Shameful!https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6f06b5c043378ee773a4369fe21e66bab086629af588ab1c9b152b683b8a772f.jpg
Hannah Dahlen is a piece of work.
Woo is creeping into our universities thanks to all the lovely money it brings with it, which helps VCs and others with their financial KPIs.
HD is an example.
What Hannah Dahlen really means:
“Dr Amy promotes ideas that are contrary to mine, and my feelings keep getting hurt.”
So she basically is so stuck on the idea that unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding are a priori good, that she assumes someone who draws a parallel between these and other things must think said other things are good as well. She’s missing the entire point of your post, which is that just because something exists in nature doesn’t make it good. Rape exists in nature and it’s not good. So if you’re going to argue that unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding are good, you need a better argument for why.
Hannah Dahlen is such a hypocrite. She sounds like a twelve year old having a tantrum.
Where do you practice so I know where not to go. Anyone arguing the validity of natural birth or breastfeeding is insane. As a healthcare professional, I would think you’d be able to see the pros and cons. Making an analogy to rape is barbaric. Stop trying to justify your poor decisions and push them on everyone else.
Cognitive dissonance is hard for natural childbirth/breastfeeding advocates.
If you could read properly you would have read at the top right of the page that she is retired therefore not currently practicing.
What poor decisions are you talking about?
How is the analogy “barbaric”? Please explain what you mean. What does she say in this post that is incorrect?
Yes I would also like to know what you mean by poor decisions. Do you mean decisions that are different from the ones you would make personally? Cause if that is the case then you are the one pushing your decisions on everyone else. we call that hypocrisy.
How is natural birth more “valid?”
How is breastfeeding more “valid?”
Because it’s Gods design.
Then god fucked that one up. Would you say that to a woman whos baby is starving because she cant produce enough?
If you had read the website, you would know that she is retired, so no worries there.
If you had read more than 1 post, you would know that she isn’t anti breastfeeding. She is anti what breastfeeding has become: a status symbol, a tool to blame and shame, and, in some cases, a real danger to both mother and child. Also, Dr. Teuter breastfed her children.
You don’t have to agree with this post. Or with any of them. I do wonder, though, why people who drop in to disagree don’t take the time to understand why she writes what she does.
This analogy is true, but people are gonna start saying Dr Amy supports rape and so do we. Either because they did not read the article or they are too stupid to understand the analogy. I was gang raped and this piece does not offend me at all.
When I was about 11 my older sisters each had a cat. The female was about 14 years old and spayed, and the only time a female cat wants to have sex is during heat ( cause males have a barbed penis so it hurts the female) but she was not in heat when this happened cause she was spayed. The other cat was a 4 year old male who fathered most of the kittens within a 3 block radius.
The male used to rape her quite frequently. One time this lasted for 1 and a half hours and she kept trying to get away but she was old and could not outrun him so he kept catching her. At the 1 and a half hour mark we had to separate the cats to get him to stop. So yes I would agree that rape is something that occurs in nature..
Anyone who’s witnessed duck sex in person will tell you rape definitely exists in nature.
I once had the misfortune of reading about one male duck having sex with the dead body of another male duck. They’re evil quacking bastards.
My mother has had gay frogs and once caught one trying to have sex with a dead frog and I currently have one gay cat.
I can’t believe I’m quoting Alex Jones, but… “THEY’RE TURNING THE FREAKIN’ FROGS GAY”
It just will never not be funny.
Not ducks, but pigeons
https://yarn.co/yarn-clip/9c594672-1547-4741-9cd2-6ba63b31fe4c
Also whales.
Dolphins too. They aren’t so sweet and innocent.
Rape exists in nature now, but it didn’t exist until after sin entered into the world. Genesis explains it.
No buddy it doesnt.
I’m normally on board with you, and I completely understand the analogy, it is accurate. but I think you went waaay to far with this one.
You’ve handed the lactivists ammo on a silver platter. I know you don’t care what they think of you and not should you, but this is going to be used to fuel further attacks on formula and c-section Mums for a long time. I can see it now: “Why would you use formula when the people who support it are rape apologists”.
I’m absolutely, 100% behind your science and your stance. You’re a fantastic voice for those of us who value lifesaving interventions, pain relief and have struggled with breastfeeding. but I really think you should reconsider this one.
I’m nor sure Dr Amy’s post is going to matter at all. They’re ALREADY saying all kind of gross stuff about c-section and formula-feeding mothers. Their self-worth is so enshrined in the natural function of their organs that they’re unable to back up.
Dr Amy gained traction not by being always perfect in her speech but by being contradictory. Understanding, tactful bloggers get zero notice.
Honestly, I was put off by the headline as well. But since I’m not a moron whose only achievement is to have pushed a kid out of my you know what and then had this kid hang on my boob up to their teens, I actually read the article. And while it’s focused on the animal kingdom, I now think we NEED such an article but focused on human rape, stalking, molestation and all those nasty but natural trait prevalent in many. If this was discussed and paid attention to, perhaps I would have known what to do when I became target for creeps attracted to girls in their early teens, instead of keeping it a secret because I was petrified and ashamed.
I live in a post-Communist country where child molestation was never discussed. If it was not natural, it should have never existed here, yet I was molested and almost raped – and my parents didn’t know how to react. Perhaps we need articles about this natural but cruel and wrong thing.
I completely agree with al of you.
I just worry that if there’s a Mum out there who doesn’t want a bar of the woo (because a lot of them are nut jobs that use terms like birth-rape!), and are looking for other outlets, this is one of the few sites that has accurate unbiased information. And roughly a quarter of that demographic will be a sexual assault survivor. Articles like this are likely to completely turn them off. And given the FIBF quotes her a lot, they may be turned off them too by association. This limits their options of a supportive community.
I’m just not sure that lowering our standards to those of the opposition is the best strategy. It calls out the idiots for misguided psychos they are,yes. But it also risks alienating an already vulnerable population in the process.
Well, to be fair, many of the natural childbirth advocates have equated medical birth with rape more than once before. So calling out Dr Amy over it is very hypocritical of them.
Good point. If they’re upset over this but support the concept of “birth rape,” I got nothing.
Agree. I completely understand the analogy and the science. Although astute, I worry that subject matter is so distasteful, and for many people, so personal, that I wonder if this was a very well-intended but ultimately unhelpful treatise for the cause. There are other excellent examples of how natural isn’t better that may make a more compelling argument. (Marijuana. Death in childbirth. Childhood death from type 1 diabetes, influenza, cystic fibrosis, or getting eaten by wild animals. Sickle cell anemia. Anencephaly. Priapism. Etc.)
I would agree if these folks took exception to “birth rape,” but they don’t.
So much talking about rape worldwide. So much strategies to avoid it. So much uproar and suffering.
Because rape isn’t natural. That’s obviously the reason it KEEPS happening on such a scale. Because it doesn’t happen in nature since the nature of many can never be just this shitty.
These dumbasses on Dr Amy’s Facebook page must be living in quite the bubble!
Yall whites natural but damn disease … See how that works
This is word vomit what are you trying to say?
ARE YOU FUCKING RETARTED?
LOL
wow
You used the wrong form of you’re *and* you misspelled retarded.
That is impressive. Spectacularly impressive.
But not in the way you probably intended.
2 out of 4 words are spelled correctly, is 50% a passing grade? Youracunt mustn’t have been breastfed, all that formula has destroyed her brain cells: imagine the argument they could have made with a lacto-intact brain!
There’s certainly a torrent of outrage happening on your Facebook page.
People accusing each other of being ‘liberals’ (the horror) and who knows what else.
My particular favourites are the folks saying (in way more words) ‘but it’s illegal which proves it’s unnatural’.
I don’t love your analogy but what it’s unleashing is revealing.
The “illegal = unnatural” thing is my favorite too. Growing marijuana is still illegal in many places, does that make it unnatural?
Yeah, and homebirth illegal in some US states. The natural childbirth crowd still advocates for it.
They don’t care about legal, they care about natural.
Liberalism = liberation from Gods law and common sense.
Ewwwwww you sound like an incel. WTF!?
Dr Amy’s Facebook page is a riot! No one reads but all the lactivist on their high horse have OPINION! Rape is not natural!
I wouldn’t know. After all, I was never raped. Pretty sure, though, that the teenaged neighbour who tried to rape me when I was 8 was 100% natural… and the attribute he was trying to release from his jeans when I kicked him before I jumped through the second floor window was totally natural as well. Far be it from me to suggest that anyone actually taught him to like, be attracted to, and try to rape little girls. 100% natural. This was how it was with him. Natural. Not the same as laudable. But that’s too hard a concept for lactivists to grasp.
I love the “rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power” thing. From my PoV, if not for this golden window, my nether regions would have hardly been able to make the difference if the pervert had managed to get aforementioned attribute in them. The result is one and the same. Why fuckery related to power is more unnatural than the one related to sex, I have no idea.
I’m just sitting back and grabbing the popcorn. You can tell that the vast majority of the outraged haven’t even bothered to click through and read the article. They saw rape in the title, decided they were triggered and descended like screaming banshees.
The problem is, their overly emotional reactions prevent them from sitting back, considering the subject matter and realizing that Dr Amy is making a very valid point.
Hypocritical pigs, that’s what this bunch is. They’re all accepting of same sex couples, people getting help to get pregnant, etc.. Because these things are so natural. They’re above such basics as nature. But mention that natural can be ugly? Pigs start shitting all over the place.
Um, same sex couples *are* natural though.
Which validates the point – what is natural is not always good, nor always bad. The point is, is that we cannot use nature to justify anything, whether it’s about vaginal birth or homosexuality, positive or negative. Nature is neutral.
Of course they are. But they are not the majority which is all that matters to these people. Formula feeding is natural because people want to feed their children but we don’t see it getting praised as natural enough, do we?
I thought that was what you meant, but the phrasing struck me wrong.
I wanted to just put in a picture from Archer saying “Uhhh phrasing” but I’m at work and that isn’t an option.
The phrase might have LOOKED indeed wrong because I didn’t give it much thought. The truth is, degrees of “naturalness” have never been intriguing to me, so I have no idea how much percentages of “natural” is enough and I don’t care. . Nature has modified and changed so much, with and without human help, that it’s ridicuous to try and judge which thing is more natural than another, unless we’re talking of products that are KNOWN to be man-made.
I’ll guarantee every one of them LOVES watching Game of Thrones, too
“Rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power” — well, depend. Enjoying the exercise of power through sex, underscored by how their choice to experience sexual pleasure overrides the other person’s right to bodily autonomy, is clearly a winning combo for many a horrible person.
And it’s not like the enjoyment of the feeling of power over others is totally unnatural for humans either.
Rape is punishable by death according to the law.
In current times in most countries no it is not.
This must be a joke.
You can’t claim the right to bodily autonomy while at the same time claiming the right to cut other people’s genitals.
“…refusing to use lifesaving technology is maladaptive.”
Yes.
Fuck nature. Rape, incest, necrophilia, cannibalism are all natural. Infanticide, neglect, disease and death are natural. Cancer is natural.
Nature is a crapshoot. Take rabbits for instance, which I’ve talked about before; no one can doubt just how fertile a female rabbit (doe) is. Induced ovulation means being able to breed all year round, pregnancies lasting only one month and being able to get pregnant again straight after birth, with only six weeks of nursing meaning a lot of large litters in a short period of time. It also means that anywhere of between sixty and eighty percent of does after the age of four years will develop ovarian and/or uterine cancer, cutting their lives extremely short (the oldest currently living rabbit reached sixteen recently, though he was a buck). One of the most fertile animals on the planet only lasts a few years before their reproductive system turns on them. Nature doesn’t need a rabbit to live past four when it’s already spread its genes so quickly. (And, as it’s nearly Easter, I’d add that we don’t really need more rabbits)
Fuck nature. Humans ingenuity means that we are no longer slaves to the shortcomings of our own bodies. Everyone in my family needs glasses. My gran has a lot of health problems, from lifelong diabetes to arthritis; my mother has high blood pressure and restless leg syndrome; my father has a blood disorder; and I’ve had several relatives die of cancer or strokes. It is the human brain that made the miracle of modern medicine possible, that has ensured the survival and comfort of my family, not nature, indifferent to our individual lives.
What you need to understand is that nature is tainted by sin, read the book of Genesis, God made nature perfect but sin entered into the work and through it came the food chain and death and animals abusing and hating one another. Read your Bible, it’s a history book. Humans are not the only ones who are suffering the effects of sin, animals and nature is also a victim.
First of all, buddy, I’m an atheist; secondly, you just insulted all the smart and decent Christians (and other religious folk) here with your bullshit. I can respect people that believe in the Bible that use its teachings as a tool and a guide to living life, but you are a whole new class of nut for calling Genesis a textbook.
One intelligent, caring Christian I know is my own grandmother; she went to Church most of her life, only hampered now by health problems (all of which are being helped with medical science), she reads the Bible, and she has done volunteer work. She also donates money to charities, several in Africa, something much more useful than just prayer; she watches wildlife documentaries, and doesn’t blame the behaviour of animals on ‘sin’; she had all her children in hospital, vaccinated all of them, and often marvels at how far we advance. I am much better served talking to her than you.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a show about armadillos on the telly I’m going to watch.
I have noticed that the people who spend the most time internet preaching about paleo diets or about natural birth are often the same people who freak out when the wifi connection goes out for more than 5 minutes. Also I have a feeling they would not last more than an hour if they were a contestant on survivor.
I tell people all the time: rattlesnakes are natural. Uranium is natural. Lightening is natural. Natural doesn’t mean safe!
Luckily, brains are also natural. Using our brains is natural.
I love telling people smallpox is natural.
Nature is tainted by sin.
And this thread has just been tainted by you.