With "non-judgmental support" like this, who needs sanctimommies?

I really need to stop participating in mommy groups on Facebook for the sake of my own mental health.  In these groups are two local individuals who seem to be the "go-to" women for lactation consulting and childbirth classes/doula services.  Both of them, of course, advertise themselves as supportive of mothers and their personal preferences.  And both of them need to shut their dang mouths.

I had nothing against the doula until last night.  A friend in one of these groups asked about VBAC versus RCS.  The doula actually said that the risk of uterine rupture is no higher for VBAC than it is for first-time mothers!  For the record, the risk of uterine rupture for VBAC is estimated to be between 0.5 and 1 per 100 births.  I don't know about primips specifically, but the rate of uterine rupture in an unscarred uterus is 0.7 per 10,000 deliveries, or 100 times as rare as during VBAC. (Source: http://www.uptodate.com/contents/rupture-of-the-unscarred-uterus)

The LC, however, is a real nasty piece of work.  She was recommended to me when I specifically asked for recommendations for an LC who is supportive of combo-feeding.  Thank G-d I didn't hire her because, as far as she's concerned, combo-feeding and supplementation are terrible for the baby's health.  Oh, and women should be forced to have vaginal deliveries when at all possible.

According to the LC:
1. Supplementing ruins the microbiome in the baby's gut;
2. Formula feeding can lead to chronic health problems later in life;
3. The WHO's recommendations are applicable for developed countries.

So let's take these claims one by one.
1. Formula supplementation *does* change the microbiome in the gut. However, there's no evidence whatsoever that this difference is at all meaningful.  How do I know this?  Because:
2. There are no proven long-term health benefits to breastfeeding.  Every single study that supposedly shows a difference either failed to control for confounding factors or the difference disappeared as soon as those factors were controlled for.  Basically, most breastfeeding studies haven't proven that breastfed babies grow up to be healthier; they've shown that wealthy women breastfeed and poor women don't.
3. I'm not sure why natural fallacy types think the WHO was founded.  In any event, the WHO does not maintain separate medical recommendations for developed countries because they discovered that developing countries don't trust you when you do that.  This is a matter of historical fact.  Formula feeding in the West isn't dangerous just because there are many impoverished countries with no clean water and no regulations for the production of formula.

And since ethics are just as important as science here, let's all take a brief moment to be shocked (SHOCKED!) that a woman who makes a living telling other women how to use their bodies to feed their babies also thinks she has the right to tell a woman how she ought to give birth.

In which I discover the existence of TERFs

And now, for something completely different.

I admit that I've been mostly ignoring the Caitlyn Jenner hubbub.  My initial reaction was, "What's a Bruce Jenner?  Oh, this is sports news," meaning that I had almost tuned out before I realized that this was a story about a prominent person coming out as trans and I should probably make the effort to care.

That changed once I saw the backlash, not from the usual easily freaked-out right-wingers, but from purported feminists.  Apparently there is an entire category of feminists who earnestly believe that transgendered people are subjecting themselves excruciating levels of harassment and violence solely to reinforce the patriarchy.  A representative example of this genre can be seen here.

For readers who are trying to avoid heartburn, the basic gist is that gender identity is a social construct developed to persecute people with vaginas, that women are women because their brains have been molded by that persecution, and therefore, trans women are not real women and are actually complicit in this persecution by reinforcing gender roles.

What astounds me more than any other aspect of this theory is the breathtaking cruelty required to believe in it.  Transgendered people are at increased risk of violence, sexual assault, poverty, and homelessness.  Forty-one percent of transgendered people in the US say they have attempted suicide. Just how malicious and incapable of compassion do you have to be to see all this and decide to pile on?  How blinded by hate are you to say that someone would choose to submit themselves to that in order to persecute YOU?

Let's get one thing straight.  While gender *roles* are socially constructed, often in a way that benefits men at the expense of women, the existence of trans people pretty much proves that gender *identity* is innate.  Don't go crapping on the marginalized of the marginalized just because they disprove your pet academic theory.

I'm foaming at the mouth at this point a little bit, so I'll just sum up some of the other, less grating flaws of the article:
1. It tells feminine women that they are inferior feminists;
2. Saying, "I'm not a woman because of my genitals; I'm a woman because the neurological effects of the persecution I have suffered on account of my genitals" is still a form of gender essentialism;
3. The fact that trans advocates, like activists for every other cause on the planet, sometimes go to silly extremes is not legitimate justification for saying that transwomen aren't real women;
4. It's not easy to enjoy male privilege when being considered male causes you significant mental distress;
5. You just said that it isn't genitalia that makes women women, so why are you quantifying who really counts as transgendered based on whether or not they've had gender reassignment surgery?;
6. Have you even considered that more gender reassignment surgeries might be performed on women (and no, they aren't men, even though they have penises) because the risks and expenses involved are less, leading many transmen to say that just presenting as male is sufficient?

Trans issues aside, there's something I find profoundly disturbing about the idea that being a woman is all about negative experiences, as it implies that there is no value in being a woman.  For me, at least, being a woman is less about my physical body and more about my actions.  As long as I have a kick-ass matzoh ball recipe, there is value in me being a woman.  I don't want feminism to mean that we degrade everything women have produced and achieved as being inferior.

A good explanation of why natural childbirth is sexist

A recent article by Hadley Freeman in the Guardian nailed what's so wrong about the natural childbirth movement. Some of the best quotes:

"Few things drive the British press quite so demented as the thought of a pregnant woman with a choice... An individual! After all, we know that as soon as conception happens, a woman stops being her own person but is instead generic 'mum', and should be talked to accordingly."

"This reflects a worldwide increase [in C-sections], and is thought to be the result of 'a combination of doctors believing surgery is safer in potentially difficult births and women choosing not to undergo labour', neither of which sounds much like a terrible cause."

"It is quite something to watch how what is erroneously described as 'natural childbirth' – as though childbirth involving medical intervention is fake, or 'lesser' – has shifted ... to being yet another stick with which to accuse women of being insufficiently self-sacrificing as mothers."

"As anyone who has been to a certain kind of pre-natal 'support group' knows, for a woman to say – admit, even – that she will avail herself of all the pain relief and opt for a c-section is tantamount to admitting you plan to give your kids heroin to keep them quiet during EastEnders."

"The self-indulgent veneration in the media today of 'natural childbirth' is downright offensive in a world where women still die every day because they don’t have access to different childbirth options."


Here's the full article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/29/obsession-natural-birth-judge-women-pregnant-medical?CMP=soc_567