This article provides a contemporary feminist autoethnographical account of my lived experiences of reclaiming my pregnant, birthing, and maternal bodies through intimate abuse and coercive control and beyond. Drawing from contemporary and culturally diverse feminist perspectives, I unpack the over-medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth and how it operates on a continuum of the systematic, institutional, cultural, and patriarchal gaze, surveillance, and control of women’s bodies. The paper will unpack the Battered Woman’s Syndrome as a problematic example of this clinical and medical patriarchal gaze and control and its prevalence in contemporary medical, psychological, and legal discourses relating to women living with intimate abuse and coercive control, and their bodies. I draw from my own personal experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering through intimate abuse and coercive control, the practice of zuò yuè zi, and the mythology of the Goddess Metis as sites of resistance, resilience, and resourcefulness that challenge the Western patriarchal gaze, surveillance, and control over women’s bodies. The paper will offer three alternative and counternarratives and ways of rethinking, reframing, and reimagining the pregnant, birthing, and maternal body as sites of resistance and resourcefulness through the ancient Greek mythology of Metis, the ancient Chinese practices of zuò yuè zi, and homebirth.
Reclaiming the Maternal Metis Body: Pregnancy, Birthing, and Mothering through Intimate Abuse and Coercive Control
Marilyn Metta is senior lecturer in anthropology and sociology at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University in Bentley, Western Australia. She works as a trauma-informed counselor with culturally diverse communities and has published widely on autoethnography, intimate abuse, family violence, and resistance. She was the winner of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry 2011 Outstanding Qualitative Book Award for her book Writing Against, Alongside and Beyond Memory: Lifewriting as Reflexive Poststructuralist Feminist Research Practice (2010). Marilyn is the Director and founder of The Metis Centre, an educational and social justice organization working to ensure women and children’s safety and wellbeing. She is the Founder of Metamorphosis Inc, a not-for-profit charitable organization working to provide access to education for refugee and stateless children and young people.
Marilyn Metta; Reclaiming the Maternal Metis Body: Pregnancy, Birthing, and Mothering through Intimate Abuse and Coercive Control. Journal of Autoethnography 1 October 2022; 3 (4): 526–543. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2022.3.4.526
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