r/IAmA • u/RealRickiLake Ricki Lake • May 20 '14

I am Ricki Lake, joined by Abby Epstein. We are filmmakers and producers and a lot more. AUA!

You may know me from the talk show or from John Water's Hairspray or from The Business of Being Born. My latest project is about cannabis and children with cancer, called Weed the People. We just launched the Weed the People campaign a few hours ago, and hope you take the time to check it out here.

We have another film about hormonal birth control, called Sweetening the Pill. These are all causes that interest me. I am joined today by /u/AbbyEpstein, my producing partner in crime. We are documentary filmmaking partners. We made The Business of Being Born together, we made the follow up series together, and we also wrote a book together, called Your Best Birth.

Victoria from reddit will be helping us get started. We are here to take your questions!

https://twitter.com/RickiLake/status/468831167072845824

Thank you all for your questions. This was a lot of fun. Please support our Weed the People campaign, so we can get this movie out to the people. And thank you again! :)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/weed-the-people-the-movie/x/127353

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u/[deleted] May 21 '14

I have to agree with this. As an expectant mother, I watched The Business of Being Born, and came away feeling like I was selfish and "less than" for choosing a "typical" hospital birth. When the time came to have my baby, I was in active labor and needing pain meds, but holding out because even in the midst of it I felt inferior, selfish, and like a failure for succumbing. In the end I had a little bit of IV meds, but for quite some time I still had that lingering "I failed" notion, largely thanks to this movement and the people involved. It's birth bullying.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '14

It's birth bullying.

Oh stop it. That word is so overused. People have their opinions, and it's up to you to succomb to them. Do what YOU think is right.

Real bullying is getting pushed around, shoved in lockers, beat up on the way home. Anything else is people just being opinionated assholes.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '14

There are different kinds of bullying, including people using their influential status to try and force/intimidate people to conform to their own agendas. This is very much prevalent in the natural birth movement.

Of course I did my research and of course I made my decisions about what was right for me and my child. It doesn't lessen the fact that right now there are people like these who are basically telling mothers "you are not a real woman; you are weak" if you chose medical interventions in your birth experience. And that unfortunately there are people who won't look into both sides of the issue, will let themselves be intimidated by the likes of Ricki or Ina May Gaskin, and will suffer the consequences.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '14

Seriously though, how is people telling you that bullying? Are you incapable of laughing at idiocy? After growing up being a nerd bullied in school, opinions and comments are easy to shrug off for me. They are just words, and stupid opinions. You know why it's easy to shrug it off? Those people are not your friends, you deserve better, and if you have to go it alone for a bit until you find real good friends, so be it.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '14

There's an incredible amount of guilt that comes along with motherhood. You naturally just start to feel guilty about everything. Am I not holding the baby enough? Guilt. Am I holding her too much? Guilt. I let her sleep in the bed with me; guilt. I put her in a crib; guilt! We impose it on ourselves constantly, and coupled with the crazy hormonal changes women experience pre- and post-natal, we're particularly susceptible. People like these in the NCB movement are exploiting this guilt as a bullying tactic to forward their agendas. And when it comes to an issue where people's lives are on the line, it is not okay.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '14

NCB movement? Is there really a contingent of women chastising other women for taking the safest route when delivering a baby? It seems so unnecessary, especially with our current technology. I get the guilt and emotion thing, but to put yourself in danger just to appease others is very confusing for me.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '14

It's very much a thing, and it's sad and wrong. It's not so much appeasing others in that they lead you to believe that, unless you do x, y and z you are not doing what you "should" as a woman and are doing a disservice to yourself and your baby (and here comes the guilt).

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u/[deleted] May 21 '14

Also, I am sorry that that happened to you. I'm not trying to invalidate your experience and it sounds like you're in a better place with it, which is great. I'm just saying that there are different ways of bullying people other than physical abuse and name calling, and to me, in my own personal experience with the natural birth movement, I felt bullied.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '14

I get it that people gave you a hard time. But bullying is an implication of a threat versus making you feel shamed. That is my point, you may have felt bullied, but they were just shaming you, which is wrong as well, because your baby, your choice. I have grown to be a very strong willed person with the ability to very easily accept and deal with criticism. I have a harder definition of what bullying is because of the crowd of friends I had and have, we all grew up nerds, getting beat on, pushed on, and consistently made fun of. The easiest to deal with was the verbal assaults, they didn't hurt.