| > This article mixes the science with unnecessarily gendered language. It turns "a lying down position helps the doctor" to "men decided women should be on their backs" and "one pervert king liked watching women give birth, therefore somehow that's why". Looking more into the history of it, I find the "gendered language" to instead be important factual context. It was also not the author who wrote about the king or other "gendered language" things but instead quotes from a birth center founder and a uni professor. Also, in the article it says "They can thank a French man named François Mauriceau". The King was a possible influence but not "one pervert king liked watching women give birth, therefore somehow that's why". The article says nothing about "a lying down position helps the doctor". Mauriceau, who wrote a book "that helped establish obstetrics as science"[0], thought of pregnancy as illness, and that it would be "more convenient for the male physician attending". This is an important tidbit, as the article continues, "(there was already a movement emerging to dispense of midwives and instead have male surgeons present at births)." The only problem with the "gendered language" is not explaining it further, and probably where the immediate jump to thinking it's "sexism" comes from. At that time "man-midwives", or people with medical education and the same educational requirements as a surgeon, decided "midwifery" was a great side hustle and created a movement to push traditional midwives out of the birthing process by saying the job required a medical degree, that only men could get. Since men had no idea what the natural process for child birth was, unlike midwives who probably went through it themselves, they decided that having a woman lying down was less work for the people attending. This happened specifically because they were male. The females were pushed out of the birthing process at this time. It went against everything that women had for millennia been doing. It's absolutely important to point that out when trying to give background on why -- all of a sudden -- this natural process was perverted. I don't know how else they could put it other than, it was more convenient (and profitable) for men at the time. And propagated because one guy, who thought of it as an illness, decided he knew better and other doctors decided to listen to him. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Mauriceau |
> Mauriceau, who wrote a book "that helped establish obstetrics as science"[0], thought of pregnancy as illness, and that it would be "more convenient for the male physician attending".
You contradict yourself in the very next sentence.