Sungold's Gold: Volume I

To be honest, all the "end of year" roundups get on my nerves. January 1 is such an arbitrary date. Why not celebrate the winter solstice instead? Or the spring equinox? Why not the start of the school year, which to me - perpetual student that I am - still feels like the "natural" beginning of the year?

Nonetheless, Jill's generous call at Feministe for her readers to promote their "best-of-2008" posts got me browsing my archives, and once I started, I decided I might as well embrace the tradition. Heck, if Abba can hawk "greatest hits" albums, why not me? Plus, I was having a lot of fun looking back; the historian in me was seriously happy. So was the navel-gazer.

First, this is as good a time as any to say how much I appreciate those of you who read Kittywampus. I love you even more when you comment. So thanks! I hope you'll keep coming 'round in the new year. I'll try to not waste your time too much ... or (I hope) be mildly amusing when I do.

When I look back, I'm amazed and appalled at how much I wrote. This blog was supposed to be a place to park some ideas and reflections for teaching, and maybe an outlet for the excessively long comments I'd otherwise leave at some other poor soul's blog. Instead, I wrote more than a post a day - 385 and counting - and some of them were really more essays than blog posts. (Okay, some days I just posted Tina Fey's latest takedown of Sarah Palin, but that was all good, too.)

Can I earn a second Ph.D. for this? Oh, nevermind. I'm sure somewhere on the Internet, you can buy a Ph.D. in any discipline. Including blogging.

Anyway, here's my "greatest hits" selection. These posts actually aren't necessarily the ones that got the most hits; they're the ones where I thought there was a flash of an idea, or maybe more. I notice that like my posts themselves, this list is way longer than the average blog year-end round-up. I don't think this is necessarily a virtue, but it's who I am - the same gal whose dissertation ran to some 900 pages. To be honest, I'm compiling this list mostly for myself, as an index of sorts. If you see something you like, though, I'll be pleased.

Teaching - my original raison de blog - really did spawn a few decent posts:

• I'm still grateful to those former students of mine who contributed to my thoughts on men in the women's studies classroom. I presented this material at the National Women's Studies Association annual meeting, and the guys' comments were really the heart of it.
• A class discussion gave rise to an analysis of the relationship between finger length and prenatal testosterone exposure.
• I explained why I don't blame the Patriarchy - but instead prefer to think of patriarchy as a set of specific, historically situated conditions - and followed up by asking whether fundamentalist Mormonism meets those patriarchal conditions.
• A post on Bild Lilli - a sexy German predecessor to the Barbie doll - still gets oodles of hits. It's short and glib, but I was searching for good pictures of Lilli to use in class, and I found some great ones.

My favorite posts, though, are the more reflective ones, often not overtly political, but still informed by my politics, I'm sure. One group of these dealt with how we construct our selves, often (but not always) through our embodiment:

• I reflected on what it means to write the history of the body (a project that occupies most of my non-blog writing).
• I pondered aging as an experience of alienation from a "true" younger self.
• I explored the connections among blogging, narcissism, and the confessional impulse - and why tripe like the infamous Philip Weiss New York Magazine article sucks me in every time.
• I considered regrets at midlife (and my general lack thereof).

I wrote an awful lot about sex for someone who doesn't call herself a "sex blogger":

• My favorite piece on sexuality is probably the one I felt most nervous - most naked - about posting: how sexual vulnerability is both essential and terrifying. This post really belongs more in the last category because it's all about how particular embodied experiences shape our sense of self.
• I explained why I'm ambivalent about "sex positivity" as a label - and I still feel that way.
• I considered how commodification shapes desire in gendered ways - how commodification intersects with male privilege in prostitution. - and how the Elliot Spitzer case offers ample evidence of male privilege at work in prostitution.
• I chewed on the disparity between the rates of infidelity reported for men and women.
• I indulged in a thought experiment on "mindblowing" sex and traffic lights.
• Spurred by the revelation of John Edwards' extramarital affair, I pondered the less-obvious links between serious illness, infidelity, and relationship turmoil.
• I criticized Lauren Slater's assertion that a person can unilaterally impose a sexless relationship on their partner and expect them to be okay with it.

While not every last one of my posts on health and medicine related to gender or sexuality, most of 'em had at least an oblique connection:

• I deconstructed the war metaphor so often applied to cancer, and took some potshots at "staying positive," too.
• I expressed outrage at the denial of insurance coverage for reconstructive surgery after prostate cancer and bemusement at the failure of the campaigns against breast and prostate cancer to make common cause.
• I speculated that the health benefits of ejaculation are systematically underplayed due to our culture's anti-sex, anti-body bias.
• To mark Viagra's tenth anniversary, I criticized doctoring women's desires.
  

I explored the connections between feminism, parenting, and just being human from a bunch of angles:

• As the Duggar family announced the impending birth of their eighteenth child, I looked at how the Duggars fit into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement.
• I mopped up after a truly fruitless food-fight between childfree people and parents, and then considered how "reasonable" it is to choose parenthood anyway.
• As 9/11 marked another anniversary, I mulled over the impossibility of preparing kids to live in a world full of atrocities.
• I explained why - even though I see it as a reasonable and a potentially feminist choice - I don't homeschool, and I followed that up by analyzing the risks of long-term at-home parenthood.

Like motherhood more generally, childbearing and reproductive rights are at the heart of my academic research, too:

• I looked at how gestational surrogacy is entangled with notions of the Good Mother and socioeconomically inflected intimacy.
• I cast a skeptical eye on advocacy of orgasmic childbirth.
• Extrapolating from my knowledge of history, I imagined the impact of overturning Roe v. Wade.
• I reflected on the moral complexity of abortion and what we lose if we deny it.
• In a post that attracted a lot of detractors, I explained why reproductive rights are human rights.

I expended way too much emotional energy on Sarah Palin - yet another reason to hope that her career will henceforth be confined to Alaska:

• I explained why her decision to fly from Texas to Alaska while leaking amniotic fluid betrayed reckless judgment. This was one of several posts that took a more speculative and judgmental stance than is typical for me. (Another one castigated the idea that you can simply delegate the care of a special needs child - or really, any child - beyond a certain extent.) While I don't plan to make a habit of judging so harshly, I do think later events confirmed that my reading of Palin's personal behavior was spot-on as a predictor of her political character.
• I tried to articulate the principles of Palinofeminism. (Hint: they're not very feminist after all.)
• Extending Tim Wise's analysis, I considered the role of white privilege on the Republican ticket.
• Finally, I reflected on why so many of us feminists who actually had better things to do with our time obsessed about Palin in spite of ourselves.

I spun my minor-league involvement in the Obama campaign into a few posts that I think are still a good read even after the election:

• After describing my experience at Obama's rally in Berlin, I dabbled in actual reporting and knocked down the wingnutty rumor that the mammoth crowd only came for free beer and bratwurst.
• Based on phone calls I made for Obama's campaign, I reflected on the appeal of voting for a woman - any woman.
• As a canvasser, I tried to understand the political ramifications of deep poverty after a harrowing visit to a trailer park full of vicious dogs.
• Similarly, I drew on my experiences as a canvasser to try to fathom the effects of racism on the election.
• In a fit of post-election melancholy, I mused on the thing with feathers.

And that seems as good a place as any to embark on the new year: hope. I wish it for you, my kind readers, and for all of us who totter on this spinning Earth. Thanks for spinning along with me.

Is Blue's Clues Going Black?

Via image.fishpond, used under fair use provisions of copyright law for educational and critical purposes. Welcome message to Viacom spiders: We love Blue's Clues, so please consider this a free promo and don't make me take the pic down. :-)

I live very happily without MTV and VH1. I get most of my Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert online anyway. No one in my house is a big Spongebob fan. But losing Nick Jr. and Noggin? Blue's Clues and Dora the Explorer? That is a crisis.

The crisis is scheduled for midnight tonight. When the ball drops for the new year, my #%*&$ cable provider, Time Warner, will also drop all Viacom channels. A last-minute settlement is still possible but unlikely, since Viacom claims Time Warner is refusing to negotiate.

Why - instead of hearing this directly from Time Warner - did I get word of it instead from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo? (Thanks, Skippy and Jill!)

These are the fruits of media consolidation, folks. Time Warner and Viacom are mired in a spitting match to determine who's the more powerful player in their little oligopolous world. They don't give a damn about notifying their customers. Why, Time Warner isn't even reachable via their customer service number today! All I get is a recorded message claiming "technical difficulties."

These big media meanies don't even mind if they make my little Tiger cry. He loves Blue's Clues and Max and Ruby. He used to be passionate about Dora, though that has faded slightly. Gosh, the whole family likes the Wonder Pets. If Blue goes black, even for a few days, tears are sure to ensue.

Those tears might just be mine if I have to do without what a friend of mine calls "the bad parent machine." She means that in the most affectionate way possible, because she too relies on TV at strategic moments. Not constantly, not indiscriminately. In my house, the kids are allowed to watch TV mostly in the early mornings, and then mainly on weekend and vacation days.

Yes, I'm a slacker. I like to sleep in when I can. Blue lets me do that. So for the sake of us dedicated slacker parents, let's hope Viacom and Time Warner catch a clue.

The Greying of Abortion Providers: Doing the Math

Anyone who follows reproductive politics is likely aware that the doctors who provide abortion services have been rapidly aging. Now, a new survey of abortion clinics helps us quantify the situation. It reports that nearly two-thirds of providers (63 percent) are aged 50 or older.

The survey has some limitations. It looks only at clinics and not at doctors who provide occasional abortion services as part of a broader ob/gyn practice. The survey was circulated in 2002 and I have no clue why results are only now being published.

Still, the statistic on the aging of abortion providers seems solid enough that I decided to do the math and try to project what it means for the future availability of abortion services.

Let’s say we have 100 doctors. Assuming an average retirement age of 65, over the next 15 years 63 will retire, leaving 37 still in practice. This assumption is subject to error because while some providers may stay on past age 65 for lack of a successor, others may retire earlier due to burnout or fears for their personal safety.

Now let’s assume that the rate of entry into practice has been linear over the past 25 years – in other words, that the 37 younger doctors began practicing over the past 25 years and trickled into the field at a steady pace. This is probably optimistic. Training in abortion techniques has become less common in medical schools, and it’s more likely that the number of entrants per year has declined steadily over time.

Over the course of the next 15 years, the retirees will be replaced by (37 divided by 25 for the number of entrants per year) x (15 years) = 22 new doctors. Instead of the original 100 doctors, we’ll have only 59.

In other words, we can expect the number of abortion providers to decrease by about 40 percent over the next 15 years.

However you do the math: The current shortage of abortion providers is on course to become an all-out crisis.

Let's make one further assumption: A safe abortion, performed by a qualified, trained doctor, is preferable to an unsafe one. So I won't respond to comments that demonize abortion in general; that's not what this post is about. While I recognize that some opponents of legal abortion may see the provider shortage as an another route toward reducing the number of abortions, that idea belongs in fantasyland. There are much more effective strategies for reducing abortions that don't put women's health at risk.

Sadistic Coaching and Parenting

Before it goes stale along with my Christmas cookies, I just have to vent about this expose of Santa and his head reindeer, Donner, via Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake (caution: not suitable for kids):



It's about time! Even as a kid, I hated Donner's overbearing, unsympathetic attitude. Until now, though, I didn't notice how relentlessly Santa had his back.

Didn't you have a coach or gym teacher just like Donner, too? For me, the worst was Mr. Rosen in junior high. His favorite trick was to make his classes run "gut drills." I think they're called by different names in different parts of the country, but the upshot was that - starting at one end of the basketball court - you had to sprint to the first freethrow line, touch it, pivot and sprint back to the starting line, then do the same with the center line, the other freethrow line, and the out-of-bounds line at the court's far end.

If you didn't finish the gut drill in 30 seconds, you had to run another. Then another. And another. You were done if you made it in under 30, or when Mr. Rosen could see you were about ready to puke. Woe to you if his basketball team had lost the night before.

I almost never finished in less than 30 seconds. All through those long North Dakotan basketball winters, I'd make myself sick with nauseated worry on days when I had gym. Since P.E. was always late in the afternoon, I lost entire days of my life to that dread.

Mr. Rosen was a sadist. I suspect my sons' gym teacher has a similar, though much milder, streak. As a parent recently said on an email list I lurk on: "P.E. is institutionalized bullying." I'm think it's changed somewhat since 1975, but I don't see it as wholly transformed.

The truly appalling thing about the Donner character, though, isn't that he's a coach. It's that his parenting reflects the same sadistic approach. Even more sadly, I don't think he's wholly fictionalized.

This fall, watching the Tiger's kindergarten soccer team, I overheard a dad yell at his child: "Come on, pull yourself together out there!" He then stalked away in disgust. Dude! These are five year olds!! Ironically (but irrelevantly) this man's daughter was actually paying attention to the ball. My Tiger, meanwhile, was running in the wrong direction and chatting with a little girl who'd befriended him.

Sometimes I think my boys need to be a little tougher - not because they're boys but because they can both be cloyingly thin-skinned. They tend to cry over every little bump. They tattle on each other at each opportunity. I'll readily admit that my understanding and frustration spring from the same source: I was just like them as a kid.

But you know, the world is full of Donners, and my sons will encounter plenty of them. They're leading P.E. classes. They're on the playground. They're clawing their way up the corporate ladder. (Who hasn't had a Donner as a boss?)

What my kids need from their mama is not a Donnerette. They need love and understanding. They need sympathetic encouragement to distinguish the minor scrapes of life from the big bruises. They do need me to discourage the tattling, too - but that'd be another post for another day.

The Out-of-Control (Feminist?) Classroom

Control freak kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Historiann raises an interesting question of where professors experience the most control: research or teaching. In response to an MLA survey that contends professors, and especially women, may overinvest in teaching because it offers them a sense of control, she writes:

At least in my experience, research is the only area in which I have near complete control–not in the classroom, where someone else designed the rooms, and someone else determines the number of students and the number of courses we teach.

I agree completely. If I'm researching and writing, it's just me, the sources, and my ideas. Sure, someone else will eventually judge my work, but the process feels like it's within my own control. If I produce good work, it redounds to my credit. If it's crap ... well, there's no one else to blame. (Hmmm ... academic writing is a whole lot like blogging, that way.)

But teaching? There, the lack of control goes far beyond the conditions that Historiann mentions. Most importantly, the process of teaching escapes our control. We can steer, nudge, cajole. We can't totally direct it, however. In fact, I'd suggest that relinquishing control is sometimes necessary for effective teaching.

Teaching women's studies has forced me to wrestle with my inner control freak. (So has parenting, but that would be a whole 'nother post.) Let's just say my control freakery is not vanquished, but most days it's, well, under control. When I was interviewing last spring for my current job, the hiring committee posed this question, which I've been mulling over ever since:

How has your teaching changed now that you're in women's studies instead of history?

The big difference, for me personally at least, is that I've put more emphasis on discussion. In my lectures, I've increasingly taken an interactive, Socratic approach. I'm actually not convinced that such an approach is at all specific to feminist pedagogy. I think it's often just part of good teaching, period. But feminism definitely demands that the instructor repeatedly question the basis of her authority and how she expresses that authority in the classroom. This doesn't imply the professor has no special authority, a point that the occasional student - willfully? - misunderstands, only that she's obligated to draw on her education and experience to make that authority transparent and legitimate.

Teaching in the humanities often feels risky and humbling, anyway, because what you know is always dwarfed by what you don't. This is exacerbated when you throw touchy subjects such as sexual violence and abortion into the mix. I'm not saying that German history (my other areas of expertise) is uncontroversial, but at least there's a basic consensus that the Holocaust was a Bad Thing. There's no such consensus in women's studies.

It's often those out-of-control moments, though, that allow everyone to learn - me included. This past quarter in one of my intro classes, when one of my male freshmen boys insisted that being gay is a "lifestyle choice," other students had to articulate why they disagreed. My role was to make sure no one got hurt - including the guy who sparked the discussion - and otherwise to keep out of the way. This, by the way, is something I learned years ago as a T.A. in grad school, the first time I had to deal with a homophobic comment: other students can be far more effective teachers than me if I stay off my soapbox. That original incident actually occurred in a history course, which underscores the point that voluntarily and mindfully "losing" control can be useful in lots of different settings.

Or take the "cunt" discussion that erupted on the last day of my other intro class this fall. I'd previously talked with my theory class about reclaiming it and other pejorative terms, such as "bitch" or "queer," and we'd had the kind of reflective that made that group a huge pleasure to teach; they were advanced students with a basic commitment to feminist politics. But the intro class is a different beast, full of freshmen and business majors with little previous exposure to feminism. And so I was totally taken by surprise when one of my students - an outspoken Evangelical Christian feminist, and no that's not an oxymoron - wanted to end the quarter by discussing what's so offensive about "cunt" and why women might be able to use the word proudly.

I'm not sure I nudged that particular discussion in a fruitful direction. The other students weren't quite ready for it, and I really was ambushed by it, myself. A few of them were visibly embarrassed. And yet ... I'm willing to bet that at least one of them, sometimes in the hazy future, will think back on that discussion and feel just a bit less shame about her body.

Of course, none of this means you can just walk into a classroom unprepared. Quite the opposite. You need experience, confidence, and a pretty solid knowledge base.

And of course, I'm probably bloviating about the control issue precisely because I'm not prepared for winter quarter, which starts a week from today. :-)

A Tail of Two Tigers

What to do when the kids are burbling with post-Christmas energy and turning the house into a zoo? My little Tiger, in particular, has been bouncing off the walls, acting silly and obviously craving the company of his own kind. Frustratingly, nearly all of his friends are still out of town for the holiday.

And so yesterday we packed these bouncy, giggly kids into the car and drove to Columbus. If you're running a zoo, you might as well take it literally. If my Tiger couldn't be with his friends, at least he could visit his namesakes.


Here's the tiger's best pussycat imitation ...


... and proof he was just faking it.


"I can has cheezburger?" (Or is that a childburger? He was looking straight at us!)


Thanks to weirdly warm temperatures of almost 70 degrees, the flamingos made a rare winter appearance.


I'd never seen the koala awake before yesterday (they sleep 22 hours a day), but apparently he too warmed up enough to scootch slowly, slowly toward his eucalyptus leaves.


The tree kangaroo was nearly as sleepy and slothful as the koala, and just as furry.


This gorilla was looking after a baby who made me very grateful for my own kids' comparatively good behavior. Her little charge was smearing something on the window that looked suspiciously like poop.


The Columbus Zoo does a holiday light show, Wildlights, which drew so many visitors yesterday that traffic was backed up for miles in both directions when we headed home. A photo can only hint at how many lights there were (millions, I think) and how beautiful they are when you see them "by real," as the Tiger would say.


On the drive home, the Tiger fell asleep, all his silliness and wildness now just a shimmer of a dream.

Merry Christmas Redux

The Brits have Boxing Day. The Germans have their Zweiter Weihnachtstag (second Christmas Day).

Here? The dang markets are open and so my poor little sister, who works for a major mutual fund company, has to go to work. That just seems wrong! I love the idea of a second Christmas Day and I think no one should have to go to work unless they provide a life-sustaining service. Heck, I'm in favor of all twelve days, even if that song really gnaws on my nerves.

So here's wishing you a very merry Second Christmas Day. In its honor, I give you two of my favorite holiday things: music (at least those songs that don't make me want to shoot someone) and cut-out cookies.

Thanks to my computer's built-in mike, the sound is pretty reminiscent of a music box. And the beginning sounds pretty wooden, since I was watching to see if the technology was cooperating, which only enhances the music-box effect. Otherwise it's a flawless performance (ha!) of Mel Torme's "The Christmas Song," arranged for piano by Philip Keveren. Listen at your own peril.

I can't claim the cookies are in any better taste. Still, the frosting does taste good (thanks to a generous splash of almond flavoring). There's probably enough dyes in them to preserve us for the next 80 years.

The Tiger, who made this one, hearts Christmas almost as much as he hearts sugar.


What's Christmas without a festive cat?


Or two?


And then there's the traditional Christmas rooster.


This guy might slide through as the Ghost of Christmas Past.


Apparently the Blue Man show has gone to the North Pole.


Here's our homage to Charlie Brown's tree.

I'd close by quoting Mel Torme's last line - "May all your Christmases be white" - but darn it, a thunderstorm just rolled into town. So instead, I'll just wish you love, kindness, joy, peace, compassion - and a glimpse of the holiday spirit where you might not expect it, whether in a torrential rainfall or a purple tree.

The Tragedy of the Elves

Today I have a horrible elf hangover. No, I didn't fall too deep into the egg nog last night. I was up until the wee hours doing the work of the elves.

As always, this wasn't how I'd planned it.

A few weeks back, the Bear mentioned that the one toy that caught his imagination in the Christmas catalogs was a puppet theater. I whispered to his dad that we could maybe build our own; the one in the catalog looked small and flimsy. By "we," I of course meant "he." The Bear didn't bring it up again - until a few days ago, with hope gleaming in his eyes. By then, his dad was under the weather and nothing was going to be built of wood and hardware.

But I started to fret that the Bear might be disappointed to not get the one and only toy he'd requested. So yesterday, I got the brilliant idea (and by "brilliant," I of course mean "harebrained") that I could sew a puppet theater. These Martha Stewart-ish fits strike me only about once a year. They always end in me feeling grateful that home ec was a required course during my long-ago North Dakotan girlhood - and foolish at not having learned my lesson during my last fit of craftiness.

4 p.m.: I'm in Wal-Mart, scouring the fabric department for supplies. (Please don't chide me for patronizing the evil empire; it's the only source for fabric within 40 miles.) Finally I find the only bolt of velvet in stock. Technically it's velveteen, but it'll do. It's lush and black. As for trimmings, I settle on sequined braid, ribbon, and tassels, all in a festive gold.

9:30 p.m.: I sneak the sewing machine out of the upstairs closet and past the kids as their dad gets them ready for bed. I discover that the prongs on the plug are badly warped. I unwarp them just enough to render them pluggable. Mercifully, the machine runs smoothly; I hadn't used it since I'd driven all the way to Zanesville for repairs after I'd broken the entire needle unit while sewing a Halloween costume. It dawns on me how stupid it is to engage in Christmas brinksmanship.

9:35 p.m.: The Bear appears downstairs. I bark at him - rather unmerrily - to get back to bed. I thank my stars that it wasn't the Tiger, who still believes.

11 p.m.: My husband slinks out to his woodshop in the garage, after all, to sand down a dowel to support the bottom of the stage's opening.

12 midnight: We cross the Christmas dateline without any kids appearing again. Ribbon loops grace the top edge of the curtain, an arched opening has taken shape, and I'm about to hem the edges. I realize that the edges are really long - six foot along the floor and nearly five feet vertically. This theater is big enough to accommodate three or four puppeteers.

1 a.m.: Everything is finished except the trim. I reconsider my original plan of using the hot glue gun to attach it. What if it makes the curtain too stiff? What if it melts the sequins? If I wreck the theater, I've got no Plan B. How about if I sew the sequins on with the machine? No, no, no - that's how I broke the damn thing last time. (My machine is no match for the glue on sequined fabric and trims.) I google variations on "attaching sequins" and come up remarkably empty. Oh Martha, Martha, why hast thou forsaken me?

1:15 a.m.: I sigh and start sewing on the sequined braid by hand. It is two yards in length. I learn that black is a truly fiendish color in dim artificial light when your eyes are tired and you've refused to get bifocals despite advancing presbyopia. I take off my glasses and bring the fabric within a few inches of my face.

2:30 a.m.: I go through another round of dithering about how to attach the tassel trim. This time, I use the machine. The metallic gold thread breaks again and again.

3:00 a.m.: I hang the theater on the suspension rod. I can't believe it's finally done. I can't believe it actually worked and - as the Tiger loves to say - "it looks awesome." I'm so tickled, I have to take a picture.


I lay out a trail of animal puppets to lead the kids from the stairs to the theater. Santa's work is done, and not once did I use the seam ripper.

3:30 a.m.: I crawl into bed.

4:00 a.m.: The Bear crawls out of his bed.

6:15 a.m.: The Bear wakes me up to inform me that the motor for one of his toys just overheated.

I promised you a tragedy, so I'll tell you right now that nothing burned down from this incident. But as I groggily assured the Bear we'd figure it out later, I realized that yet again, the kids proved it's impossible to witness their pleasure when they discover Santa's goodies. Unless, of course, you stay up all night. Hey, I nearly did pull an all-nighter, and I still missed that mythical magical moment.

That's the tragedy of the elves, isn't it? Every year, they do Santa's bidding. And then, every year, Santa gets the credit and the elves - unless they're uncommonly early risers - miss the show.

I'm reminded of a story my mom still tells of how my dad once built a kid-sized tool bench for my brother. Santa got the glory. I'd always vowed that I wouldn't do the same; that I would refuse to let Santa be a free rider.

Except for this: The Bear is in on the secret. A few years ago, he dissected all the logical flaws in Santa's cover story. And so after I finally dragged my bones out of bed later this morning, he and I exchanged a few knowing, smiling glances. He knows. I know he knows. That's good enough. That, plus the excited gleam in his eye as he said, "I really love the puppet theater, Mama."

Christmas Wonder through My Little Bear's Eyes

So last night we're driving home from services, reflecting on the message of compassion and joy that we'd just heard. From the back seat, my little Bear asks:

Has the Earth existed for more than a googolplex seconds? Or less?

Let no one tell you that science and wonder are at odds.

(And don't ask me how big a googolplex is. That's what Google is good for.)

This picture of my forsythia in its holiday finery is totally cheating; I took it a few days ago before the snow got washed away. For Christmas Eve, we had warm rains.

Belated Tuesday Recipe: Stuffed Mushrooms with Pine Nuts

Image from Flickr user One Good Bumblebee, used under a Creative Commons license.

Despite my last post, I'm not all gloom and politics, y'know. I've been enjoying some holiday cheer. Last night, the festivities included these stuffed mushrooms. The recipe is slightly adapted from the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook.

The kids loved watching me make them but turned up their nose at actually eating them. (The Bear at least tried them; the Tiger refused even that.) Everyone else was happy to eat the kids' share.

Stuffed Mushrooms with Pine Nuts

18 to 20 large white mushrooms
2 T. lemon juice

Stuffing:
Stems of the mushrooms
2 to 3 garlic cloves (more if it pleases you)
1/2 cup pine nuts (previously roasted is nicest)
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper
Olive oil for sauteeing

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Gently clean the mushrooms. Finely chop the garlic and the stems of the shrooms (I use a food processor), then saute them in olive oil. Remove from the heat and mix in the rest of the stuffing ingredients.

Dip the mushrooms in lemon juice (use just enough to coat the outside, otherwise it can get too tart). Stuff them gently but generously and place them in an oiled baking dish. Bake 20 to 25 minutes.

Bush's Christmas Gift to Women

As any beginning student of the German language learns, the word "gift" is a false cognate. In German, it means "poison." That double meaning seems just about right to describe George Bush's parting gift to women: the new HHS rule that allows health providers to refuse women basic health services.

Jill at Feministe has a great analysis of what's really at stake in this rule. Here's the short version (but you should really go read her whole post):

It’s being framed as about abortion, but here’s the thing: There are existing laws that protect health care workers from performing or assisting with abortion. Under current U.S. law, no one can be forced to partake in an abortion procedure if they have a moral objection.

This is about birth control.

Yep. I have just two things to add, both in connection with the Nativity story.

First, a film I often use in the classroom - Sacred Choices and Abortion: 10 New Things to Think About - starts from the premise that "Mary Had a Choice." And it's true that the Gospels don't say that God impregnated Mary against her will. They don't suggest that the Holy Spirit essentially raped her. God asked Mary if she was willing. She had a choice. She said yes. She could have also said no.

Imagine if Mary instead had to convince an intransigent pharmacist to prescribe Plan B for her after unprotected sex with Joseph? I'm not being flip about this. I sincerely think that the HHS rule doesn't protect the Christian faith; it conflicts with it.

Secondly: Over twenty years ago Margaret Atwood made a poetic plea for all women to have the same reproductive choices as Mary. I would like Bush and his minions to have to write out this poem over and over again until they knew it by heart - until they took it into their hearts. I realize that would take a miracle on par with the virgin birth.

(Warning: This is a poem, but it vividly depicts sexual violence, so it's not for you if you're easily triggered.)

Christmas Carols

Children do not always mean
hope. To some they mean despair.
This woman with her hair cut off
so she could not hang herself
threw herself from a rooftop, thirty
times raped & pregnant by the enemy
who did this to her. This one had her pelvis
broken by hammers so the child
could be extracted. Then she was thrown away,
useless, a ripped sack. This one
punctured herself with kitchen skewers
and bled to death on a greasy
oilcloth table, rather than bear
again and past the limit. There
is a limit, though who knows
when it may come? Nineteenth-century
ditches are littered with small wax corpses
dropped there in terror. A plane
swoops too low over the fox farm
and the mother eats her young. This too
is Nature. Think twice then
before you worship turned furrows, or pay
lip service to some full belly
or other, or single out one girl to play
the magic mother, in blue
& white, up on that pedestal,
perfect & intact, distinct
from those who aren’t. Which means
everyone else. It’s a matter
of food & available blood. If mother-
hood is sacred, put
your money where your mouth is. Only
then can you expect the coming
down to the wrecked & shimmering earch
of that miracle you sing
about, the day
when every child is a holy birth.

From Margaret Atwood, Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986, p. 70.

Atwood holds the copyright on this, of course, and if anyone objects to my reprinting it in its entirety, I will take it right down. She was describing truths from history and nature, but as usual, she was also all too prescient about the future.

Photo by Flickr user andy castro, used under a Creative Commons license.

What I Never Knew about Sex and Anti-Depressants

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

By now, I think it's pretty common knowledge that Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and all the other anti-depressants in that class (SSRIs - selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) can cause serious sexual side effects. They can cause delays in arousal and orgasm. Some people lose the ability to have orgasms altogether. Some men develop erectile dysfunction. Some people lose their libido altogether.

In this week's Boston Globe, journalist Carey Goldberg reports that the scope of SSRI-induced sexual problems is greater than had previously been recognized. Early studies put the number of Prozac users who developed sexual dysfunction at about four percent. Now, Goldberg says, that percentage is being revised dramatically upward:

But more recent studies, in which patients were more likely to be asked about specific sexual side effects and thus more likely to report them, suggest that the ballpark range of those affected by SSRIs is between 30 percent and 50 percent, said researchers including Dr. Richard Balon, a psychiatry professor at Wayne State University who studies the symptoms.

That would translate into millions of affected sex lives among the estimated 1 in 8 American adults who have tried these antidepressants in the past decade or so. Some studies have found the range still higher.

Wow. Fancy that. Doctors hadn't bothered to ask specifically about sexual problems. I guess they were trusting that patients would volunteer the information? And then they just assumed that no news was good news?

This goes way beyond naivete or cluelessness. This is not just another instance of doctors being pathetically repressed when it comes to sex - although it's true that far too many doctors are embarrassed to talk about sex ... and then they wonder why their patients don't raise the issue? This is also more than just the drug companies not wanting to know the complete downside of some of their most profitable products.

This is boneheadedness. Plain and simple. This is the ostrich approach to practicing medicine. Just prescribe a powerful drug, then stick your head in the sand of comfortable ignorance and assume all is well.

However, the wide prevalence of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction is not even the worst news. The most disturbing part of Goldberg's article is this:

[A] handful of recent medical and psychological journal articles document a small number of cases in which sexual problems remain even after a patient goes off the drugs.

This is something I'd never heard. And I'm one of the folks who's been paying attention. I know plenty of people who've taken SSRIs for short periods or long-term, and I'm willing to bet very few of them realize that sexual side effects may be permanent.

Goldberg reports that the scope of this problem is unknown because - surprise, surprise! - it hasn't been studied.

Based on recent case reports of persistent effects, an article earlier this year in the Journal of Sexual Medicine said patients should "be told that in an unknown number of cases, the side effects may not resolve with cessation of the medication." ...

In the past two or three years, scattered published case reports from around the country have described patients whose sexual symptoms failed to resolve after going off antidepressants.

Dr. Robert P. Kauffman, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Texas Tech University, has published accounts of three cases in his practice. "It's probably a small number of men and women," he said, "but I really think it deserves investigation."

Psychologist Audrey Bahrick at the University of Iowa said she became concerned when she observed that several clients whom she followed went off SSRIs and "very, very credibly to me, they did not recover" sexually.

Among their symptoms, she said, were "telltale signs" of SSRI-caused dysfunction, unrelated to the known effects of mental illness. They had "pleasureless orgasms," and "genital anesthesia," in which sex feels no more intense than a handshake. She became particularly concerned about adolescents put on antidepressants, whose sexuality might never have a chance to develop normally.

Bahrick began to explore. She found that post-SSRI sexual effects had never been systematically studied, but she came across a Yahoo group called SSRIsex, a support group for people with "persistent SSRI sexual side effects" that now has more than 1,800 members.

I'm not suggesting that this figure of 1800 sufferers tells us anything about the true scope of the problem. The thing is, no one knows how big the problem may be. And the ostrich approach isn't miraculously going to shed any light on it.

Now, I'm not trying to demonize anti-depressants. I've seen them drag people out of despair. At the risk of sounding overdramatic, I'll even say I've seen them save lives.

I'm just saying we need to have a grip on the full range of these medications' possible side effects and their probability, so that patients can decide, in consultation with their doctors, when the risks just might outweigh the benefits.

And if that's not happening - if patients are tinkering with their brain chemistry without fully informed consent - well, that's just depressing.

Our Most Naked Selves

Gustav Klimt's Danae, posted on Flickr by freeparking, used under a Creative Commons license.

A couple of weeks ago, Cosmo got piled on - deservedly, in my opinion - for a headline on the cover of its December issue that reads "Your Orgasm Face: What He's Thinking When He Sees It." I haven't read the article. I'm loathe to buy the magazine. I was even more loathe to read it while waiting to pay at the supermarket while my little Bear (age 9) reads over my shoulder. So I'll rely on the précis of it from a long discussion thread on it at Open Salon, where someone who actually had seen the article weighed in and noted that it was relatively benign, apparently intended to reassure women that men like their O-face.

That still didn't make the cover okay! Isn't it just typical of Cosmo that whatever the article's content, its headline fans women's insecurities?! I mean, we all know that the lure to buy the magazine isn't desire; it's fear of what our partner might be thinking. And if the article is eventually reassuring, well, then it's responding to a need that the cover headline helped create in the first place.

On one level, of course, Cosmo is tapping into the way women's pleasure is viewed more generally in our culture: as something to be performed for a male partner's benefit and not just enjoyed authentically in its own right. This is only the latest salvo in the objectification and commodification of women's bodies and pleasure. It totally deserves the snark it got from commenter CrossWord at Jezebel:

Please. He is waaaay to busy being grossed out by your pubic hair/shape of your labia to notice your O face.

Heh. If he's got a kebab fixation, he doesn't deserve to notice anything else.

All snark aside, I also think there's a vulnerability in orgasm that's not entirely reducible to social conditioning. And this, I think, is far more interesting than Cosmo's foolishness. Now that I've got that mini-rant out of my system, I'd like to ponder this vulnerability from a more philosophical angle.

For me, at least, there's an element of trust and intimacy in letting a man see me at that moment, naked in every sense, which I hope would be appreciated, enjoyed, and never treated casually or with contempt. Thankfully, I've never been teased about it; I've never felt judged. Appallingly, several of the commenters at Jezebel mention exes who actually did give them a hard time. The right retort to that comes from their fellow Jezzie commenter Swashbuckling: "If a guy can't deal with an orgasm face, he's well within his rights to give up sex." Indeed.

However, in my chequered past I have experienced partners who did a quick disappearing act, which felt too much like disrespect for my vulnerability (and perhaps for their own). In one case, the guy's retreat was literal and almost instantaneous, as he leapt off of me, into his trousers, and out the door. Other times, the guy conspicuously avoided me once everyone's clothes were on again. Either way, I found it hurtful and bewildering. Note that these were situations involving friends where I wasn't pressing for any deeper involvement. I assume that their reactions had more to do with a general fear of intimacy or unresolved inner conflicts about their own boundaries, but that's all conjecture since, after all, they didn't stick around to explain.

Nonetheless. Even in a supposedly low-commitment situation, when I allowed myself to be that naked and my partner's reaction was a rapid retreat, it felt like a breach of trust. And I think this has to do with the vulnerability of having been seen with every defense down, exposed in every way.

Now, I suppose one solution would be to avoid such vulnerability. The only problem? I think that really wonderful sex, whether with a long-term partner or just a partner-for-tonight, requires precisely this vulnerability. In my experience, anyway, there's a deep need to be really seen, for a partner to look at my exposed self, with all its messy desires and pleasures, and to embrace it anyway. No, more: to be embraced because of that wild nakedness.

If this isn't just my personal quirk (and if I really thought it was, I'd shut up), it sheds some light on why "casual sex" is so often not really casual and even less often meaningless. I also imagine that this is one reason why so many people are sexually unsatisfied even where the mechanics of libido, arousal, and orgasm work just fine. It might help explain why some people seek out affairs or prostitutes. (For me, it suggests why I find commercialized sex so unappealing, but I know it's true that many men seek more from a prostitute than just physical release.) It illuminates why solo sex apparently strikes so many of us as a wholly inadequate substitute for coupling with another person.

And so sex is about much more than just pleasure and orgasms, or even love and affection; it's about the need to be seen and embraced in our orgasmic vulnerability.

I don't for a minute believe that long-term relationships hold a monopoly on this sort of connection. It can happen in the shortest-term liaison as long as there's mutual regard and a willingness to take emotional risks. It can occur between friends with benefits as long as the friendship is real and not a mere fiction. It can be absent in long-term relationships, even in otherwise loving and intimate ones. In fact, familiarity may tempt us to think we know our partners fully, to stop seeing them afresh, and to carry this jadedness over into routinized sex that feels "safe" in all the wrong ways.

When this sort of vulnerability is nurtured over the long run, its rewards can be greater, I think. But this requires a willingness to take risks.

Whatever the relationship context, people may tend to default to emotional pseudo-safety in sex because the need for shared, perceived, embraced vulnerability collides with another need: to protect ourselves against possible rejection. Because what if your partner sees you in your naked neediness and is repulsed - or just alarmed at the too-muchness of it? What if your partner beats a quick retreat (see above)?

This pushme-pullyou of vulnerability and fear isn't only about gender, though it has some gendered dimensions. In the Western world, throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, women were held to be more carnal than men: voracious, sexually aggressive, and just plain out of control. Kochanie recently suggested that

By attributing such power and malice to women, men became, by default, the submissive class. A resentfully submissive class.

This puts a new spin on why men put (respectable) women on a pedestal in the nineteenth century - and why, despite its ongoing costs to all of us, so many men persist in claiming women are the less lusty sex. This historical legacy also suggests that men may put more at risk in letting themselves be vulnerable, sexually, because vulnerability can edge into loss of power and privilege, if not necessarily submission per se.

In the wake of this history, men can too easily conflate vulnerability with weakness. They are not the same.

What's more, the blurring of self/other boundaries that can happen when you risk sexual vulnerability challenges the very notion of the autonomous self. Men have more invested than women in the illusion of autonomy and self-containment. The autonomous and controlled self has been fundamental to Western masculinity. It was essential to John Locke's articulation of the modern political subject. Sigmund Freud saw it as the result of successfully navigating the phallic phase. Jean-Paul Sartre asserted the superiority of transcendence over immanence. All of these subjects were deeply gendered as masculine. And while Locke would probably be appalled, you could trace the association of masculinity with self-contained autonomy all the way up to the emergence of the "pick-up artist" and the Seduction Community, which as far as I can tell is largely about using sex to avoid real sexual vulnerability.

However. Vulnerability is scary for everyone, not just for men. I recently mentioned bell hooks' take on romance as consisting of people putting a false front, trying to impress their partner (and maybe trying to fool their very own selves, too). That false front doesn't just get in the way of love, as hooks notes. It also prevents us from letting our vulnerability show, sexually and otherwise. I tend to think that the people who maintain the facade most ferociously are also precisely those who may feel the most vulnerable under the surface - and who might gain the most from dropping the mask.

And this false front interferes mightily with good sex. This is partly because forgetting yourself is no small part of good sex, which is why anything that makes us judge our performance through external eyes is so pernicious. (Yep, I'm talkin' to you again, Cosmo!) It's also because vulnerability itself can be hot.

In the end, though, the imperative to drop the mask is about way more than just heat and friction. It's about an existential need to convince ourselves, if only for one peak moment, that we're not truly alone. That we're not ultimately disconnected and atomized. That we don't have to be self-contained.

If the existentialists exalted the transcendent, autonomous, self-directed man, they also recognized the anxiety (the nausea, as Sartre would have it) that comes with seeing ourselves as wholly alone and wholly free. If Sartre were around to comment on this post, he'd likely see me as either naively romantic or stupidly mired in immanence.

But Simone de Beauvoir (who I'm pretty sure would hate that Cosmo cover) might have thought I'm on the right track. Here's her final word in The Second Sex on sexuality in a world where women and men would be equals (my emphasis):

It is nonsense to assert that revelry, vice, ecstasy, passion, would become impossible if man and woman were equal in concrete matters; the contradictions that put the flesh in opposition to the spirit, the instant to time, the swoon of immanence to the challenge of transcendence, the absolute of pleasure to the nothingness of forgetting, will never be resolved; in sexuality will always be materialised the tension, the anguish, the joy, the frustration, and the triumph of existence. To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other.

It's this mutual recognition that I think we yearn for - and that I believe we deeply, deeply need, women and men alike. It's neither utopian nor romanticized. It can only happen, though, when we drop the mask and pretense and allow ourselves to be seen fully, nakedly, as equals transfigured by desire.

Persistence

It would be too easy to turn these little guys into an inspirational statement. So I won't.


They are just themselves, my tough little pansies, rearing up through the snow and ice yesterday, the 17th of December. Today the snow melted and they're still there, standing a bit taller.


I may see them as embodying persistence. You get to pick whatever metaphor works for you.

Helicopter Parenting Goes off to College

Indulgent mama kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

There's humoring one's children. There's hovering. And then there's outright helicoptering.

So this morning, I get an email from the mother of a student who's enrolled in one of my classes winter quarter. She wants to know the names of the books for the course so she can buy them for him. The email concludes by saying I should "feel free" to contact her via email or phone.

Now, I realize that the money for my students' textbooks normally flows from their parents. That is, if they're lucky enough to have parents who are both solvent and supportive. But geez, there's a world of difference between paying for your kid's books and actually buying them for him.

This is not the first time I've had a mother contact me about book purchases. (And yes, so far it's always been mothers, not fathers.) When I spoke with the bookstore manager this morning, he said there's been a real uptick in mothers buying their kids' books.

What's more, some of the parents pay with their credit card but have the kid actually go to the bookstore. However, according to the manager, they don't trust the kid enough to give him or her the card or the number. The cashier then has to speak to the parents on the phone - usually with lines of other customers snaking out the door - to complete the sale.

Yes, I'm totally judging. As the store manager said: "Who dresses these kids in the morning?"

Of course, it's not just the parents coddling the kids. We professors coddle the parents. After speaking with the bookstore manager this morning, I fired off an email to mother with a list of the books and information on where to buy them. So yes, I'm an enabler.

Then again, with all the budgetary pressures my university faces, we can't afford to piss off parents. So coddle we must.

Tuesday Recipe: Pecan Tassies

Maybe you've had these miniature pecan pies. Unlike with my pecan-maple pie, I haven't contributed anything original to this recipe. The tassies are one of the treats my mom used to make around the holidays, and I could eat them by the handful.

Since we had a snow day today (and another is likely tomorrow - eek!) I figured I might as well spend it baking. And so I made a triple batch of these little guys, 72 in all. My family will probably fight over them anyway.


Pecan Tassies

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 3-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cup all-purpose flour
Filling (see below)

In a small mixer bowl, beat together butter and cream cheese. Stir in flour. Cover and chill about 1 hour or till easy to handle. Cut into 24 pieces. Shape into l-inch balls. Press onto bottom and up sides of ungreased 1 3/4-inch muffin cups. Fill each with 1 rounded teaspoon filling. Bake in a 325 F oven for 20 to 25 minutes or till done. Cool slightly in pan. Remove and cool well. Makes 24.

Pecan Filling:
Beat together 1 egg, 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, 1 tablespoon melted butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans.

You can also substitute other fillings. One I thought was pretty good (though not better than the original) was Cranberry-Nut Filling: Beat together 1 egg, 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, 1 tablespoon melted butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh cranberries and 3 tablespoons chopped walnuts. I'm guessing Craisins might work in lieu of fresh berries.

And finally, here's one I'd like to try if I can ever get out of my delicious pecan rut, Almond-Raspberry Filling: Divide 1/4 cup red raspberry preserves among pastries (about 1/2 teaspoon each). Beat together 1 egg, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1/2 cup almond paste, crumbled. (I would probably substitute ground almonds.) Spoon 1 level teaspoon of the mixture over preserves. Sprinkle with coarsely chopped sliced almonds. If desired, drizzle cooled baked tarts with additional red raspberry preserves.

Not on My Wish List: Hello Kitty Undies

While shopping for my niece online, I came across a product I really, really don't need for Christmas. This would be the perfect present for a frenemy to buy me if they want to make sure my partner keeps a chaste distance from me in the year 2009.

Never mind that I'm a cat lover. Hello Kitty is not a cat; she is a marketing juggernaut with only a passing resemblance to actual felines. I think she's freaky looking, with those blank, fixed eyes and that pink bow that looks like it's surgically attached to her head.

As if the front view weren't alarming enough, the panties feature Hello Kitty peering up from one butt cheek.
On a more serious note, I think this product creeps me out because it so industriously blurs the line between childhood and adult sexuality. I feel similarly about schoolgirl fetishes, which I think eroticize immature girls, even if it's a fifty-year-old woman sexing herself up in knee socks and a plaid skirt. Making adult women "sexy" in a child's costume is just the reverse of turning little girls into sex objects. (Remember those Hooters shirts for toddler girls?)

I'm generally pretty non-judgmental about people's kinks. Most of 'em don't bother me even if they don't do anything for me. But I see the eroticization of fake little-girliness as in a wholly different category than, say, a fursuit fetish. (Go google that yourself if you really must know.)

Farewell to Socks the Cat

This picture of Socks in his salad - um, catnip - days is ubiquitous on the web, but I swiped it from Chaos in the House of Cat.

I think it probably dates me that I remember when Socks the Cat moved into the White House. Back then, he'd just outgrown kittenhood. Now comes the sad news that Socks is sick with cancer and not expected to live much longer.

He apparently enjoyed good health through last spring, when U.S. News reported that he was "still purring" at age 18. He had a thyroid condition that caused his fur to look a bit mangy, but otherwise he was okay. He must be 19 now. That's a pretty good run for a cat.

I'm sad about this. It's not just Socks; I rage, rage against death no matter where it strikes. Sure, it's the circle of life and all that, but I don't have to like it. Then, too, I'm always saddened when a beloved animal dies, even if it wasn't my beloved animal.

But Socks was also a symbol of an era, wasn't he? It was always clear that Bill Clinton had more of a connection with their dog, Buddy. I honestly couldn't picture him appreciating a cat's less-obsequious affections. Still, Socks brought a dose of feline grace into an administration that had lots of graceless moments.

What I really don't understand: Why, upon leaving the White House, did the Clintons hand Socks off to Clinton's former secretary, Betty Currie? I could not do that with a beloved animal. I left GK with my mom for some months when I first headed off to Germany, but once I had a stable living situation I dragged her across the pond. Maybe the Clintons felt they traveled too much and once Chelsea was grown, Socks wouldn't have a steady companion. Both Bill and Hillary were allergic (though this was oddly not an issue during their White House years). Socks and the Clinton's dog, Buddy, allegedly clashed. But still! (I guess this is one of the very few things I agree with Caitlin Flanagan on. Eek.)

Anyway, it sounds as though Betty Currie has given Socks loads of love. Last spring, Southern Maryland Newspapers Online published a feature that portrayed them as besotted with each other:

She is his biggest fan.

And the feeling appears to be mutual.

Socks lies on the back deck of the Currie home and nuzzles Currie’s toes with his nose and face as she grooms him to prepare him for photos. Her attention is one of the only things that has roused him from his determination to nap. ...

He’s even won the somewhat grudging affection of [her husband] Bob Currie, who says he’s not really a fan of cats.

‘‘He really has a nice personality,” Bob said. ‘‘He’s really smart.”

Like both Hillary and Bill Clinton, Bob is allergic to cats. For Bob, too much exposure to cats causes ‘‘sneezing, coughing, his eyes to get swollen,” he said, especially when Socks gets up on the Curries’ bed and curls up on one of Bob’s shirts, just for instance.

The cat ‘‘lives better than I do,” Bob says as he looks down at Socks lying on his shirt, not seeming to mind that much.

Maybe Socks ended up right where he needed to be after his retirement from politics. Here's wishing him - and the Curries - peace and comfort.

Orgasmic Childbirth - Unicorn, Guilt Trip, or Taboo?

Now that I've been nominated for the honor of Hottest Mommy Blogger, I guess I have to live up to it by promiscuously mixing sex and maternity in a single post.

At the New York Times Motherlode blog, Lisa Belkin unleashed a storm of debate a few days ago by raising the question of whether childbirth can result in an orgasm. Belkin described a documentary entitled "Orgasmic Birth" that will air on ABC's 20/20 on January 2. (Correction 12/15/08: The 20/20 episode will discuss the topic but only show excerpts from the actual film.) While over the years a small number of women have reported experiencing orgasm during labor, it's quite uncommon. According to its director, doula and childbirth educator Debra Pascali-Bonaro, the film's intent is not to imply that orgasm during childbirth is attainable for all women; rather, she says:

"I hope women watching and men watching don't feel that what we're saying is, every woman should have an orgasmic birth," she said. "Our message is that women can journey through labor and birth in all different ways. And there are a lot more options out there, to make this a positive and pleasurable experience."
(ABC's entire promotional summary is here.)

Fair enough. But why, then, choose such a misleading title? Okay, ABC wants to drive ratings. Pascali-Bonaro wants people to watch her film. But dang it, the title is sure to generate more heat than light. (Oops - no pun intended.)

That's not to suggest orgasmic birth is entirely fictional, even if it is vanishingly rare. More than one commenter on Belkin's blurb reports having experienced an orgasm during birth.

No, it is not ridiculous, because some of us actually experienced it, but were too embarrassed to mention it.

It happened during both of my deliveries, and it’s kind of a relief to read this and know that it has happened to others - I didn’t even tell my husband, because it sounded so weird, and I was afraid it would make him feel really insecure!

— Nell

Nonetheless, orgasmic birth also appears to be very infrequent indeed. It's also not clear that what these women describe as "orgasm" is the same sensation they'd experience during sex. Of course there are different flavors of orgasms, even as experienced by the same woman at different times. But a couple of the descriptions given by those who've been there make me skeptical that this is actually "orgasm" as opposed to some other sort of pleasurable peak experience:

Yes, actually it’s true. I had that experience, and I sure wasn’t expecting it. It wasn’t like sex at all, it was more like surfing the best wave ever.

— Catherine

Well, I guess I’m in the minority here, but the birth of my first child was actually an orgasmic experience…So much so that the first thing I said to my midwife after I could see straight was “I want to do that again! Right now!”…What I experienced was not identical to an orgasm during sex, but it was intensely pleasurable and memorable enough that I couldn’t wait to go into labor with my second baby… — rebecca

Even Tamra Larter, the woman whose birth is shown in the film, qualifies her experience in a follow-up post by Belkin:

“I never claimed to have a pain-free birth,” she wrote, “but laboring with my daughter was awesome and for the most part felt really good.” The actual “orgasmic experience” did not feel like the climax of sex, she says, but rather “sensations which were something different than sex, but similar enough I feel O.K. using the word orgasmic. It was a wonderful feeling.”

If some mild skepticism is warranted about the nature of the experience, there are stronger grounds to worry that a few women's capacity for pleasure will get blown into another benchmark for all women's "performance" in labor, much as some women's (reasonable) preference for drug-free childbirth has too often been treated as a modern norm for the Good Mother. Concerned that this film will raise unrealistic expectations, one midwife writes:

As a Certified Nurse Midwife who has worked with thousands of women during their births, I can safely say I have never seen a single one come close to an orgasmic experience. Having said that, I work in a busy hospital, not in peoples homes. Most couples do not “mak[e] out” in the hospital. I could see an orgasm as a remote possibility if someone were deeply relaxed in the comfort of their own home.

— MSW

The thing is, most of us aren't that relaxed. Sure, tension exacerbates pain, but that doesn't mean the pain itself is illusory. The ABC promo for the documentary and its director's comments imply that pain in childbirth is avoidable. It's true that a lucky few women do actually experience a pain-free, unmedicated labor.

I certainly did not experience an orgasm with either birth, but I was quite surprised to find that the 2nd stage of labor (pushing the baby out), did not hurt at all (in contrast to 1st stage, which was like a hellish version of menstrual cramps). At one point, the midwife asked me to “push into the pain.” After a few repetitions of this instruction, I told her that I had NO PAIN. I’m quite prepared to believe that the experience of childbirth differs greatly from woman to woman, and from labor to labor; and I’m sure there may be a luckly few who even experience orgasm in 2nd stage labor.

— Laurel

While pain-free birth is highly unusual (though not as exceptional as orgasmic birth), it does exist, and anyway I would never presume to tell another woman what she did or didn't experience. I don't know what causes painless birth, but I can think of a couple of possible explanations. Maybe it's natural endorphins. Maybe just-right pressure on pelvic nerves cuts off sensations. Maybe mind triumphs over matter.

I do know that given the rarity of painless birth, the rest of us shouldn't be made to feel like it ought to be within everyone's reach.

One Motherlode commenter implies that if you do feel pain, it's because you're, well, a tight-ass. Or too tight somewhere, anyway.

Of course it [orgasmic birth] makes sense. Women’s bodies have been birthing babies for eons. When they are truly open, and energy is flowing, anything can be ecstatic, orgasmic. Same nerves, just have to be stimulated in a system that is open. There can be uterine contractions, but if the emotions are not contracted, of course it can be orgasmic. Proof is in the example given, and in the case of many.

— Robbie

Um, yeah. Those nerves need to be stimulated, all right. How they're stimulated matters very much. Most women have fairly specific preferences about how they like to be touched even under ordinary sexual circumstances. Most of us don't prefer levels pressure otherwise achieved only by pneumatic tools.

An advocate of hypnobirth who believes labor pain is merely a self-fulfilling prophecy chides us for forgetting our animal roots:

Watch animals in the wild who aren’t taught what to expect. They don’t cry out in pain. For others its the most painful thing they ever experience. I believe this is mostly due to that expectation combined with the way many hospitals pressure one to push and to see the whole experience as medical and anxiety producing.

— Erika

Well, wild animals don't generally walk on their hind legs, which necessitates a smaller pelvic outlet. They also don't spawn absurdly big-brained progeny. If you want to appeal to nature, let's be honest about our natural differences from other beasts. We're operating with a system with very narrow tolerances and no real clearance whatsoever. It's a tight fit, and sometimes the fit is simply too tight.

That's why for most of us, childbirth really does hurt like a sonofabitch. We're not deluded, uptight, or removed from nature. We're just responding to pressure on nerves that I'd be tempted to call inhuman if it weren't so characteristically human. Some Motherlode commenters compare labor pain to a root canal without anesthesia. Others just said it was excruciating. I sort of related to this description:

My first birth experience I’d liken to be turned completely inside out and then having a very large tractor run over me back and forth for 30 hours.

— Jenna

In my own experience, even the pain of early labor had nothing to do with mere cramps, whether a "hellish version" or not. When I had my first child, I had debilitating back pain within the first half hour of labor. It didn't feel like cramps. It didn't feel like the regular, five-minute-apart pains that all the books described. It was a wall of continuous pain.

I was one of the best-educated first-time mothers I've ever known, and yet, I had only one thought as I crouched on all fours on the bare linoleum of my apartment's hallway at 4 a.m. and waited for my husband to haul his butt out of bed: I am clearly dying. There was no point in timing contractions, because either I was in labor or I was in mortal danger. Either way, the hospital sounded like a brilliant idea.

Then there was the nausea. More surprisingly, there was the uncontrollable chills and shaking. By the way, that's another experience neglected by the What to Expect squad: the not-uncommon uncontrollable trembling that can occur during labor, and not just during transition. There's a world of difference between this and shuddering in ecstasy.

The other main objection to this documentary that Motherlode readers express is disgust at the idea that the birth of a baby could be a sexual experience (and not just the result of our sexuality). This reaction doesn't come just from defenders of the medical model of childbirth. Even some commenters who chose "natural" (that is, unmedicated) birth are repelled by the idea of orgasmic birth:

I’ve given birth three times. One in hospital, one in birthing center, and one at home. All were so painful I lost my voice. Orgasm during child birth seems gross and weird. Not to mention the midwife/ doctor/ nurse/ whatever around while you are giving birth and who would want to have an orgasmic birth with people watching you. Giving birth is hard enough, let along with people around watching you and then expecting you to orgasm while you are in the most insane pain anyone could possibly imagine. How intrusive and bizarre. I can’t even get my mind around it.

— Jennifer

Everything else aside, I feel like it’s going to be really awkward down the road when Baby Larter reads in The New York Times that he entered the world to his parents “kissing and caressing,” and he may have actually given his mother an orgasm. On camera.

— Ben A

It seems almost self-evident that the "gross" response is rooted in our incest taboos. People are icked out at the idea that you could get an orgasm from your very own baby. I suppose it might sound like it carries a whiff of pedophilia too.

Of course, this is nonsense. It's not as though women set out to have a baby because they think it'll be a sexual thrill to push it out. (Well, at least now they don't. Let's see what happens after this documentary airs!) Nor do women forgo pain relief in hopes of an orgasm. Those who do experience sensations they label "orgasmic" actually sometimes express confusion about it (like the first woman I quoted, who wondered if telling her husband about it would make him feel insecure).

More commonly, women experience sexual pleasure and sometimes even orgasm while breastfeeding. We don't talk about this, either, because it feels vaguely incestuous. Yet it's a widespread enough experience that taboos and silence only condemn women to feeling shame.

But this taboo is the real shame. It alienates women from their bodies, makes them feel freakish, and tries to shore up an untenable line between our experiences as parents and our existence as embodied creatures. That's a conversation I'd love to see this documentary inspire: how can our culture move beyond its anxieties about parents as sexual creatures? Unfortunately, the chance of that happening is about as likely as, well, a woman actually having an orgasm in childbirth.

Update 12/15/08, 1 p.m.: Laura Shanley, a proponent of "unassisted childbirth" who appears in the 20/20 show, has contributed her perspective in comments, so be sure to check them out. Also, to see a trailer for the documentary, go to its website, Orgasmicbirth.com. If you're at work, make sure your computer's sound is muted or pop on your headphones, because the trailer's soundtrack is pretty much what the title implies.

Also, if the film's publicity is not meant to play up its potential sensationalism, then it's doing something wrong. From its website:

Joyous, sensuous and revolutionary, Orgasmic Birth brings the ultimate challenge to our cultural myths by inviting viewers to see the emotional, spiritual, and physical heights attainable through birth. Witness the passion as birth is revealed as an integral part of woman's sexuality and a neglected human right. With commentary by Christiane Northrup, MD, and midwives Ina May Gaskin, Elizabeth Davis and other experts in the field . . . and stunning moments of women in the ecstatic release of childbirth.

It's hard not to read this as a blurb for soft-core erotica. Nothing wrong with erotica, mind you, but this way of framing the film won't focus attention on the larger issues of home birth, support for women, etc. that are supposedly the film's broader agenda.

Hot Mama Blogger? Moi??

So awhile back, when I was bloviating on how Sarah Palin's looks were one of the few things I did not hold against her, I mentioned I could be magnanimous because when I was a senior in high school, my friends nominated me for "basketball homecoming queen." I was not the type of girl who won such things. I wasn't a beauty pageant girl, I wasn't dating any athletes (or anyone else, really), I wasn't Popular, and in fact I was kind of an anti-candidate. My friends and I tended to be ironic and sarcastic about such things. But I had a bunch of loyal friends, and I think I came in second as a result.

Well, I've been nominated for another popularity contest - for the first time in nearly 30 years! - and this time, the nomination is quite sincere. And so I'm sincerely touched and grateful that Kochanie nominated me for "Hottest Mommy Blogger" in the Blogger's Choice Awards. Thanks, Kochanie! (She also put me up for "Best Political Blog," but I think the mommy category is probably more apt. There's not a feminism category, which is where this blog would be most at home.)

I don't have a snowball's chance of winning (the leading blog already has 100 votes) but I'm hoping my friends and readers will go cast a vote for me anyway, lest I be embarrassed that the only two votes have come from my kind benefactor, Kochanie, and (shudder) myself. Worse yet, since voting isn't by secret ballot, anyone who visits my page will see exactly who cast those two votes!

Of course, if you honestly think I am a hot mama, I'll gratefully take that, too. Either way, if you're so inclined, just click the little box below or follow this link. The site requires a brief registration. Also, you may see a notice that "2008 voting has closed." This is totally deceptive. It refers to last year's awards. Ignore it.



While you're there, you might also cast a vote for Kochanie's blogging partner, figleaf, who writes some of the smartest analysis of feminism, sex, and relationships that you'll find on the intertubes. He's up for Hottest Daddy Blogger (and he really is a devoted work-at-home dad, though his readers see more of his hot side). He would truly deserve it; he's a brilliant blogger and a good-hearted human being. Go here to visit his blog. Click here to vote for him.

In the animal category, I Can Has Cheezburger is leading; you know how Ceiling Cat would like you to vote, don't you? Here's where you can do it.

Boy, I'm still in GOTV mode, aren't I? Someone needs to deprogram me.

My name is Sungold, and I approved this message.

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

Of Housecats and Cat-houses

No, not that kind of cat-house. I mean home design that's properly feline-accessible.

Back in Grey Kitty's prime, when I first moved in with my boyfriend in Berlin (the same guy who's now my husband), we slept in a loft bed in a one-room apartment. Well, two out of three of us did. GK was initially banned from the bed. But one day, in a blur of spinning, clutching paws, she scrambled gracelessly up the ladder and glared down at us defiantly. GK specialized in glaring. She did it very, very well.

My mate followed her up the ladder and pitched her kindly but firmly out of bed.

GK climbed up again. And again. And again. Until finally she wore down the humans and occupied her rightful place between the two pillows.

In the long run, this was probably incredibly stupid, because my partner developed a serious cat allergy and we are now catless. It's possible that he could have avoided the allergy - or at least the resultant asthma - had she slept elsewhere. Be that as it may, for as long as we lived in that little studio, she stayed ensconced in that bed.

We all stayed in that apartment so long, in fact, that GK started to grow old. She still clambered up the ladder as clumsily and gamely as ever. But she never did learn how to climb down again. She was always climbing-impaired from kittenhood onward, though that's a whole 'nother story. Her egress was to leap - plunk! - onto the backrest of a couch. As her catty knees grew sensitive, it obviously hurt her to make the four-foot jump.

My husband (who by then was sniffling and wheezing like crazy) responded by building her a ramp from the bed onto the couch.

GK had it good, all right. And yet, if she'd seen this, she'd have felt entirely neglected.

From I Can Has Cheezburger? The original source for the photo is The Cat's House.

Boom Times, North Dakota Style

Photo of North Dakota sky at sunset by Flickr user Pete Baer, used under a Creative Commons license.

I just loved last weekend's New York Times article on North Dakota's so-far resilient economy.

As the rest of the nation sinks into a 12th grim month of recession, this state, at least up until now, has been quietly reveling in a picture so different that it might well be on another planet.

The number of new cars sold statewide was 27 percent higher this year than last, state records through November showed. North Dakota’s foreclosure rate was minuscule, among the lowest in the country. Many homes have still been gaining modestly in value, and, here in Fargo, construction workers can be found on any given day hammering away on a new downtown condominium complex, complete with a $540,000 penthouse (still unsold, but with a steady stream of lookers).

While dozens of states, including neighboring ones, have desperately begun raising fees, firing workers, shuttering tourist attractions and even abolishing holiday displays to overcome gaping deficits, lawmakers this week in Bismarck, the capital, were contemplating what to do with a $1.2 billion budget surplus.

And as some states’ unemployment rates stretched perilously close to the double digits in the fall, North Dakota’s was 3.4 percent, among the lowest in the country.

North Dakota’s cheery circumstance — which economic analysts are quick to warn is showing clear signs that it, too, may be in jeopardy — can be explained by an odd collection of factors: a recent surge in oil production that catapulted the state to fifth-largest producer in the nation; a mostly strong year for farmers (agriculture is the state’s biggest business); and a conservative, steady, never-fancy culture that has nurtured fewer sudden booms of wealth like those seen elsewhere (“Our banks don’t do those goofy loans,” Mr. Theel said) and also fewer tumultuous slumps.

(More here.)

North Dakota's secret? Its people just are not prone to excess. In fact, any excess is liable to freeze up in the winter and fall off.

If anything, North Dakotans can be excessive in their rejection of excess. I say this as an expat who's still got a streak of this. Also, you grow up eating hotdish, and something happens to your DNA to keep you from ever getting terribly impressed with yourself. Certainly it's hard to imagine North Dakotans cockily trading toxic mortgage securities or even getting irrationally exuberant.

So if North Dakota is now experiencing a relative boom - or at least seems to be cushioned from the worst of the recession - it's due primarily to a culture that's so far removed from Wall Street, it might as well be another country altogether.

I don't want to romanticize my birthplace. It does get really, really cold. And it's not that North Dakota is immune from economic woes. The farm crisis of the 1980s was pretty devastating.

But I do wonder if the rest of this country might take a page from North Dakotan commonsense and humility, dial down our expectations, and put community over commerce.

Oh, and we might all learn to wave laconically at every vehicle we pass while you're driving down two-lane country roads. You do this by barely lifting a finger or two off the steering wheel, whether you know the other drivers or not. (No, not that finger, remember this is North Dakota!) It's a small thing, yes, but I think it's one of many influences making it unlikely that people will write "those goofy loans."

Pistol-Packin' Professoriate

"The Pink Mafia," photo by Flickr user Dunechaser, used under a Creative Commons license. Gotta love how the Lego people grin dementedly while wielding their guns.

This came via the faculty email list a couple of weeks ago, thanks to an moment of impressively poor judgment on the part of the colleague who forwarded it. You've surely heard of penis spam; well, this was pistol spam. (And yes, sometimes a pistol is just a pistol.)

I spoke to you on the phone about a week ago about hosting a seminar for faculty members to teach them the basics of firearm safety and to have them actually handle a firearm at a private range just out side of Athens. I am an NRA certified pistol instructor and personal protection in the home instructor. If you need to see proof of my credentials I can bring them by you office. I will attach a flier that you can send around to other faculty and let them know what is happening. The reason for the class is basic firearm safety and knowledge. No prior experience will be necessary for anyone to take part in the class and I will not charge anything for the class except the price of the ammunition they will be shooting. For insurance reasons I have to have them shoot factory ammunition as apposed to reloaded ammunition that is assembled at home.

At the time, I just thought this was snark-worthy. I tried to picture me and my equally nice-and-nerdy colleagues out on the shooting range. The scene was an unholy mix of camouflage and tweed. I tried to imagine myself as Agent Scully in the X-Files, mixing braininess and a killer aim. It was no good. My imagination was failing me.

But here's where the humor ends. Now, I'm wondering if this email was not just a poor student trying to recruit customers with a free sample, but instead the opening salvo in an arms race. And I don't mean that metaphorically. At Alternet, Lilian Segura describes how gun-rights groups are lobbying for students to bear arms:

A flurry of news stories earlier this year reported a pioneering solution proposed to the rash of recent campus shootings: instead of redoubling efforts to enforce the whole "gun-free school zone" thing -- a quaint little notion from, like the 1980s -- why not change the rules to let students bring more guns onto college campuses?

A few answers leapt to mind -- binge drinking, drug use, close living quarters in a high-pressure environment -- but for awhile, it seemed like the idea was catching on. In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007, in which 32 people were killed, several states began considering legislation to expand the right to carry a concealed weapon onto college campuses.

Fortunately, as Segura reports, these concealed-carry laws have failed in fifteen states, including some pretty gun-friendly ones: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington. Utah is alone in having such a law. Ohio is considering one, and while my adopted state does plenty of goofy things, I can't imagine it'll allow guns on campus.

But I also don't suppose that'll be the end of the story. Segura says that a new group called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus claims 35,000 members. I'm wondering, now, if our local student offering free shooting lessons was one of them.

I'm no absolutist on guns. I come from a family of hunters and while I personally don't hanker to shoot critters, I won't tell others they should't. (It sure beats factory farming.) I think most people are responsible gun owners, although there was that time my dad shot a hole in the floor of his office ...

But on campus? As a women's studies professor, I didn't immediately connect the student concealed-carry movement with the Virginia Tech massacre (though that's probably most people's main association). My first thought was: We don't need another Montreal Massacre. In that attack at Montreal's École Polytechnique, fourteen people were killed and another fourteen injured in the name of "fighting feminism." Just last week was its nineteenth anniversary. If there were ever a reprise, a women's studies classroom would be an awfully convenient target.

Update December 10, 10:00 p.m.: In comments, Hesperia emphasizes that fourteen women - engineering students - were shot and killed. For the sake of readers who don't remember that event, I should have made that clear. They were targeted specifically because of the shooter's hatred of women in general and feminists in particular. I'm not at all sure that there's any basis for assuming all women engineers are also feminists, but hey, if you're a misogynist embarking on a hate crime, logic is probably not your strong suit. Similarly, most students in a women's studies class typically don't identify as feminists, but symbolically that might not matter to a potential attacker.

When You're Up to Your Neck in Effluvia ...

I need some cheering up after yet another sewage backup (the fourth in a year, the second in ten days). Cleaning up puke and sewage within a six-hour span? What did I do to provoke such karma?!?

The city workers who came out tonight promised to dig up the street in search of the problem, and they went so far as to spray-paint a big fat X where the pavement will be breached. I'm hopeful that they'll find the problem. In the meantime, the water has receded and the house reeks blessedly of bleach. I'd trade in for a new epidermis if possible, after that cleaning job, but I'll settle for smelling like a mix of mango body wash and Chanel No. 5. Oh, and the methane appears to have blasted my sinuses clear. I wouldn't recommend it as a remedy; try saline first.

Anyway, back to cheering up. While home sick from school this week, my kids have been enjoying DVDs of the old Muppet Show. This was their new favorite today: a wacky vegetable chorus from an episode hosted by (a now very young) Steve Martin:

Laboring by the Insurance Clock

I'm feeling taciturn and mildly mopey today because I have a nasty sinus headache and the Tiger (who has tonsillitis) just yakked up his lunch. So, from the department of "it could be way worse" comes this news about how the recession is stranding people without health care. The New York Times (via Broadsheet) reports that when the Archway cookie factory in Ashland, Ohio (yes, Ohio again!) went belly-up two months ago, it left its employees stuck without health insurance.

While no one has died (yet) as a result, the company's irresponsibility made it shockingly hard for one baby to find its way into the world, as the Times recounts:

[Starla] Darling, who was pregnant when her insurance ran out, worked at Archway for eight years, and her father, Franklin J. Phillips, worked there for 24 years.

“When I heard that I was losing my insurance,” she said, “I was scared. I remember that the bill for my son’s delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself.”

So Ms. Darling asked her midwife to induce labor two days before her health insurance expired.

“I was determined that we were getting this baby out, and it was going to be paid for,” said Ms. Darling, who was interviewed at her home here as she cradled the infant in her arms.

As it turned out, the insurance company denied her claim, leaving Ms. Darling with more than $17,000 in medical bills.

I couldn't fathom how Starla Darling could be left stranded with those bills if she was still insured. It turns out the company misinformed her - or to put it bluntly, Archway lied. The Mansfield News Journal connects the dots:

On Oct. 4, [Darling] received a certified letter stating that, as of two days from then, she would no longer have a job or health insurance.

Darling says she asked and doctors agreed induce labor the next day, before the insurance expired Oct. 6.

After seven hours, with doctors about to send her home because the effort to induce was not taking, she began hemorrhaging.

"My placenta tore away from the wall and both the baby and I were literally inches away from death," she said. "We were rushed into emergency C-section, with both of us hanging tight to our lives."

Darling said doctors had to cut her open with no time to administer pain medications. Afterward, she learned her health insurance had already expired, despite the certified letter. Archway had stopped paying its part for employee health insurance months prior.

"Apparently, employees were paying their share of health insurance, but it has been reported that the company had not been paying since June," Meghan Dubyak, a spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, told the News Journal on Friday.

Ugh. It's one thing for a company to slide into bankruptcy; it's quite another to lie to your employees. Also, can I just note that the credit crunch only began in September, not June? Archway had a problem for a good long time before credit froze up. It obviously had other mismanagement issues.

Former Archway employees are really stuck. Most can't afford COBRA coverage anyway on their meager unemployment benefits. But even if they could, their former employer's actions have rendered them ineligible. The Wall Street Journal gives more detail (via Michael Panzner at Daily Markets):

Archway was self-insured — and when it filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 6, there wasn’t enough money in its coffers to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of outstanding health-care claims along with all its other debts.

Workers weren’t eligible for Cobra, a federal act that gives certain laid-off employees the right to temporarily continue health-care coverage at group rates. That’s because Cobra doesn’t apply when a company terminates its insurance plan.

This story is disgusting from start to finish. About the only thing Archway is not culpable for is the hemorrhage Darling experienced. To the best of my knowledge, induction of labor is not a particular risk factor for placental abruption.

Otherwise, Darling's story and those of her co-workers (follow the links above for those other stories) demonstrate why health insurance desperately needs to be de-coupled from employment. Insurance costs are bleeding employers (and indirectly, their employees, whose wages are depressed when premiums rise). As Archway's "ethics" show, a few employers can't be trusted to make their employees' health a priority in hard times. Most perniciously, as the recession/depression deepens, the number of uninsured is going to skyrocket.

The Facebook Creeper

Voyeur kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Full disclosure: I am a Facebook creeper. Or so says one of my students from last quarter.

She and I get along great, so I have reason to think she meant this in the friendliest possible way. Still she has a point.

When she said this, we were discussing Facebook in class. I was pontificating about how people shouldn't Do Stupid Things on Facebook. (And Facebook embarrassment is not just for students anymore: Salon had a hilarious article a few weeks back on how "adults" manage to mortify themselves by not understanding how un-private Facebook actually is.)

So I told my students that I joined Facebook to see what they're doing on it. No, I'm not a voyeur. I wasn't particularly focused on individuals' behavior. But I did want to learn about how they were collectively using what was then a pretty new medium, back in spring 2007. I was curious about what it meant for gender, identities, and human interactions.

Ironically, that made me an "early adopter" of Facebook, at least among my old-fart friends. (My students, of course, were already all on it.) I think the last time I was an early adopter of anything was in the mid-1980s, when I helped my sister buy a 128k Macintosh (the original model) and then a 512k "enhanced" Mac for myself.

Anyway, what I learned just by browsing groups (not by searching for specific students) was pretty illuminating. A few of my young female students were part of a group dedicated to chatting about anal sex. While I (obviously) have no problem with that, it's also not information I'd suggest sharing with future employers. Then there was the quiet young gentleman who sat in the front row of my Intro to Women's Studies class, got good grades, and belonged to a group called something like "We f*ck bitches without a condom." (I couldn't find the group anymore when I searched for it just now, more's the pity.)

But that was back when Facebook was the playground of university students and employees. Now it's opened up to the world. As the all other oldsters sign up, I've enjoyed reconnecting (however superficially) with people I remember very fondly from my distant past. I could have hundreds of friends if I weren't so lackadaisical about it, as my college and grad friends are signing on in droves.

And so are the creepers. The real ones, not the fake ones like me. I got my very first one last week when this message arrived in my Facebook inbox:

Hi Pretty,how are You doing Over there..i am very Impressed with your Profile and your personalilty of being Goofy is very Attractive to me, I will like to know You More better and Lets see where Things is Going to lead,Because I believe that there is a Reason why we are Both on this Dating site...If You don't Mind my IM is [creep-o-rama] at yahoo, you can add me into Your yahoo list so that we can know ourself better......nice pics and over ur profile...see u soon...

Now, I really was creeped out by this, because my privacy settings are pretty tight. Only "friends" can see my profile, which lists me - twice! - as married. So I assume my creeper has some way of spamming people's mailboxes en masse. In retribution, I was very very tempted to include the link to his page; anyone who wants it can email me, but I'm not that mean. Also I don't want a trail leading back to me, even under my Sungold nom de blog.

My creeper still got me to check out my own profile to see if I'd described myself as having a "goofy" personality. It's not out of the question that I'd write that. Also, "Pretty" is close enough to one variation of my real-life name that I did a serious double-take.

On the other hand, I sort of like the capitalization of "You," as if I were a goddess. I'm sure a lot of gals will dig his writing style. It reminds me of the "Hot Russian Lady Looking for True Love" school of spam, except tailored toward us poor lonely women who've been sadly underserved by spammers - until now.

The dude claims to have gotten a grad degree from Stanford. Ya think?

In all seriousness, it's probably good that this little wake-up call got me to doublecheck my privacy settings. If you've barred everyone except friends and family from peeking at your stuff, it's unlikely that a creeper is after you, personally. That's why I'm not worried about this douche, in the end. But it's probably also good to be reminded that everything we do online can and will come back to bite us - even if we're not looking for a job in the Obama Administration.

The Tangled Web of Gestational Surrogacy

Historiann drew my attention to a fascinating essay in last weekend's New York Times Magazine by Alex Kuczynski, "Her Body, My Baby, on the experience and economics of becoming a mother via surrogacy. Historiann rightly raises a bunch of smart questions about how socioeconomic disadvantage encourages women to "altruistically" carry another woman's child:

This family may be an isolated example, but, I wonder: are working-class and middle-class women and girls being driven to sell reproductive services in order to get themselves and their children through college? If so, what does it say about what we value in women–their brains or their bodies? Are women who use the latter to improve the former with the goal of finding work that doesn’t involve their reproductive organs being canny, or are they being used?

(Read the rest of Historiann's post for more.)

Historiann locates a lot of unconscious class-based elitism in Kuczynski's essay, and I don't think she's wrong. But I think Kuczynski is equally driven by her unconscious embrace of the ideology of good mothers/bad mothers and her puzzlement at where she and her surrogate, Cathy, fit into it. She's also nagivating a fraught line between commerce and intimacy. Of course, these tensions are profoundly rooted in social class, too, but they can't be reduced to elitism. Here's the money paragraph:

WHEN WE CAME ACROSS Cathy’s application, we saw that she was by far the most coherent and intelligent of the group. She wrote that she was happily married with three children. Her answers were not handwritten in the tiny allotted spaces; she had downloaded the original questionnaire and typed her responses at thoughtful length. Her attention to detail was heartening. And her computer-generated essay indicated, among other things, a certain level of competence. This gleaned morsel of information made me glad: she must live in a house with a computer and know how to use it.

Historiann sees a patronizing "splendid isolation" here, and I agree. It's not quite on a par with Bush 41's awe at supermarket scanners, but yeah, Kuczynski's apparent surprise that Cathy lives in a house with a computer reflects the limits of a life spent shuttling between her Idaho vacation home and their little nest in Southhampton. It's hard not to see Kuczynski as a poor little rich girl who needs to brush shoulders with the hoi polloi more often.

But I think this paragraph - much as it made me cringe, too - reveals other dimensions of surrogacy and, more broadly, American attitudes toward maternity.

One of Historiann's commenters mentions that she'd considered becoming a surrogate, and that it felt to her like becoming "a reproductive whore of sorts." (She didn't do it.) I can see her point (though I've never been either a surrogate nor a prostitute). Both of these forms of work - and they are work, which should not be stigmatized - seem to me as though they entail selling an intimate aspect of one's corporeality. As I wrote a while ago, I don't see a problem with women choosing to sell these services, especially in a labor market where their other options may be quite bleak; I do see the buyer's position as hard to defend ethically, in part because the client is almost always in a strong position to exploit the seller.

I'm still struggling to work out why surrogacy and prostitution seem so qualitatively different to me than selling one's hard physical labor as a coal miner, say, or one's intimate thoughts as a professor (which Martha Nussbaum claims is in fact at least as ethically problematic). Maybe because surrogacy and prostitution would involve letting others have use of the interior of my body? Maybe because they seem to imply a different, physically and psychically deeper sort of vulnerability than other occupations? Maybe because both surrogacy and prostitution would be far less attractive if women had other lucrative possibilities at their disposal? Yes, I know that there are many sex workers and surrogates who claim to love what they do, and I don't dispute that. I'm still sure that their numbers would drop dramatically if the financial incentives evaporated.

At any rate, Kuczynski's arrangement with Cathy is both contractual and highly intimate. This is not so different from prostitution, either, viewed from the john's side. Susannah Breslin's Letters from Johns collection is rife with examples of men who want much more from a prostitute than just an orgasm. Ditto for Peridot Ash's wonderful blog on the charms and burdens of being a paid escort (here, for example).

To drive the sex work parallel just a little further into the ground: Escorts are generally better paid when they're educated and bright. Clients pay a premium for the privilege/illusion of social intercourse with someone who appears to have something in common with them. Why should surrogacy be any different? From this angle, it's not at all surprising that Kuczynski would look for someone she felt she could connect to, emotionally and personally. The lines that follows the paragraph quoted above are revealing on this point:

In our conference call with Cathy and her husband, Mick — the vice president of marketing for a credit union — we felt immediately comfortable. They had three children, two of whom were in college. Cathy and Mick sounded compassionate and intelligent. ...

I appreciated Cathy’s warmth and straightforward manner. But there was something else that drew me to her — the same thing that caused me to see her computer-generated essay in a different light from the other women’s hand-scrawled applications. She and her husband were college-educated. Her husband graduated from William and Mary. Her daughter Rebecca, then 20, wanted to be a journalist. They lived in a renovated mill house on a creek in a suburb of Philadelphia. They seemed, in other words, not so different from us. Later, during the election season, she and I were unaccountably pleased to learn that we were both planning to vote for Obama.

I have to make a leap of empathy, but in Kuczynski place I think I'd feel the same. Consider daycare providers, an area where I do have some direct experience, and which substantially parallels surrogacy in that you're entrusting your child's care to another person. Personally, I valued the fact that our long-time provider was intelligent in every way - emotionally and intellectually - and well educated. She had good common sense, excellent problem-solving abilities, and an intuitive understanding. Oh, and she supported Obama too! That's not as superficial as it might first appear. It was just one more indication that our values harmonized well.

Now, Kuczynski's situation was different in that Cathy would not be teaching, disciplining, and playing with her child; she wouldn't be molding his character or values. Kuczynski writes:

I know all this should have been irrelevant. Political preferences aren’t passed along through the umbilical cord. Strictly speaking, she was a vessel, the carrier, the biological baby sitter, for my baby, or as she put it in her essay, “I will serve as the ‘foster mother’ to the baby until it is born.” But it was easy to think of her as carrying my baby. She wasn’t desperate for the money, so our relationship wouldn’t have to feel like a purely commercial enterprise, or a charitable one.

In fact Cathy mentions that she's become part of the extended family for another couple whose child she carried. In an ideal world, every surrogate contract would morph into a real relationship, just as birth mothers would find a comfortable relationship with everyone involved in open adoptions. In reality, an awful lot of factors militate against this happening: social and economic differences; the parents' desire to move on with their lives or even deny their neediness; the fact that the arrangement was always about business, first and foremost.

While Kuczynski's desire for someone like herself to carry the baby is perfectly understandable, it also has a shadow side: the desire to control the surrogate as if she were, indeed, "a vessel." This reflects the near-paranoia that has taken hold in middle-class America about women's conduct in pregnancy ever since the publication of the original What to Expect When You're Expecting, with its endless lists of virtuous and evil foods. These paranoid tendencies seem to intensify toward the top of the socioeconomic food chain, where Kuczynski is located. For her, since self-control wouldn't ensure a healthy baby (no matter how many yoga classes she attended), she directed this controlling impulse toward Cathy:

Later in the fall, Cathy went to Las Vegas with her husband, who was attending a conference. I took the news badly. My tiny child — now that there was a sex, an identity, I could think of him as a child — was out there in Vegas at a craps table. I worried about the flight and whether the pressure would harm him. The thought crossed my mind to ask Cathy if it was really necessary to go, but I knew I couldn’t. I had given her my baby, and I would have to give her my trust as well. I hated giving up control, but experience had proved that I had even less control over my own uterus, and trying to exercise any measure of authority over Cathy would cause both of us only grief.

Yikes! I can imagine that making this leap of trust would be hard. I'm not totally unsympathetic. And yet - does Kuczynski really think she would have foregone her trips to Boise if she's been the "vessel"? Pregnant women routinely fly. If they're not experiencing complications or within a few weeks of delivering (or leaking amniotic fluid!), flying is no big deal.

Kuczynski recognizes that she can't control Cathy in any practical sense. What she fails to acknowledges is that her desire to do so isn't just likely to retraumatize herself; it's just plain unreasonable. Why does she object to Cathy playing a few rounds of the craps? Is the baby going to be born with a gambling addiction as a result? Or is it just that Kuczynski has bought into the mythology that a good mother forgoes all pleasure?

Instead of reflecting on how overblown these control issues had become, both in her mind and in our culture, Kuczynski laments her inability to live them out. Given the reflective tone of her essay, I wish she'd found a way to break out of this insanely exacting Good Mother paradigm. Given the control freakery around pregnancy in modern America, it's not surprising that she didn't.

Kuczynski's control issues culminate in her reaction to the baby's delivery, which sounds like a classic case of couvade - the practice in some cultures of the baby's father emulating symptoms of pregnancy and/or labor:

Birth is not a tidy business. As Cathy went into labor, my husband stood respectfully by her head to avoid being on the more visceral end of things. I found my son’s birth to be a terrifying event. When the baby crowned and the top of his skull appeared, my brain did back-flips. There was the mind-bending philosophical weirdness of it all: there is our baby — coming out of her body. And then there was the physicality of it: the torture of childbirth, of being split open, of having your body turned, it seemed, inside out to produce this giant, beautiful baby. Cathy vomited; I vomited.

Watching someone else birth your baby has got to be a profoundly weird experience, indeed. What's missing, of course, is an account of Cathy's experience. That essay - written by the mother who nurtures the baby, then hands her over in an act of blinding generosity - has yet to be published in the New York Times. What are the odds of that ever happening?

Photo by my husband.

Sungold the Sexpert - Or Not?

So the matchmaking site OK Cupid has spun off their amusing test-taking section - a clever move for reaching those of us who aren't looking for a new relationship, don't subscribe to Cosmo, but still enjoy taking silly quizzes.

Silly, yes. But I'm still chagrined that I took their "Ultimate Sex IQ Test" and got this result:

Sexpert

92% points on Sexual Knowledge! You know your shit.

Sexpert: Way to freakin' go! You know just about all there is to know about sex. You've got the lingo, the positions, the health, the relationship, and biological aspects down. I just hope you're putting it all to good use! Keep up the good work by keeping yourself safe, healthy, and sharing your superior sexual knowledge with others.

Take Ultimate Sex IQ Test at HelloQuizzy

Okay. According to the site's oh-so-scientific analysis, my score was higher than 98% of my peers.

That's cold consolation, in my book. I took the silly thing three times to see if I could figure out which question I'd missed. I mean, this was not a test of skill or allure. It was pure book learnin'. Stuff like whether you can get pregnant the first time you have sex.

HelloQuizzy offers oodles of personality tests, too. But I have a strong suspicion that my reaction to getting less than 100% on this silly quiz tells you all you need to know about my personality flaws.

Nonetheless: If you take this quiz and get 100%, maybe you can set me straight?

Labiaplasty: How Common, Really?

Just a quick follow-up to last week's post on how the media deals with plastic surgery on women's genitals. I cited an estimate from Time magazine that put the number of labiaplasties and similar procedures at about a thousand annually in the U.S.

A study just came out that makes me think that estimate is way too low. In the December issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery ("Aesthetic Labia Minora and Clitoral Hood Reduction Using Extended Central Wedge Resection"), Dr. Gary Alter reports performing 407 surgeries over two years. This was just one particular procedure and just one physician - albeit one in Beverly Hills. I couldn't access the article's full text but Dr. Alter's website doesn't mention any partners, only that he's got a second office in New York and a teaching appointment at UCLA, so I assume he's a player in both of the main markets and is relatively prominent in his field. (He also has a hilariously perfect last name for his profession, doesn't he?)

If Dr. Alter alone is doing 200 surgeries per year, there's just no way only 1000 women are getting it done each year. Even if Dr. Alter is a big fish, he surely isn't covering 20 percent of this market. Googling "labiaplasty surgeon" turns up oodles of other practitioners scattered around the country.

My googling also enlightened me on some other aspects of this business. For one, I got the impression that dilettantism may an issue. While Dr. Alter specializes in genital surgeries (ranging from repair of botched surgeries on intersex people to penile enhancement and transsexual reassignment), he doesn't seem to be typical. Most surgeons who perform genital cosmetic surgery also offer a spectrum of other, purely cosmetic procedures ranging from facelifts to boob jobs (here's just one example among many). I'm not letting anyone with a knife near my O'Keeffean bits, but if I did, I'd go for the real specialist. I'd want that doctor to know the map of pelvic nerves better than his own hand.

Perhaps even more striking is the apparent absence of gynecologists and urogynecologists from this field - the specialists who repair the real functional damage that can result from childbirth. I can readily believe that large labia do pose functional problems for some women. But if that were the main issue, wouldn't regular gyns be more involved in labiaplasty?

I also found that most of these surgeons post before-and-after pictures on their sites. I'm far more curious than squeamish, so of course I looked. (They do not post pictures of the surgery or of fresh post-surgical wounds, in case you were wondering.)

What I saw: A few of the women who get these surgeries do have labia large enough that I can imagine it being uncomfortable. That wasn't the case for most, although obviously only the woman who inhabits that body can say for sure. It's also a little hard to tell, because many "before" photos show one or both lips being stretched to the sides as far as possible, while the "after" photos often omit the stretching.

My guess is that in most cases, "discomfort" is a label for insurance purposes. The discourse of discomfort may also help plastic surgeons conceive of themselves (and promote themselves) as serving a higher purpose than a pornified beauty ideal. It lends legitimacy when these surgeons publish their results.

Oh, and I learned that the amount of variation in normal color and shape really is tremendous. Even in the "after" photos. The flower analogy may be trite, but it is apt. And I have to wonder - once more - why bother taking dahlias and irises and tulips, and turning them all into uniform carnations?

I took this photo of a bearded iris in my garden last spring.

Two Pants Rants

One: Why did my little Bear - age 9 and smarter than both his parents put together - think it was a good idea to put sticky tack in his pants pockets??!! And how do I get it out? This stuff is like chewing gum!

Then again, I guess it could be worse ...

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

Two: Yesterday, with my two kids in school and me on break, I seized the chance to shopping for pants. It was an unmitigated disaster. For one thing, my town's solitary "mall" is actually a ghost mall. Only about every fifth store is occupied; the rest are empty, apparently because the mall's owners have overpriced the rents.

In our one lonely remaining department store I tried on about 30 pairs of pants. Not one fit me. I tried jeans, dress pants, cords - oh, I would've tried clown pants if they'd had any! I even ventured into the junior department with its distressed and ripped denims. Nada. Zip.

It comes down to this: For over a decade now, these $%*&@ low-rise pants have crowded nearly everything else out of the market. Even my slenderest students - the ones I suspect wear a size zero or less - often have a muffin top in these styles. As for me, they consistently gape in the back and even the "moderately" low-rise ones still stop miles below my belly-button.

Hey, I've done market research on this and the results are indisputable: There's not an overwhelming public demand to see me wearing a girly version of the plumber look.

I realize some women seem to fit just fine into "modern" pants (which frankly aren't all that new anymore). My sister is one of them. But are the rest of us all just a bunch of freaks? I have a waistline. I'm the same weight and height that I was 30 years ago in junior high. I'm not boasting; I was a few pounds heavier but lost them in last spring's minor medical tribulations when I was reduced to eating plain yogurt for a few weeks; and now my existing pants are all too large, and I can't find new ones. I honestly don't think I'm such an oddity. Yet it's been years since I could find pants that really fit me.

Men don't quite have this problem, do they? (Well, okay, there's the variety of older gent who wears his pants over his belly and under his armpits. I think that's a personal style choice, though.)

Anyone up for a revolt against the fashion industry's rigidity? If not, I guess I'm stuck waiting for spring - and better weather for skirts. And if anyone has a line on clown pants, do let me know.

The Song-and-Dance around Prop 8

From Funny or Die via Salon's War Room, here's the musical mockery that Prop 8 supporters so richly deserve.

From Funny or Die

I've never really thought of Jack Black as a god, but he does make a marvelous Jesus. And don't overlook Maya Rudolph and Margaret Cho among the gay-friendly earthlings. Also, I realize this is in atrocious taste, but the credits list a "Wife #1" and "Wife #2" for the anti-gay ringleader.

For the "Health" of the Mother

Remember John McCain's use of air quotes in the presidential debates when he talked about abortions to preserve women's "health"? Remember how the Bush Administration is trying to push through a "conscience clause" for providers of reproductive health services that's so capacious, it would likely redefine birth control pills as abortifacients? Remember how women used to routinely die in this country during childbirth? (Okay, so you need a longer memory for that last point. A century ago, the lifetime risk of death in childbed was about 1 in 20. 'Course, that only applied to women, which might explain why McCain sees "health" as a non-issue.)

Well, as Tracy Clark-Flory reports at Broadsheet, the Bushies are making one last push during these lame duck days to put that new rule in place. The only good thing about this? The ensuing discussion is shedding light on the barriers women already face in getting decent, equitable, timely reproductive health care. From the L.A. Times:

In calling for limits on “conscientious refusals,” ACOG [American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists] cited four recent examples. In Texas, a pharmacist rejected a rape victim's prescription for emergency contraception. In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital. [My emphasis.]

That last case was new to me, so I hunted it down - first via the ACOG report and then the ACLU analysis that ACOG footnoted (both are pdf files). The ACLU report had the details. Here's the story:

In the spring of 1994, a nineteen-year-old woman in Nebraska, Sophie Smith [not her real name], was admitted to the emergency room of a religiously affiliated hospital with a blood clot in her lung. Tests revealed that Smith was approximately ten weeks pregnant, and the clotting problem resulted from a rare and life-threatening condition exacerbated by the pregnancy. The hospital immediately put her on intravenous blood-thinners to eliminate the existing blood clot and to help prevent the formation of more clots that could kill Smith instantly if they lodged in her lungs, heart, or brain.

Smith’s doctors told her that she had two alternatives. She could stay in the hospital on intravenous blood-thinners for the remaining six-and-a-half months of the pregnancy. She would also need a procedure in which a doctor would insert into one of her primary veins an umbrella-like device designed to catch blood clots before they reached a vital organ. Or she could have a first-trimester abortion, switch to oral blood-thinners, and be released from the hospital.

Smith decided to have an abortion. She wanted to go home to her two-year-old child. Because she was poor, Medicaid was covering her medical expenses but would pay for an abortion only upon proof that it was necessary to save her life. Four doctors at the hospital certified that Smith needed a lifesaving abortion, and Medicaid agreed to cover it.

On the morning Smith was scheduled to have surgery, however, the hospital’s lawyer appeared in the operating room. He announced that the hospital would not permit an abortion – lifesaving or otherwise – to take place on its premises. The procedure was canceled, and Smith was wheeled back to her room.

Ten days of dangerous delay followed. Smith wanted to be transferred to a facility that would perform the abortion, but moving her increased the risk that she would throw a life-threatening blood clot. Moreover, because the blood-thinners she was taking made her prone to excessive bleeding during surgery, Smith’s doctors felt that it was in her best interest to be treated in a hospital. The hospital, however, stood by its decision not to let the abortion take place in its facilities. Notwithstanding the risks, Smith was ultimately transferred by ambulance to her doctor’s office. He performed the abortion and sent Smith back to the hospital, which provided follow-up care.

Even in a culture where a presidential candidate feels free to mock women's health, this story is shocking. It wasn't just Sophie Smith's health that hung in the balance; it was her very life.

I know someone who died in her twenties from a pulmonary embolism. One of my grandfathers died - long before I was ever born - from an embolism. If even Medicaid judged the situation to be life-threatening, you'd better believe it was. An embolism is an immediate life-or-death emergency, not some remote risk.

And yet this hospital saw fit to risk the Smith's life. Of course, if she had died, she wouldn't have been much use to her potential child, either - not to mention her actual one! But I guess that didn't occur to these morally pure hospital administrators. She did survive, but due to luck, and no thanks to the "care" she received.

Historically, of course, the woman's life was always chosen first - not because women had higher standing in the past (they didn't) but because they typically had family members who depended on their care. Even the Roman Catholic Church was on board with this policy until about 1900. After that, it began to revalue the "innocent" life of the fetus as worthier than that of the presumably sinful mother.

In Smith's case, you have to wonder if any particular "sins" exacerbated her situation. She was young. She was obviously poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. She may have been married, though given her youth, odds are that she wasn't. I'm guessing that an educated, middle-class married woman in her thirties might have had better luck. But then again, maybe not.

And remember: Smith's ordeal happened in the mid-nineties. The climate for reproductive choice has only deteriorated since then, with the emergence of new tactics such as pharmacists' concerted refusals to fill birth control prescriptions. Anyone want to imagine what new scenarios might emerge if Bush manages to ram through this new rule?

As Clark-Flory notes, Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray have vowed to fight the rule. An Obama administration won't let it stand. But repeal will take time and political capital, and it leaves women's health advocates fighting a stupid, unnecessary rear-guard battle.

Update 12/4/08: I corrected the text to keep the blame focused on the hospital administrators, where it belonged, not on the doctors. Thanks for pointing out the slippage, moioci.

Hungering for Intimacy, Settling for Crumbs

Polymer clay sculpture "Petit Plat" by Flickr user sk_, used under a Creative Commons license.

Via Blue Gal and figleaf, I just read Lauren Slater's essay in the Sunday New York Times on her almost total lack of interest in sex. I've known Slater's work for about 15 years now, and try as I might to avoid it, it holds a trainwreck fascination. Long, long before there was Emily Gould and Philip Weiss, we had Lauren Slater's literary excursions into the most private, painful aspects of her life. Like Gould, she has a flair for entertaining us while she bares her underbelly. She can sometimes be lyrical. I feel compassion for her struggle with depression.

But Slater's charms rarely include wisdom. She's too busy looking in the mirror for that. Her latest essay is no exception.

Slater describes herself as having almost no desire for sex. Of course we all have times when we lose our groove, but what Slater describes is a permanent state of affairs. This is not a matter of acceptance of asexuality as an orientation; this is a situation that’s deeply affecting her marriage. And Slater's essay is an extended justification of why she has no obligation to try to change it. As a personal choice, that's for her to work out with her husband. As an ethical program, it's seriously wrong.

While Slater's self-absorption is her own unique gift, the problem is not hers alone. An estimated 20% of married couples have sex ten or fewer times per year, which is what sexologists define as a "sexless marriage." Nor is this a matter of women going "frigid." Our culture tells us repeatedly that women are less interested in sex than men, that women only do it for love/affection/diamonds, that it's women who stop feeling juicy once married. In truth, men are nearly as likely to lose their mojo. This is a gendered issue mainly on the level of cultural attitudes, though those attitudes skew our perception of who's actually affected by loss of libido.

It's natural for people to go through occasional slumps. We're pregnant or breastfeeding. Kids deplete us. A career sucks all the energy out of one or both partners. That's not what Slater is describing. Nor is this a situation where partners' libidos are mildly mismatched - where, say, one wants it daily, the other once a week, but both basically do want it. Nearly all couples have to reach some compromise on frequency. That, too, is a normal and inevitable challenge in any long-term relationship.

What Slater portrays instead is a sexual relationship that has basically ceased because one partner doesn't want intimacy for months and years on end. Sometimes this can be due to physical causes - hormone levels, disease, etc. - but Slater has had enough of doctors and insists that her state is simply her normal. I can empathize with her need to protect one area of her life from being pathologized (she's already had to deal with cancer and depression). Still, by simply declaring her state "normal" - and doing so in the New York Times! - she's drawing a line in the sand and refusing to even try to revitalize her connection to her husband. Again, that's her personal choice, but when you publish it in the Times, even as a highly personal essay, it becomes a rationalization with broader cultural import.

It's one thing if a person declines to marry in the first place, realizing they just don't like sex. This, by the way, is one reason everyone has a stake in asexuality being recognized as a legitimate orientation. It could save a lot of heartbreak. Closeted asexuality is analogous to closeted homosexuality. No one wins when someone chooses marriage on false pretenses or in part to prove their sexual "normalcy." In both cases, the unsuspecting spouse can be deeply hurt, and the marriage is unlikely to survive. (Think "Brokeback Mountain" except entirely without the sex.)

Slater, however, understood her libidinal economy before she married her husband. She knew she couldn't stay sexually interested in a man for more than six months. She married her husband anyway. Whether he knew that about her or not (and the essay doesn't tell us), he's clearly not okay with the lack of sex.

Here's where Slater's self-justifications kick in. She writes that she's just wired in such a way that she can respond to a brand-new partner, but the thrill quickly fades and she'd rather play checkers. I'm not knocking checkers, but her partner could play that with anyone. There's only one game he's promised to play with her, and her alone.

The problem in valorizing asexuality within a previously sexual relationship is that it basically gives one partner license to say, "OK, we're done with sex now," and expect the other partner to be faithful and essentially celibate. If you're in a committed monogamous relationship, it's passive aggressive to expect your partner to quit caring about sex on cue. Unfortunately, unless the partner goes on anti-depressants, there's no spigot they can turn to switch off their sex drive.

If this situation turns permanent and the no-libido partner refuses discussion or compromise, it's a cruel trap for the partner. He or she has three options: 1) Resignation to a life without sex. 2) Cheating. 3) Or trying to negotiate an open relationship. The first option is very painful. The second is broadly regarded as immoral. As for the third? For all the blog chatter about polyamory, I can't see how that could constitute a real solution to a sexless marriage. What incentive does a sexually disinterested partner have to consent to an open relationship? Either they have no libido, period, and thus nothing to gain personally. Or opening the relationship reveals that they still have desire, all right, just none for their partner - which is liable to blow everything sky high. So the partner is left with no reasonable solutions. Oh, and let's not forget that the partner may not want to have sex with anyone other than the person they loved and desired enough to promise fidelity.

Slater opts for a version of openness that's yet another double bind. She tells her husband he can do other people, he just can’t care about them. He sensibly realizes that his heart doesn't work that way; if he has sex, he can't just treat his partner as a blow-up doll. (My phrase, not his. One problem with this essay is that we get very little sense of his feelings, other than that he's evidently aggrieved.)

In trying to empathize with his situation, I think the old food-sex analogy works pretty well, even if, like any analogy, it has its limits. We all know people who don't particularly care about food, who take little pleasure in eating, who wolf down whatever's placed in front of them. This is not pathological. It's normal variation. I'll gladly grant Slater that point.

However: Imagine your spouse skips most meals due to dieting or just a lack of enthusiasm for food. And then imagine he or she expects you to adopt the same eating habits, renouncing breakfast and dinner and subsisting on 600 calories a day for the rest of your life. Those meals you eat together may be pleasurable or rancorous; you probably won't physically starve; but you will in any event be seriously deprived. Oh, and remember: you don't get to eat out in this regimen - or if you do, you aren't supposed to converse with your dining partner (in the scenario Slater offers her husband) and afterward you'd better feel guilty.

And so the hungry partner is left with crumbs. Slater doesn't tell us how often she and her husband have sex, which is probably just as well. We already know more about Slater than I really needed to know. (I'm not gonna even touch her anecdote about claiming sexual trauma when she just wanted to stay a virgin a while longer! Go read the essay; it really is a trainwreck.) Slater hints that they still couple occasionally. I don't know how her husband perceives these encounters. But I'd sure feel like it was pity sex - especially if my partner had written that essay, and I'd read it.

Slater writes of her hopes that they’ll eventually emerge from their conflicts over sex and be a happy, harmonious couple again:

A gulf of loneliness enters the marriage; the rift it creates is terribly painful. My sincerest hope is that once we make it through these very stressful years, assuming we come out the other end, my husband and I will be able to reconnect.

But when would she expect that beautiful new era to dawn? When will those stressful years come to an end? When her husband is too physically infirm from old age to want it anymore?

The sad thing is that both partners suffer from the rift. She admits her own loneliness. Her husband's cannot be less than hers.

Again, this isn't just Slater's problem, and not just her husband's, though her version of it is particularly complicated. It's widespread. It plays a big role in the American divorce rate. Kids and extended families suffer along with the couples involved.

I don't have any easy solutions. I realize that physical, psychological, and relationship issues all can play a role when libido dies, and each couple faces a unique constellation. I also see that it's a couple's problem and not just an individual's.

Still, I hate to end a post in a hopeless key. Not to drive the food analogy into the ground (okay, I will anyway), but I really like what Dr. Ruth has to say about flagging desires:

Sex is the glue that holds a relationship together, so couples need to maintain their sex lives. Just because one or both partners don't really feel "in the mood" is no excuse to abandon hope. Be persistent.

The French have an expression, "L'appetit vient en mangeant," which means "your appetite comes as you eat." Even if a couple doesn't feel like making love, they should make an appointment, take their clothes off and climb into bed together. Most of the time this will be enough to get them started.

Dr. Ruth's advice isn't a substitute for wanting your partner to want you. I doubt that it's adequate to Slater's relatively extreme situation. It won't magically resolve long-term fears of intimacy, which Slater admits to having. She closes her essay with an extended metaphor about how she prefers granite to sex; she means to convey her plan to build a solid and beautiful home for her family, but the symbolism of cold stone gets away from her and loops back - whether she wants it or not - to her fear of too much closeness, too much vulnerability.

As Blue Gal said, it's not our place to try to fix Slater. (If we did, she'd be out a career. And we bloggers would have to find someone else to vent about.)

But we can set a banquet in our own lives. We can lay the table. We can do it often, not just on special occasion. We can invite our partners to feast. And when they do, we can be mindful that it's an honor and a blessing.

Still Life with Fruit (and Vegetables, and Bread ...)

Apart from a few woeful pansies and the Silver Tidal Wave petunias that just won't die, my flowers are now out of season. I'm bereft of fresh garden porn. But in a before-and-after sorta way, I'm almost equally inspired by food photography, which is fresh year 'round. And now, via Benjamin Cohen of Science Blogs, I've discovered that a British artist, Carl Warner, combines both genres.

But is it art?

Whatever - it's very trippy. This garlic-scape looks as though Alice and the White Rabbit ought to be skulking through it ...


... and this might be where they landed when Alice went down the rabbit-hole. Note the carrot stalactites.


This valley appears to be an edible version of Yosemite. Instead of Half Dome, maybe it's Half Loaf?


And this fruity balloonscape makes me think of the opening sequence from Ian McEwan's Enduring Love - minus the catastrophe.


All images nicked from Carl Warner's gallery at The Telegraph (UK); go there and to Warner's website for more.

The last photo is an especially striking illustration of the point Benjamin Cohen makes: that food is used to depict the growing of other food. Kind of twisted, and kind of cool.