We stick to the descriptions of life from the people themselves, but we have to explain it, so we have to turn into other methods because people aren't rational creatures.

I don't see "explaining" something as "redefining" something. As in the example, if a woman who labored for 48 hours calls it "beautiful" then I would expect an explanation to be "This woman labored for 48 hours and says it was a beautiful experience," not "This woman labored for 48 hours and says it was a beautiful experience, but that description seems suspicious to me so I will call it something else."

One is explaining, and one is redefining someone else's own lived experience.

And maybe I am just thinking like a journalist. You report what someone did/said; you don't offer your spin on it. (At least, you don't offer your spin in *good* journalism that is *not* intended to be an editorial/opinion. But editorials/opinions are labeled as such so that right at the outset the reader knows that the journalist is going beyond just reporting what happened.)

I'm wary of defining an experience as "mythical" just because we understand the biological underpinnings. Especially when we're talking about emotions - how people feel about their own experiences isn't something that can be usefully defined in those terms.

I didn't try to define the experience as mythical, and I'm sorry if I am read in that way. However, I think that we mystify a lot of things - just look at commercials that tell you that you'll get a guy/happiness if you'll buy the product - because we're human and that's what we do. It doesn't mean that we're "wrong", in that way. It doesn't mean that child giving isn't an amazing experience. It just means that we might explain it to ourselves that way because we're human. And being the outsider that I am, I usually prefer other techniques of explanations. A professor I appreciate wrote that sociology is a science without sanctity. I disagree: I think that the only thing that's sacred in sociology is the humanity of all. But other than that? It's all about "screw this idea: I've got a theory. Also, WTF is wrong with these people?".

As in the example, if a woman who labored for 48 hours calls it "beautiful" then I would expect an explanation to be "This woman labored for 48 hours and says it was a beautiful experience," not "This woman labored for 48 hours and says it was a beautiful experience, but that description seems suspicious to me so I will call it something else."

I'd probably say, ". . . but that description seems suspicious to me because I understand there are significant hormonal and cultural influences at work that may be influencing her perceptions. So while she may have found the experience subjectively 'beautiful' I am reluctant to assign the event the objective description 'beautiful' until I can get further data."

Ah, very good points to clarify:

I don't see "explaining" something as "redefining" something.

Good! Neither do I.

You report what someone did/said; you don't offer your spin on it.

That just the thing: we don't report merely on what someone did/said. We also offer an interpretation of why that someone did/said that.

As in the example, if a woman who labored for 48 hours calls it "beautiful" then I would expect an explanation to be "This woman labored for 48 hours and says it was a beautiful experience," not "This woman labored for 48 hours and says it was a beautiful experience, but that description seems suspicious to me so I will call it something else."

So in this case, "This woman labored for 48 hours and says it was a beautiful experience," should be the starting point of why she described it as beautiful, using her own words - and not my original thought.

If we'd take at face value people's reports on why they're doing what they're doing without questioning things that we see both as normal and abnormal, we should have been stayed at the same place as a society. But we're not. We're changing. Language is changing. "Hot" isn't just a temperature anymore, but a scale of beauty. And that's why thick description is important: because we're not flat/two-dimensional creatures. We're changing, and so are the myths we're creating. So it doesn't matter if I believe/don't believe the woman. It's important to research her conceptualization and feelings. Because they matter to society, as a whole.

Edit: and yeah, what Calli wrote.

I'd probably say, ". . . but that description seems suspicious to me because I understand there are significant hormonal and cultural influences at work that may be influencing her perceptions. So while she may have found the experience subjectively 'beautiful' I am reluctant to assign the event the objective description 'beautiful' until I can get further data."

I just don't understand someone even trying to assign an *objective* description to *someone else's* lived experience. Like, "I think childbirth is bloody and scary and painful, so your description of your own experience of delivering your child as beautiful CANNOT BE RIGHT, objectively."

"I think childbirth is bloody and scary and painful, so your description of your own experience of delivering your child as beautiful CANNOT BE RIGHT, objectively."

Oh, it's not that "it cannot be right"; it's just that it can be seen from another angle as well.

I just don't understand someone even trying to assign an *objective* description to *someone else's* lived experience.

Yet it's been my impression that we're given a message (at least in US culture) that childbirth is a beautiful experience. Period. Not that many women find it beautiful, but that it is beautiful, objectively speaking. Like a sunset or a garden, only with more bodily fluids. So when a woman gives birth and finds it the most horrible experience of her life, she finds herself going not against other women's perception of their own experiences, but against the message of what the reality of childbirth is supposed to be.

I can't help but think we could be having this exact same discussion about kink. Consider our starting point:

Call me naive and inexperienced, but romanticizing a process which contains blood, screaming, sharp instruments and pain for hours as beautiful gets me suspicious.

you you mean that sociology and anthropology are about defining other peoples' lived experiences for them, rather than letting them define the experiences themselves, since they -- and not the sociologist/anthropologist -- lived it?

As a sociologist I've been very shocked by how little the field involves the voices of people who live the situations that are studied. In my specialism, the sociological study of disability, the subjects of research have been exploited by researchers for a long time. Eventually they (we!) got sick of it, and emancipatory disability research began to develop - which is characterised by making sure the research participants set the agenda of each research project. Participatory action research is similar. (I've got links to papers on this if anyone's interested.) But overall, disabled people are still 'studied' far more than they get to participate fully in research. The same goes for a lot of other social groups, especially marginalized ones. I don't know much about anthropology, but my impression is that it's similar. But there is another way! It's just less mainstream.

That just the thing: we don't report merely on what someone did/said. We also offer an interpretation of why that someone did/said that.

But why? How is your interpretation of someone else's lived experience *possibly* worth more than their own experience?

Honestly, that strikes me as arrogance.