Reclaiming the Maternal Metis Body: Pregnancy, Birthing, and Mothering through Intimate Abuse and Coercive Control

Abstract

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.