Politics of the Womb

Politics of the Womb

Author: Lynn Thomas

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2003-08-20

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0520936647

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In more than a metaphorical sense, the womb has proven to be an important site of political struggle in and about Africa. By examining the political significance—and complex ramifications—of reproductive controversies in twentieth-century Kenya, this book explores why and how control of female initiation, abortion, childbirth, and premarital pregnancy have been crucial to the exercise of colonial and postcolonial power. This innovative book enriches the study of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and African history by revealing how reproductive controversies challenged long-standing social hierarchies and contributed to the construction of new ones that continue to influence the fraught politics of abortion, birth control, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.


Theology of The Womb

Theology of The Womb

Author: Christy Angelle Bauman

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-12-06

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 153266219X

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If it is true that God is a male, then His Divinity or Deity is expressed in His masculinity. Yet I am a woman, and there are parts of my body; such as my breasts, my vagina, and my womb that are telling a story about God that I have never learned or understood. This is an exploration of the significance of a womb that must shed and bleed before it can create. How will we engage our body which cyclically bleeds most of our life and can build and birth a human soul? How will we honor the living womb, that lives and sometimes dies within us? This is a book about the theology found in the cycle of the womb, which births both life and death. Every day each one of us is invited to create, and every day we make a decision knowing that from our creation can come death or life. Women's voices have been silenced for a long time as society and the church has quieted their bodies. Will we courageously choose to listen to the sound of your voice, the song of your womb, and speak for the world to hear?


Wombs in Labor

Wombs in Labor

Author: Amrita Pande

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2014-09-23

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0231538189

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Surrogacy is India's new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of India's surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on this burgeoning business and the experiences of the laborers within it. From recruitment to training to delivery, Pande's research focuses on how reproduction meets production in surrogacy and how this reflects characteristics of India's larger labor system. Pande's interviews prove surrogates are more than victims of disciplinary power, and she examines the strategies they deploy to retain control over their bodies and reproductive futures. While some women are coerced into the business by their families, others negotiate with clients and their clinics to gain access to technologies and networks otherwise closed to them. As surrogates, the women Pande meets get to know and make the most of advanced medical discoveries. They traverse borders and straddle relationships that test the boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality. Those who focus on the inherent inequalities of India's surrogacy industry believe the practice should be either banned or strictly regulated. Pande instead advocates for a better understanding of this complex labor market, envisioning an international model of fair-trade surrogacy founded on openness and transparency in all business, medical, and emotional exchanges.


Jesus in Our Wombs

Jesus in Our Wombs

Author: Rebecca J. Lester

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9780520938205

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In Jesus in Our Wombs, Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants--young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity. Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an "authentic" femininity--one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of "the Call"--and their choices in answering it--as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, Jesus in Our Wombs delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's "technology of embodiment" on multiple levels--from the phenomenological to the political.


Women as Wombs

Women as Wombs

Author: Janice G. Raymond

Publisher: Spinifex Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781875559411

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Annotation. Renowned scholar and feminist activist, Janice Raymond, delivers a passionate expose and uncovers the alarming ethical, legal and political implications of high-tech biomedical reproductive technologies. She argues that these technologies are neither liberatory nor an issue of reproductive "choice". Rather, they violate the integrity of women's bodies, perpetuate prostitution and an international trafficking in women and children, and are a threat to women's basic human rights. Women As Wombs is a scathing feminist analysis which contributes groundbreaking insights to the raging debate over reproductive technology.


The Flaming Womb

The Flaming Womb

Author: Barbara Watson Andaya

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0824829557

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The Princess of the Flaming Womb, the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet, despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male-female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women's roles and perceptions. Andaya explores the broad themes of the early modern era (1500-1800) - the introduction of new religions, major economic shifts, changing patterns of state control, the impact of elite lifestyles and behaviors - drawing on an extraordinary range of sources and citing numerous examples from Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Philippine, and Malay societies.


Policing the Womb

Policing the Womb

Author: Michele Goodwin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-03-12

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 110703017X

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This book tells the real-life horror story of states' abusing laws and infringing on rights to police women and their pregnancies.


A Decolonial Feminism

A Decolonial Feminism

Author: Francoise Verges

Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9780745341101

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For too long feminism and multiculturalism have been co-opted by the forces they seek to dismantle. However, in this manifesto, Francoise Verges argues that feminists should no longer be handmaidens of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism and fight the system that created the boss, built the prisons and polices women's bodies.Attuned to the temporalities of contemporary struggles, the book incorporates issues such as Eurocentrism, whiteness, power, inclusion and exclusion, within feminist discourse. Throughout we touch upon feminist and anti-racist histories, as well as assessing contemporary activism, including #MeToo and the Women's Strike.Centring colonialism and imperialism within intersectional Marxism, this is an urgent demand to free ourselves from the capitalist, imperialist forces that oppress us.


The Wandering Womb

The Wandering Womb

Author: Lana Thompson

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2012-05-02

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1615925430

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A provocative tour through religious, medical, and social history, "The Wandering Womb" pinpoints the humorous, outrageous, and hair-raising beliefs, practices, and longstanding falsehoods about women which have permeated human culture. Illustrations.


Sacred Woman

Sacred Woman

Author: Queen Afua

Publisher: One World

Published: 2012-06-20

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0307559513

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The twentieth anniversary edition of a transformative blueprint for ancestral healing—featuring new material and gateways, from the renowned herbalist, natural health expert, and healer of women’s bodies and souls “This book was one of the first that helped me start practices as a young woman that focused on my body and spirit as one.”—Jada Pinkett Smith Through extraordinary meditations, affirmations, holistic healing plant-based medicine, KMT temple teachings, and The Rites of Passage guidance, Queen Afua teaches us how to love and rejoice in our bodies by spiritualizing the words we speak, the foods we eat, the relationships we attract, the spaces we live and work in, and the transcendent woman spirit we manifest. With love, wisdom, and passion, Queen Afua guides us to accept our mission and our mantle as Sacred Women—to heal ourselves, the generations of women in our families, our communities, and our world.