Feminist theory has refused to treat unwilled childbirth as agentive
Evidence
Our tendency to think of childbirth as passive because unwilled and uncontrolled is deep-rooted. Even Simone de Beauvoir, observes Susan Brison, “views childbirth and nursing as completely passive—and thus dehumanizing—processes, which keep women mired in immanence.” Such a view, in its highly transcendental and intentionalist perspective, rejects that birthing has anything to do with agency, with doing. References to pain in birthing tend to underscore its passivity. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 433
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: De Beauvoir’s immanence/transcendence framing connects to wider critique of intentionalist theories of action in Asad and in virtue-ethics debates about agency.
Related
- Unwilled bodily events like childbirth need not count as passive or agency-free. (similarity 0.93)
- Painful childbirth is agentive despite being unwilled and particularized (similarity 0.86)
- Women experience childbirth as either creative act or passive ordeal (similarity 0.85)
- Childbirth feels depersonalizing, leaving the mother without pride in creation (similarity 0.83)
- Pain in childbirth can be agentive without being chosen, willed, or empowering (similarity 0.82)