Small children struggle with a conflict. They want approval from parents and other authority figures, but they want to misbehave, too. Solution? Misbehave but hide the evidence.
The folks at the Coalition for Breech Birth seem to have the same problem. They want approval and respect from authority figures (A doctor is one of our members! Sure he was convicted for sexual exploitation of a patient and disciplined TWICE by the Board of Medicine, but he’s a doctor and he agrees with us!). Yet they also want to be free to share their stupidity as “information” and get lots of “attagirls” when they display their ignorance. Solution? Continue to wallow in stupidity, but hide the evidence.
The napalm grade stupidity of the Coalition for Breech Birth was on flagrant display in their thread about single footling breech. From the original poster, a midwife who asks why single footling breech is dangerous AFTER she has attended two (how are patients supposed to give informed consent when their provider is not informed?); to the blathering of attention whore Nancy Salgueiro (hey, Nancy, how does a dead baby have a “life experience”?); to the hilarious discussion (directly under the label “Open Group”) of how I managed to read their exchange, their ignorance — and their ignorance of their own ignorance — was on display for everyone to see.
Solution? Anyone with any maturity might cringe at being revealed as stupid, but they would almost certainly investigate how they could be so wrong and modify their opinions and advice based on what they learned. But like small children, the folks at the Coalition for Breech Birth want to continue to wallow in ignorance. They simply made their group private (after finally noticing that they were posting under the label “Open Group”)
That demonstrates two things.
First, they recognized that their own words made them look like fools. If they were proud of what they wrote; if they believed it to be true, they would have kept the group open.
Second, contemplating learning from their mistakes vs. being free to continue making absurdly stupid proclamations, they chose to continue making absurdly stupid proclamations.
I consider this a win-win-win.
Using their own words, I was able to illustrate the profound ignorance of natural childbirth and homebirth advocates.
By hiding their words, they basically acknowledged that I was right and they were profoundly wrong.
Forcing them to hide their own words by making their group private dramatically limits their ability to influence other women or to be taken seriously by anyone else.
I can’t explain why anyone would take advice about childbirth from clowns like these, but at least I can expose them for the fools they are.
