Bad Medicine

Call it Viagra culture: In the eight years since the little blue pill made the scene, its wild success has institutionalized the impulse to treat any and all sexual problems, idiosyncrasies, or irregularities with prescription drugs. the result is an increasingly commerciatlized approach to sex that turns attention away from the complex social, cultural, and psychological determinants of sexuality that have been the subject of feminist analysis for several decades. Feminist activists and scholars have long observed that sexuality--especially, but not exclusively, women's sexuality--is as much a matter of politics as biology. But in their effort to medicalize sexuality, big pharmaceutical companies want us to believe that sexual problems are a result of biology alone. Of course the drug industry want us to believe that the solution to our sexual woes lies in a pill/patch/cream/nasal spray; after all, a pill that puts orgasms easily within reach can be marketed in a profit-making system, but social change is a little trickier...

The first success of Viagra culture, apart from the drug itself, has been the success of drug companies in successfully banishing the term "impotence," with all its psychological connotations of weakness and failure, and replacing it with the more biologically oriented, less judgmental "erectile dysfunction," or ED. And in the hopes of doubling their profits by doubling their market, pharmaceutical companies are now working toward their second challenge--reconceptualizing women's sexual problems as physiologically based "female sexual dysfunction," or FSD. So far, no "pink Viagra" has yet received approval from the Food and Drug Administration, but dozens of products are in development, and each year growing numbers of women are given off-label prescriptions of men's sex drugs, even though these drugs have not been proven sage or effective for women. (Despite the popularity of Viagra s a party drug for gay men, Big Pharma's marketing and research programs betray a deep heterosexual bias. The current research on FSD in particular tends to focus almost exclusively on heterosexual women, relying on a heterocentric view of sex and implying that only certain women's sexual problems--and only certain kinds of sexual problems--are worthy of consideration.)

The year 2003 marked both the fifth anniversary of Viagra's launch and the release of two prominent new sex drugs for men, whose names will be familiar to any e-mail user: Levitra and Cialis. All these drugs are intended to tread ED, a condition made famous by those first Viagra ads featuring an aging Bob Dole confiding in us about his post-prostate-surgury erection troubles. Nowadays, drug makers are seeking ways to distinguish their ED products in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, realized it needed sexier ads to capture the younger set, and soon dumped Dole as its poster boy in favor of highly masculine (and less wrinkled) professional baseball players and NASCAR drivers. The adds for Levitra and Cialis, however, have attempted to secure a portion of Viagra's multibillion-dollar annual market share by literally bringin women into the picture: Prominent ads from the Levitra campaign feature a female partner front and center, talking about her man's concern with erection "quality," the silent male demoted to the background. Cialis capitalizes on its alleged 36-hor range of effectiveness by depicting a heterosecual couple enjoying an air of romance ("If a relaxing moment turns into the right moment, will you be ready?"), with one of its first ads showing a couple enjoying the view from their his-and-hers bathtubs.

But pharmaceutical companies want women to be more than the spoonful of sugar tha makes the medicine go down for their male partners; they want women to spend an equal amount of time worrying about their own sexual problems and what pill might treat them. Female sexual dysfunction is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the official catalogue of mental illnesses), so if a woman is diagnosed with something that falls under the umbrella of FSD (say, lack of desire, lack of arousal, pain during intercourse, or lack of orgasm), she is automatically considered to have a mental illness of disorder. A few generations ago, a woman might be considered mentally ill (more specifically, a nymphomaniac) if she wanted sex too much; these days a woman might just as easily be labeled mentally unsound if her libido is below "normal."

For years, Pfizer hoped to determine that Viagra could be used to counter lo0w arousal in women, but in 2004, the company stopped its clinical trials, concluding that Viagra was no more effective than a placebo. (The placebo, by the way, did have a positive effect on sexual arousal, suggesting, if nothing else, the important role of expectation in psychology.) But why have women share the men's candy when an FDA-approved sex drug specifically for women could be just as much of a marketing boon as Viagra was? With a market for such medical treatments at an estimated nearly $2 billion per year, pharmaceitical companies have a tremendous financial incentive to produce a successful contender, and thus far more than half a dozen companies are focusing their efforts on drugs intended to treat low desire and arousal, developing and testing a raft of pills, patches, creams, and sprays, hoping to find that elusive pick Viagra.


The main focus in FSD-drug development is on testosterone products intended to amp up sexual desire, rather than the Viagra model of products that increase blood flow to the nether regions. Just months after Pfizer pulled the plug on the Viagra trials targeting women, Proctor and Gamble announced plans to seek FDA approval for its Intrinsa testosterone patch, designed to remedy a lack of desire in women. Mainstreem media obediently followed Proctor and gamble's marketing spin--it's not just sexual arousal that's the problem, it's desire for sex to beigin with--proclaiming the failure of the Viagra trials to be evidence of women's complex sexuality. Testosterone--often called the "hormone of desire"--seemed like the most promising fix.

Though low sexual desire in women is often considered to be a product of low testosterone deficiency, this assertion has not been borne out of by evidence; a 2005 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association explicitly debunked the notion of a link between low sexual desire and low testosterone levels in women. In December 2004, the FDA reviewed the first-ever application for an FSD-specific drug--the aforementioned Intrinsa patch. The FDA's advisory committee determined that the benefit of the drug (an average of one additional sex act per month, according to the trials) was overshadowed by the patch's potential long-term health risks, and they unanimously voted against approval of Intrinsa.

Yet despite the lack of scientific data on the efficacy of testosterone to treat low libido in women, the absence of FDA approval of use of testosterone to treat these problems, the known risks of testosterone therapies for women (ranging from beard growth to more heath-threatening liver problems), and the unknown long-term risks of such therapies, a growing number of physicians are prescribing testosterone drugs off-label to women. (If a drug is FDA-approved for any one condition, a doctor is allowed to prescribe it off-label at her discretion for any other condition, even if the drug has not been tested or approved for that condition.) In an October 4, 2005 article in Newsweek, testosterone researcher D. Jan Shifren estimated that one-fifth of all prescriptions of testosterone products approved for men are actually written off-label for women for the treatment of "sexual dysfunction." Such off-label prescribing is becoming increasingly normalized in mainstream media accounts of FSD, and depicted fovorably in outlets such as CBS Evening News and 20/20, as well as in numerous women's magazines.


Women in search of solutions to their sexual problems often turn to the mass media, looking to magazines and television talk shows for advice, information, and empathy. But because many of these sources encourage women to see disappearing libidos or foiled orgasms as de facto FSD, these encounters often work to spread the Viagra culture, to the detriment of the women themselves. Two sexperts have risen to particular prominence in this converage of FSD, largely through their presence in pop venues: sex therapist Laura Burman, PhD, and urologist Jennifer Berman, MD. The Berman sisters have been favorable featured in numberous women's magainzes, including Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Ladies' Home Journal; appeared on many TV shows, such as Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and 20/20; and had their own weekly cable-TV talk show on the Discovery Health Channel. (Laura has a reality show called Sexual Healing upcoming on Showtime.) With cowriters, they've published two mainstream books on women's sexual problems: For Women Only: A Revolutionary Guide to Overcoming Sexual Dysfunction and Reclaiming Your Sex Life and secrets of the exually Satisfied Woman: Ten Keys to Unlocking Ultimate Pleasure.

In 2001, the Bermans founded the UCLA Female Sexual Medicine Center. Three years later, Laura Berman left UCLA to open a private clinic, the Berman Center, in Chicago. Jennifer Berman soon followed suit, opening a sexual-medicine practive in Beverly Hills at the Rodeo Drive Women's Health Center. The shift of the Bermans' practices from an academic center to the explicitly for-profit commercial sector speaks volumes about the new reatil-oriented cultures of both sex and medicine. Both practices offer a boutique experience in a high-end, spa-like environment. A review of the Berman Center's website, where a prospective client can secure an appointment witha credit-card number, indicates that an initial assessment will cost $550 plus testing, and another $550 will buy a session of "bio-identical hormone thereapy." Not surprisingly, there's no mention of insurance coverage. (there's already been a lot of outrage in feminist and women's health circles about the fact that Viagra is more likely to be covered than contraceptives, and one can easily imagine that insurance companies might similarly refuse to cover sex drugs for women, even if they are eventually FDA-appoved.)

Even more important than the commercialized nature of the Berman's practices, however, is their approach to treatment. Although both assert that they combine the strengths of psychotherapy with the benefits of sexual medicine, they ultimately give preference to the biomedical perspective. As part of a 2004 20/20 special on women's sexuality, the Bermans rtreated a woman whose husband had threatened to leave her if she didn't remedy her low mojo. Though the sisters failed to find any biophysical indications for the woman's depressed libido (in other words, no sign of "low" testosterone), they nevertheless wrote a prescription for testosteron and, with this magic bullet, side-lined the deeply problematic nature of the woman's relationship with her husband and any psychological facotrs that may have affected her sex life.


The spread of an already prevalent "just pop a pill" approach to the realm of sexual desire minimizes the myriad ways in which our society fosters sexual problems in both women and men. People work more hours in the U.S. than in any other industrialized society, take fewer vacation days, and have increasingly longer commutes--so exhaustion alone is quite possibly a major explanation for many an underused American bed. But for women, the same political struggles that have long informed their sexual choices and well-being are still in existence. Persistent gender inequality in heterosexual coupling (manifested in women shouldering much of the burden of household work and childcare), and increasing threat of restricted reproductive rights, and active epidemic of sexual vilence against women, and women's higher likelihood of being diagnosed with depression (and higher rates of antidepressant use) all likely play a role. In addition, women's magazines' continual emphsis on sex and how to make it longer, better, and more frequent can easily give women the impression that they're at fault if they can't blow their man's mind--to say nothing of their own--every time. Certainly, a sex drug won't address these fundamentally social and cultural causes of sexual discontent. Men, of course, can also experience sexual problems for many of these same reasons as well, a point usually minimized in discussions of ED.


As the medicalization of sex expands, growing numbers of critics are raising voices of dissent. Since its 2000 inception, the New View Campaign has used a variety of tactics to counter the growing biomedical orientation surrounding women's sexuality (see www.fsd-alert.org). Critical articles about FSD have also appeared in medical journals, such as the British Medical Journal, and a number of mainstream publications, including 2005 features in the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. and recent drug scandals, such as those involving the Vioxx brand pain reliever and hormone replacement therapy, appear to be ushering in a more widespread critical appraisal of the health threats of our pill-popping culture.

Perhaps the biggest danger of the rise of the Viagra culture is that the source of women's sexual problems is becoming overtly depoliticized. A main intent of the feminist women's health movement was to politicize women's sexual/health problems, often by challening the power of the medical establishmetn. Now that drug companies are the major players hijacking the characterization of women's sexual problems, we need to firmly resituate women's sexuality back intot the political realm. Sure, some women may be helped by a new sex patch or pill, but this quick fix (with health risks) might just put a Band-Aid on a larger problem. Neither the medical establishment nor the drg industry is going to change, so it's time for women to demand that these profit-hungry entities stop trying to peddle drugs that benefit their bottom line at the expense of our health.

Notes To Come Back To: SCARFACE (1932)

~Intro (government needs help, responsibility to force them to act)
~Howard Hawks
~"Italian Accent" in subtitles
~"Old-style gang leader" vs. New Italians
~1932
~Volstead Act
~Corruption of politicians, lawyers, witnesses ("wink")
~Based on book/real events
~"Micks"
~Glorify/Romanticize as "Demigods" by plastering across front page
~Take off front page
-most not citizens; make laws; give bad name to Italians
-private citizens need to act (cops can do nothing)
~X marks the spot (need to rewatch to see how many times...but definitely many)
~His involvement eventually kills his sister

~Rinaldo, Camonte, Lovo, Cesca, Epstein, etc.

Christian Broadcasting

Last week, while working late, I brought up the commericals that ask you to donate several hundred dollars so that a Russian can be moved back to Israel.

Perri said that she had seen that commercial...and that her first reaction was: "If they're planning on sending people back to where they came from, I'm saying this now: I'm not going back to Africa."

I thought it was an intriguing thought.

If there was a mass effort to remove people from this country, I might just barely make the list...and that would only be for being a "crazy liberal", but not because of my color.

It's amazing how often it's possible to forget about "whiteness."

Hmm....

Gas Prices

driving back from target last night, i realised that it's kind of crazy the effort that gets put into watching the pennies on the gas station signs rise & fall.

...


i finally realised that this obsession is kind of absurd. a jump of 10 cents means that it will take an extra dollar to fill my car (for big trucks it's probably about $2-$2.50).

when did a dollar become so big? normally we get so excited over the things that we could get for $1 ("wow! a burger!...or fries!...that's awesome!). it seems a little strange that the thing we get so excited over spending to get food we compulsively stress over when it comes to gas for our cars.


just a thought.

(yes, i do realise that the jump up of $1+ per gallon that's happened over the last few years DOES make a difference...and that the difference has come about by the slow increase of pennies over time. on the short term, though, it does seem odd how close many people watch the gas prices to get the best deal...that really isn't that much better of a deal.)

(and yes, i will continue to be one of those people...though probably less so now.)

Applying for Jobs

At my interview yesterday afternoon, my Program Directors were talking about how the funding cuts were going to cause the corps to be significantly less diverse.

For some reason, white women are always the ones who apply early. (For note of reference: my corps tutors underachieving students.) All other types of people apply later along in the hiring process...sometimes even within a month of the program starting.

I thought that this was really interesting. What does it say about these different populations with how they relate to this sort of work? What other sorts of applying styles do other programs out there (that might not be so geared towards a particular group of people) have?

I think that it would be interesting to see what sorts of jobs that men apply to first, with others coming along later. Or the ones where non-white ethnicities are the primary candidates, followed by whites.

There's probably some research out there on such a thing. Well, I imagine there is.

If anyone hears of any, let me know.

The Culture of Buses

It may seem really lame, but it's something that has been intriguing me for the last month at least. Buses are really interesting places to examine. From the sorts of people who ride them, to the bus drivers, to the subtle codes.

Originally, I had been wondering about the difference between buses in the city and those heading to the suburbs. It is just because I have been downtown a couple times when the bus just blows past a rider because they weren't at the stop, and several times when the express bus has held up so that the late person could get on. There are so many possibilities, I still don't quite know why. There is the personality of the driver, the personalities of the riders, and the bus schedules (buses run more often in the city than to it). I'm sure it ends up being a combination, but I thought it was interesting that the waits occur more often with the express bus. (I don't think it's just the bus that I ride.) This is a remarkably complicated question; and with no way to find out, I have had to move on to other things.

Like the "rules" about sitting. That's right. It amuses me each day to watch the ways to signal that you don't want someone sitting with you (placement of stuff and seat choice for example...yes, some seats are less popular for being the second occupant that others). But the one that I see so easily every day is how are seats are same-sexed (with the exception of the VERY front, sideways seats...and when talking about couples riding together). Men will never sit next to a woman. Even if she is a co-worker. He will sit in a seat adjacent to hers, but not in the one right next to her. (On the buses I have ridden, it is easy for a woman to sit next to another woman. Females are probably about 65-75% of those on the bus.)

It's been fun figuring these out. As far as the strategies go, it's meant that I've figured out how to routinely get the seat to myself (even though I assume many now realize that I also get off at the first stop, making it moderately inconvenient for them to have to move). When the bus stops at the transit station, I note the number of people out there in line, but also the rough number of women. (I also end up sitting next to some of the businessmen at times, and it always feels a little odd. But that just might be because I was the one who had to sit down next to a stranger.)

Anyways, I will no longer go on. I have written this down. That is enough.

"Remembering Mills"

In honor of the true spirit of this blog, I would like to copy something I found. (Okay, so not totally the original spirit, but a very important addition at least.)

"The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in
which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and
neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither
understand nor govern."



The New York Times

May 14, 2006
Essay
The Deciders
By JOHN H. SUMMERS

"The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern."


The opening sentence of "The Power Elite," by C. Wright Mills, seems unremarkable, even bland. But when the book was first published 50 years ago last month, it exploded into a culture riddled with existential anxiety and political fear. Mills — a broad-shouldered, motorcycle-riding anarchist from Texas who taught sociology at Columbia — argued that the "sociological key" to American uneasiness could be found not in the mysteries of the unconscious or in the battle against Communism, but in the over-organization of society. At the pinnacle of the government, the military and the corporations, a small group of men made the decisions that reverberated "into each and every cranny" of American life. "Insofar as national events are decided," Mills wrote, "the power elite are those who decide them."

His argument met with criticism from all sides. "I look forward to the time when Mr. Mills hands back his prophet's robes and settles down to being a sociologist again," Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in The New York Post. Adolf Berle, writing in the Book Review, said that while the book contained "an uncomfortable degree of truth," Mills presented "an angry cartoon, not a serious picture." Liberals could not believe a book about power in America said so little about the Supreme Court, while conservatives attacked it as leftist psychopathology ("sociological mumbo jumbo," Time said). The Soviets translated it in 1959, but decided it was pro-American. "Although Mills expresses a skeptical and critical attitude toward bourgeois liberalism and its
society of power," said the introduction to the Russian translation, "his hopes and sympathies undoubtedly remain on its side."

Even so, "The Power Elite" found an eclectic audience at home and abroad. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara debated the book in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir published excerpts in their radical journal, Les Temps Modernes. In the
United States, Mills received hundreds of letters from Protestant clergymen, professors and students, pacificists and soldiers. This note came from an Army private stationed in San Francisco: "I genuinely appreciate reading in print ideas I have thought about some time
ago. At that time, they seemed to me so different that I didn't tell anyone." In the aftermath of the global riots of 1968, the C.I.A. identified Mills as one of the most influential New Left intellectuals in the world, though he had been dead for six years.

The historical value of "The Power Elite" seems assured. It was the first book to offer a serious model of power that accounted for the secretive agencies of national security. Mills saw the postideological "postmodern epoch" (as he would later call it) at its inception, and his book remains a founding text in the continuing demand for democratically responsible political leadership — a demand echoed and amplified across the decades in books like Christopher Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites" (1995), Kevin Phillips's "Wealth and Democracy" (2002),
Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire" (2004) and Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas?" (2004).

Much of "The Power Elite" was a tough-talking polemic against the "romantic pluralism" embedded in the prevailing theory of American politics. The separation of powers in the Constitution, the story went, repelled the natural tendency of power to concentrate, while
political parties and voluntary societies organized the clash of interests, laying the people's representatives open to the influence of public opinion. This "theory of balance" still applied to the "middle levels of power," Mills wrote. But the society it envisioned had been eclipsed.

For the first time in history, he argued, the territories of the United States made up a self-conscious mass society. If the economy had once been a multitude of locally or regionally rooted, (more or less) equal units of production, it now answered to the needs of a few hundred
corporations. If the government had once been a patchwork of states held together by Congress, it now answered to the initiatives of a strong executive. If the military had once been a militia system resistant to the discipline of permanent training, it now consumed half the national
budget, and seated its admirals and generals in the biggest office building in the world.

The "awesome means of power" enthroned upon these monopolies of production, administration and violence included the power to prevent issues and ideas from reaching Congress in the first place. Most Americans still believed the ebb and flow of public opinion guided political affairs. "But now we must recognize this description as a set of images out of a fairy tale," Mills wrote. "They are not adequate even as an approximate model of how the American system of power
works."

The small groups of men standing at the head of the three monopolies represented a new kind of elite, whose character and conduct mirrored the antidemocratic ethos of their institutions. The corporations recruited from the business schools, and conceived executive training
programs that demanded strict conformity. The military selected generals and admirals from the service academies, and inculcated "the caste feeling" by segregating them from the associational life of the country. Less and less did local apprenticeships serve as a passport to
the government's executive chambers. Of the appointees in the Eisenhower administration, Mills found that a record number had never stood for election at any level.

Above the apparent balance of powers, Mills said, "an intricate set of overlapping cliques" shared in "decisions having at least national consequences." Rather than operating in secret, the same kinds of men — who traded opinions in the same churches, clubs and schools — took turns
in the same jobs. Mills pointed to the personnel traffic among the Pentagon, the White House and the corporations. The nation's three top policy positions — secretary of state, treasury and defense — were occupied by former corporate executives. The president was a general.

Mills could not answer many of the most important questions he raised. How did the power elite make its decisions? He did not know. Did its members cause their roles to be created, or step into roles already created? He could not say. Around what interests did they cohere? He asserted a "coincidence of interest" partially organized around "a permanent war establishment," but he did little more than assert it. Most of the time, he said, the power elite did not cohere at all. "This instituted elite is frequently in some tension: it comes together only on certain coinciding points and only on certain occasions of 'crisis.' " Although he urged his readers to scrutinize the commanding power of decision, his book did not scrutinize any decisions.

These ambiguities have kept "The Power Elite" vulnerable to the charge of conspiracy-mongering. In a recent essay in Playboy called "Who Rules America?" Arthur Schlesinger Jr. repeated his earlier skepticism about Mills's argument, calling it "a sophisticated version of the American nightmare." Alan Wolfe, in a 2000 afterword, pointed out that while Mills got much about the self-enriching ways of the corporate elite right, his vision of complacent American capitalism did not anticipate the competitive dynamics of our global economy. And of late we have seen that "occasions of crisis" do not necessarily serve to unify the generals with the politicians.

Yet "The Power Elite" abounds with questions that still trouble us today. Can a strong democracy coexist with the amoral ethos of corporate elites? And can public argument have democratic meaning in the age of national security? The trend in foreign affairs, Mills argued, was for a militarized executive branch to bypass the United Nations, while Congress was left with little more than the power to express "general confidence, or the lack of it." Policy tended to be announced as doctrine, which was then sold to the public via the media. Career diplomats in the State Department believed they could not truthfully report intelligence. Meanwhile official secrecy steadily expanded its reach. "For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end," Mills wrote in a sentence that remains as powerful and unsettling as it was 50 years ago. "Such men as these are crackpot
realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own."

John H. Summers teaches intellectual history at Harvard. He is currently writing a biography of C. Wright Mills.

Repression of War Experience

Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame --
No, no, not that, - it's bad to think of war,
When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.


Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; counting fifteen,
And you're as right as rain...
Why won't it rain?...
I wish there'd be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark.
And make the the roses hang their dripping heads.
Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they're so wise.
I tell you all the wisdome of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees, --
Not people killed in battle, --they're in France, --
But horrible shapes in shrouds --old men who died
Slow, natural deaths, -- old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You'd never think there was a bloody war on!...
Oh yes, you would...why you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud, --quite soft...they never cease --
Those whispering guns --O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop --I'm going crazy;
I'm going start staring mad because of the funs.

--1918, Siegfried Sassoon

Red--Anonymous (something I found while cleaning)

I've always wanted to be a communist.
I found it a beautiful ideal in
which humankind could finally
live equally, sharing possessions
and knowledge.
Materialistic world we live in
I strive for my utopia
World in which differences are
an asset not a handicap
Judging, judgmental
Even I disciminate by saying I
hate racists.
Ask a Russian if he wants to be a
communist.
Ask a Tibetan how she feels
about communism
Ideal, mystic unrealistic
Human nature a destructive
force bringing greed and selfishness
Power seeking pigs
Waiting for my communism

Silent No More

I realise that this is possibly one of the worst places that I could do this. It's so impersonal. You can't see me, and certainly can't prove that I said any of these things. But I couldn't wait any longer and just keep being quiet. I missed my big opportunity, so this is my second chance to at least say something.

On Friday I had lunch with some of my co-workers, and they ended up talking about abortion for some reason I can no longer remember. And while I could handle them talking about how people needed more information, I was very uncomfortable while they were talking about how traumatic an abortion is (although it was deemed just as traumatic to carry the child).

I am tired of this idea of trauma being deemed universal. It is NOT. I am sure that it is a very hard thing for some people, but it isn't for all. How do I know this? Because I've been through it, and don't regret it. My life wouldn't have been what I wanted if I had made any other decision.

Have whatever opinions you like, but don't encourage the idea that all who have abortions react in the same way.

Assumptions All Around

It seems like just when you think that you've gotten pretty good at recognising the assumptions you commonly make, another one jumps out at you.

With only half realising it, I had been making assumptions about bus drivers. Now this may seem really petty, but it ended up being something that totally shocked me yesterday. I realised that as a precaution, I had stereotyped them all as being the sort of middle-aged, white males that were probably conservative. I now know that this was so that I wouldn't end up "slipping" and saying something that would create this whole political atmosphere that would impede our comfortable relationship. Yesterday I got to find out how ridicule this assumption was...

My driver yesterday was telling us about how he'd always wait for us, that he didn't like it when drivers took off even though you could see the person just out of reach of the bus. It sounded like part of it came from his wife being in front of the bus when some driver started off. Our driver said that he figured that it was partly because she was black, and that he never found out who it was because he knew that fighting the other driver wouldn't do any good. This all lead into him telling us about how fe believed Gandhi saying that fighting doesn't solve anything, that all these wars haven't fixed things, that he's been trying help his son not be a fighter, and how he served a little in Vietnam.

It's amazing what the truth is sometimes.

The Future

One of the things that I am doing this session as part of my afterschool program is assisting a woman with her Girl Scout troop. This is purely for background. It was just that I had a thought at the celebration they had last Wednesday to welcome in the new girls to the troop.

While disappointing in the number, one set of parents showed up. I think I spent the rest of the time trying to figure out whose parents they were.

I think that it was just extra intriguing (because I think I would have done this guessing if any other parents had shown up) because the father was Hispanic and the mother was Caucasian. It feels a little bad that I was extra intrigued by this, but at least I admit I was. I was curious of who had the mixed family.

(Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against mixed families. I have a niece and a nephew that are bi-racial kids and I think that they are very adorable.)

The thing that I started wondering about was what were the long term possibilities. I just wondered what positive (or negative) effects that it might have on our ethnic tensions...Would anything change? Would we become more fractioned? Might skin color start to matter less because we would have become more of the melting pot that America had been thought of? (Even though there has been some questioning of the benefit of the so-called melting pot because it results in the loss of a sense of culture and familial history, I think that this is one way in which it might be good...And then we just have to make the effort to pass on the traditions in our own way. Or something.)

It's that last one that I want to hope for.

any other words? (pt. 2)

In our move to continue talking more "politically correctly," do you notice about how there are some words that are still used much more frequently. Like how there is an effort to say "African-American" or "Afro-American" versus "black." However, we still continue to use the word "white" rather than "Caucasian" or "European-American." I think it's interesting. And even more interesting when you can visibly see the PC-barrier breaking down in people when they just start refering to "black" and "white."

It's weirdest seeing it in myself.

James Garbarino & Blaming Culture

I went to a talk yesterday by James Garbarino at the University of St. Catherine on the topic of female aggression. While really interesting at many points, there was one spot that I almost considered totally tuning out.

He started talking about pop culture and the effects that it is having on today's youth. (This was through the increased portrayal of strong, aggressive females in movies & violence in both music & movies.) And he started into what sounded like a blaming of youth violence on the lack of immunity to these displays of aggression. (Evidently, in a research study on the effects of television on youths, girls were impervious to any negative effect from what they saw until the eighties.) I hate these blame games.

Each time there was a school shooting in the last decade, there were these lines of psychologists (and other "experts") that would rant on & on about the impact that violent games, music, & movies had. Doom & Marilyn Manson make you kill people. I'm sorry...but NO! FUCK NO! If this was true I would feel like there would have to be a lot more blood in the streets. Life is bloody now, but not as bloody as it seems like it should be.

Anyways, I was about to totally tune out (& be VERY bitter that I had dealt with driving just so I could hear a man say things that I didn't believe were good enough), but I managed to hang on just long enough for him to redeem himself.

See, James Garbarino says he analyses from the "ecological" standpoint. That means that the answer to most any question is: "It depends." Broad patterns are contextual, primarily based on society or time period. One of the examples was how "permissive" parenting in the 1920s brought about the best-adjusted adults; while in the 1960s "authoritative" parenting was more effective. This was due to the strictness of the world outside of the home, and how the home worked to counterbalance the outside. Thankfully, in my opinion, this held true to the effects of violence in media as well.

As it came across, violence in the media does not necessarily breed violence in those who view/listen to it. It is only dangerous when there is not a support structure in place. Those who already feel alienated are at a greater risk of acting out than those that have strong "spiritual" ties. (I think this was emphasized because the talk was at a Catholic college.) This "spiritual" grounding was just that the person felt that their life was meaningful in some way, or that the world/universe was meaningful.

I liked this a lot better. Despite the way I defend it, I do acknowledge that youth involved in violent acts are often drawn to violent music, movies, & games. It just should not be the scapegoat, and I do not believe that censoring is the right way to fix it (although it always sounds like the easiest). This "ecological" viewpoint shows that while pop culture is to blame, so are the rest of us that are not supporting each other well enough. It's the parents, the educators, and other positive role models that are lacking as well. There is not just one thing to point fingers at, there are many factors. And that should be acknowledged more often by those who talk about why moral disasters happen.


There, I feel better.

I thought this was a worthy addition.

	It may not be a true story... (Anonymous)
	Read this http://www.antiwar.com/orig/ttaylor.php?articleid=5801 before you believe this book. I'm not in any way saying honour killing does not exist (5000 murders per year, according to the UN) but you can find better accounts than this.

Re: It may not be a true story... greenpingu

i think that it was more interesting since i had never before been exposed to the idea of honour killing. (i had heard about the acid, and about another related affair in india, but nothing quite so specific.) also, part of the reason that i thought that it was more interesting than most stories was because of the split between the two "lives". like when she talks about how she thought things were normal, but didn't until she left for europe. it just feels like although this horrible thing is being talked about, it's almost like it has is seen worse through a western eye. there just felt a little hesitance in giving in entirely to the belief that what happened was wrong. aside from the shock of the treatment of women (although i really shouldn't have been as shocked as i was), this was one of the most intersting parts to me.

Souad

i'm going to end up copying this to several places, so if you've read this before, i'm sorry.

i read a really good book last week; and if anyone finds it, i highly recommend reading it. it's called Burned Alive by Souad. it's the true story of a woman who survived an "honour killing" (because she had sex before marriage). and it's really not that long (~200 pages).
so quick read, interesting story.

READ IT!

Lifetime Movies (copied from Livejournal)

while i was out shopping for movies last night at best buy, i saw something that both totally apalled & intrigued me: lifetime movies. i couldn't help staring at it & wondering the horrors that i was sure it contained. (and how could it not with the titles of "mother at sixteen" & "too young to be a dad"?) so while i could appreciate the idea, i feel SO CERTAIN that they dealt with the issue of teen pregnancy in such a bad way.

unfortunately, the only way to prove how bad...or good...they were was to buy the disc & watch it. while i may enjoy watching movies for analyzing (as evidenced by the bad teen movies i watched too much of last year), i am not willing to spend $15 on a gamble. my limit is $10 for movies that i'm not going to watch for any real reason other than to write about.

i'm sure that there are other (bad) movies on teen pregnancy that i can actually rent at blockbuster. i'd prefer cheap rental to too expensive of a commitment.

"Hotel Rwanda"

Isn't it amazing what horrendous things we are capable of when we turn a blind eye?


"Cowardice askes the question: Is it safe?
Expediency asks the question: Is it political?
Vanity asks the question: Is it popular?
But conscience asks the question: Is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position, that is neither safe, nore popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him that it is right..."
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

any other words?

Because of the horrible associations with the word, it has been shortened down to being called the "N" word. I find this totally understandable. The word is extremely derogatory and carries a lot of baggage with it. (I do also realize that it has been used more colloquially, but I am not sure that it would constitute the sort of "reclamation" of "former" derogatory words such as "faggot" & "cunt".)

What I wonder, though, is: are there any other words that we shorten down like this?

Curse words are shortened down because it is unacceptable for unacceptable for young children to say them. When others say them, they need a way of expressing that the word was said & they need a way of saying that they found them inappropriate. But do we have any other words that are deemed such for adults as well as kids other than the one that I first referred to?

...I am not sure. I can't think of one. And I've been trying for a few days.

Texas Truth

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher (whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle) the doctor and the old man struck up a conversation about George W. Bush being in the White House.

The old Texan said, "Well, ya know, Bush is a 'post turtle'." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was. The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain, "You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just want to help the dumb bastard get down!"

"wow!" i say.

"Abortion is the worst form of terrorism."

"fighting the enemy?"

...We still remember a proud city covered in smoke and ashes, a fire
across the Potomac, and passengers who spent their final moments on
Earth fighting the enemy. We still remember the men who rejoice in
every death, and Americans in uniform rising to duty. And we remember
the calling that came to us on that day and continues to this hour.

We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire
or rest until the war on terror is won...



(i didn't think they were "fighting the enemy." how does he mean that?)

Radical Militant Librarians!

When the shepherd is a wolf, the flock becomes only so much meat.
- Gurney Halleck

There was an internal FBI email sent in October 2003 that speaks volumes about why our legal system has been arranged the way it has. An unnamed agent was railing via email against the Department of Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. Specifically, the agent was frustrated by OIPR's failure to deliver authorization to use Section 215 of the Patriot Act for a search. "While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from OIPR's failure to let us use the tools given to us," wrote the agent.

Radical militant librarians?

Radical militant librarians?

This, right here, is why the legal system is arranged the way it is. This is why officers must obtain warrants from a judge before they can conduct a search. Even in this time of watered-down civil liberties, warrants serve a vital purpose. At a minimum, the warrant firewall keeps walleyed FBI agents with wild hairs about radical militant librarians from bulldozing through the Fourth Amendment.

The President of the United States of America, it seems, does not agree with the sentiment.

It has been widely reported that Bush personally authorized the super-secretive National Security Agency to conduct surveillance against American citizens. "The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval," wrote the New York Times upon breaking the story, "was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches."

As if this were not outrageous enough, Bush, during his weekly radio address, bluntly admitted to violating the laws governing surveillance of American citizens and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution not once, but some thirty times. "I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September 11 attacks," said Bush, "and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups."

These revelations hit Congress like a dung bomb, and caused what would likely have been an easy rubber-stamping of the renewal of the Patriot Act to go flying off the tracks and into the puckerbrush. "Disclosure of the NSA plan had an immediate effect on Capitol Hill," reported the Washington Post on Saturday, "where Democratic senators and a handful of Republicans derailed a bill that would renew expiring portions of the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law. Opponents repeatedly cited the previously unknown NSA program as an example of the kinds of government abuses that concerned them, while the GOP chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said he would hold oversight hearings on the issue."

...(rest of article can be found on my livejournal.)

---

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

Alito Turns Aside Democrats' Criticism~Chicago Sun Times

Under persistent questioning, Alito also declined for a second straight day to say whether he believes, as he did in 1985, that the Constitution contains no right to an abortion. "I don't think it's appropriate for me to speak about issues that could realistically come up" before the courts, he said.



(SO mad he got confirmed...it makes me want to learn how to perform abortions just so I can for women who want them after it becomes illegal again.)

"Nina Grant, Pediatric Nurse" (1960)

"I like being Mrs. Enoc Halpern," she said with a glorious smile.

His smile matched hers. "I'm glad you do, my little nurse," he said.
"For that is what you're going to be for the rest of your life."

Current Mood: nauseated

...yet they are so very, very different...

Rumsfeld Compares Chavez to Hitler

The Secretary of Defense likens the Venezuelan President to the German dictator, saying: “‘He’s a person who was elected legally—just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally.”

(from truthdig.com)

Groundhog Day!

This year, both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address fall on the same day. As Air America Radio pointed out, "It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog."

keeping 'em down.

'We have 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population. . . In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity. We should cease to talk about the raising of the living standards, human rights, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.'

-- George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning of the U.S. Dept. of State, 1948