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.

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.

In skeptical circles, it swings violently in the opposite direction - everybody knows that childbirth is really horrible and painful, so if your experience was in any way positive, you've just been brainwashed by the natural birth movement.

The cult of Mommyhood allows for very little middle ground.

Calli writes better and shorter what I want to say.

And once again, Jessica is right. I think it's the same issue, raised by a collaboration by Steph and me. Great. Just don't leave us in the same room alone for more than a few minutes, or our discussion will create a black hole in the fabric of reality.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but did we came to agreement/consensus/conclusion on the kink discussion?

I can't help but think we could be having this exact same discussion about kink.

I was gonna say that, but I tend to go there so often in conversation, I was reluctant to do so.

My lived experience of what The Boy and I do is that it's exciting and fun and fulfilling and hot. Let me tell you, I've had a shrink tell me that I clearly didn't understand my own thoughts and desires and that *really* I must be self-hating and want to be harmed.

You know? My lived experience trumps someone who DIDN'T LIVE IT trying to tell me my business.