absolutely needed the midwives to be female. the reasons are most of the ones you could imagine that i am sick of having to restate in this time where women's rights are being stripped back.
i've had a long but calm labour and a short but intensely painful labour. i wanted to feel what it feels like - partly because of my need to be in control and not at the mercy of somebody else's care (also related to life history) and partly out of interest, to connect with the women that came before me who often laboured without their partners and who had much less of a voice to speak of their experiences.
but to labour like this, for me, required a deep sense of trust and safety so that i could be the female mammal that i needed to be in order to get the babies out.
there were male practitioners involved in other elements of my care but there is something very specific about the role of midwife. they are there with you through all of it. it is a social role - i took my sense of safety from their cues. i outsourced my thinking to them. i followed their instructions. they dealt with my blood and shit and screams..... there is nothing "feminine" about labour.
i am sure there are some male midwives out there who i might have felt able to trust. there are probably some bad female midwives out there. but i make my decision based upon my years of experiencing other humans of both sexes in my educational, personal, social and working life . no female has yet ignored my boundaries or disregarded my bodily autonomy. no female has committed a crime against me. no female health care practitioner has ever ignored my words and carried on doing what i have asked them to stop. females don't tend to talk over me or dismiss my concerns or ignore my knowledge.
it is not progressive to ignore that some men treat women appallingly. or ignore that over 90% of violent and sexual crime is committed by men. if we aren't allowed to know this what hope do we have of changing it?