Today I was at a community house for local activists/radicals/anarchists and found this sticker posted underneath by the water dispenser:

Surgeon General’s Warning:
Consumption of soft drink bevarages may result in
Rotten teeth, diabetes, obesity, malnutrition, osteoporosis, & Cancer

Well it wasn’t exactly like that, because it was all in caps.

I took it down, and tomorrow I’m going to leave this in its place:

To the person who put up that sticker, and everyone else who couldn’t be bothered to take it down.

I have gotten tired of taking down messages that reinforce mainstream ideas about food and bodies. Rather than just removing that sticker, I am going to explain why I find it problematic - in the hope that one day people will stop putting such messages up - or at least other people will take them down before I see them.

1. I have no idea why you thought this message is necessary. Presumably you believe that there are people out there who have been deprived of the information that soft-drinks can lead to rotten teeth, and there only way of accessing this information is through alternative channels. We obviously live in very different worlds.

2. Telling people that they shouldn’t eat a particular food because they might get fat, is about as un-radical message as you can find. I’m not even going to go there, you should know better.

3. As activists we should be focusing on health collectively rather than individually. We challenge the system of unemployment rather than blaming people for not getting a job. Surely we should challenge the system of food production rather than blaming people for getting sick

4. Think for a second about people who have the diseases listed - would you really be ok with someone with rotten teeth reading that? Are you even aware about the link between rotten teeth and poverty? Is this just another way of making sure that only middle-class alternative types feel comfortable in this space?

So lets stop with the moralistic bullshit around food. Let’s treat food politically or ignore it. Repeating mainstream messages is not an option.

PS: Surgeon General? Can we please stick to the bureaucrats we are actually inflicted with, without borrowing other people’s?

The more I read about ‘health’ research, the more sceptical I am of any edict about diet or lifestyle. It starts by doubting the headlines (housework prevents cancer), then you read the articles and get sceptical of science journalism. So far you’re only blaming the messengers. But then you go on the internet and find the articles the press-releases are based on, and they don’t prove anything. It’s when you read the articles in their entirety, and see badly designed study after badly designed study, which don’t prove anything, despite what their authors claim. Theoretically journal articles are supposed to be refereed to ensure that they actually prove what they say they prove. As articles that clearly don’t prove what their authors claim are allowed through this process, why do we believe any of it?

And yet, I was still surprised to read an article arguing that a diet high in saturated fat did not make people more prone to heard disease.

Malcolm Kendrick appears to be making two claims: that there’s no evidence that a diet high in saturated fat causes elevated cholesterol, and that there’s no proof that elevated cholesterol levels leads to an increase risk of heart disease, or death. Read the article yourself - I’m sure you’ll hear more about it - he’s got a book coming out (the parts about cholesterol lowering drugs are particularly interesting).

I’m not saying I believe Malcolm Kendrick - necessarily. In fact I make it a matter of principle to disbelieve everything in the Daily Mail. There’s some really bad logic in the article (almost all foods on saturated fats were rationed in the UK during and post-war, but the level of heart-disease doubled - this is supposed to be evidence that there is no link between heart disease and saturated fats. Unless there was more than one risk factor for heart disease). I wouldn’t be surprised of Dr Kendrick, or others doing this research had some connection with the meat and dairy industry (if you were part of the meat industry wouldn’t you pay him?)

But at this point everyone is being paid by someone. Food is manufactured for a profit, as is food advice. Malcolm Kendrick gives the examples of the 9 memeber panel that decided to lower the recommended cholesterol level - 8 had ties to the pharmaceutical compnaies that produce cholesterol lowering drugs.

The ridiculous nature of nutritional advice can be seen when the anti-carb people fight the anti-fat people. Each side is very good at demonstrating why it’s a bad idea to demosing an entire food-group, but the argument behind this isn’t that demonising a food group is probably a bad idea, but that we need to eliminate the right food group (and I’m sure the anti-carb people are funded by industries that are high fat, and vice versa).

We have a puritanical attitude towards food. The idea that virtue will be rewarded, and that virtue is the elimination of pleasure, and the quest towards perfection, describe most mainstream conversation about food (and as a political activist I must point out far too much non-mainstream discussion as well). This fits in well with the needs of our food producers (which is for us to buy their products, in case you were wondering). Meat producers can make you feel virtuous when people are worrying about carbohyrate, bread produceers when people are worrying about fat. The people who make chocolate, donuts, and deep fried potatoes know that these ideas of sin and virtue serve their intersts as much as anyone else’s - because it’s only within that context that people can transgress by eating.

At this stage willing to believe that it’s dangerous to smoke, and eat arsenic - but it appears that we’ve got to take everything else of faith. Personally I’ve got other things I’d rather spend energy believing in.

Hey folks,

I got this email on a list serve, and I figured I would disseminate this query to as many people as possible.  This sounds like a fascinating area of research that needs further development.  I’m not sure if he needs participants for a study, references to organizations and activists, or general literature on the topic.  Personally, I’m excited about this area of study because I have yet to see any thorough analysis of the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and disability.  If you can help him you can send an email directly, if you have general points of suggestions for the general audience, please feel free to put them in the comments section. 

From: A. Rahman Ford

arford@sas.upenn.edu

I am searching for literature regarding race and disability.  I seek to use such information to explore the intersection of disability and Black masculinity. Any information will be greatly appreciated. 

[This is Charles] In the long running previous thread on that started out with Amp’s rebuttal of anti-trans arguments, I suggested opening a new thread to refocus and to make the loading time shorter (425 posts and rising, phew!). A huge issue in that thread was the problems of how to talk about trans issues (transitioning, transgender, transexuality, cisgender, …), so I think it might be good to look at how the language works around all this, and what is wrong with the language we use.

I’m going to be lazy, and not do the work I should pulling quotes from the previous thread. Instead, I am going to just post the last comment from the previous thread, as it seems like a good starting point (I hope this is okay with everyone):

BritGirlSF writes:

nexyjo and littlelight - I’d love to hear more from both of you about how you feel about how the language we all use at the moment frames the issues, how it works for you and how it doesn’t. For example, nexyjo said something about not feeling like a woman post-transition even though many other MTF trans people do. How would you define your current gender identity? Or are you not defining it because we don’t seem to have any words that really fit?
I’m not sure if that made sense, I’ll try to clarify if it didn’t. That’s the point I was trying to make earlier, really - our ability to have this conversation is hampered by not having the linguistic tools we need.

I think it was a New Year’s Day party that my parents were holding; I would have been thirteen or fourteen. It was near the end of the party and all my mothers’ closest friends were talking, trying to get up the energy to round up their kids and leave. One of the women started explaining this great diet she was about to go on and even though it was fifteen years ago I can still remember the details she described. But what I remember more was noticing other people’s reactions. None of the men cared about the conversation, and my little sisters and their friends just kept on playing, but every single woman in the room was treating this as important information that deserved respect. Then I noticed that I was paying attention to the conversation - did this mean I was a woman?

Jill from Feministe wrote a really good post on the proposal to print children’s BMI on their report cards. It’s not her argument that I want to respond to (although I agreed with 99% of it), but the position from which she wrote. She starts: “When I was in elementary school, we had annual weigh-ins. I dreaded weigh-in day more than just about any other day of the year,” and continues:

From there, I spent most of my life engaging in restrictive eating behaviors, and volleying back and forth between extremes of “being skinny will make me happy and so therefore I’m only going to consume 800 calories a day” and “this is ridiculous, I’m a feminist and I’m not going to buy into this shit, so I’m going to eat whatever I want, even if that means binging and gaining 10 pounds in a single month” (that’s where I was at last month, and now I’m miserable). Even at 23, I still feel completely out of control when it comes to my weight, and I still go back and forth between a desire to be thin and an ideology which conflicts with that desire.

What I think is so important in what Jill wrote is that for many women feminism does not solve our relationship between food and our bodies, it just helps name the problems. It’s also a lot easier to talk about food and body politics in the abstract, which can leave everyone feeling that they’re a bad feminist for not figuring out this stuff by themselves.

A lot of women on this heartbreaking, rage-inducing, thread that piny started, talked about the conflict between feminism and their feelings about their body. Or going further, that feminist analysis just adds a level of guilt to what they’re doing, that they should be strong enough and smart enough not to let this society get to us.

Which is bullshit, we do the best that we can, but none of us are strong enough and smart enough to deal with all of this on our own. (I say “all of this” deliberately, because I think body and food issues are about society’s image of women, but they’re also about so much more. They’re about control and losing control. They’re a way of conforming with what women should be, and a way of resisting.)

If we’re going to do anything that allows us to take up space, we’re going to have to do it together.

As a feminist, that much is clear. I’m just not sure what I do with this analysis; what it means for the way I talk to other women. I am reaching the breaking point in terms of listening to the female dialog around food and our bodies that exists among the women I know. If I never again hear someone insult her body, or what I’m eating, it’ll be way too soon. I don’t want to listen anymore for me, and I don’t want that to be around for other women to hear.

That doesn’t get me anywhere much. Being comparatively noisy about the fact that I think the common discourse about food and our bodies is really fucked up makes that noise a little quieter when I’m around. Which is great for me, but it doesn’t help build anything new.

But I’m not sure we can build anything new within this environment. I’ve seen how activists can make mainstream diet advice look alternative. It’s a hegemony so perfect that we can’t say anything about food and our bodies that doesn’t reinforce the status quo.

More than that, I don’t know how to have this conversation without hurting other women, without hurting myself. I’ve been told that the reason I hold the views I do is because of my size, so challenging a woman who is smaller than me on what she says feels really risky. Food and our bodies are systems that are left to women to police, which works only too well to give us extraordinary power over each other.

I write about collective action, but I don’t know how to get there on this issue. I don’t even know how to get from where we are now to a point where we can have the conversation that would help us take the next step.

I’m still angry with the women who were at the party that day (feminists all). I’m angry that their feminism didn’t even stop them hating their bodies in front of us. I want the generation of feminists I am part of to at least recognize the harm we could do to our daughters (and each other). But I want to go further than that, I want to find a way to stop the harm we do to ourselves, and I don’t know how to do that. I’m worried that if we start by asking that women stop degrading themselves and the foods that nurture us, we’ll never get any further, because we’ll just drive those thoughts underground.

* From a commenter on feministe.

I heard about this today on BBC:

In a case fraught with ethical questions, the parents of a severely mentally and physically disabled child have stunted her growth to keep their little “pillow angel” a manageable and more portable size. The bedridden 9-year-old girl had her uterus and breast tissue removed at a Seattle hospital and received large doses of hormones to halt her growth. She is now 4-foot-5; her parents say she would otherwise probably reach a normal 5-foot-6.

The case has captured attention nationwide and abroad via the Internet, with some decrying the parents’ actions as perverse and akin to eugenics. Some ethicists question the parents’ claim that the drastic treatment will benefit their daughter and allow them to continue caring for her at home..

I’m really shocked by this case. I don’t want to be overly critical of parents raising severly disabled kids because I do think there is no good support system in place for them, but I’m shocked that doctors and a medical ethics board were willing to go along with this.

One of the things that really caught my attention was the quotes about breast removal from the blog that the parents have created to explain the surgery:

Ashley has no need for developed breasts since she will not breast feed and their presence would only be a source of discomfort to her. This is especially true since Ashley is likely destined to have large breasts, given her maternal and paternal female lineage; for example, an aunt had a breast reduction operation at age 19. Large breasts are uncomfortable lying down with a bra and even less comfortable without a bra. Furthermore, breasts impede securing Ashley in her wheelchair, stander, or bath chair, where straps across her chest are needed to support her body weight. Before the surgery Ashley had already exhibited sensitivity in her breasts.

And then soon after there is this quote:

Large breasts could “sexualize” Ashley towards her caregiver, especially when they are touched while she is being moved or handled, inviting the possibility of abuse.

I am at a loss for words :-O :-O

I definitely think this is a feminist issue and a disability rights issue. The the desexualization of the disabled combined with the extremely gendered nature of this treatment just astonishes me. To me feminist reproductive rights advocates should be lining up to challenge this treatment (But if I was a betting women, I’d bet most of them won’t say much.).

I went over to Blue’s site to see if she has responded. She said she will put up a comment soon.

What do you think?

Editor’s note: As the commenters pointed out, I’m actually arguing that both gender and sex are social constructions. 

I have a good example. This case is not unique, but it is rather interesting. An Indian runner who earned a Silver Medal in the Asian Games, was disqualified because she “failed a gender test.”

The IOA also asked its medical commission to inquire into Soundarajan’s case and report within 10 days.

There are no compulsory gender tests during events sanctioned by the International Association of Athletics Federations, but athletes may be asked to take a gender test. The medical evaluation panel usually includes a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist and internal medicine specialist.

An Indian athletics official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said Soundarajan almost certainly never had sex-change surgery.

Instead, the official said Soundarajan appeared to have “abnormal chromosomes.” The official also said the test revealed more Y chromosomes than allowed.

I find it interesting that they had to get a half dozen experts to determine this women’s gender for her. If gender was just about chromosomes and/or genitalia, then this wouldn’t be such a big debate. I have heard of cases like this before with professional athletes and other people.

Now before, the biological determinists come crawling out of the wood work, I’m not saying that there is no biological basis for sex, but I am saying that the criteria used for assigning gender (and sex) are social in nature. One of the things that our social construction of gender teaches us is that there are “males” and “females” and that’s it. It also tells us that everybody fits into these two gender boxes, but the biological “truth” is a little more complex.

As fans of Buffy probably already know, from March next year ‘Season 8′ will run monthly in comic book form. Joss will write the first four, last four and some in between. I’m excited, really I am, I love Buffy beyond the telling of it.

But I’m just not sure I can be persuaded to love superhero comic books. I enjoyed Fray, it had Joss dialogue and great twists and turns. But the drawings of Fray and her sister depressed me - croptops, tiny waists, and breasts of steel.

Joss says the right things:

TVGuide.com: Does she get comic-book superheroine breast implants?

Whedon: She really doesn’t. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never worked with a T&A artist. I’m very specific about that.

TVGuide.com: Isn’t that the raison d’etre of lots of comics?

Whedon: That’s part of why I stopped reading comics for a while. All the people I work with draw actual women.

But this is one of the sample pages from the Buffy comic provided with that very article:

I suppose there are possibly women who have a waist hip ratio of .66 (or whatever that figure has), but Buffy sure wasn’t one of them.

It seems a bit stupid to be complaining about the images of women in a comic book based on a TV series where Amber Benson was ‘the big one’. But at least with TV you are looking at an acutal women. When a TV actress loses weight she does lose weight all over. Comic book women are fantasies - and they’re male fantasies. I don’t want to look at images of women created to fulfil the desires of men. The endless images of women with exagerated hour-glass figures make it clear that women readers are peripheral to superhero comics. That the stories are not supposed to be for or about us.

I’m just not sure I could handle Buffy stories that said that to me.

Easily the best post I’ve read this month is Winter’s How do I look? Thoughts on feminism and white middle-class femininity. I was really pleased to see that both Hugo and Rachel used the post as inspiration for their own posts. They both focused on Winter’s starting point:

My experience with feminine beauty practices has been oppressive. You can read about it here if you’re interested, but now I realise that when I wrote about my experiences, I should have paid a lot more attention to the fact that my own attitudes to feminine practices are deeply class-based. I have not been talking about “femininity,” I have been talking about the specifically white middle-class femininity that affects my life, and which often seems to be taken for granted as a universal experience for all women when white middle-class women speak on the subject. Hence the accusations of class privilege: white middle-class people are all too used to getting to speak for everyone.

I agree with this entirely. I’m not going to attempt to parse the discussion about the relationship between feminity and feminism, but there was an assumption that feminity had a set meaning, and covered a reasonably stable set of behaviours. As Winter points out this just isn’t true. The gendered behaviour expected of a woman depends on the time and place, culture and class that that woman lives in. Her ability not to conform to those expectations often also depends on her culture and class.

That’s not to say that middle-class white women shouldn’t analyse the experiences they have of being middle-class white women. The problem is not that these discussions happen, but that they become a stand in for all women.

Winter went on to make an even more interesting point. Appearance and feminity is generally something that is left up to women to police (certainly among middle-class white women, my understanding is it true for a wider group of people, feel free to jump in if you have a different experience). In particular within white middle-class women part of conforming to standard ideas of feminity is not looking like you’re trying.

Therefore, feminist discussions about appearance and supposedly feminine behaviours can fit right in a white-middle class discourse about women’s bodies. Feminist critiques of shaving/waxing/make-up and so on, all fit into the idea that women shouldn’t appear, and women critiqueing other women’s appearance is how the whole system is maintained in the first place.

I think that analysis explains why it’s very difficult to discuss these issues in a way that doesn’t come across as policing policing. It also explains why discussion gets so fraught so quickly, as most women have good reason to get defensive when they feel other women are policing their appearance and behaviour. It’s not just on-line either. I’ve been part of in person discussions that have gone badly wrong, and no-one really knew why.

But go and read Winter’s whole post - I think her laying it out there like that was an awesome starting point.

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

Or an alternate title could be–”Women are Like Other Animals.” I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is that troubles me about this study. I’m not sure if it is that this seems like a waste of time and research funding or if it is the constant obsession with trying to link all female behavior with biology, in particular hormones.

What do you think?

Amp has asked me to guest post again this month. Expect some posts on recent New Zealand union developments (we fought! and won! - it was very exciting), praise for the irony free, and the usual rants about feminism, bodies, capitalism, Joss Whedon and collective action.

But I thought I’d reintroduce myself by cross-posting two memories I have, that I wrote about yesteday.

I generally refer to my primary school (for non New Zealanders primary school generally goes from ages 5-12) as ‘my hippy school’. It was run as a parent co-operative; we all worked at our own pace; the entire school was thirty children; and every family had to do one half-day parent help each week. It was a gillion times better for me than my other primary school in New Zealand where I’d been bored and miserable. Although I don’t know how it would compare with the primary school I went to in London, where my Mum says I was really happy (my main memory from that school is not liking gravy, but being too shy to ask the school dinner people not to put any gravy on mine).

I was going to write a post about what my ideal primary school would be like (I’ve written it now, and it’s here). But as I was thinking about writing that post, I remembered something I hadn’t thought about in years. So I thought I’d write about that memory first. Otherwise I feel I’d have to go into it in great detail in a footnote in the other post, and that’d be a little bit distracting.

I don’t know how old I was at the time, I think I was ten or eleven, I certainly wasn’t older than that. I know because the main teacher of the school (and the one who taught us ‘big kids’) left before I turned 12. Anyway she decided that four of the girls around my age were getting fat, and therefore we had to go for walks (everyday? Once a week? I don’t remember). We were to go out of the school down to the park up a hill and come back again.

We didn’t always do it, of course (no adult came with us). Sometimes we’d go down to a creek bed instead. Sometimes we’d stop behind some bushes that was a fairy place (I was still young enough to like ‘fairy places’).

There were four girls my age who didn’t have to go on these walks, two of whom were reasonably serious gymnasts. I wonder, looking back, how much of it was that the teacher had forgotten how girls’ bodies change. We were the first older girls in the school for a number of years (the school always had more boys than girls), and we were all eldest daughters. Maybe puberty took them by surprise.

You see, it was only the girls they did this to. There had been fat boys about our age in earlier years, and no-one thought there was any need for intervention.

It makes me so angry, looking back. Not at the activity itself - it’d be sad if the great injustice of my life was having to go for a walk. If they’d decided that kids who weren’t particularly physically active needed to do more walking, I think that would have been cool (and I would certainly have been one of them, but so would some of the thin girls). I am really angry that an alternative school, where there was at least some feminist analysis among the people who ran it, dedicated time and energy into making sure pre-teen girls knew they should try and control their weight.

So tomorrow you’ll hear all about my plans for an alternative model for schools. But remember that individualised attention isn’t always a good thing, it can allow all sorts of individualised way for teachers to passed on fucked-up ideas.

Of course there is plenty of scope for this at normal secondary schools. In fourth form (fourteen) I was taught nutrition by a woman with anorexia. The thing I remember most about that was an exercise where we had to write down everything we ate over a certain period of time. We were told the number of calories we should eat each day, and everyone I knew in that class (it was an all girls school) worked really hard to make sure we ate less than that number of calories. To the extent that I thought that was the point of the exercise, to make sure we weren’t eating too much. Because the important thing to teach fourteen year old girls is to make sure that they eat less than the calories they need to live.

Also posted at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

It seems that about 1/4 of the readers of this magazine were offended by this cover. I can’t even feign any sort of objectivity on this subject. I usually try to be the semi-neutral academic blogger, but I can’t figure out why people would view breastfeeding as gross, disgusting, or sexual. I just had a big debate between myself and all but 2 (out of 18) of my students on the subject of breastfeeding. The majority of students felt that is was “icky” and should be done in private. Of course these same students also didn’t know about the health benefits of breastfeeding, how often it needs to be done, and the numerous studies showing that breast milk is generally healthier than infant formula. They were clueless. Now I’m an educator, and I have come to expect this sort of reaction; however, it is usually a small but vocal minority of students, not the vast majority of the class. The funny thing is that these are the same people who are not the least bit offended at the latest Maxim cover or numerous pictures of Pam Anderson with her breasts equally exposed, but suddenly when breasts are used for what they are actually for people get loopy.

The magazine was reporting on a survey from the American Dietetic Association, and the findings of that study are even more depressing:

The picture in Babytalk was aimed at illustrating the controversy surrounding breastfeeding in the United States, where a national survey by the American Dietetic Association found that 57 percent of those polled are opposed to women breastfeeding in public and 72 percent think it is inappropriate to show a woman breastfeeding on television programs.

So most of the people in this random sample survey think that women should not breastfeed in public (I wonder if the survey asked how many opposed those Maxim covers???).

The good news is that in spite of the general opposition to breastfeeding in public, most states (32) have laws allowing women to breast feed anywhere. However, there are still states that do not have such laws, and more laws are need to protect breast feeding mothers and their children. Here is a brief summary of some of the breastfeeding laws from the National Council of State Legislatures:

• Thirty two states allow mothers to breastfeed in any public or private location (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Texas, Vermont and Virginia). Fifteen states exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws (Alaska, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin).
• Ten states have laws related to breastfeeding in the workplace (California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington).
• Ten states exempt breastfeeding mothers from jury duty (California, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma Oregon and Virginia).
• Four states have implemented or encouraged the development of a breastfeeding awareness education campaign (California, Illinois, Missouri, and Vermont).Nevertheless, it is still shocking to see such a low level of support for breastfeeding in the general public.

Nevertheless, the controversy over the cover and the ADA survey indicate that the social support system for breastfeeding is lacking. In spite of the numerous medical and social benefits to breastfeeding, there still seems to be a notion that breastfeeding should be hidden from public view.

Here’s More Info. on Breastfeeding Rights:

A Summary of States’ Breastfeeding Laws from the National Council of State Legislatures.

La Leche League Summary of Breastfeeding legislation.

(Warning: This post is really long. Primarily because it took me about 3-4 weeks to write and research.)

Well, It seems like menstruation has been the hot topic on feminist blogs for the past few months, and I wanted to follow-up on my previous post about using hormonal birth control to suppress menstruation. For those of you who missed the earlier post here it is at Alas and at Rachel’s Tavern. My concerns about menstrual suppression revolved around three issues 1)the lack of studies of the long term health effects of this 2)the possibility that women may get pregnant and not know about it in time to get adequate prenatal care or have access to abortion and 3)the marketing and framing of menstruation as abnormal bad or gross. If I were to prioritize those three things, the last one is the one that I am most concerned about, and that is the one I would like to emphasize in this post.

Amanda over at Pandagon took exception to my view, and made this argument:

The problem isn’t discussing one’s feelings about it or anything like that, but I have a big, fat problem with the kneejerk assumption that “natural” is more valuable than “unnatural”. Every time someone praises menstruation as something that makes them feel like a woman or whatever, I wonder if they’re working for Tampax or something.

The only problem with that argument was that it was not my point. If I was making that argument, I think she has a valid point. I try very consciously to avoid the term “natural”–things like poison ivy and stinging nettles natural. The natural framework is problematic. First, off you’d be hard pressed to get people to agree on what is natural, and second we can’t assume that things that are “natural” are necessarily better than things that are created by people. I also think there are just as many people making money off menstruation as there will be on stopping menstruation. Whether you think a period is “natural” or not, we do need to understand that there is nothing abnormal about periods.

One commenter defended my position very well. La Luba said,

But traditionally, it is the male body that has been viewed as “normal” or “natural,” and the female body that is viewed as abnormal, unnatural, cursed, in need of “fixing.” Arguments like this are really intended to reclaim the female body as OK in its own right; that there isn’t something wrong with us, simply because our bodies aren’t male.

I’m not attached to “natural” as meaning “completely without medical intervention.” But I’m very suspicious of an effort by Big Pharma to focus the marketing of this pill formula towards women without problem periods. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. There is a lot of effective right-wing organizing towards abolishing birth control; Big Pharma is reacting to that by targeting the market in a way they know will have a positive effect on their bottom line–by reminding women of the negative aspects of their periods. That will create a demand. Women who wouldn’t dream of fighting for their right to control when and if they get pregnant will definitely get out in the streets to demand the right to live without a period–and don’t think for a minute that has nothing to do with the history of how women, and our menstruation, has been viewed.
Color me skeptical.

And yes, the fact that many women aren’t aware that “periods” while on the pill speaks to the fact that we are taught to be divorced from our bodies and their functions—that we are taught that our bodies are for being seen and being “done to,” rather than being active. I’m seeing this issue against a backdrop of how women’s bodies are viewed and treated, and I see Rachel’s point about semen. Semen has never been traditionally viewed with the negativity menstrual blood has. We haven’t heard semen referred to as “the curse” our whole lives.

I can’t see the marketing of this pill as being any different from the marketing of say, breast implants, or plastic surgery. Restorative breast implants and plastic surgery can make sense for cancer patients, or burn patients….but is this something the rest of us need, or should want? No one would question this “choice” if periods had been traditionally viewed through a neutral lens, as neither good nor bad, just there. That’s not the backdrop we’re working with here. Especially considering the religious overtones of “unclean” menstruating women; of “hysterical”, “unstable” menstruating women. Those myths are still out there. We are still fighting those myths. Whether or not an individual woman makes the choice to take this pill is immaterial. But whether this pill is seen as a “magic bullet” to rid us of the “hysterical” myth is very material. I don’t want a future of “but of course women are just as capable as men! we’re not hysterical anymore, ever since the pill! It’s only those women who don’t take the pill who are hysterical!!” arguments. There’s plenty of pseudo-feminists who would ride that train. (not that it would work. the bars would just be moved again.—but that’s another reason these conversations are necessary.)
I’m not saying that having this pill as an option is adding fuel to these fires. This pill is neutral, in and of itself. I’m saying it’s well worth questioning the why of this option. There are good reasons for making this choice, to take this pill. There are also good reasons for making the choice to not take this pill. Guess which choice is likely to be validated in an antifeminist, capitalist society such as we live in? A world where plastic surgeons make sales pitches in health clubs, because working out isn’t “enough” to make a woman “beautiful?” A world where women are more likely to swallow a man’s semen after oral sex than men are to perform oral sex on a menstruating woman (why is menstrual blood generally considered “ickier” than semen, hmm? wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact it comes out of a female body, would it?).

Natural hell. That’s not the bottom line for me.

Later LaLuba, also added the following comment which I agree with,

Who here is fetishizing “natural” I don’t have high blood pressure; does that mean I’m fetishing the concept of “natural” if I don’t take high blood pressure medicine?
I haven’t really noticed a mainstream tendency to fetishize natural. The mainstream tendency is to fetishize the “better living through chemistry”. And women’s bodies are the favorite battleground. For all the mention of fetishizing “natural”, I have yet to hear of a bottle-feeding mother being asked to leave a public place for not breastfeeding. It’s breastfeeding mothers who are regarded as disgusting, animalistic, filthy, unsanitary, and a public health hazard. Not to mention just plain slutty broads who want to show their tits. I have yet to see much cultural support for women who aren’t getting the full intervention workup. And yes, part of that is because historically, women were/are viewed as being closer to “animal” nature than men. I don’t like fuzzy-headed la-la arguments about some amorphous concept of what is-or-is-not “natural” either, but dammit, we are pressured to tamper with our bodies more than men are, and for specious reasons. Like I said before, there are good reasons for choosing this particular version of the Pill (in reality, a continous dose of the same-old-same-old Pill), but there are also good reasons not to. And women who choose not to are likely to be regarded as unclean freaks, the same way breastfeeding mothers are.
Look. This Pill has been around for generations. There’s a reason it is being marketed in this way, at this time. And it’s because of the pre-existing disgust women were taught to feel about our bodies. Yes, blood stains clothing. Yet people in general do not feel the same way about a bloody nose and a bloody cunt. There is a special revulsion reserved for menstruation. Why? It’s not just about the bloodstains.

I think we need to take a particularly strong stand against the phenomenon that La Luba addresses (in the bold writing). I strongly agree with this proposition. Marketing anti-period or no period pills really is really an ingenious way to help the fight against birth control. I can’t tell you how many young women I know who swear they take birth control pills ONLY to regulate their periods or cut down on period cramps. They say this because they know it is much more acceptable to say, “I am trying to feel better during my period” than it is to say “I’m having sex, and I don’t want to get pregnant.” I’m not chiding people for taking BCP to cut down on painful periods. I’m just pointing out that the “ick” fact associated with periods is something that the right wing embraces, and feminists need to be very careful not to embrace this too.

To me one of the underlying issues is body image—how we feel about our periods is part of our body image. Body image is not just whether we like our weight, breasts, or cellulite. It’s also whether or not we accept the bodily processes that are associated with women. A study by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals found that MOST women did not enjoy their period (71%) and would like to stop periods (62%). I don’t necessarily find this troubling. I did find some of the study’s other findings bothersome:

Forty-five percent do not avoid touching themselves when menstruating; but the sample was split on whether they thought menstrual blood was disgusting, at 37% disagree/strongly disagree and 37% agree/strongly agree.

I’m shocked at the number of women who will not touch themselves when they are on their period. I remember having an argument with a classmate in high school who believed that women were not supposed to bathe while on their period. She learned this from her mother who forbade her from washing during her period. One of the other findings I found interesting was the fact that 75% of women “believe men have a real advantage by not having the monthly interruption of a period.” On some level this is probably true, but I worry that people are not going to realize that it is the social arrangements of patriarchy that disadvantage menstruation, not anything defective in women’s bodies. Menstrual shame is a real issue that should not be minimized. In fact, Planned Parenthood dedicates a whole webpage to the subject.

The scientific community seems divided over the issue. The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research has released a statement on menstrual suppression. This statement includes results from three studies on the subject of menstrual suppression. Here is a quote on the study findings (the bold emphasis is mine):

Authors of the first paper, Christine Hitchcock and Jerilyn Prior, reviewed studies that have been published on extending the schedule of oral contraceptive pills in order to reduce the frequency of menstrual bleeding. They concluded that we do not yet have evidence to suggest that menstrual suppression is entirely safe and reversible. The second set of authors, Alex Hoyt and Linda Andrist presented results from a study of women’s attitudes toward menstrual suppression. They concluded that negative attitudes toward the menstrual cycle were a better predictor of women’s interest in menstrual suppression than women’s menstrual symptoms, suggesting the importance of psychosocial factors in women’s decision making about altering their menstruation. The third paper, by Ingrid Johnston-Robledo and Jessica Barnack, addressed popular media coverage of menstrual suppression. From their analysis of print media, they concluded that regular menstruation is presented as bothersome and even unhealthy. Advocates of menstrual suppression and its benefits were afforded more space than opponents and risks. As with many other health issues, women are not getting accurate, balanced information, rendering an informed decision about this health care option difficult if not impossible.

While the response of this group is more tempered, the doctor who created Depo Provera, has a popular (but controversial) book arguing that menstruation is obsolete. (I still think menstruation is no more obsolete than semen.) Others advocate menstrual suppression, but don’t go as far. Here are two good sites that give information that is generally favorable to menstrual suppression—The Well Timed Period and No Period.

Some people, who disagreed with my previous post, took me to task arguing that I did not know what a period is. They claim that people taking BCPs do not have periods, just break through bleeding. I think what these people are missing the fact that the definition of a period is socially constructed, and the vast majority of people define a period as bleeding from the vagina as part of the cycle of a woman’s reproductive system. I know cases of women not taking BCP who were anovulatory, but still had monthly bleeding that they label as a period. Most women label the period in which they bleed as their period whether they are on BCP or not. Since my argument was more about the potential marketing of periods as icky disgusting and gross, I think the physiology of BCP is a moot point. What troubles people is blood coming from a woman’s vagina. They don’t care whether she has ovulated or not; they don’t care about the lining of the uterus.

Let’s be real menstruation needs a public relations firm. Imagine if I had written this post about diet pills or a new breast enhancement pill, making the same argument that women should have the right to take it, but that we should be leery of the marketing. I think we would see many more feminists up in arms. I have a feeling the response would have been much different, and I would have been getting high fives all over the place. The disgust with female bodies is widespread unless of course we are talking about the aspects of our bodies that are most accepted by men. (Having your breasts partially revealed on the cover of Maxim is good, but having your breast partially revealed while breast feeding invokes a totally different reaction.) I think views on menstruation are some of the most negative, especially when you have only 45% of women willing to touch themselves while menstruating.

I’m not saying that women should not take these sorts of BCP regiments. I believe in women’s rights to make decisions about our bodies. I also haven’t lost sight of the fact that our bodies have been and continue to be pathologized, and that’s a part of the reason that I still want my period.

Endnote: Clearly, this debate is very contentious among feminists. I collected several discussions on this subject, which are listed below. Overall, the feminist bloggers that I have read are fairly evenly divided on this issue, and both sides seem to feel passionately about the subject. Here are some posts on this subject: Pandagon, Shakespeares Sister, Feministing—Pt. 1 , Pt. 2 , Pt. 3, Niobium, Pandora’s Bazaar, Deanna Zandt, The Primary Contradiction.

I’m going to reprint a comment I left at another blog - but a bit of context is required first. Over at Prawfsblog, a post introducing a new blogger, who is female, was responded to by a male poster who wrote “New permaprof is easy on the eyes as well.” Ann Bartow responded by saying to the new blogger, “I was going to wish you good luck even before reading that bit of assholishness. Now I wish you good luck more emphatically still.”

This led Bart Motes (lots of “barts” in this discussion) to respond:

3. Do you not think that there is a valid point to be made that criticizing the misapplication of the male gaze, or lookism, or whatever, is a misapplication of valuable and rare resources? Or do you think that having some guy go “hubba-hubba” on a message board about the picture of a priviledged, powerful, indepedent member of society aka a law professor is really a more pressing issue than wage inequality, having control over one’s body, etc.?

Bart, I’ve commented on “the pettiness” charge at some length at my blog. But, briefly:

1) Your question assumes that Ann faces an either-or choice between discussing “pressing” issues and objecting to a sexist comment on this blog. In fact, Ann can do both, and does do both.

2) You’ve written more on this thread than Ann. Surely there are more pressing issues you could be discussing, by your standards. Why aren’t you holding yourself to the same standards you suggest Ann be held to?

I’d suggest it’s because the standard you suggest is in practice unreasonable, for either you or for Ann. A standard that says we can never engage any issues but the most pressing is simply too restrictive.

3) Your belief that sexist comments about professional women is not a pressing issue is dubious at best. You’re ignoring that sexism is systematic. Wage inequality and attacks on reproductive freedom don’t happen in contextless isolation; they happen in a context of a society in which women are consistently devalued.

Sexism directed against female law profs is bad in and of itself, and that alone is enough to justify Ann’s comment. But it’s also bad because such ordinary day-to-day sexism normalizes sexism, and makes the more “pressing” concerns you cited more difficult to overcome.

4. Do you think that when you get to the point where you are mau-mauing a guy who read Katha Pollitt’s column in the Nation from age 16, whose sister went to Smith, and who considers himself an equality feminist that you might be out on the fringes of mainstream political opinion? Just asking.

It’s refreshing to read an ad hom defense, rather than an ad hom attack. But even as a defense, ad hom is still a logical error; who you are is not logically relevant to if your arguments are bad or good. And whether or not Ann’s arguments are “mainstream political opinion” is not logically relevant, either; mainstream views can be mistaken.

That said, I’m glad you self-identify as a feminist (the more the better!). But with all due respect, a feminist self-identity shouldn’t rule out taking feminist criticism of oneself seriously.

* * *

Further reading on this subject: Law and Letters has an extremely thoughtful and well-written post inspired by the discussion on PrawfsBlog. And Being Amber Rhea has a wonderfully angry post about “you’re not only smart, you’re hotttt!” style compliments - and also the “you’re stupid and ugly” counterpart.

Cross-posted at Creative Destruction, where moderation is less heavy-handed.

So yesterday a government panel recommended that all young women and girls be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus. Here is a quote from the New York Times:

A federal vaccine advisory panel voted unanimously yesterday to recommend that all girls and women ages 11 to 26 receive a new vaccine that prevents most cases of cervical cancer.

The vote all but commits the federal government to spend as much as $2 billion alone on a program to buy the vaccine for the nation’s poorest girls from 11 to 18.

The vaccine, Gardasil, protects against cancer and genital warts by preventing infection from four strains of the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted disease, according to federal health officials. The virus is also a cause of other cancers in women.

The development and subsequent approval of this vaccine is very good news considering that HPV (aka-genital warts) is the most common sexually transmitted disease here in the US. (I should note that HVP is a group of several different viruses. The strains of HPV that cause visible warts seem to be less carcenogic than the strains that do not show visible symptoms.)

I thought it was interesting that this is being promoted as a “cervical cancer vaccine” because it really isn’t a cervical cancer vaccine, it’s a HPV vaccine. From what I have read the vaccine only works in people who do not have the strains of HPV it inoculates against and it decreases the risk of cervical cancer by preventing HVP infection. I suspect that framing this as cancer prevention is probably more acceptable to those parents who would reject the idea of a sexually transmitted infection (STI) vaccine, but there is something that bothers me about framing it in that way.

I’m also curious as to why the vaccine is being recommended for only girls and women. It seems to me that the best way to slow down the infection is to vaccinate everybody. One study indicated that vaccinating men would reduce the prevalence of HPV, but it would not be cost effective. Upon doing some further research, I found that there is a vaccine produced by Merk that can be used in men or women, but the vaccine was not universally recommended by the panel yesterday. I think even if it is more costly we should vaccinate everybody. In particular, vaccinating only women would not help men who have sex with men. This would be a non-issue if cervical cancer was the only type of cancer caused by this virus, but the HPV (which is really a group of several different viruses) viruses also can lead to cancer in the anus, penis, vagina, and vulva. The good news is that these cancers are less common than cervical cancer, but they are still costly and deadly cancers that we should try to eradicate. It seems to me that the vaccine should not be gender specific. I understand the practical reasons for calling it a “cancer vaccine” not a HPV vaccine, and I suppose it could still be called a cancer vaccine since HPV seems to increase the risk of several kinds of cancer.

I’m not trying to dampen the good news. I think the development of this vaccine is great, but I think it should be universally recommended without regard to gender. The current vaccination strategy seems to be modeled on heterosexist assumptions about sexual behavior, and it will not eradicate the disease. Universal vaccination would do this.

AP

Sex education teachers must present abstinence as the preferred behavior for unmarried people under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Jim Doyle. The legislation means teachers must emphasize that refraining from sex before marriage is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

I’m waiting for the bill that requires education on sexual ethics including what is and is not legal sexual behavior. The closest I ever came to that type of talk was during a greek mythology class when the teacher let the discussion between students stray into who can have sex, when and with whom. Most boys believed they were under no obligation to wait, but their bride should be a virgin on their wedding night. One boy delighted in mocking that double standard.

Before that all I got was a gym teacher in junior high school breaking the rules to explain what the sex organs were and how they functioned.

Too often the traditional abstinence message turns teen sexuality into a hockey game where the girl is the goalie who is told she must protect her goal (virginity) at all times. The boys meanwhile are encouraged, either explicitly or implicitly, to try to get past the girl’s defenses.

If you buy into that analogy, it makes perfect sense to ask, “What was she wearing?” and to blame the girl for failing to stop a boy from scoring. It also makes many acquaintance rapes just part of the game because the girl or woman let her defenses down. Rape charges are then like a bad call from a ref who wasn’t anywhere near the game you were playing.

But healthy sexuality is not a competitive sport where you must have winners and losers.

Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Feminism, sexism, etc, Gender and the Body | 77 Comments »