Sherry Chandler

I See Invisible People is hosting Carnival of Feminists XIII and has done me the honor of including my post on elective C-sections.

Many intriguing titles in Terry’s selections on the theme of “Feminism and Challenges.” Topics range from aging to disability to rape to women artists to third-world feminism and I will be reading for some time.

At the moment, I want to draw your attention to Women’s Space/The Margins, where you will find a thought-provoking meditation on “Goddesses on Parade:” Birth, Pornography, and the Brittany Spears Birthing Statue.

Readers have suggested to me, perhaps inevitably, that it is a “feminist mindset” that causes women to elect Caesarean sections, that they are career-minded women trying to fit birthing into tight schedules. This kind of thinking doesn’t reflect anything that I would call feminism, which has always been about empowering women. Rather I think these women have been divorced from their physicality and stripped of their sexuality so they can fit into the corporate world — or a busy doctor’s schedule.

So I consider the post at Women’s Space/The Margins an enhancement of my own thoughts:

Following is some birth imagery I have gathered, together with some thoughts and questions I am having. I continue to be deeply disturbed by how feminists responded to the creation of the Britney Spears birthing statue. Before I begin, here is an image of a woman actually giving birth in the position represented in the Britney Spears statue. Although the woman’s body is covered, this photo demonstrates that this really is a position in which women labor and give birth.

…

Is the Britney Spears statue pornographic just because the woman represented is Britney Spears? Even though she was never consulted and did not give permission? Are images of Britney Spears quid pro quo pornography? If so, how so? If the statue of the Taina woman is also pornography, why is it? Because wherever women are nude and displaying their breasts and genitals, we are seeing pornography? Are representations of labor and birth pornographic, per se? Why? If they are not, why aren’t they? Is the statue of Britney Spears pornographic because it was created in the context of raunch culture? Is the image of the Taina woman somehow not pornography because it was created by an indigenous man to portray the cultural event of birth amongst his people?

Go and read the rest, look at the images, and consider.

Michael Czarnecki of FootHills Publishing has some nice photos up on his web of his U.S. 62 tour.

He spent Saturday night and Sunday at Artcroft and you can find pics from his morning hike on those Nicholas County ridges here. I’m particularly fond of the redbud path, reproduced at left. It looks a lot like the Owen County farmland I grew up on.

But you should go and take a look. U.S. 62 runs the long way through Kentucky and Michael is seeing it at a lovely time of year.

His On the Road journal is being posted here.

While you’re there, browse around. Michael produces some lovely books by some great poets. I’m proud to be in their company.

Although I can’t find Mary E. W. Betts’s famous poem, “A Kentuckian Bows to No One But God,” I do want to talk about her a little bit because she fits into my story about O’Hara, López, and the filibuster into Cuba. It is also, in a way, a continuation of the story of Gilbert Imlay and James Wilkinson. It’s all about Manifest Destiny and American expansionism.

Narcisco López’s first attempt at this adventure, in 1849, was stopped when Zachary Taylor seized his ships. He immediately began to plan a new filibuster, and as I said in the comment below, he appealed to prominent southerners to join him as a way of expanding slavery. Jefferson Davis turned him down and so did Robert E. Lee. But other prominent southerners decided to join him. In May 1850, he landed in Cuba with a force of 600, including Theodore O’Hara.

In events that might have predicted the Bay of Pigs, the local population failed to rise up and join the filibusters. The force retreated to Key West where they quickly disbanded to avoid prosecution under the U.S. Neutrality Law of 1818. Indictments were nevertheless brought against several members of the expedition but none were convicted.

In 1851, López tried a third time. Once again the local uprising failed to materialize but this time the troop was captured and most of them were executed or sent to mining labor camps. Among the executed was Colonel William Crittenden, nephew of Kentucky’s John J. Crittenden. William Logan Crittenden was born in Shelbyville. He graduated West Point and served with distinction in the Mexican War.

To quote Wikipedia:

The execution of López and his soldiers caused outrage in both the northern and southern United States. Many who did not support the expedition found the Spanish treatment of military prisoners brutal. The strongest reaction occurred in New Orleans, where a mob attacked the Spanish consulate. Despite its failure, López’s expedition inspired other filibusters to attack Latin American countries throughout the 1850s, most notably William Walker’s invasions of Central America in 1855-1860. Had he been successful, López could have profoundly altered politics in the Americas, giving a strong Caribbean foothold to the United States and spurring its further expansion. Instead, the failure of López and other filibusters discouraged Americans, especially in the South, from adopting expansionist strategies. Faced with the inability of slavery to move southward, many Southerners turned away from expansion and talked instead of secession.

The present Cuban flag is adopted from his banner.

One such expression of outrage was Mary Betts’s poem. According to William Ward, when Crittenden was facing the firing squad, he refused to kneel, saying “A Kentuckian kneels to no one but God, and he always dies facing the enemy.” This statement inspired Betts. She was a native of Maysville and the poem was originally published in the Maysville Flag.

In lieu of Ms. Betts’s poem, I’ll give you a snippet I found in chapter 1 of Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (University of North Carolina Press, 2002) to give you some idea what it may have been like:

Around the Moro’s grim façade
The soul of Lopez wanders
And Crittenden—a glorious shade!
Beside him walks and ponders.
O, God of Peace! that such as these,
Like dogs, should be garotted—
Choked out of life by Spanish beasts,
Fierce, bloody and besotted.
—Democratic Review, December 1854