ABSTRACT
This chapter critically explores simulations of birth, the lifelike, and techno-corporeality through a close encounter with a blonde, white birthing machine. The text draws on a range of sources, notably technical manuals, instruction videos, as well as an interview with the simulator's founding father', but it also take into account technological imaginaries of simulator bodies in terms of how the simulator is imagined in popular science contexts. The chapter, starting with the birth of simulators, ends, conversely, with a brief contemplation of simulation and death. I have argued, often and elsewhere, for the posthuman feminist necessity of alternative female machines. Noelle doubtlessly produces birth-giving bodies in a selective fashion. Woman as enunciated by the patriarchy as a birth machine, predestined for the reproduction of the labour force in capitalist society, is far from a new figuration. Realism involves a fidelity both to the physical, sensually perceived details of the external world, and to the values of the dominant ideology.
