Apparently it is not enough for lactivists that breastfeeding promotion is the official policy of the land. It is critical to purify the world by shaming women who choose to bottlefeed anyway.
But bottle feeders have begun a stealth campaign to escape detection and opprobrium. If confronted while bottlefeeding, they’ve taken to lying about the contents of the bottle. They actually dare to claim that the bottle is filled with breastmilk. Don’t worry, though; the Breastapo is on the case!
Like every fascist organization, militant lactivists feel the need for a secret police force, hence the Breastapo. The Kommandant of the Breastapo is Allison Dixley of The Alpha Parent. Dixley has helpfully created an educational poster designed to allow the average lactivist to sniff out — literally — those bottlefeeders who are lying to save themselves.
As Dixley warned when introducing the poster:
Formula feeding in public? Don’t bother trying to pretend it’s breast milk.
The poster is loaded with tips for informants on how to discern the difference between breastmilk and formula even when it is in a bottle. For example, breastmilk may look thin and watery, but formula is of uniform color. And breastmilk may have a layer fat on the top, while formula is of uniform density.
You don’t have to simply trust your eyes, though. Once you grab the bottle away from the mother and baby, be sure to smell it. Formula has a “cheesy” odor.
On her Facebook page, Dixley notes:
I’m not sure if the internet is ready for this. Oh well, some things have just gotta be said.
But unlike Dixley, some lactivists are too mealy mouthed to recognize the need of the Breastapo to recruit informers from among general public.
One commentor states:
Lady, you are so full of hate and issues….please do not kid yourself for one minute that you are anything like Dr Jack Newman or anyone else who promotes breastfeeding. You are a troll, pure and simple, and all you achieve is to cause upset and hurt. Do not kid yourself for one minute that you are a breastfeeding advocate. You do more harm than good and I really, really wish you would stop and do something positive to promote breastfeeding.
Someone else offered the ultimate compliment/insult:
Because she is the Dr Amy of breastfeeding…loud rude & obnoxious…but does get her point across!
Well, we may sound the same, but we have very different points to put across. My point is to alert women to the dangerous misinformation espoused by homebirth advocates, lactivists and vaccine rejectionists, and I occasionally invoke shame to do it. I’ve gotten my point across when women question misinformation and learn about the real risks of their options. It’s a victory for me when a baby’s life is saved, an incompetent midwife is exposed, a child is fully vaccinated or a mother feels happy with her own choice for pain relief in labor or bottlefeeding.
Allison’s point is to shame, period. No woman who is currently bottlefeeding could return to breastfeeding even if she wanted to, so there is no benefit to babies. There’s no benefit to anyone except lactivists themselves, who enjoy a frisson of satisfaction when hurting other women. Allison wins if another woman cries.
The post Allison created is to designed to spread the hurt to places where Allison herself cannot go. I doubt she should trust other women to shame as effectively as she can, though. Instead of trying to recruit new members of the Breastapo, Allison should make it easier on herself and propose the obvious: All bottlefeeding mothers should be branded on the forehead with the letter “B.” That way only minimal effort is required to identify bottlefeeders for shaming purposes.
Then it will be impossible to hide from the Breastapo!
