In March I had the chance to present at one of my field’s preeminent conferences, the Conference on College Composition and Communication. (Here’s a link to my panel: http://center.uoregon.edu/NCTE/2017CCCC/cfp/speaker_datasheet.php?id=V3339376 ) For the past several years, I’ve been presenting at this, and similar, conferences with a (slightly rotating) group of scholars who are doing work in reproductive rhetorics. While this hasn’t exactly been  my area of expertise in the past, my recent work as a doula has changed all of that. Feminist rhetorics has always been one of my subject areas, so I’ve gone to feminist panels since I first started attending these conferences years ago. (In fact, I’ve been largely disappointed in my field’s lack of work in this area.) Increasingly, I’ve noticed that feminist panels have dealt with issues of reproduction through a rhetorical lens. For a long while, I thought this was interesting, though not personally relevant. All of that changed once I began working a doula and particularly once I began volunteering as a doula at the university hospital.

My first presentation on this topic of rhetoric and childbirth was about the rhetorical function of narrative in childbirth as a means of learning. Next, I presented on how women use their own birth stories empower and educate each other. This year, my presentation was entitled, “Rhetorics of Consent in Childbirth: Doula-Supported Birth Advocacy in Rape Culture.” After working on this stuff for the past few years, the work is finally worthy of a publishable article. This last presentation was about how the patriarchy (and it’s bureaucracy) take away women’s choice and ability to consent during the childbirth process. In the article, I point to new legal cases that demonstrate doctors acting against the wishes of the mothers/patients, I share some of my own experiences/interpretations of how consent works (or doesn’t work) in the childbirth settings and (and here’s the hard part), I theorize this and place the work within the field of feminist medical rhetorics.

I’m posting this here as an update, but also as a placeholder, a reminder, and a motivator for me to actually complete the darn article.