seriesofnonsequiturs:

smitethepatriarchy:

flowerfeminism:

smitethepatriarchy:

tattoostickle
replied to your post “have you seen the post about the husband stitch”

The husband stitch is an extra stitch added when stitching up an episiotomy to tighten the vagina (usually tighter than pre-childbirth, so painful intercourse etc can happen). It’s meant solely for the pleasure of a husband andhas no medical reasoning. There is much of the medical community who denies it even happens.

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@smitethepatriarchy so I had a male college professor whose wife had a baby, and the male doctor said to my male professor “I’m gonna do you a favor” and referenced the husband stitch. Luckily my professor knew what this was and said “Medical necessity only”……I dont recall if the doctor would have done it without the wife’s knowlege or divulged to her it as an option……but either way….how fucking creepy, am I right?

This whole recollection makes me physically ill. I feel cold, and like my stomach has just become a void. Like women exist as just walking flesh-lights…..It sounds so primitive, like it happened a long time ago and u would never expect it STILL happens….but hooooooooly hell……it does

For real, everyone out there who may get pregnant, PLEASE BE AWARE AND TELL UR PARTNER ABOUT THIS. Not every doctor does this of course, but goddamn…..it does happen…..and also, I bet my life that it has happened without the woman’s consent.

I read the entire huge post with all the sourced materials and holy shit. I wasn’t going to have kids anyway but this pretty much seals it, if anything could.

And it’s just such a spot on example of how little the medical community understands about the vagina. This is supposed to make sex better for the husband but it doesn’t? At all? But mostly, it’s the most deeply dehumanizing thing I can think of. Pair that with the visceral AHHHHHH FUCK NO of episiotomy and like nah just let me die in childbirth thanks.

This professor wrote an amazing article about when she teaches the short story “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado 

“When I teach Carmen Maria Machado’s story ‘The Husband Stitch,’ the first in her collection Her Body and Other Parties, to my fiction workshops, it’s unlike teaching any other story. For one thing, the men in class don’t speak.” 

“Often, one woman admits she cried when she read it, and when I nod and ask why, she says she doesn’t know. Always, a student says that she sent it to all of her friends.”

“I asked three male friends in medical residencies in different areas around the country if they’d heard of the husband stitch and only one had, but not from medical school; he knew it from Machado’s story. 

And yet it happens, based on the chatter on message boards, women’s chatter, which I have been conditioned to approach with skepticism, a category of information I might dismiss as an ‘old wives’ tale’ (a term with its own troubling connotations). It happens even now.

But this is not an essay about the husband stitch. It’s an essay about believing and being believed.”