The Mimah Club

It's always so weird to come down from the biology heavens to see what the average person believes about animals, plants, ecosystems, just the world around them. I don't even mean things that one simply doesn't know because they've never been told or things that are confusing, I'm talking about people who genuinely do not see insects as animals. What are you saying. Every time I see a crawling or fluttering little guy I know that little guy has motivations and drive to fulfill those motivations. There are gears turning in their head! They are perceiving this world and they are drawing conclusions, they are conscious. And yet it's still a whole thing if various bugs of the world feel pain or if they are simply Instinct Machines that are Not Truly Aware of Anything At All????? Help!!!!!! How can you look at a little guy and think he is just the macroscopic animal version of a virus

i cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you should ideally give birth in a fully equipped and staffed medical facility or if you insist on giving birth through an alternative method you should be within minutes of a hospital and i mean under 5 minutes if you’d like me to be really fucking frank

like i can get on board with so much feminist theory and stuff, truly, and i do acknowledge that obstetrics and gynaecology as a field holds blind spots that are egregious (e.g. infant and maternal mortality in the black community) but there is no empowerment in risky birthing practices that our foremothers, and i’m not mincing words, often suffered through. birthing is natural, but it is not “easy” or even “innate”, it is best practiced guided and witnessed by those that know what to do in an emergency. you are not reconnecting to any innate feminine nature by practicing dangerous birthing practices—you are recreating a time when the bodies and lives of women barely mattered and it was expected that death would/could occur at insane and tragic rates.

this is a hill i will spend the rest of my days fighting on because while i am not interested in birthing children myself, i have an incredible passion and interest in the field of labour and delivery. it’s been one of my greatest joys to play even a small part in delivering neonates. i do not want anyone to risk their babies over a deeply, deeply misguided idea of free birth being “the natural way” when natural is not always synonymous with the safest way.

So many people think it's either midwife or doctor. It's not. Have your midwife or doula in the hospital room with you, I promise the doctors don't give a shit. Hell, you can have her do the delivery itself and just have the doctors there as emergency backup! But for the love of your baby, go to the fucking hospital.

yup. a lot of hospitals are willing to work with you to realize your birthing plan as much as they can within safe limits and parameters. my hospital is closely and highly allied with midwives all up and down the coast, with the explicit instruction to call the midwife when we know a labouring patient is about to deliver so we can respect their plan. genuinely, you can have almost any kind of birth you want—just make sure that there are qualified professionals in attendance, and it’s not just midwives or OBGYNS you need. you have no idea when you’ll need a respiratory therapist on call, you have no idea when you will need a blood transfusion within minutes or risk certain death, L&D nurses do not have the same training as NICU nurses if a baby declines rapidly. it’s a literal thousand things that can go wrong and you should be in the best place for them to go wrong.

Isn’t it weird how the school uniforms of underaged girls in Japan have been so sexualized as to become ubiquitous and uncontroversial in many circles? Isn’t it weird how for many people on this app the sexiest thing they can imagine is a young woman or girl wearing the uniform of an elementary or middle schooler? But it’s treated as if it’s somehow different because they’re Japanese, in line with a long history of Americans using Japan as fertile ground for consequence-free sex crimes since WWII