Femina Machina

On the language of the industrialized female body

“I’m so much more than a lactation machine”. Words I read and had a reaction to recently. The woman who posted them assumed my reaction was offense, when really it was curiosity about how women have come to equate normal female function with machines, as the whole “I’m not a milk machine” is commonly uttered and this was not the first I have heard this sentiment shared. Further, I saw irony in how these words position the woman herself as a machine when in fact, a lactating woman nursing a baby on demand is avoiding the necessitation of a multitude of machines. Breast pumps, the entire factory full of a plethora of machines used in the manufacture of formula, the machines used to milk the cows whose milk is the primary ingredient in that formula, the agricultural equipment used to farm the seed oils in that formula and the grain and corn and soy and other crops that fed those cows, all of the transportation for all of these ventures and packaging and savvy marketing tech-these are all machines. Machine, from the Greek mēkhos, a word for “contrivance”. A woman making milk is no contrivance.

Milk Machines as personification of the commodification of the industrialized female body (still from Mad Max:Fury Road, one of the only movies I have stayed awake for in the theater)...

Why do women compare ourselves to machines? Alternatively, why do we accept and tolerate certain labels that use the same logic? And why are these comparisons almost always about our female physiology? “Milk machine”, “fuck toy”, “baby factory” etc…these phrases are commonly used in somewhat self deprecating manners by women in reference to their own relationship with their bodies and in the expectations placed on them by others. Machine, toy, factory-all of these words have a negative connotation in this context and it is due to a sense of artificiality.

People generally innately understand artificial as inherently wrong. This is despite there often being much orchestrated validation in discussion around things that are fake-think plastic surgery and other extreme measures of aesthetic manipulation-women feel the need to explain their utilization of them because somewhere deep down they know that fake=bad. Therefore, the use of these phrases for themselves is in a disparaging way. The use of the language of “self-as-machine” is invoked when women are feeling bitter and annoyed and used.

Sex and birth and breastfeeding do require the utilization of our bodies. In the grand scheme of things, all bodies, male and female, are useful. When the use of self morphs into the use by others, we see this sort of annoyance and subsequently the self-diminishing language takes over. In this, we are shifting from giving of ourselves to being taken and consumed. In commercial situations-prostitution, surrogacy etc-this language fits, because in those situations women are being consumed.

A woman breastfeeding her own baby isn’t being used in an economic manner though. She isn’t being taken, she is no machine. A woman giving birth to her own loved baby isn’t being used or consumed, she is no factory. A woman having sex with a man she wants to sleep with is not merely just her body, a vehicle of pleasure for him-she is not his toy. A woman’s reproductive life is not a commercial one, so it is strange for us to be “identifying” with machines in this (most important) part of ourselves.

If a woman feels annoyance in these experiences to the point of feeling aligned with a machine-something is off. This is industrialized female existence. It has something to do with a misalignment with nature, bolstered by a lifetime of messaging that tells us that that misalignment is what is right.

Why are all the cultural tools of “female empowerment” about misalignment with nature? Birth control, access to reproductive technology via employment benefits and insurance coverage, the ability to access sterilization as a healthy young woman, abortion rights and free/low cost childcare are the some of the most discussed talking points in the realm of modern feminism. Here’s the thing though: mass-prescribed birth control and free childcare and free breast pumps and corporate egg freezing programs function to keep women in the workforce for as much as possible for long as possible. Machines indeed.

There is a hyper focus on supercharging the commercial utility of women rather than the personal and familial utility within this framework. To be aligned with nature, the creative utility of the female mind, soul and body needs to be focused more on the inner rather than outer realm. This doesn’t mean no women should work. This means that when money-earning work is an endeavor a woman chooses for herself, especially in the reproductive and child-bearing continuum, the work itself should bend to the will of the holistic needs of the woman and her children. The woman should not be contorted into a commercial appliance, rather the work should be contorted into a form that resembles a vehicle of means which shape-shifts and ebbs and flows with the ever evolving needs of the woman and the family. Work for women needs to be equally as flexible and fluid as the nature of the feminine soul is.

Why the need to disparage the most natural acts (birth, lactation, copulation) of womanhood using language that renders us nothing more than bitter and mechanistic reproductive proletarians? These are the acts of life, and we DO own the means of production of that life.

In a culture that is in opposition to life and the sustenance it demands to truly flourish, referring to these acts in such a dismissive and utilitarian way serves the function of giving the women who use this language a way to identify out of their physiology. We know society doesn’t care about that physiology, and women want to signal that they are not only “more than just a mother” but that they, too, don’t care. Because to care in an environment that doesn’t is torturous if you allow it to be. Perhaps we allow too much.

It is also interesting when we examine the way those tools of female empowerment™ are spoken of. They are all labeled as care. Health care, child care, reproductive care. They are framed as human rights, and some of them could perhaps, in certain contexts, be argued to be so. However, when the right to take potentially harmful pharmaceuticals to prevent pregnancy and the right to utilize reproductive technology once our bodies don’t cooperate due to purposefully delaying pregnancy in favor of career becomes more highly prioritized in a culture than the right to raise our own children and birth and feed them the way we are meant to when we are meant to-whose interests are being held highest? Not the woman’s, certainly not the baby’s. The woman is not the machine here, the cultural machine is projecting itself onto her, forcing her to comply with the restraints it demands. Is this truly “care”? Or is it coercion?

When the functions of the machine are named as care, and the functions of the mother-baby dyad are named as machine, we are being had. It is in this specific setting where something like the abomination that is gestational surrogacy becomes legitimized. It isn’t hard to make the jump from “woman as baby factory” to “woman as literal baby factory” when we speak of ourselves in the language of the industrialized female body, where reproductive parts are separated from the holistic whole. It isn’t hard either when we prioritize the perceived need for the care we receive from the machine (healthcare, daycare) over the care that we are meant to give and receive as mothers.

A righteous demand for free birth control and childcare should at the very least be matched with an equally voracious demand to be the ones to mother our own children and to breastfeed without being separated from our babies. Where is the righteous demand to mother? Where is the righteous demand to not be labeled as economic capital (whether that be as a part of the workforce and as taxpayers or as literal economic goods when it comes to egg donation and surrogacy)? Where are the rallies about the bleak maternal mortality rate in our country, the atrocious c-section rates, the fact that midwifery is still illegal in some states, the fact that society deems it perfectly acceptable to ask women to leave their babies when they are only 6 weeks postpartum (earlier than when puppies are typically separated from their mothers by the way)?

Free birth control and government funded abortions transforms us into actual fuck toys-all fun for the parties involved, with no work required. Surrogacy and egg donation transform us into actual baby machines. Leaving our babies in free childcare and using the free breast pumps from Medicaid transforms us into actual milk machines. When liberal feminism prioritizes these sorts of “rights”, which are actually demands usually born of egotistical and hedonistic desires, it sets to transform us into the Femina Machina- the female machine.

Divorcing womanhood from machine requires women not identifying with it and not relying on it. Stop calling yourself a “milk machine” when you’re feeling annoyed with the normal demands of an infant. Quit popping birth control so your mediocre boyfriend doesn’t have to pull out. Don’t demand that taxpayers pay for your abortion. Don’t turn your reproductive capacity or sexuality into a money-making scheme. You’re not a “baby factory” because you have more than one or two children.

The reciprocity required of all human relationships when the relevancy of the machine is deleted has so much more potential for an abundance of happiness and satisfaction. This is why we should consider not identifying with it. Many of us may perform this identification subconsciously, as it has been baked into our self perception, and using this language that industrializes the female body is a good example of just that.

Instead of Femina Machina, we would do ourselves good to align ourselves with another Latin feminine concept- Semper Femina, simply “always a woman”. Or, a more holistic explanation- “Varium et mutabile, semper femina” is a quotation taken from Book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid. It roughly translates to “fickle and ever-changing is woman. Fickle, we could debate about, but ever changing? Yes. The female machine is rigid, in her thinking and her function as related to society. Women by our very nature are the opposite of rigid, we are creatures of transformation and fluidity. Those changes are built right into our very physiology. Always a real, living, breathing, making and creating woman. Always changing, cycling through lifetimes past and present and future. Always a woman, never a contrivance.

We should not be mechanistic in our description and interpretation of female existence. A mechanistic view of human utility creates a tear in the fabric which we are intricately and masterfully woven from. It is this falsehood that spins the idea of “care” into acts and services which are often objectively harmful in at least some ways, but which facilitate more and more efficient commercial human utility. This falsehood is the real contrivance.