On Breast Augmentation

Are your breasts big enough? I bet that you have never spared this a thought if you're a man, while if you're a woman you have certainly considered the likely answer to this question. What if the likely answer is that they are not big enough? Big enough for what, exactly? What do the breasts have to perform that would require a large size? Well, we all know the answer, and it has nothing to do with breastfeeding or with lifting weights with your mammary glands. It has even nothing to do with not being out of balance packwards or any other smart-alecky explanations I can think of. It's all in the eye of the beholder. If the beholder is a man, or, as I am going to argue, if the beholder is a male American*.

Science is wonderful. It has even come to the aid of those women who prefer larger breasts than nature's designs allowed. The operation is called breast augmentation, and it involves cutting the breast tissue open and stuffing it with bags of silicone or bags made out of silicone but filled with a saline solution. Then the breast is sewed up again and presto, you're a cup C or D now! Except that you aren't, not really.

Many women who choose breast augmentation do it for very good medical reasons. They may want to have their breasts reconstructed after surgery, for example. But many others have breast augmentation on perfectly healthy breasts. The medical problem they suffer from is that the society tells them their smaller-than-average breasts are not acceptable.

In fact, what is now becoming perfectly acceptable is to fix this size problem with surgery, even for girls under the age of eighteen whose breasts may not have actually stopped developing. Bigger breasts is a fashion item, something that would make a nice high school or college graduation present, and if mum and dad won't pay for them, well, there's always loans:

"When I graduated high school in 1990, the big thing was nose jobs," said Jo Trizila, director of media relations for the Greater Dallas Chamber. Now, 8 of her 10 friends have implants. Those who couldn't afford them took out a loan.

But getting breast implants is not like buying a new color of lipstick or eye shadow. Breast augmentation means surgery, anesthesia and recovery from surgery. All the usual risk factors of surgery and anesthesia apply. Add to this the possible side effects from having foreign material in your body, and the fact that no breast augmentation is for ever: practically every single patient will have to undergo more surgery later on in life:

Whether you are undergoing augmentation or reconstruction, be aware that breast implants are not considered lifetime devices and that breast implantation may not be a one-time surgery. You are likely to need additional surgery(ies) and doctor visits over the course of your life. You are also likely to have surgery to remove the implant with or without replacement sometime over the course of your life.
Many of the changes to your breast following implantation are irreversible (cannot be undone). If you later choose to have your implant(s) removed, you may experience unacceptable dimpling, puckering, wrinkling, loss of breast tissue, or other cosmetic changes of the breast.
Breast implants may affect your ability to breast feed. Also, breast implants will not prevent your breast from sagging after pregnancy.
With breast implants, routine screening mammography will be more difficult, and you will need to have additional views, which means more time and radiation.
Breast implant surgery and/or treatment of complications may not be covered by your health insurance. You should check with your insurance company regarding these coverage issues because, for some women, health insurance premiums may increase, coverage may be dropped, and/or future coverage may be denied.

The average cost of breast augmentation is 7,000 dollars in the United States. That would buy a lot of padded bras, and the amount is just for the first operation. Then there are all the possible things that might go wrong with breast implants: capsule contracture, capsule deflation/rupture/leakage, infection, hematoma/seroma, extrusion, necrosis and so on. While none of these effects occur in an extremely large number of cases, there is some cause for concern if breast implants are viewed as an innocent fashion item rather as a medical option with all sorts of nasty risk factors.

Now I'm beginning to sound schoolmarmish and prudish. But I hate to think of people unnecessarily exposing their bodies to all that cutting and drugging. There's plenty of opportunity for all that later on when the bodies get old. And I do think that the reason for much of breast augmentation is an unnecessary one: there is nothing medically wrong with smaller breasts; they might even be less prone to breast cancer than larger ones. But I'm not telling anybody not to undergo this surgery if they wish to. It's not my breasts that are being cut, and I can't know how someone must feel to voluntarily undergo such cutting. I just think that the culture could focus on something else than the female breast as a sexual marker for a while. Give us some breathing room, if you like.

This culture is largely the Western one. The Breast isn't that important in some other cultures. The Japanese traditionally found the nape of the neck in women the part that aroused men's sexual instincts, the Africans and Caribbeans tend to focus on the buttocks. Even in the Elizabethan England bare breasts provoked very little comment, as it was women's thighs which made men's hearts beat faster. And I can tell from my own multi-continent experiences that it is the American men especially who are mesmerized by the Breast, preferably a largish one.

That the focus on mammary glands as a sexual marker is so culture-bound is important to stress, as some wingnuts argue that breast augmentation is a natural evolutionary strategy for women to compete against each other in the search for the Best Sperm. This would make it unfair competition, by the way, but that's not the point of their argument. Rather, they imply that the yearning for better and bigger breasts is biological and therefore Just The Way Things Are. They are mistaken, as I so aptly point out in the preceding paragraph. The Breast is not somehow the naturally designated measure of a woman's sexual desirability; we have made it so in this particular culture.

What's worrying, too, is that fashions about breasts could change. Maybe suddenly breasts aren't the IT thing anymore, and then all the women who spent money on better breasts are no better off than they were initially. Of course, the culture would then tell women to carve out their thighs or to round out their noses or something, so a change in the fashions isn't a real answer. I don't know what the real answer would be. But it would help if we realized that this fixation on the Breast is a cultural one, and that there is much more to the sexiness of the body. It would also help if we all agreed that the breasts belong to the woman to whom they are attached, not to the advertizers or the movie industry or the pornographic industry or the FCC. But that's probably too much to hope for.


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*I'm aware that many men are not fixated on large breasts, and I apologize for using the generalization device in this post. The reason is purely stylistic, as you will see if you try to amend the offending sentences.

Fluff

This post is fluff if written by female bloggers (or goddesses) and it disqualifies the blog from being regarded as a Serious Political Blog. That's why I have to include it every once and a while. I shiver at the idea of Serious Political Blogging. Or Serious Anything, really. We all take ourselves far too seriously.

I just got up after having slept sixteen hours nonstop. Didn't even get into my pyjamas before I conked out. Why? It had something to do with lots of nectar and the world's largest chocolate ice cream cake with hot fudge sauce and whipped cream all over it. I used the whipped cream to write haikus on the tabletop about the pleasures of chocolate ice cream, and someone else ate the haikus. That's really awful, and I was so shocked that I had to go to bed.

The day had started badly enough. I slammed the phone down on someone who wanted me to write ten letters on behalf of leukemia sufferers and then to distribute them in my neighborhood so that for weeks afterwards people would run away when they see me coming. And then the self-recriminations started: How could I slam the phone down on all those suffering people? What sort of a monster am I? (Well, I know that one, but you know the idea behind the guilt.) Will I now get leukemia as a punishment?

This was so horrible that any counterargument from my Better Self (like the fact that I have already done this thing and know the consequences and that the majority of my so-called disposable income already goes to charity and that nine out of ten phone calls I get are like that one, and I always say yes) were drowned out. I was too upset to even do the laundry or the vacuuming, and the hours to nectar time seemed far too long. And then I started feeling guilty about not doing the laundry and the vacuuming just because I was upset and so it went on and on.

But of course this isn't about politics or sociology, no. The begging calls and letters are totally unrelated to the fact that we won't have the government support medical research and the poor adequately. And my guilt has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I have been carefully brought up to think that good women are charitable and kind and just love doing laundry and vacuuming and saving all the children in the world. Even when their compassion well is running dry and all they can dream about is chocolate ice cream. Even then it's just about some idiotic personal drivel fluff about some things that everybody faces bravely and courageously on their own and never utters to anybody else. Now, something about John Kerry and his motorbike, that would be real blog politics!

What's Happening in the Religious Right?

They've been busy little bees recently, especially down in Texas, where they have totally taken over the local Republican Party. Steve Gilliard gives this quote from a Salon article to convey the flavor of the fervent religiosity among Texas Republicans:

The values and world vision of the movement today can be found enshrined in the 24-page party platform. It's a fearful, twilight looking-glass world, beset by enemies, where the purity of the culture, under constant siege, must be protected from threats both internal and external. The platform makes short work of the federal government, calling for the abolition of everything from the U.S. Department of Education to the Internal Revenue Service, along with most taxes. Aliens without proper identification are to be summarily deported. Illegal immigrants should not be granted drivers' licenses. Voter registration is to be made more difficult. "American English" is the official language of the state, and "the Party supports the termination of bilingual education programs in Texas." A plank titled "equality for all citizens" urges the repeal of hate crimes legislation. Another one states: "We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values." Since the Bible is the literal truth, teachers should have the right to instruct their public school students in "creation science." The Ten Commandments are the foundation of the legal system. And lest anyone forget, "America is a Christian nation."

I find this very scary stuff. Funny, too. Lest you think it's just a joke, listen to this comment from the same convention:

Gina Parker, who ran unsuccessfully for state party chairmanship on an anti-abortion, pro-gun, and pro-business platform, opened a window on the world of conservatives in Texas: "We are waging war on our own society. My boots were made for walking all over the Democrats and re-electing President George Bush."

Those of you who thought the war was in Iraq are now properly informed: the war is here, at home, and the enemies are US! And Texas will be the new Talibanstan, I fear.

But Texas isn't the only place where the religious right holds sway. In fact, they're pretty much running the whole country right now:

In the mid-1990s, following Bill Clinton's second electoral ride to the White House, the vibrancy of Religious Right organizations appeared to be on the wane. Outside the sanctuary of the fundamentalist church, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had become public caricatures of intolerance and zealotry. Pundits in the media and the liberal church deemed the movement torn, shattered, and perhaps dead.
How then, less than a decade later, has the Religious Right become a powerful sector of the Republican Party, holding veto power over most any GOP maneuver?
"The Religious Right has been institutionalized within the Republican Party," confirms Kenneth Wald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida at Gainesville. "Just look at the leaders of the GOP."
Note the top seven ranking Republicans in the U.S. Senate: Bill Frist, Tennessee; Mitch McConnell, Kentucky; Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania; Bob Bennet, Utah; Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Texas; Jon Kyle, Arizona; and George Allen, Virginia. Other than party affiliation, what do these senators all have in common? Each has earned a 100 percent rating on the Christian Coalition's scorecard, voting in accordance with that organization's positions on key legislation.
A similar pattern exists among the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives. Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, who in part controls whether an issue will be even debated on the House floor, also receives a 100 percent on the Christian Coalition scorecard.
Yes, the Religious Right is alive and well. Over the past quarter century, it has grown from an adolescent, grassroots movement to a mature political player closely integrated into the Beltway mainstream. The results of a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press illustrated the historical shift in political classification of white evangelical Protestants. In 1987 and 1988, 34 percent identified as Republican while 31 percent identified as Democrats. Currently, 43 percent view themselves as Republicans against 22 percent as Democrats.

The main agenda of the religious right is on what they call moral issues. These include abortion, gay rights, school prayer, teaching creationism in public schools and regressive tax structures. The last one seems surprising, given that Jesus was somewhat of a redistributioner of wealth. But today's religious wingnuts don't read their Bibles that way; rather, they see communism lurking in anything that would take from the rich and give to the poor. Besides, allowing for increased poverty of the lower income classes lets the religious people to work together with traditional conservatives. Never mind what Jesus would do. Jesus was a feminist and socialist, after all.

The religious right needs to have Bush re-elected. Another four years in power will give them a Supreme Court that should leave the 1990's Afghanistan in shame. All they want from Bush is the courts. Otherwise Bush can go on pleasing the corporations as usual. This was made clear in a comment by one religious right leader:

"The Republicans need to understand that we have two non-negotiables - we're pro-life and we're pro-marriage. We might not be happy to move on other issues, but we're willing to make some concessions. But not on those two things."

Must be a relief to the other Republicans, the ones who will not be picked up in the Rapture. But it's worrying to the majority of us who happen to be female, as I doubt that the definitions of 'pro-life' and 'pro-marriage' that these folks use include very many concessions to women.

Revisionistic Economic History

This article at the mediamatters.org is so good that I'm posting a big chunk of it:

In the days since the death of former President Ronald Reagan, many media outlets have falsely credited him with presiding over "the longest economic expansion in history"; in fact, Reagan should be credited with presiding over only the third-longest expansion in American history.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research , the longest economic expansions in U.S. history are:
March 1991 -- March 2001: 120 months
February 1961 -- December 1969: 106 months
November 1982 -- July 1990: 92 months

The expansion Reagan presided over is therefore the third-longest in history. Even at the time of the expansion Reagan presided over -- before the expansion that began in 1991 -- it wasn't the longest in history; it was the second-longest.

But that's not what many media outlets have been reporting:
The New York Times (6/6/04): "After the 1981-82 recession, Mr. Reagan presided over the longest economic expansion in history, one that saw the creation of 16 million jobs."
New York Daily News (6/6/04): "Throughout much of the Reagan presidency, the country enjoyed what was then the longest economic expansion in U.S. history."
The Philadelphia Inquirer (6/6/04): "In 1983, the United States entered its longest economic expansion since World War II."
The Washington Post(6/6/04): "When Reagan took office in 1981 after the inflation-ravaged years of Jimmy Carter, his advisers warned of a looming 'economic Dunkirk.' When he left the presidency eight years later, inflation and unemployment had fallen sharply and the country was in the midst of what was then the longest economic expansion in history."
CNNfn anchor Kathleen Hays repeated The Washington Post's mistake , verbatim (6/7/04): "When Reagan took office in 1981, high inflation forced his advisors to warn of an coming economic Dunkirk. When he finished his term, inflation and unemployment had fallen sharply and the country was in the midst of what was then the longest economic expansion in history."
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial (6/7/04): "He presided over the longest economic expansion in history with the creation of 16 million jobs, yet cutbacks in social programs left millions of Americans more vulnerable than ever."
Jack Wheeler's column, The Washington Times (6/8/04): "Five years ago, in February 1999, I wrote the following tribute to this extraordinary man. 'He crushed inflation along with left-wing Keynesian economics and launched the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. Starting in 1982, the Reagan Boom is now in its 18th year - with only a short eight-month shallow interregnum caused by the oil-price spike following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.'"

It is true that, at the time, the expansion that began during Reagan's presidency was the "longest peacetime" expansion "since the end of World War II." (It has since been surpassed by the expansion that began in 1991.) But how meaningful is it to write of the "longest peacetime economic expansion since the end of World War II" (and before 1991)?

Between the end of World War II and the end of the expansion Reagan presided over, there were only two periods of "peacetime" that lasted five or more years: one of roughly eleven years from the end of the Korean War to the beginning of the Vietnam War and one of roughly 17 years from the end of the Vietnam War through the end of the expansion in 1990.

"Since the end of World War II" sounds impressive -- nearly 60 years! -- but the "peacetime" qualifier (and the omission of the 1990s expansion) cuts the timeframe in question roughly in half.

I wonder how the even longer peacetime economic expansion of the Clinton era will be treated by future pundits? Unless things change a lot, the so-called liberal media will probably not mention it. The blue dress, now, that's an altogether different matter.

Reagan's Legacy to Women

I don't think that he intended to leave one. Women were not one of his concerns. But many of the current administration's policies regarding women have their roots in the Reagan era. It was then that international family planning programs became a target for the Republican pro-life base. Reagan put Clarence Thomas (of later Supremes' fame) in charge of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EEOC, and cut the EEOC's budget by half. Talk about putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop...

Poor women also suffered because of Reagan's general economic policies. Reagan didn't believe in raising the minimum wages or in welfare payments for single mothers, and it was during the Reagan 80's that it became fashionable to call women on welfare 'welfare queens'.

But some things that Reagan tried to accomplish were indeed ahead of his time:

Reagan welcomed the New Right, headed by ultra-conservatives from The Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Free Congress Foundation. They wasted no time putting forth their agenda in the form of the so-called Family Protection Act, introduced in 1981.
It would have dismantled equal education laws, banned "intermingling of the sexes in any sport or other school-related activities," required that marriage and motherhood be taught as career choices for girls (but not, of course, marriage and fatherhood for boys) and banned legal aid for women seeking a divorce. The act never passed. These ideas were seen as out of the mainstream back then. But the seeds were sown.

Indeed, they were sown. And the conservatives have tried to harvest the yield ever since. Just consider the recent attempts to modify Title IX which requires gender equality in education, or the most recent attempts to make sex-segregated and unequal education acceptable. It would be just a small step from this to programs that advocate different educational choices for girls and boys.

Some Innocent Fun

Via skippy. Click here, and then move the cursor around. Then click on Blair and do the same.

On Comments

When I check this nifty little Haloscan site for any new comments on my blog I always read the warning that heads the list of comments: "If you delete a comment, it can never be recovered." This strikes me as so poignant, never to be recovered, gone for ever, dead. I immediately want to delete everything, just to see if I would actually feel that bad. I haven't done that yet, of course, because I treasure all the comments, even the ones that don't call me wonderful.

The funny thing about the comments is that they are always better than my post. This did come as a surprise to me, as I thought my role would be to educate and gently guide my naive readers (!), whereas the reality is that the readers send me back to check my data and learn new things. A humbling experience, but fun.

Of course, I have not yet had a real troll visit. That might make me feel differently about the comments, and maybe I could even use the ban button. It could be interesting, but so far I have been saved from testing this theory. The trick for troll avoidance is to use really long words in the posts. That and writing sort of mushy.

Anyway, the point of this post is to thank all of you who read this valuable blog (never forget to self-promote), even if it costs equally valuable minutes of your lives, never to be recovered. As the alternative is probably something even more tedious than reading me, I hope you will persevere.

With Liberals Like These...

who even needs conservatives as enemies? I'm talking about Susan Estrich, a law professor at University of Southern California and the author of a frankly feminist book Sex&Power. She was the first woman to run a presidential campaign in the United States, that of Michael Dukakis. She is supposed to be a liberal.

Here is Susan as a guest host on Hannity and Colmes:

HANNITY: I mean, we hear this. We've got Soros -- wait a minute. We've got Soros; we've got Podesta. We've got them going into talk radio.
But when you watch what they're doing they seem to want to attack personally conservatives just like they have hatred for George W. Bush, but they don't have ideas. Where are the ideas on the left? Where is the thinking liberal?
ESTRICH: I don't know. I don't have a full-time job on TV, so I can't tell you.
I don't know any liberal radio except the one that's failing. I don't know liberal television, you know, that doesn't exist. All right.

Strong analysis, right? Being a good debater on the liberal side of the spectrum, right? Well, my left shoe would have done better.

And here is Susan in her column which for some obscure reason is on the Clintons:

Compared to Bill Clinton and George Bush, John Kerry looks like a guy with relatively little not to like about him. He didn't start the wrong war; he didn't have sex with the wrong girl. He enlisted. He's not Bill, or George. It may be enough.

It was just a few short years ago that we were a nation torn apart by reports of a blue dress, a cigar and oral sex in the White House.

Is it possible that we can really turn aside from the scandals of war and peace and return to the simpler days of a blue dress?

Or is it inevitable that the debate, this time, will be about why we wasted so much time on nothing when we could have been focused on weightier matters; whether Richard Clarke was right in arguing that Clinton put a higher priority on fighting terrorism and Al Qaeda than George Bush did, or whether it is also true that had we not been so distracted, the country as a whole might have put a higher priority on fighting terror than fighting against each other?

There are, to be sure, some Democrats who worry that Clinton's reememergence will make Kerry look pale, dull and inarticulate by comparison. That is what happened last spring at the party's Unity dinner.

How does the old saw go? Damning with faint praise? Who was it who said that conservatives are those who attack liberals with venom and vitriol, while liberals are those who attack liberals more obliquely?
Whoever it was, that person must have met some of this new breed of liberals.

Mummy Wars Revisited

This is a post from last November. I wanted to write about the mummy wars, but realized I had already done so. Hence a slightly edited rerun, in honor of the approaching summer. Its topic is every bit as current today as it was last year. More's the pity.


For those of you who have been asleep for the last hundred years in an enchanted castle surrounded by thorny rosebushes, Mummy Wars are the vicious argument ongoing between mothers who work outside the home and mothers who are full-time caretakers of their children, or sometimes between women with children and women without children. It also has a subcategory of fights about women on welfare and women who work.

Mummy Wars are not real wars. They look staged to me; as if they are there to entertain someone else. Who is the audience? Who made up the rules of these wars?

This is what I wrote on one of my bad-hair days: ( Even goddesses have them, and then our power turns not-so-nice. Well, ok. Goddesses don't have bad-hair days, but then I need to find a language to communicate with mere mortals, and hair seems to be one of those things everybody is allowed to be angry about, even women.) So rather, here is my view from above on a cloudy day when the rain whipped down with a vengeance:

U.S. women are sharply divided by motherhood and its meaning. The ferocious battles being waged over this have been called the Mummy Wars. But what we are observing is not so much a real war as a series of carefully orchestrated matches in a sports arena. In fact, Mummy Wars are best seen as a set of fights between Roman gladiators in the Colosseum:

The first match of each night is always between the teams Mothers and Others. The Mothers are armed with accusations of selfishness against those Others who could've joined Mothers but didn't, and condescending pity towards those Others who tried to join Mothers but couldn't. For a long time the Others had very puny weapons and predictably lost most matches, but recently they have wrought a sword out of accusations that Mothers get preferential treatment in the workplace. This should make future battles much more interesting to watch.

The second match of the night is a filler where Mothers Who Pull Their Weight butcher Mothers Who Are Welfare Queens. As the latter team has no weapons, the match is enjoyed by only the most sadistic of spectators.

The third match is the main event of the night, and always promises lots of blood and gore. The teams are the Stay-At-Home Mothers and the Employed Mothers. The Stay-At-Home Mothers fight mostly with accusations of selfish greed and child neglect. Although these weapons are few, the ferocity with which they are used makes the team a formidable opponent. The Employed Mothers have an interesting strategy: They appear to fight almost solely defensively by using individual freedom of choice as a shield. This is because the rules of this Colosseum forbid open attacks against Stay-At-Home Mothers. But covert maneuvres are always possible, and the Employed team uses them brilliantly by whispering that their opponents should really be called the Ladies Who Lunch or Mealticketed For Life.

The outcome of this match is never certain, but one thing is: if you get turned on by a protracted struggle resulting in lots of severed limbs and bleeding guts, this is the battle for you to watch.

The real Roman gladiators fought each other to please their spectators. This is something all of us fighting the Mummy Wars would do well to remember.

Nasty, isn't it? A suitable episode in the Mummy Wars. Of course it has a point, all sarcasm does, and the point is that these fights are orchestrated by the way the labor markets operate and by the way women are judged. Children are not really regarded as the responsibility of both parents, and employment is still based on the Victorian assumption that each worker has a full-time caretaker at home for all those annoying things that happen to people, you know, small children, elderly relatives and so on. Lipservice is paid to allowing re-entry to labor markets for those who take time off, but in reality such re-entry is rarely possible without considerable losses of pay and retirement benefits compared to what would have been gained from an uninterrupted career path. This is why I find even the term "Mummy Wars" so incredibly insulting: these fights are created by the often impossible constraints under which so many mothers function and by our cultural obliviousness to the needs of those who take care of small children. Women are pretty much told:"You better choose to have children OR to work, for only perfect worker bees are admirable and only perfect mothers are admirable. Too bad if you can't make this choice or don't want to make it. Then you are on your own. Actually, whatever you choose, you'll be on your own. Now, pass the popcorn."

Mummy Wars do give us all free entertainment, including those of us who are fathers. Yet there are no Daddy wars. Now, I'm not one of those goddesses who did things with immaculate conception. For there to be babies, mothers are needed, but so are fathers. And their place is not in the stands, munching on popcorn and rooting for one of the favorites or not. Come to think of it, most people who are in the stands shouldn't be there.

Take a different view of the Mummy Wars. One I took on a lovely, bright day while being adulated by my snakes.

The human cultures have a biased view of women. Mostly, men are seen as individuals, but women are seen only partially as individuals and largely as members of an amorphous mass 'womanhood'. Think of actors: male actors are not asked the sorts of questions that women actors are, about how they cope with combining family and career, about how they stay beautiful. Men are asked individual questions about their acting choices and lives. Women are asked largely 'woman' questions (how do you compare to other women?). And so on.

So all humans, to some extent, see women as a mass and men as individuals. If these humans happen to be women themselves, they will partly view themselves as individuals, but also keep asking themselves how they compare to others in the mass 'women'. All other women then affect their self-esteem; others' choices affect how right our choices look. If a woman stays at home with the children and another one works outside the home but also has children, their choices are not seen as independent of each other. One woman affects the other, her self-esteem and the society's judgment of her 'goodness'. And this effect goes both ways. A working mother will be blamed because she is not at home, a stay-at-home mother feels that her choices are made unimportant by the existence of women who appear to be able to both work for money and care for children. Thus, both feel exposed and criticized by the existence of the other's different life. Sisterhood? Not likely. But it doesn't have to be so.


There are three secret devices that cause the Mummy Wars. Two I have already referred to: the way work is organized in this society and the tendency to see women as an undifferentiated mass of femaleness, both by men and by women themselves, when in fact we are all individuals with different temperaments, talents, limitations and life situations. The third one is the presumption that if two women make opposite choices, one of these choices must be wrong. This I call false duality. It is false, because we don't apply it to people's choices in general. Matt may choose to enter into engineering, Jessica into medicine. Yet nobody would argue that EITHER Matt OR Jessica must be right.

But when we talk about the 'female' kinds of choices, suddenly one choice must be right and the other wrong. This is because we see all women as essentially the same woman in this sphere, and therefore it appears obvious that one of the choices is better than the other. This is wrong, an example of false dualism, and it is false because all women are not the same woman.

These two devices also explain why women often have the tendency to be more judgmental towards other women than men. What other women do affects the self-esteem of the judging woman. What men do has no such effect in general cases, because the same false dualism is not applied to men.

So we women (I'll count myself here as one, to look less judgmental here...) can be cruel to our sisters, we sometimes keep them in line, because if we don't do so, our own self-image might shatter. This is all so sad and all so unnecessary. If we could only climb over the obstacles of regarding womanhood as one amorphous lump and of making snappy falsely dualistic judgments we could actually approach some idea of realistic sisterhood, lower our weapons in the Mummy Wars and start to plan the truly necessary military campaign: how to reorganize work and family life to bring about a more humane world for both women and men.

Some Food For Thought...

By Bill O'Reilly, my current favorite wingnut talk show host:

O'REILLY: Finally, the ACLU -- we talked about this yesterday and I -- and, you know, I have to pick on the ACLU because they're the most dangerous organization in the United States of America right now. There's by far. There's nobody even close to that. They're, like, second next to Al Qaeda.

Yep. Civil liberties are very scary things to wingnuts. And of course both the ACLU and Al Qaeda have an 'A' in them, which proves that O'Reilly is right. Or something like that.

American Job Creations Act of 2004

This act*, introduced in the House, is a very interesting one. It has article after article of new tax relief for our poor suffering corporations. Even fishing tackle boxes are specifically freed from the horrible burden of excise taxes on their liberty!

But what really caught my eye in this act which so very hard tries to create Americans some more jobs are two tiny sections on churches. The first one of these is endearingly entitled "Safe Harbor for Churces". Yes, a safe harbor for churches is urgently needed in this country where horrible secularist communists are holding all power in the House and the Senate and rampaging all over the mainstream media. Just think of the Fox News and you know what I mean.

Anyway, the safe harbor churches now have is the one of being allowed to engage in political speech inadvertently without any serious consequences. Slip of the tongue sort of stuff. Anyone could be guilty of accidentally hosting a Republican campaign meeting in the church hall! So of course we shouldn't be such sticklers about the separation of the state and religions. This is a Christian country, after all, as the Texas Republican party so powerfully recently told us.

The changes make such inadvertent crimes something easier to forgive.
In the past, meddling in politics would have cost the church a fine equal to the maximum tax that could be levied on its annual gross revenues. Now the first 'inadvertent' meddling costs only the church the maximum tax on its weekly revenues! And we need to see three 'inadvertent' meddlings before the church loses its tax-free status for one year. Such a relief! Especially as the Republican party has launched a church-centered campaign in the state of Pennsylvania. This little amendment guarantees that any new pals the Republicans might make this way don't get their fingers slapped.

Of course, this has nothing whatsoever to do with job creation, but neither do many of the other clauses in this act. Mostly it's payback time for all that corporate support.


-------
*I can't get a permalink to the exact text of the act, but you can search for it at the website I link to. Here are the exerpts of interest from the act:

FROM SECTION 4955:`(2) UNINTENTIONAL VIOLATIONS- An organization described in section 508(c)(1)(A) (relating to churches) shall not fail to be treated as organized and operated exclusively for a religious purpose, or to have participated in, or intervened in any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office, for purposes of subsection (c)(3), or section 170(c)(2) (relating to charitable contributions) unless such organization or any of its religious leaders so participates or intervenes on more than 3 separate occasions during any calendar year. This paragraph shall not apply with respect to any such participation or intervention which constitutes an intentional disregard by such organization or any of its religious leaders of the prohibition of such activity under subsection (c)(3) or section 170(c)(2).

SEC. 4956. TAX ON IMPERMISSIBLE ACTIVITIES BY CHURCHES.
`(a) IMPOSITION OF TAX- There is hereby imposed on each organization described in section 508(c)(1)(A) which is an organization exempt from tax under section 501(a) by reason of section 501(q)(2), a tax equal to--
`(1) the highest rate of tax specified by section 11(b), multiplied by
`(2) the gross income of such organization for such calendar year.
The tax imposed by this subsection shall be paid by the organization.
`(b) REDUCTION FOR LESS THAN 3 VIOLATIONS- In the case of an organization described in subsection (a) which committed not more than 2 acts of participation in, or intervention in a political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office during such calendar year, the amount taken into account under subsection (a)(2) shall be the amount which would have been taken into account under subsection (a)(2) (but for this subsection) divided by--
`(1) 52 in the case of one such act during such calendar year, or
`(2) 2 in the case of 2 such acts during such calendar year.
`(c) COORDINATION WITH SECTION 4955- The tax imposed under this section with respect to any act shall be reduced by the amount of any tax imposed under section 4955 with respect to such act.'.

Silly Stuff

I'm busy writing to a deadline, plus doing some research on breast implants for this blog. In the meantime, I'm going to offer you something that seems to sell well in the mainstream media:

1. Possibly some completely unfounded gossip on our current president. I can't guarantee that any of this is true, but if you like to worry or need another reason for it, this should keep you going for a few sleepless nights.

2. An IQ test. Guaranteed to make you feel bad, even if you score the maximum as internet tests are not real. Of course, IQ has very little to do with intelligence in the first place, but we all love tests that will tell us everything we never knew about ourselves through all these decades of inhabiting our bodies, yet all this can be told to us in one simple test by perfect strangers! Whom to marry! What color to wear! Whether we should have our penises or breasts artificially engorged! What fun!

The real reason I'm including this is of course that I got a good report. Sort of. Here it is:

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that's just some of what we know about you from your IQ results.

I do resent the comparison to Plato, though. But of course this writeup justifies my having a blog from which to preach to the world.
Am I getting too obnoxious? It's hard to know sometimes when one is a goddess.

On Ronald Reagan

I'll let the voices of those who mourn for him speak:

I love Ronald Reagan because I feel that he stands for good, period. I agree with everything he says and everything he does. I would never say the same thing about anyone else, other than the Pope and Michael Jackson."
Penned in behind a strip of yellow police tape outside number 668 St Cloud Road in the exclusive Los Angeles suburb of Bel Air, Paul Whitney was witnessing a small moment in American history and mourning the death of the country's 40th president.
"I'm overwhelmed," he said. "It's a big surprise. I thought he'd just go on and on, like Bob Hope. He lived to be 100."

...

As the news spread, people gathered to pay their respects and - occasionally - voice criticism of Reagan's policies. "I grew up in the 80s, I was a Reagan kid," said Jim Frye. "The thing that was different about Ronald Reagan was that he made you feel good about being an American. He had core principles and stuck to them."
"He was an idiot," countered LaShan Bramtam, who worked for the Reagan and Ford administrations. "I didn't agree with his politics. He was good in foreign policy but in domestic politics, the economy, we went into debt under him. Either you love him or you hate him. He wasn't one of those people you could stay in the middle."
Ms Bramtam, along with her friend Jacqueline Washington, were unlikely mourners for Reagan, both describing themselves as Democrats. "It's sad when someone dies," said Ms Washington. "We came here out of respect."

...

At 5.15pm the gates of the Reagan estate were opened and a hearse slowly made its way down the drive. Inside was a coffin draped with the American flag. Four assistants walked alongside the vehicle, each with one hand on its roof. The hearse negotiated the corner into the lane and Ronald Reagan left 668 St Cloud Road for the last time.
"I'll tell you something about this place," said Ms Hinton, who has lived in the area for 26 years. "It used to be number 666, but the Reagans petitioned to get the number changed."

Today's Philosophical Conundrum

If I accidentally swallow a fly in a glass of water, am I still a vegetarian?

Little Red Riding-Hood Retold

The Little Red Riot-Helmet

Once upon a time in a country far away lived a little boy called Georgie. He lived in a large, beautiful house with his mama and his papa, but the family was not happy with the house. They wanted an even larger and more beautiful house. That's why one spring morning when Georgie was outside playing riot police in his brand new red helmet, his mama called him in. "Georgie Porgie", she said, "Your papa and I have an important job for you. We want you to take a basket of Bible literature and food to your dear old granny Fundie. She's not feeling well, and we need her up by the elections." "Aawww, do I hafta?" moaned Georgie.

"Yes, you do. Elections will get us a bigger house," his mama said firmly. Then she packed a basket with some inspirational fundamentalist literature, a bottle of papa's Secret Health Elixir, and several hard-boiled unborn chickens. "Now, Georgie, remember to walk straight to granny Fundie's house. Don't stay gawking in the forest. There are dangerous Democrats there and even a terrorist who eats little boys!" And after having said this, Georgie's mama pushed Georgie out of the house.

Georgie was scared of the dark woods. He had heard about dreadful happenings there; stories about hordes of horrible feminazis attacking innocent wingnuts, stories about evil people who lived off the hard-earned savings of others and who were always on the lookout for more. Georgie feared that they might steal his basket of food or his brand-new riot helmet, but he didn't believe in any terrorists. Mama was just trying to scare him!

So off into the woods went Georgie, walking very rapidly, as rapidly as he could while carrying the heavy basket. He refused to look to the right or to the left, but went straight down the path. Evening was approaching and light was falling rapidly. Georgie could hear twigs snapping in the woods and he became very afraid. To keep his spirits up, he started singing a little ditty:

I'm Georgie, my helmet is red
I'm going to granny who is sick in bed
My basket will feed her and make her sing
And then mama and papa and I will win.

This was fortunate or unfortunate for Georgie, depending on your view. A very hungry and desperate terrorist was indeed roaming the woods, looking for something to devour. He saw little Georgie, all alone in his red helmet, and thought of making a quick snack out of him, but the ditty made him plan more carefully. Here was a way of getting a real meal: both the pudgy little boy and the granny. So the terrorist quickly ran along a sidepath to granny Fundie's house and knocked on the door.

"Who's there?" croaked old granny through the door. "It's me, little Georgie, granny. I've come to see you with a basket of goodies from mama" piped the terrorist in a convincing imitation of Georgie. "Come in boy, the door is unlocked" the granny answered. The terrorist obeyed. What happened next is too awful to describe. Let's just say that granny Fundie ended up in the terrorist's stomach. The terrorist then dressed in granny's large Christian nightgown and lay down in her bed to wait for Georgie.

Georgie was unaware of all this, of course. He had been walking fast and scared and singing his ditty until he was too tired to sing. He had scratches from tree branches, and his knee hurt from a tumble caused by a nasty tree root. After that one he had taken a break and eaten all the unborn chickens. He had washed them down with papa's Elixir. Thereafter, the path seemed much shorter though curvier than before, and Georgie arrived at granny's door quite happy, except for a small fear that she might not like the basket's contents without the food and the drink. Still, what's done is done, Georgie thought, and straightened his red helmet. He knocked on the door and went in without waiting for an answer. Granny Fundie's door was always unlocked for boys like him, he knew.

Inside the cottage it was quite dark, and Georgie could just distinguish the looming shape of granny in her bed. "Hi granny, how are you?" Georgie said and sat down by the bedside. "Would you like me to open the drapes more to let in some light?" It seemed to him that granny was really unwell. She looked so different. "No! No light, please, my eyes hurt" the terrorist squaked.

"What's the matter with them, granny Fundie?" Georgie asked. "They look sort of red and bloated."

'It's all that pornography that Hollywood keeps pouring out, my dear boy. It corrupts us, even the most innocent of us."

"Ok, granny. And that's why your nose is quivering, too, I guess."

"Yes, my child. I can smell the infidels at their evil plans."

"Infidels?" George said, a little confused. "Never mind, granny. But why is your mouth so open?"

"So that I can better GOBBLE YOU UP!" shouted the terrorist and quickly swallowed poor Georgie, red helmet and all. Poor, poor Georgie. He was all eaten up.

You might think that this is the end of the story, but you'd be wrong. What happened next was this: the terrorist fell asleep, having eaten enough for the day. But he had been so greedy that neither granny Fundie nor Georgie were properly digested. In fact, they were both alive in the terrorist's belly, kicking each other and arguing over whose fault the whole disaster might be. They even made a long list of possible culprits.

All this made a terrible racket, of course, though the terrorist didn't wake up. He might have turned over in his sleep, though. But a brave young carpenter, called Muricanpeeple did hear the racket as he was walking by on his way to fell some Democrats. He looked into the cottage through a window, saw the terrorist snoring away, and immediately knew that something was really wrong. He tiptoed to the front door of the cottage and peeked in. The terrorist was still very asleep and didn't notice a thing. The carpenter gathered his courage and took hold of his trusty axe. Then he took a deep breath, rushed into the room and smote the terrorist's stomach open with one blow of the axe.

Out popped granny Fundie and Georgie, only slightly digested. They were so happy that they kissed and hugged the carpenter and sang great psalms of joy. They promised the carpenter all sorts of good things, like lower taxes and eternal peace as a reward and Muricanpeeple was very pleased. In fact, he was so pleased and flattered that he offered to go out into the world to look for more terrorists. Which he did.

Georgie and granny Fundie didn't go with him. Instead, they skipped hand-in-hand through the dark forest back to Georgie's house where his mama and papa greeted them with great joy and celebration. The election victory was now certain.

The terrorist also got up, holding his stomach together with his hands. He wasn't dead, you know. Instead, he was now very very angry, and ready to find many more terrorists. They would start a big war against that stupid carpenter, Muricanpeeple.

Now, all's well that ends well, don't you think?

The Flanagan Circus and the New Yorker

Caitlin Flanagan is a new staff writer for the fabled New Yorker magazine. I have already written about her extensively, and those of you who have never heard of her, but are interested in knowing more should click here. The gist of that post is that Flanagan is the new darling of the East Coast literati, a writer who hates feminism and most women, who can't do proper research or make a logical argument, but who is very witty and if she's published in the Atlantic Monthly (her previous job) or the New Yorker, well, there must be something deeper in her message.

Christine Cupaiuolo in ms. musings tells us about the latest Flanagan-debate between Herself and several women who are still willing to call themselves feminists, despite Caitlin's pathbreaking work in trying to make feminism obsolete. Some Flanagan-quotes from this circus:

In her letter published in the May issue of The Atlantic, the writer and feminist Lynne Sharon Schwartz called Ms. Flanagan's essay "narrow-minded and self-serving." "Anyone who admits to never having changed a sheet should not presume to expound on those who have changed thousands," Ms. Schwartz wrote, suggesting that Ms. Flanagan's husband might pitch in with the linens as well. The debate turned even weirder when, in response, Ms. Flanagan wrote with a kind of wicked glee, "As for my husband's changing sheets—why in the world would I want him to do that? He is the head of the household, and I treat him as such. But I'm not a feminist, so there's no surprise there."

and

Consider that line about her husband being the "head of the household." What does she mean by that term, exactly?
"How old are you?" was Ms. Flanagan's response. "What do you think I mean?" To the suggestion that the term implies that the man of the house gets a free pass from doing domestic chores, she responds demurely, "I mean by it whatever anyone would think that I meant," adding, "if my husband pops a button, I sew it back on."
So she doesn't wash the sheets, but she does sew buttons. Does she like to sew buttons? "I do like to sew buttons. I think it's very rewarding that you can take a garment that's shabby and unwearable and in this quick way you can really transform it," she said. "It's an easy little gift for me to give him." Yet this is from the same woman who in her 2003 essay on Erma Bombeck wrote that "I have been married a total of fourteen years to a total of two men, and never once have I been asked to iron a single item of either man's clothing or to replace even one popped button, for which I suppose I have the women's movement to thank. But I realize now, late in the game, that we'd be much better off if I had a few of those skills."
But to accuse Ms. Flanagan of inconsistency misses the point entirely. Who cares that Ms. Flanagan apparently found the redemptive power of button-sewing some time between 2002 and 2004? Ms. Flanagan clearly relishes pushing buttons as much as she does sewing them.

and as a sort of concise summary of her odd logic:

"The two things I hate most are feminism and homophobia."

says she, or that hatred of others as a group is a bad thing in general, but a very good thing if it's about women. It's all very silly, of course. That's why Flanagan's presence in the New Yorker is such a conundrum.

There are, after all, many writers of her ilk, writers seeking fame and recognition by holding outrageous opinions and by changing the argument whenever they get caught for being wrong with the initial one. It isn't Flanagan's writing that causes the furor among women (and a few goddesses as well) who call themselves feminists. It is the behavior of the Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker in choosing to portray someone like Flanagan as the Voice On Women's Matters. How utterly demeaning for women! And how utterly
callous and greedy! Just consider whether they'd employ a black member of the Ku Klux clan for similar purposes, and if they did, consider how the readers of the magazine would react to that.

But when the human rights that are debated belong to women it's perfectly acceptable to portray these rights as something ridiculous, nay, even harmful for the women themselves. It's perfectly acceptable to describe the prophet of such views as someone with "real wit" and to be "very excited to have her join in on the conversation" on family issues. Not to mention to have her single-handedly in charge of the said family issues.

What this demonstrates is how very far away we still are from a society that really believes in the equality of men and women. Women's issues are a sideshow in the big circus, and feminists are the new bearded women to be ogled at. As long as this draws enough paying customers or subscribers the Caitlin Flanagans of this world will wield the impresario's whip in the middle of this little circus ring.

Conspiracy Theories

They are a lot of fun and only get cumbersome when other people believe in them. This is a good time for some new, juicy conspiracy theories, though; not the silly old ones about the U.N. helicopters. I have made one myself! It is as follows:

There are five fat men in a secret cave
somewhere.
They are naked. They are bald. They live in a wave of
purified air.
They read the Playboy and the Joy of Cooking.
They have grown obese and sated from just looking.

They can feel us. They can see us.
They know our petty schemes.
They have planned us. They have manned us.
They made our secret dreams.
And they caused it to be thus:
Nothing that we do is quite as it seems.

If you don't like that one, or even it's wonderfully bad poetic form, you might be interested in something much more serious and worrisome:

A dentist who claims he met three of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Shreveport one year before the attacks has mysteriously fallen ill and is on life support.

Dr. David Graham was driving back to Shreveport from Houston on Saturday night when he became sick. A friend said Graham began suffering organ failure and medical tests show possible poisoning. He is hospitalized in Houston.

Graham is trying to publish a book that claims meetings with the hijackers and another Middle Eastern man who is a federal fugitive here.

In fact, the Bush administration gives a lot of material for conspiracy theorists. A large number of people who used to be in this administration have died in mysterious circumstances. Coincidence? Perhaps. It might be possible to clarify that by doing some statistical analyses of causes of death and any clustering of rare causes in this way. Or one could just speculate, of course.


Thanks to Atrios and kei&yuri for the links.

All These C-Words

This is a self-indulgent post that nobody else will find interesting. That's the nice thing about owning a blog, no editor can come in and force me to delete it because it doesn't sell. The bad thing about owning a blog is, of course, that I don't have an editor, unless you count the dogs.

The reason for this post is a simple one: I have totally fallen in love with these four things:
-cad
-curmudgeony
-clotted cream
-crunchy

Or at least the way the feel in my mouth. They are wonderfully edible words and phrases! Just try saying them: 'cad', like sighing out in exasperation, 'curmudgeony', like housing a small spiny creature in the mouth (a hedgehog?), 'clotted cream', just like the sound of a spoon digging up some of this substance and then spreading it on a piece of smooth toast, 'crunchy', so crunchy that I fear my teeth have crumbled when I say it. I adore them all.

Do these sorts of things ever happen to you? I used to have a bad crush on the word 'albatross' once, too.

Women in the News

Playing a pundit, again. This time I'm a caustic, male-bashing feminazi goddess. I always wanted to be caustic; I'm imagining walking by obnoxious people and causing all their clothing to melt.
General male-bashing comes harder, but it's doable if I pretend to be Rushette Limbaugh. Limbaugh and all his ilk bash females nonstop and that's called objectivity in some very loopy circles. Feminazi, well, I can goose-step with the best of them, but the rest of the nazi stuff makes me feel vomity.

So imagine me with safety-pins through my eyelids and with a horrible square stubby moustache. Ready? Ok, here it goes.

The first piece of news today is the miserable life of women in Congo, especially the life of young women who have been repeatedly raped by the militiamen in the recent disturbances. Now that they have been saved by the United Nations troops:

Young female refugees in the Congo who were raped by militiamen are now allegedly being sexually exploited by United Nations peace troops. According to the Independent, UN peacekeepers are giving girls as young as 13 food in exchange for sex.

Testimonies from both aid workers and teenage girls say that young girls in the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in northeastern Congo are climbing through a wire fence every night to sell their bodies for food to UN soldiers from Morocco and Uruguay, reports the Independent.

What else could they sell if they're hungry? Who would value the parts of these young women which are not related to sexual activities?
The stories they can tell, the songs and dances they may know, the ideas beginning to take shape in their heads. What will be saved for their futures? What sort of futures will they have?

And consider this, in many parts of the United States it's illegal to leave a child under twelve alone in a parked car. In Congo, thirteen year olds climb fences to have sex in order to eat. I eagerly await the rigorous examination of this problem the U.N. has promised.

A second interesting piece of news is the rarity of female ministers in the governments of countries:

The Asia-Pacific region has the lowest ratio of women in legislative office, according to a report presented at the Global Summit of Women 2004 in Seoul.
According to the report released this week, Europe has the highest number of female cabinet members, comprising 18 percent of the legislative body. Compared with 14.7 percent in the United States and 10.8 percent in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region comes in at 6.9 percent.
Today, 12 countries have no female ministers of any rank in government, according to the report. Nine of those are from the Asia-Pacific region; they are Brunei, Lebanon, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu.
Won-Hong Kim, a researcher of the Korean Women's Development Institute, told the Seoul-based Korea Times that the low numbers are a result of patriarchy in Asian-Pacific society.
"Traditionally, Asian societies have been male-centered, denying access to women in many sectors, especially politics," Kim said. "In order to improve the status of women, policymakers are required to give special attention to the problems and offer administrative support."
Irene Natividad, president of the summit and a Women's eNews 21 Women for the 21st Century, released the report that included 195 countries in its analysis.
"One woman minister can affect thousands," Natividad told the Korea Times. "One woman minister can ensure women are open to all occupations. One woman makes a difference."

Asian societies have indeed been traditionally male-centered, and as far as I can tell, they are still very much so. Just consider the well-known preference for boys in most of Asian countries. But the problem isn't limited to Asia; even Europe with the highest percentage of female ministers is still a continent where eighty percent of ministers are male. Where are all the women, many male bloggers might ask here. Isn't it the case that women just aren't interested in politics? Just look at who reads political blogs in this country.

Well, as Rivka points out in her excellent post on this topic, women actually vote in larger relative numbers than men, and are more active as political volunteers. She also demonstrates that women's political involvement increases with time, especially when counted from the date when they won the right to vote. Given that women have had the vote for only somewhat less than a century in even the most advanced countries, it's a bit early to start making some sort of philosophical conclusions about women's reluctance to engage in politics. There are still real barriers in the way of politically active women in many countries, and in several of them women who venture out into the political arena face open discrimination. Even in the good old U.S. of A. women bear special burdens in political life: they are attacked by right-wingers if they have minor children, they are still often regarded as responsible for the home and the house as well as their political careers, they are suspected of being weak on defense, merely because they are women, and they are viewed as running as 'women' rather than as people. And most recently, women are found lacking in the required macho quotient... But yes, it would be good to have more female ministers and presidents and even a pope or two. In my opinion.

Finally, something cheerful and uplifting about women in the news:

--As she answers phones, scours wire service reports for breaking news and researches feature stories, Nazima Shafique looks like any one of the other two dozen journalists working in the Pakistan Television (PTV) newsroom.
And that is just the way the 28-year-old news anchor--who has battled two of the harshest forms of discrimination in Pakistani society to pursue her career--wants it to be.
"When people look at me, I want them to see a person who can work just as well as anyone else in this room, that there is nothing different or special about me," she says.
As gutsy as she is humble, the cherub-faced journalist, however, is anything but ordinary.
The PTV news anchor, disabled by a severe case of childhood polio, is one of only four women in Pakistan presenting the nightly news.
In a country where only 25 percent* of women work, Shafique challenges the male-dominated status quo of most newsrooms and the cultural tendency, in a country still struggling with polio, to expect little of the disabled.
Although Pakistan passed a 1981 law to reserve 2 percent of the workforce for disabled persons and a 2002 law to integrate disabled children into the education system, many social workers complain of lax enforcement and little change in social attitudes.
"It's an engrained belief that disabled people are a burden, that they will never contribute to a family's earnings other than perhaps as a beggar on the street," says Islamabad-based social worker Aisha Hamid. "Sadly, changing this perception has just not been a priority for successive governments, and many disabled persons and their families remain utterly ignorant about the possibilities to better their lives."
Over 80 percent of disabled persons in Pakistan remain unemployed.

Let's hope that this is the beginning of similar good developments all over the world.

Now, that wasn't too bad, was it? You've read through a whole feminazi post, and you're still as normal as you ever were. And I can rip off my moustache and go play with the snakes. Until next time.


----------
*As an aside, I doubt that only a quarter of Pakistani women work; rather, that only a quarter of them are directly paid for the work they do.

Call the Condom Car! Quick!

Believe it or not, this is possible in Sweden:

From Friday, June 4, amorous couples can call the telephone number 696969 and a white van featuring a large red condom with wings as a logo will deliver them a packet of 10 prophylactics.
"We need to increase the usage of condoms," said Carl Osvald, marketing manager for the Swedish Organization for Sex Education, the non-governmental organization behind the initiative. "It is 50 percent about pregnancy and 50 percent about sexually transmitted diseases."

That is, of course, in a parallel universe, not the one where I'm sitting and typing away. There are yet other universes, all coexistent on this same earth. Which would be quite funny, if we weren't part of the mess that results from that; you know, the greatest minds of the fourteenth century telling me what my morals should be and so on. I always want to make ugly faces to those minds, but they'd interpret that as me being possessed by Satan. Which is always possible, I guess.

Still, I can't imagine calling for the condom ambulance. Imagine the whole neighborhood standing in their windows staring at a van with a flying condom painted on its side! They'd all KNOW! I have to work more on my Viking courage.


Thanks to Mrs. Jones for the link

Some Cunning Campaigns

The New York Times has been duped by one, according to Daniel Okrent, the Times ombudsman (a Swedish word?). The campaigners were the Pentagon, CIA and "cloaked government sources...[who] insinuated themselves and their agendas into prewar coverage". Okrent waxes very poetical on this: Some stories "pushed Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets on the shoulders of editors", and other stories that challenged the assertions "were played as quietly as a lullaby".

Ok. What he's saying is that the Times admits to doing a crappy journalistic job on this issue. I think admitting it is great, it's the first step to getting more objective coverage. What's so sad is that most of the mainstream media did at least as poorly as the Times, and others are not apologizing.

But was this a very cunning campaign from the Pentagon, CIA and various mysterious cloaked agents? Or were the journalists who fell for it unusually naive/greedy/biased? I'd go for the latter, given that the press is supposed to stand in an adversial position to the government, and that every adequately cynical adult expects propaganda from the administration. So maybe the Times and especially the other culprits who haven't even started on their self-recriminations should also think about getting rid of those who appear unable to hold up the expected journalistic standards. Just saying.

Another cunning campaign may have been carried out on the unsuspecting American medical establishment. In 2001, The Journal of Reproductive Medicine published a study which seemed to prove, quite decisively, that long-distance prayer works to improve medical outcomes. The authors, Daniel Wirth, Kwang Cha and Rogerio Lobo reported on an experiment where prayer groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia were given photographs of some women who were trying to conceive through IVF in Seoul, Korea, and asked to pray for their successful pregnancies. Other women at the same IVF clinics served as a control group as nobody was presumably praying for them. The experiment was a double-blind one, so that neither the research staff nor the women themselves knew who was being prayed for. The results were shocking: the women in the prayed-for group doubled their chances of conceiving. According to one expert in the area of fertility research, this sort of an increase would be a revolutionary one.

As the Guardian points out, many Americans took this study as a sign from God: prayer works, and even quite scientific organizations and groups were impressed. Questions were asked about how to incorporate this into general medical practise and so on. I must admit I was very sceptical of the whole study from the very beginning, not because I wouldn't believe in the power of prayer (just ask me something!), but because I very much doubt that any divine being would let humans play with prayer this way: some women were arbitarily excluded while others were allowed to benefit. This makes the experimenters the gods.

Anyway, now it turns out that one of the three authors, Daniel Wirth, is a well-known conman with special interests in parapsychological research. He is currently under house arrest in California awaiting sentencing for multi-million dollar fraud charges against Adelphia Communications. It's not clear what his role in the research was, but his prominent position among the authors of the study is at least a minor embarrassment for the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, and in the worst case the whole study may be a gigantic fraud. I vote for the latter alternative.

I also think that the same requirements apply to the medical establishment as to journalists, i.e., they can't now blame someone else for the mess. Medical research is frequently financed from public funds, and researchers have the responsibility to be good guardians of this money. If my fraud prediction turns out to be correct, heads should roll here, too. Wow, I seem to be a vengeful goddess today.

On Writing Styles in Blogs

To write or not to write, that is the question, especially in deciding on the appropriate style for blogging. I still haven't gotten it down to a science, and I notice such a variety of styles on the blogs that it's hard to know if there is any such thing as the universal blogging style. Probably not, at least not yet. So I could write a post in many different styles (some a lot better than others, of course). Here are some variations:
=========
Hiya, guys and gals! Jeez but things are slow today. What's the effing matter with all youse? I'm busting my ass off writing for you, and when I eyeball my visitor stats for Sunday, what do I see: a f****ing 120 oglers so far today. Come on, give me some respect here!
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According to Slack and Slick, 2004, Journal of Blogometry, vol. I, no 1, pp.1-109, the average visitor frequency in a randomly drawn sample of blogs (n=1) was 120. The relatively low number may be attributed to the day of the week, viz. the general slowdown of internet usage during weekends when a large number of internet users are otherwise engaged. In a rejoinder, Glick and Glack, ibid. hypothesize that this may cause great distress to those bloggers whose output is especially large on Sundays. All researchers conclude by noting that internet users could be encouraged to increase their visits by suitable incentives, such as lotteries for a two-week expenses-paid vacations to a location near the Equator with some minor mythical goddess.
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Solitude. Silence. The night spreads its cloak over me and nobody calls. I bend over my keyboard; a stray tear rolls down my cheek but I persist. Can you hear me, silence? Can you hold my grief, emptiness? Hollow footsteps, just audible from somewhere. Where did it all go? What was it all for? You never visit me anymore. Only silence stands and looks over my shoulder as I write.
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Today was a day like all other days that are also called Sundays. The same slowness, the same newly starched faces in all the same church pews, the same drunks at the street corners worshipping in their own way. I wake up with a hangover next to the face of a stranger. The whiskey bottles on the floor are empty, and I have a headache down to my kidneys. Remind me not to go out with gorillas in the future, especially when the keyboard sits there idle, filling me with guilt. I slug down the eau de toilet from the bathroom cabinet and light up a stogie end I find under the sleeping gorilla. Time for some heavy lifting. The audience is out there, somewhere, and one day they will hear about me and even pay me. Until then I'll be ok with the booze and my karate skills. The roads are hard for a gal all alone but you knew that already.
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And so on. I could keep on writing this for many more hours, but it probably wouldn't be that profitable. You get the idea, anyway. So what is the appropriate blog language?

Sunday Night Musings

I stole this post from Trish Wilson's blog. It's an oldie but a goodie, and well worth remembering, especially so close to Memorial Day. Not all who fought for us were soldiers.

Thank A Feminist

If you're female and...

...you can vote, thank a feminist.

...you get paid as much as men doing the same job, thank a feminist.

...you went to college instead of being expected to quit after high school
so your brothers could go because "You'll just get married anyway", thank
a feminist.

...you can apply for any job, not just "women's work", thank a feminist.

...you can get or give birth control information without going to jail,
thank a feminist.

...your doctor, lawyer, pastor judge or legislator is a woman, thank a
feminist.

...you play an organized sport, thank a feminist.

...you can wear slacks without being excommunicated from your church or
run out of town, thank a feminist.

...your boss isn't allowed to pressure you to sleep with him, thank a
feminist.

...you get raped and the trial isn't about your hemline or your previous
boyfriends, thank a feminist.

...you start a small business and can get a loan using only your name and
credit history, thank a feminist

...you are on trial and are allowed to testify in your own defense, thank
a feminist.

...you own property that is solely yours, thank a feminist.

...you have the right to your own salary even if you are married or have a
male relative, thank a feminist.

...you get custody of your children following divorce or separation, thank
a feminist.

...you get a voice in the raising and care of your children instead of
them being completely controlled by the husband/father, thank a feminist.

...your husband beats you and it is illegal and the police stop him
instead of lecturing you on better wifely behavior, thank a feminist.

...you are granted a degree after attending college instead of a
certificate of completion, thank a feminist.

...you can breastfeed your baby discreetly in a public place and not be
arrested, thank a feminist.

...you marry and your civil human rights do not disappear into your
husband's rights, thank a feminist.

...you have the right to refuse sex with a diseased husband [or just
"husband"], thank a feminist.

...you have the right to keep your medical records confidential from the
men in your family, thank a feminist.

...you have the right to read the books you want, thank a feminist.

...you can testify in court about crimes or wrongs your husband has
committed, thank a feminist.

...you can choose to be a mother or not a mother in you own time not at
the dictates of a husband or rapist, thank a feminist.

...you can look forward to a lifespan of 80 years instead of dying in your
20s from unlimited childbirth, thank a feminist.

...you can see yourself as a full, adult human being instead of a minor
who needs to be controlled by a man, thank a feminist.

-- Author unknown.

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This article makes periodic trips around the Internet.
Whoever first wrote it, THANK YOU!

Promotion of Buggery Intimately Connected to Obesity

According to Lord Tebbit of Britain's House of Lords:

A high ranking Conservative member of the House of Lords says that the push for civil rights by gays is leading to a nation of obese people. Lord Tebbit then compared same-sex marriage to the promotion of buggery.
Tebbit, the former chair of the Tory party and its current Whip in the Lords, was debating the growing problem of obesity with a member of the governing Labor party on a British radio program.
He suggested Labor's ''promotion of buggery'' was ''intimately connected'' to the increasing number of overweight people.
''Families now so seldom eat together. They don't prepare meals properly. Wives are pressurized into thinking they ought to go out to work instead of looking after their children. And it is the breakdown of family that is at the root of it.''

Mindboggling. It's almost admirable in its idiocy. I especially like the pressurized women. It's a model specimen of how so much of the extreme right propaganda starts with the conclusions: "the gays did it" "the uppity working women did it", and then rearranges the landscape between this and the problem at hand to lead to where they want to go. That's why crime is caused by feminism, by the way, and why our national defence is weak. In fact, everything is the fault of those people who are demanding their rights, yet shouldn't have any. In a hierarchical right-wing society large numbers of people are needed standing and just holding up the ladders so that others can climb, and horror of horrors if some of the supporters go and get their own ladders! Imagine the teetering on one leg of the ladder! Hmmm. I wonder if Lord Tebbit is at all overweight?


Thanks to frog for the link.

Friday Night Dog Blogging

Or blog dogging. Hello, this is Henrietta the Hound, the smarter of the two dogs at the Snakepit Inc.. All the others are asleep right now, having gorged on strawberries (the goddess) and kibble (Hank the Rethug Labrador). (The snakes are always asleep.) I'm in charge. Finally!

The first thing I wanted to do is to activate picture blogging so that you can see how handsome and soulful I really am, but I may not have enough time; I hear them moving in the other room. But I am handsome and soulful and should be the president of the United States.

For one thing, I would never have let Chalabi's nephew pretend to be the new prime minister of Iraq. Everybody knows the dangers of in-breeding, except the idiotarians in Washington, D.C.. Just look at Hank to see what I mean! Ok, he may not be a real nephew, but he sure sounds like a brother-in-arms to Chalabi.

For another, I would never have stooped to torturing. A good butt bite is all that's needed for anybody who wants to show domination. It works for me, and it would have worked for George Bush if he possessed any real canines.

Here's my proposal: Let me in charge of the world for one year, and then judge if things are better. During that time, humans are limited to only the necessary roles like opening cans and driving cars to dogparks, but in return I promise a democracy in Iraq (I know a lot of good dogs there), an American revival and unlimited Parmesan cheese to all dogs. And a world at peace. What do you say? What can you lose by this arrangement anyway?

Yours, in solidarity
Henrietta the Hound

Puritan Thoughts

People are too fat. They cost the health care system far too much. Smokers are evil. Their health care shouldn't be covered. Pregnant women should not run, take hot baths, go to work, get angry or sad. If they do, they're sinners and deserve chastizing, maybe ultimately even prison sentences.

This is my summary of many health issues I read or hear about. There is a fire-and-brimstone tinge to these stories, an air of moral putrification and its purification, and the experts are sometimes not easily separable from enthusiastic preachers and judges. A sort of a Puritan carneval.

Now we're all eagerly out there condemning overweight people. Overweight causes more preventable deaths than smoking, we're told. And then we go for the artery: Who's to blame? Maybe McDonald's is. But no, every overeater is responsible for her or his own extra pounds. And here's what you do: cut out everything that brings you some psychological relief during your long and stressful day, replace these things with raw slices of cabbage and jog home with a backpack full of stones. Or if you're very poor, just take seven buses with poorly overlapping connections to the nearest organic food store and spend your month's income on expensive fresh produce. Then take seven buses back and cook for the next four hours. And the children in ghettoes? Well, they should ride their bikes to school or walk. And the children in the suburbs? Well, they can't take bikes or walk, they might be kidnapped, you know, so parents should drive them to martial arts classes and to gym classes and to baseball clubs. Of course, then the parents will get fat from all that sitting in the cars.

Then we'd all be really healthy and deserving of others' respect. Until the next purification carneval comes along, and some other deep weakness in our personalities, nay, in our very souls will become the object of public condemnation and scrutiny.

I'm not a Puritan goddess. I'm slender and healthy due to my divine genes, so it would not be fair of me to join this raving and ranting. But let me point out a few corrective facts: Fact 1: The most expensive patients for the health care system are ultimately the "healthy lifestyle" people, as they'll end up in nursing homes until they are 102. Nursing homes are very expensive to run. The average beer-and-hamburgers guzzler will keel over quickly of a heart attack at sixty and save us both the retirement payments and the nursing home costs, especially if he or she is one of those people who don't bother with checkups and stuff so that there is no forewarning of the attack.

Fact 2: People usually try to live their lives as best they can. Parents don't usually try to make their children fat slobs with diabetes. Pregnant mothers don't usually try to choose lifestyles as bad as possible for their fetuses. Sometimes people eat too much or smoke because this life can be almost unbearable at times without such crutches.
Yes, by all means, give people better information, give them healthy, quick and cheap recipes. Make the streets safe for kids to ride their bikes, encourage walking and playing outside. Give workers some relief from stress, and have grocery stores offer good healthy food at a reasonable cost. Give everybody the know-how they need to negotiate life successfully. But don't blame those who falter. You have not walked in their shoes. Maybe they're better people than you, Mr. or Ms. Expert. Maybe they take care of orphaned children, maybe they spend hours working in the soup kitchens, maybe they rescue abandoned animals. Maybe they're just ordinary people in a world that sometimes seems to go crazy around us, and we have no control over those events. And you're going to tell them how bad that chocolate bar is going to be to their arteries in ten years' time?

Fact 3: People will ultimately die. Even if their mothers never smoked and drank while pregnant, even if they exercized every day of their lives and never ate anything but bran and flax oil (or especially then). We can't control this, and we can't control all the diverse causes of disease and accidents. We can try our best, but there comes a time when we must say that this is how life is. It ends. What should matter more, perhaps, is how that life is lived, what it has brought to the world, how we share the trip together. What could matter more is some compassion, some humility, some love towards others. And who knows, this might make us all healthier, too.

Something Fun and Relaxing

I need to laugh a little. I think we all do. So what good jokes have you heard recently?
Use the comments to tell us.

Here are a few I found today, to get you started:

God and the Village Idiot
One day God was hanging out at the Pearly Gates with St. Paul.

"I need to find someone to run for president," he said after a while.

Attentive to his boss' needs, St. Paul started naming off a few qualified candidates.

"Nah, I want that guy," he said pointing to a drunken Texas governor pissing off a balcony.

"You've got to be kidding," said St. Paul, "Not only is he dumber than a box of rocks, he's got drinking and drug problems."

"I don't care," said God, "This is the guy."

Perplexed, St. Paul asked: "What is the problem, Lord, art thou angry with the Americans?"

"No," said God, "I made a bet with the Devil that I could get a village idiot to run for president."

"But won't that work in the Devil's favor, oh Lord?" Paul asked.

"That's all right," said God, "he'll never take Florida"

How the Bushies Change a Light Bulb
How many members of the Bush administration are required to replace the proverbial light bulb?
Are you ready for this?
The Answer is SEVEN:
(1) one to deny that a light bulb needs to be replaced;
(2) one to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who has questions about the light bulb;
(3) one to blame the previous administration for the need of a new light bulb;
(4) one to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs;
(5) one to get together with Vice President Cheney and figure out how to pay Halliburton Industries one million dollars for a light bulb;
(6) one to arrange a photo-op session showing Bush changing the light bulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag;
(7) and finally one to explain to Bush the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

Smith Barney Advertizing

This one is in Vanity Fair, the current number, page 105. The picture shows a very early morning scene, the sun is just reaching its first rays up from the horizon and world is beginning to show the first faint signs of color. A man carrying a heavy attache case is leaving a building, walking towards the only car still parked in the lot under a solitary street light. No other life anywhere. The man's back is permanently bent forward, and he looks ready to stumble.

The text in large letters says: "Your financial consultant may share your goals, but does he share your work ethic?" The rest of the text reinforces the same idea: Smith Barney only hires workaholics who hate their children and spouses. They all work twenty hour days, then take a quick four hours off to shower, eat, and change to a new pinstriped suit. Then back to the treadmill.

The ad ends with: "This is who we are. This is how we earn it."

And someone actually regarded this as a clever form of advertizing! My money doesn't go to an institution that selects people based on their own self-destructive work habits, and then sucks them dry before throwing them into the garbage (even if well padded with bank notes). My money doesn't go to an instution that is so niggardly that it won't hire enough people to work ordinary working days, or to an institution who employs workers so inept that they have to stay redoing it all night long. And one of these must be the explanation for the sad-looking bent-over shape dragging itself to the cold car at about four a.m..

Some Coleslaw

This coleslaw is not edible, which is probably a good thing as I am a very bad cook. Rather, it is bits and pieces from various articles, mixed together and seasoned with my comments. The idea behind this is one well-known to us lazy cooks: when you don't feel like slaving over the hot stove, serve people a salad of everything you find in the fridge.

The first thing I unearthed is the news that the National Public Radio is, alas, not liberal as we have all been taught to believe:

Despite a perception that National Public Radio is politically liberal, the majority of its sources are actually Republicans and conservatives, according to FAIR, a left-leaning media watchdog.
"Republicans not only had a substantial partisan edge," according to a report accompanying the survey, "individual Republicans were NPR's most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance." In addition, representatives of right-of-center think tanks outnumbered their leftist counterparts by more than four to one, FAIR reported.

This isn't news to anybody who has recently listened to the NPR, which just may be short for Nice, Polite and Republican. Though they do broadcast the BBC World News. But the widespread assumption that NPR is left-wing tells us something about how the public conversation has been hijacked by the right, and how they now define all the terms, including the term 'liberal'.

The second snippet is on a topic that scares me, and I include it here for its scare value, not because I necessarily believe that it is true:

If religious conservatives win their fight to define marriage as between a man and a woman, Ferree warns, they might not stop there.
We find ourselves now in a strange period of what might be called attempted Christian Fascism. Our president believes God has called him to the White House (it certainly wasn't the popular vote). Empowered by Bush, evangelical Christians are pushing for a rollback of Darwin, the end of scientific experimentation, and the coming of Armageddon. The hallowed American separation of church and state has never been more under attack. The goal is the creation of a Christian nation - and later a Christian world - under Biblical law.
So after a constitutional amendment, the next logical step would be defining the roles of men and women in heterosexual marriages according to Biblical standards. Can you hear the patriarchy calling?

I stopped my ears with wax a long time ago, and also had myself tied to the mast of my ship. So I don't hear the patriarchy calling, but there are lots of people, with names such as Ann and Rush and George and Midge and so on, who not only hear this calling but hum along as loud as they can. A Christian world doesn't appeal to me that much, either; what would happen to my snakes in such an environment? They would probably all be hunted down and turned into Bible covers or whips for self-flagellators.

Finally, something about animals:

"Human beings," says an American novelist, "are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power." The novelist is selling the chimpanzees short. Ever see a chimpanzee force another chimp into acts of sexual degradation - for tourist photos? Or cut the head off another chimp - for God? Or unleash the forces of "smart bomb" hell on other chimps - for freedom, for imaginary weapons of mass destruction, for oil?

Indeed.