I'm glad you're having such
an awakening and feeling so motivated, Kelly; it's something many of us felt and
began to act on a long time ago - welcome to the club, it's populated by many
decades of women who continue to work hard to heal birth in our culture - which
is a long, slow battle. We're all pretty aware of the situation and we're
all working to the best of our own capacitys to improve it (some of us at no
profit, by finance or publicity or otherwise, to ourselves). Some of
your suggestions have been really worthwhile and quite exciting, but I have
to admit that I'm losing my enthusiasm for them amid the sea of self promotional
rhetoric that accompanies them - OzMid is not a promotional tool for BellyBelly
and some posts on this list related to it have felt like advertising Spam in my
InBox. I have to say I find your assumptions about Janet Fraser in
particular to be offensive. Do you actually know the totality
of what Janet does in her professional and personal capacity, or the
widespread and rapidly growing effect Joyous Birth is having Australia wide,
both in the mainstream and otherwise? It's nothing like one woman espousing her
own views to the converted, and how utterly rude to dismiss the lifework of one
of your sisters as being such. Every contribution counts and whilst I
think I understand the point you're trying to make about reaching the
mainstream, it's dangerous to begin tempering our message to better enable us to
begin "marketing" it to the majority gratuitously - women and babies are not a
market and our integrity is not for sale. I fear the overstepping of that
invisible line that would transform us into nothing too different from the Obs
and Hospys - big business, marketed to the masses (for instance, in my personal
experience, your forum/site needs to compromise a lot in order to appeal to the
larger membership you enjoy; this results in some less than optimal advertising
and advice, and the sad loss of some wonderful contributions and items. Do
the ends justify the means? That's a decision we each need to make, and your
contribution is still significant, though not necessarily in the form I would
personally choose for myself). What is the point of a message reaching
more people if the message has had to be diluted and perhaps changed in order to
get there? Nothing is simple and these aspects need to be
considered. It is the various voices of all of us that shed light on
darker areas of the topic; some more straightforward and uncompromising
contributions may seem difficult to hear but they're usually the most valuable
and evidence-based in my experience, and I enjoy them thoroughly.
----- Original Message -----
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- Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI new... Lynne Staff
- RE: [ozmidwifery] FYI new... Vedrana Valčić
- RE: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Tania Smallwood
- Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Melissa Singer
- Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Justine Caines
- RE: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Kelly @ BellyBelly
- Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Justine Caines
- RE: [ozmidwifery] FYI news ar... Kelly @ BellyBelly
- Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Jennifairy
- Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Janet Fraser
- Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Stephen & Felicity
- RE: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Kelly @ BellyBelly
- [ozmidwifery] Conflict Andrea Bilcliff
- RE: [ozmidwifery] Conflict Megan & Larry
- Re: [ozmidwifery] Conflict Stephen & Felicity
- [ozmidwifery] Belinda birth story [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Re: [ozmidwifery] Belinda bir... Janet Fraser
- Re: [ozmidwifery] Belinda bir... Susan Cudlipp
- Re: [ozmidwifery] Belinda bir... michelle gascoigne
- Re: [ozmidwifery] Belinda bir... Judy Chapman
- Re: [ozmidwifery] FYI news article Lisa Barrett