Quote:
Originally Posted by GuildJenn
Perhaps not, but I think that when women challenge post c/s women on their experience and choice they are behaving disrespectfully. I also hate the way people pick at women who post on their Facebooks about planned c-sections (a reasonably recent thread on this forum) and so on and so forth.
I'm just not going to change my mind that women CAN be more respectful even while seeking their goals.
I also keep saying this: The NCB community loses my support because of that kind of thing. I can no longer wholeheartedly recommend to friends that they look for doulas or even come here to read up on the things because I don't believe they will be, in the end, supported if things go wrong - and that is when they will need the support.
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Well, I am very, truly and deeply sorry to hear that, but I want to be as clear as crystal if I haven't been up to this point.
1) I, TOO, think that when women challenge post c/s women on their experience and choice they are behaving disrespectfully.
and
2) I'm ALSO not going to change my mind that women can be more respectful even while seeking their goals. In fact, that was a huge part of my point.
I know this is getting into a whole "no true Scotsman" argument, but I have repeatedly reiterated that attacking and nitpicking other women in the way you describe has NO PLACE in the "NCB community." That has in fact been the crux of all I have posted-- that women nitpicking each others' choices and/or circumstances, particularly directly TO those women, is unproductive in the extreme.
I feel a bit that we are going in circles here, and I understand why, but... Really, as far as I am concerned, we should be attacking the myth of "too posh to push" just as we should be attacking myths surrounding homebirthing and VBAC'ing, etc. The way to fight a system that divides to conquer is not to further those divisions with judgment and ridicule and personal attacks, whether direct or subtle. And I kind of feel like I am hearing "Well, I'll stop judging when you stop judging," from some (perhaps not the majority, but enough) on BOTH sides, or all "sides'. (*sigh*) That does nothing for any of us.
And, by the way-- that was not my point, either. I didn't mean to imply that NCBers are excused from attacking other women because they are also under attack from "mainstream" folks. I only meant that there is a common cause for all of our problems, and if it's not the non-evidence-based and largely disrespectful, misogynist system, then the only other conclusion is that it's "women's nature" or some other such nonsense that I simply refuse to accept.
I do think it's sad that you no longer feel that you can endorse doulas or MDC... Although if it's only that you can no longer "wholeheartedly" endorse them, I can completely understand that. To be perfectly frank, I don't wholeheartedly endorse anything, really. When I refer friends here, for example, I always do so with a few caveats. But that's in part because nothing and no "movement" is a monolith. We are all simultaneously part of communities and individuals with our own minds to make up.
Personally, it's hard for me to imagine becoming truly disillusioned with, say, NCB-- regardless of what some who identify themselves as part of the "NCB community" say or do to me now or in the future. That's because NCB simply makes sense to me, from many perspectives-- scientific, psychosocial, anti-oppression, etc. There are tons of people within that "community" who have very different perspectives from my own. I am never going to see eye-to-eye with HBers who come from a libertarian or quiverfull perspective, or midwives who believe in the necessity of tons of herbal supplements, or people who genuinely believe that, say, women NEVER make babies too big for them to birth or that XYZ intervention is NEVER necessary. I don't even believe that very many OBs are primarily driven by a strong profit motive.
But shoot-- I think a healthy skepticism and challenging of any system or community from within is a Good Thing. Particularly good for a movement that is about tearing down old norms and stereotypes. I'm not into NCB because I think it's a bad thing to completely entrust our medical care to OBs and give up our own autonomy, but it's somehow a GOOD thing to do the same with midwives. (And I have sometimes seen that attitude here and elsewhere.) I'm "into" NCB because I think we should be empowered by the evidence to make our own decisions about our bodies and our babies with the guidance of respectful care providers who really know their stuff.
And that's all I have to say about that.