Immodest Half-Life of Ur

Body hacking! (or, more about my tits)

2011-04-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been awhile. This winter, within the space of five months, I got married, defended my PhD thesis, and got a job in the midwest (which starts in the Fall). So it's been a pretty big year.

But now onto the fun stuff. Recently, I've continued my project with body hacking - this time, the attempt was to rid myself of the dreaded PMS.

You may remember my rant about xenoestrogens in the environment and what they might be doing to women's bodies. Well, since then, I've gotten rid of most of the plastics in my food prep/store arsenal, and I eat fewer things out of cans or plastic containers. Canned tomatoes are right out.

Why the paranoia? Because PMS. For me, "PMS" manifested as the (fairly typical) mood swings, fatigue, allergies, and bloating - and swollen, tender breasts. But this was not run-of-the-mill breast tenderness; this was "ohmigod it hurts to walk down the stairs because they're moving" and "wtf none of my bras fit me anymore because they're swollen." This was half the month spent in pain and shame.

I've lived with this since the end of 2006.

I went to the doctor for it - four times. The first time, my doctor prescribed Yaz (a birth-control pill). It made me suicidal (like, I'm Winona in Beetlejuice suicidal) for the whole week I was on it. The second time, my doctor gave me a pamphlet about PMS and told me to avoid alcohol and caffeine (because they make one retain water, and people assume that swollen tissues in the body must be due to water retention). Fair enough, but giving up alcohol and caffeine didn't work. The third time (which was this January), the doctor (who has been my functional GP for three years) tested my thyroid and told me to see a "women's doctor." The fourth time (seeing the women's doctor, the same one I saw the first time), my doctor wanted to put me back on my antidepressants and get a Mirena IUD, and she recommended that I seek counseling.

This all made me feel really angry, and disempowered, and hurt, and belittled. The various tests I had gotten showed that something was clearly wrong with my body - my thyroid hormones, though within normal range, were in the lower third of normal. My testosterone, which I demanded be tested at the fourth appointment, came back "a touch high" (my other gripe with this doctor is that she never tells me the actual results of my tests - including a high cholesterol reading in 2008 which she told me was "fine," but then said that I should "stop eating fried foods and meat" - which is extra funny because I've been vegetarian for 15 years. I found out later that my LDL had read 170, which is crazy high for someone my age and health). This fourth doctor also simply refused to test my estrogen and progesterone levels, even though I asked her.

Anyway. I considered the Mirena IUD, because the doctor told me that I would "stop ovulating," and therefore the monthly hormonal fluctuations would stop. But then I read a paper (Barbosa et al. (1990) "Ovarian function during use of a levonorgestrel-releasing IUD." Contraception 42.51) that showed that, although the various hormone levels of women with a hormonal IUD were lower than those in the control group, the levels were still high enough for ovulation to occur (read: you could still suffer the PMS). I did not bother arguing with doctor #4 about this point. The Mirena is also not covered by my insurance, and would cost about $500 to put in. I also have no need for a new birth control method. In short, it would have been a lot of money for something that may or may not have fixed my PMS, but would have introduced an artificial hormone into the area of my reproductive organs (a progestin, which is not biologically identical to progesterone but is meant to act similarly in the body. Don't get me started on non-biologically-identical hormones.)

Experiment #1: Left back at square one, I tried doc #2's suggestion (found in the handy "you and PMS" pamphlet). I gave up caffeine and alcohol, got regular cardiovascular exercise (despite my running allergy), ate protein at every meal, and took a ton of supplements (which have worked for me in the past and were recommended in Esther Blum's Eat, Drink, and Be Gorgeous: evening primrose oil, Omega 3s, DIM, Vitex, B vitamins, milk thistle, Alpha-Lipoic acid, calcium, and magnesium. It should be noted that Esther Blum also recommends going caffeine-free for PMS and associated breast issues).

Did that work? A bit - the girls were in less pain than they had been in previous months, though the swelling didn't go down at all. This got me through to mid-March, and boy was I miserable - no coffee, no alcohol, tons of pills every day, and running to boot (if I skipped a day of running, my running allergy also came back). AND my tits still hurt. So I started reading again, suspecting that my hormones were still out of whack.

Experiment #2, which I started March 13, was to go dairy-free. I kept eggs at first (though I've already lost my taste for them), but no yogurt, butter, milk, cheese, or anything derived from milk. The reasoning behind this experiment is that dairy products contain mammalian estrogens, which act like estrogens in the human body. I hypothesized that my body was getting too much estrogen from the dairy I was eating (and, to be clear, I was not eating a lot of dairy before this experiment, and almost all of it was organic - I will cite more about dairy and estrogens in a later post). Just to keep it scientific, I added back in caffeine and alcohol, and cut down my supplement intake to evening primrose oil, Omega 3s, a liver support (B vitamins, milk thistle, and alpha-lipoic acid), and Vitex and DIM between ovulation and bleeding (though I'm rethinking this and considering taking the Vitex throughout the cycle and the DIM only in the first half). Heck, I even mostly stopped running.

And guess what? IT WORKED! Since March 13th, I have been pain-free (through one complete menstrual cycle). All my bras fit. And I noticed significantly less bloating and fatigue in the days before bleeding.

So it's a win. Bodily, I don't feel 100% (sugar or gluten will be my next opponent/experiment), and I could still stand to lose some weight (so I might start running again), but holy damn leaving the breast pain behind is a revelation.

Alors, bienvenue, a (once again) vegan lady!

Dear Jezebel

2010-03-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

My comment to your article, "The Marketing Woes of 36DD," has not been published (yet?), but I can't get that bad "I read some sexism buried in a supposedly feminist post" taste out of my mouth.

Here's (an excerpt of) what Margaret Hartmann wrote, in an otherwise very thoughtful and poignant critique of the bra industry. She cites WWD.com:

"Band size defines a clear distinction between a busty woman with an average figure who wears a 28-to-34-inch band but is a G cup, and a plus-size woman who may not have large breasts, but whose band size ranges from 36 and larger and is a C or D cup."

and then replies:

"Yes, it's important that we separate the woman with a 28-inch band and G cups from the woman who wears a 36C, because one may be a hot porn star with implants, while the other is just a fatty."

Thought #1 (a preliminary): Bra size is often measured incorrectly. For a good way to measure your bra size, see this wiki-how article. If your band size (i.e., the circumference of your chest under your breasts) is really 36 inches, then it is likely that "plus-size" clothing fits you. I'm not saying that wearing "plus-size" clothing makes you a "fat" person. It does mean that your chest circumference is larger than what the fashion industry has decided is the "norm" for women's bodies. So when the WWD.com article calls women "plus-size" who have a bra band size of 36 or above, it is not necessarily making an evaluative statement about the woman's appearance.

Thought #2 (sticking to my ribs): When you imply that women who wear small band sizes and large cup sizes are "porn stars" who have "implants," you propagate a few very unfortunate and very anti-feminist myths: first (the smaller), the idea that women who get implants are doing so in order to look more like "porn stars," i.e., in order to sexualize themselves. Second - and what really offends me - is the notion that women who have large breasts for their frame have implants in the first place, or, even worse, that women who have large breasts are more sexualized than their smaller-breasted comrades. As a 100% natural 30FF (in British sizes, a 30H in American sizes), I hate the fact that people see my large breasts and make assumptions about my sexuality.

My point is that women really do come in all shapes and sizes, and naturally so, and it hurts us all when we assume that the way a woman is built implies something about who she is as a person. As a closing comparison, wouldn't you all find it horribly offensive if I made a statement like "all overweight women are lazy"? Well, saying "all giant-tittied tiny ladies are hyper-sexual" is just as bad, thank you very much.

To all those anti-health care conservatives...

2010-03-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

What about the children?!?

This newborn (newborn!) has been denied insurance because he has a pre-existing condition.

And you say that you care about the unborn? And the babies? I don't really think you do.

One word: plastics

2009-11-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

A disturbing new study is out which has found high levels of BPA in many of our food-preserving vehicles (by which I mean "cans"). BPA is already known to have effects on erectile/reproductive function and hormone production/reception. Also, news articles upon news articles (reporting on scientific studies, of course) continue to warn the public about the dangers of phthalates, chemicals added to tons of plastics to improve their plasticity.

Right, okay, so throw out all those canned tomatoes (cans of acidic foods tend to leach more BPA than cans of alkaline foods), stop drinking stuff bottled in plastic, or cans (yup, soda cans too), start buying phthalate-free cosmetics (moisturiser, nail polish, eyeshadow, powders, hairsprays, and more!), don't forget the phthalate-free vibrator (just when you thought your vag was safe from chemicals) - why am I still upset about all this information?

Both BPA and phthalates are "xenoestrogens", which means that they act like estrogen in the body. *All* of the hullaballoos I've been reading in major news sources about the dangers of these chemicals have only addressed the dangers these chemicals pose to *boys* and *men.* Are women not affected by excess estrogen? Are girls and women miraculously exempt from the consequences of these endocrine disruptors**?

No! But, of course it is only when the masculinity of young boys and the reproductive abilities of grown men are being threatened that journalists and the government feel the need to raise the red flag. God forbid my son be effeminate! (Or grow up with undescended testicles, or tiny penises.) God forbid that adult men not be able to stick it to their ladyfriends (or manfriends)! God forbid that all these fetuses come out female instead of male!

Thank you, sexist media, for warning us about threats to male health.

My question: where the heck are the studies about women?? And since there are such studies, why the heck is Big Media not reporting on it? Doesn't our health count?

**Disclaimer: I am a lady who is quite sensitive to excess estrogen and xenoestrogens in my body. I would hate to develop breast cancer, ovarian cysts, reproductive problems, diabetes, etc. because health organizations and the government failed to see that putting hormones into everyday products was a detrimental thing.

Apples and Oranges

2009-09-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Two arguments against Health Care that just don't cut it (in response to some stuff I read on Facebook comments this morning):

1. Health insurance should work like car insurance - we pay for all the routine stuff, and the insurance kicks in for all the major expenses.

Why this doesn't work: Who decides what is "routine"? Is a once-a-month checkup routine? Or only once every six months? What if I find a breast lump - would it be "routine" for me to go to the doctor's to get it checked out? What if I end up getting charged for four or five "routine" visits in a month's time? That could rack up some serious debt.

2. People who have health care debt are just not fiscally responsible (i.e., they spend their money on cable, cell phones, clothes, eating out, etc.)

Why this doesn't work: Health care expenses are usually on a completely different scale from that of our normal living expenses (and I'm including mortgage/rent in this equation). Having done some research on that oh-so-routine procedure that half of us will likely go through at some point in our lives (no, I don't mean hip replacement), pregnancy and childbirth is one hell of an expensive operation. Even if you do it at home, even if you get a midwife and have no complications, it can cost in the region of $1500-$4000. If you do it in a hospital (or if complications necessitate that you do it in a hospital), it will run around $6000 (though, according to actual people's testimony, it usually ends up costing more like $10,000-$20,000). If your fetus for some reason needs a c-section, or if you need an epidural, or if you need a little snipping of your perineum, those are extra expenses, and cost extra! In short, it would likely cost me more money than I make in a year to give birth to a child in a hospital right now.

More on health care

2009-08-12T08:42:00.001-07:00

I thought I'd link to Mike Madden's article on Salon.com about the present existence of health care rationing and refusal to cover necessary expenses (which are exactly what Obama's so-called 'death panels' would be). The insurance companies already deny care to their customers, and Madden gives a run-down of some particularly horrifying examples.

This is why we need a government option.

Public Health option and my thoughts

2009-08-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

I've been busy writing, but y'all should check out the new White House website clarifying their proposed public health option. I think it's a fabulous idea, given the fact that this information has not been able to be dispersed through typical channels, due to counterproductive disruptions (at the 'town-hall' meetings), media spinning, and strategic misinformations put out by conservative politicians and pundits alike. Here's what I think:

1. Decent health care should be a guaranteed right (ideally for everyone, regardless of birthplace, but certainly in this country for citizens and workers).

2. Preventive care should be the concern of the government: it's our tax dollars that pay for the treatment of diseases and problems which could have been prevented.

2a. The government should turn their backs on the food industry lobby. They want us to buy their products and get addicted to them, regardless of how much they hurt us in the process (oooh, but on a side note, someone should do some actuarial studies on the effect of the modern food industry on the lifespan of the consumer - in terms of pure profit, it doesn't benefit the food industry if they are losing years of product consumption because their consumers are dying earlier due to diseases caused in part by their products).

2b. The government should regulate the hell out of the food industry - I'm talking no more trans fats (and full disclosure on food labels, none of this 'rounding down' shit), no more MSG (or MSG-like neurotoxic additives), and get all that processed soy out da biz!

2c. The government should wake the hell up and realize that xenoestrogenic and antiandrogenic chemicals in our water - which are detectable but not filtered out in modern water treatment plants - are harming us! We need better filtering, better testing, and, finally, DISCLOSURE on the uptake rates and effects of these chemicals and the levels in our local water supplies.

3. A note on definitions: if the government *were* planning to institute "death panels" as part of their health care plan, and if the government *were* then planning to euthanize all the unsavory grannies in our country, this would not be an example of "eugenics". Why? Because eugenics aims to get rid of the "unsavories" *before* they reproduce, eliminating their contribution to the gene pool. These old people are presumably well beyond the age of reproduction, and they have probably already passed their genes down to the next generation. Thus, killing them off would not be eugenics. Ha!

and I'm back...

2008-07-26T13:27:00.001-07:00

with today's "hilarious and horrible irony":

From the Washington Post:

President Bush yesterday signed an executive order expanding sanctions against companies and individuals linked with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, part of an effort by Western nations to ratchet up the pressure on a government accused of killing and terrorizing political opponents in order to remain in power.

The move by Bush, which followed a similar maneuver earlier in the week by the European Union, freezes any U.S. assets and forbids U.S. financial transactions with a list of companies controlled by or affiliated with the government, particularly in the mining and minerals industry, a key sector of Zimbabwe's ailing economy.

"This action is a direct result of the Mugabe regime's continued politically-motivated violence, disregarding calls from the Southern African Development Community, the African Union, and the United Nations to halt the attacks," Bush said in a statement.

"No regime should ignore the will of its own people and calls from the international community without consequences," he added.

Let's have a contest to see who can name the most instances of the Bush regime ignoring the will of their own people. No, really. I'm laughing and crying on the inside.

Food prices

2008-04-24T14:24:00.000-07:00

Food prices are rising - especially for "staple" foods like wheat, corn, and soy.

The President of the World Bank (and a fuckton of other public commentators) have blamed biofuels for these rising prices. According to them, your ethanol-powered vehicle is forcing Haitians to eat mud.

I say, how about this: "Animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90% of the soy crop, 80% of the corn crop, and 70% of its grain." From the USDA

Oh, and how about this: "'To produce 1 pound of feedlot beef requires about 2,400 gallons of water and 7 pounds of grain (42). Considering that the average American consumes 97 pounds of beef (and 273 pounds of meat in all) each year, even modest reductions in meat consumption in such a culture would substantially reduce the burden on our natural resources.'" From the NIH

I think that blaming biofuels for the rise in cereal prices is like blaming that donut you had this morning for the fact that you are 30 pounds overweight.

the panic of economy

2008-04-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading my morning news (a bad decision, given that it generally makes me depressed for the whole day), and I see a headline about 'Moms' who are suffering from the rising cost of food and gas. I read the article, and a few things struck me. Depressing things, of course, but perhaps insightful nonetheless.

1. These 'Moms' are mostly working mothers with working (or recently working) fathers. None of these families can be said to be earning anything lower than middle class wages. Perhaps that is the point of the article (i.e., here are some middle class families who are struggling), but what does that say about the recently unemployed, or, for that matter, the hoards of people who make less than $20/hour?

2. The incredulity of independence from mass-marketed goods. Moms breastfeeding? Making their own baby food? Growing their own vegetables?? My god, it really has gotten bad. Of course, while there is plenty of information about your local bulk-food/low-cost grocery store, there is no information about buying actual local food (from actual farmers in your neighborhood). Heaven forbid people start realizing that they don't actually need to go to a grocery store to acquire more-than-adequate sustenance for themselves and their children.

3. The emphasis on female self-sacrifice. I understand that women still do most of the household chores in American families, including grocery shopping and cooking, but why the focus on women? Where are the men in these families cutting corners? Why are women the suffer-buffer for a family's economic woes? The article aims (I think) to use the 'mother' as a pity-evoking symbol, but it also reifies that antiquated (and Christian) notion that women are naturally (and appropriately) self-sacrificers.

So, wives and girlfriends and daughters and mothers and sisters, in these tough economic times (tough for everyone except the millionaires, of course), please just take the hit for all of us. We'd like you to absorb all the financial hardship of your family and try to make your husbands, children, and parents not notice the difference in their lifestyles. We'd also like you to quell whatever emotional difficulty your family might be having because of their lack of money. Emotions and housework are your basic family responsibilities. You can feel better about yourself later by making everyone around you feel guilty for their inadequate martyrdom.

A Fetus.

2008-01-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

So in my neverending quest to read about things that make me deeply disheartened with this world, I came across this article in the LA Times (unfortunately subscribers-only, but I'll sum it up for you):

A New Generation of Anti-Abortionists. Young people, women, in their teens and twenties, who would like to ban abortion entirely. My particular favorite is a now 20-year-old woman who has campaigned to emend the Colorado state constitution such that a fertilized egg is now defined as a person. A fertilized egg. (That couldn't work legally in America, because fetuses would either have to get visas or be declared illegal immigrants because, after all, they wouldn't have been born here).

Now, putting aside all the traditional pro-choice arguments I keep handy in my back pocket, I think that history has something very important to teach us on this subject.

First, 'abortion' (by which I mean an intended miscarriage of a fetus) has always been practiced by humans. Always. There is no point in history where one could say that no one on earth had an intended miscarriage. Abortion has as true and universal a history as religion, government, and war.

I was originally going to write a long explanation of the legal murder and enslavement of children in ancient Greece and Rome (about 1000 years' worth of Western civilization's 3000-year lifespan), but instead I would like to posit some of the legal ramifications of defining fetuses as persons today.

The Funny ones: being able to drive in the carpool lane while pregnant; filing tax reports for your fetus (and claiming them as a dependent?); ordering off the kids' menu at any restaurant; parking in handicapped spots (since the 'person' inside you is unable to walk); preboarding on airplanes (since the 'person' inside you requires assistance to get down the jetway).

The Scary ones: getting arrested and prosecuted for endangering the life/liberty/happiness of your fetus if you do any of the following while pregnant: drinking alcohol or caffeine, smoking, being near other people who are smoking, eating basil or pesto (or any number of other miscarriage-inducing herbs), taking antacids, being near paint fumes or mercury, dyeing your hair, running, jogging, jumping rope, other strenuous exercise (including sex?), petting or owning a cat, working overtime, getting stressed out, reaching upwards, lifting heavy things, etc.

My point is this: there's a lot of stuff out there that can kill a fetus, and many women miscarry for completely unexplainable reasons. Are we going to have to investigate every single miscarriage as a possible homicide? Are we going to police the movements and decisions of pregnant women? Will you be prosecuted if you fail to report witnessing a pregnant woman eat chocolate or walk past fresh paint? (After all, you may have witnessed an involuntary manslaughter or attempted assault!)

It's absurd.

new year - part I

2007-12-31T13:29:00.000-08:00

Having been out of the country (again) for a few weeks, I'm trying to get myself back on the stick writing-wise. Though I have to say that there's not much in the way of happy news to be writing about - the U.S. economy on the verge of a recession, people losing their houses, the environment going to shit, the feuding amongst Democratic party candidates becoming mind-numbingly cacophonous, and now I hear that Obama's "universal" health care plan actually doesn't cover everyone.

This is a short post, and for that I apologize. Go watch some Keith Olbermann. Or drink some champagne. I'm sure things will look better tomorrow morning.

Finally! A Rich Guy I can get behind

2007-10-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

Don't read this post yet. Just watch the video (you might have to scroll down the page to get to it).

Warren Buffett is awesome. I cannot hate a rich person who is willing to give up some of their wealth when they see the horribly unfair monetary treatment they get. And I don't say this because I live on a measly $20k per year in an expensive city. I usually qualify for a tax refund anyway. But people like my parents, who *do* end up paying the government well more than what they need to keep to save for retirement and live somewhat well as it is - well, they deserve lower taxes. That's it.
And they know they ought to be keeping more of their money. But because they themselves choose to *believe* the conservative (read: 99% of the fuckall wealthy) rhetoric, they think that the only solution to their problem is to get rid of taxes altogether. We should not be surprised that the fuckall wealthy are riding on the 'get rid of taxes' wagon. We *should* be surprised that our parents, the media that informs them, and the government fail to communicate clearly the sheer surfeit of money that the wealthiest people in our country pull in for themselves, and the relative lack of money they must funnel back into the public domain.
I am not advocating communism here. We all pay money to the government so that we can have streets to drive on, people to help us in emergencies, people to make sure our air is clean and our products are safe, parks and sidewalks to walk on, schools for our kids with already-underpaid teachers - not to mention the (comparatively inexpensive) public services that are necessary to provide for the underprivileged. Don't even get me started on the relative lack of money given for welfare/food stamps/homeless shelters/"handouts" that the conservatives are always railing about. (But if you *are* interested to see where your taxes are going, look here). As I said, we all already pay money to the government, and that is not going to change. I just think that the wealthy should not get special treatment that helps them get wealthier at a faster rate than our parents. And I think #3 wealthiest dude in the country backs me up here.
Unfortunately, unless Mr. Buffett has the cajones to fork out the millions of dollars it would take to get lobbyists in Washington changing the tax code (as if I needed anything more to support my assertion that the wealthy are heavily invested in, well, their money), his words will stay only words.

The Fires

2007-10-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

So, fire + evacuees + old terrorist confession = an excuse for Fox news to get your brain thinking more Bushily.

I read it on RawStory (which includes the original Fox News broadcast in all its racist fear-mongering glory), but this youtube video gives you the lighthearted version. Keith Olbermann makes it seem okay, or at least a little laughable, that Fox News took a 2003 terror warning and made it look like these fires all around L.A. were started by Al Quaeda.

Now you just sit, and think. Families are being evacuated, homes are being lost, firefighters are being injured, and all our lungs look like freshly-paved asphalt. And Rupert Murdoch and the conservative media machine want to use all this to make you spend your money on bombs and guns and private soldiers, send your family overseas to kill and get traumatised, and then vote Republican in 2008.

Are you angry yet? Yeah, me too.

hundred dolla bills y'all

2007-10-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

Just read from this article from RawStory that the Iraq/Afghanistan war effort, over the next decade (and possibly including what we've already spent - that part isn't clear) will cost more than $2 trillion, with over $700 billion in INTEREST - because we are spending borrowed money.

W.T.F.

No, seriously, let me write that all out:

$2,700,000,000,000.00 total

$705,000,000,000.00 in interest

RawStory estimates that this amounts to $8000 per person in this country. And I thought Republicans were meant to be fiscally conservative. Yeah, that's right Republicans, you just got told. Feel the shame.

omgzzz

2007-10-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

I've been out of contact with too many people for too long. I needed to go off the grid for a couple months to study for an exam. But that stage of my life is so over - because I passed. And I never have to worry about it again. So stay tuned for more awesome blogging from yours truly.

A potential kick in the face for male politicians

2007-09-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

Feminist strategies have taken many different forms over the years. In the 1960s, women fought for equal pay by saying that they were just as qualified/smart/ambitious as men, that they could perform the same roles. In the late 19th century, women convinced the American college system that they needed access to higher education. Their reasoning? - they needed to be smart so that they could provide a good at-home education for America's sons.

What does this have to do with the present day? Well, one of the reasons that Mrs. Clinton will probably not win a national election in 2008 is because much of our society still thinks (at least subconsciously) that women are fundamentally more emotional (read: less rational) than men. We get moody, we change our minds frequently, we cry, we break dishes, we are 'pussies'. Putting the rational/emotional debate aside, if it were the case that a candidate had less 'rational' ability, they probably would not be as desirable a political leader.

Now, this article about one of the side-effects of Viagra indicates that taking this drug might make you a more 'emotional' person. Viagra apparently increases the production of a "love hormone." [Cue satire] Now we all know that that feeling of love can mess with our decision-making skills. And we all know that some large percentage of those crusty white guys in Washington are popping the little blue pills. So how can we trust political leaders who take drugs that compromise their rational abilities and risk the safety of our nation? These men are turning themselves into women.

So I propose that we ban the use of Viagra by political leaders, police officers, men in the military, CEOs, market analysts, and anyone who clings to the myth of male rationality as a justification for not allowing women into their field. Let's keep male space pussy-free.

Radical transformation

2007-08-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

So I once wrote an essay here about the possible detrimental side-effects on the psyche of modern technological recording/documenting devices.

A few days ago, Timmy and I were having a conversation about music writing and the struggle to escape the 'please your teachers' mentality, the struggle to transform into a mentality where you strive to become yourself and please yourself without outside approval. Tim suggested that people have trouble making that transition because they are conditioned to please others in school and at home all through their childhood.

And a very radical idea occurred to me. I thought about the fact that, in the 19th century, all kinds of now-unethical methods were used in school and in the home to discipline and educate children. These children, though, managed (for the most part) to turn out to be fairly responsible, intelligent, self-directed adults. How can this be? What has changed between then and now?

My answer is psychology. 19th century society did not think about the effects of childhood discipline on the adult. The adult is not a direct outgrowth of the child. Now, however, we assume that everything we experience as children affects us as adults. We assume that our personalities are formed early on in our lives, that it resists change as we move into adulthood. But what if this theory is not exactly correct? We know that humans have imperfect memories - that our brains easily forget or misremember the past, even ourselves as we were in the past. What if we have been conditioned against allowing ourselves to forget, allowing ourselves to make a cognitive break with our past?

Certainly the modern prevalence of photo albums, family videos, and keepsakes/souvenirs tend to preserve our memories and keep them authentic, tend to remind us of our past, how we were in the past. What would happen if we stopped believing in the effects of our childhood on our current selves? Could that improve our chances of growing up, becoming self-directed, understanding who we are and who we want to be?

It's a radical idea.

supporting the troops?

2007-07-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

You all might want to read this article by the folks at The Nation.

They interiewed 50 Iraq and Afghanistan vets who were willing to state their names and tell stories about absolutely atrocious stuff that was done to Iraqi and Afghani civilians. Including shooting children, raiding completely innocent people's houses, and planting weapons (or shovels!) to make it look like something other than 'shoot first, ask questions later'.

Up till that article, I had been fairly universally supportive of the American soldiers. I do feel still that they are not entirely culpable for their actions, having been ordered to go, barricaded in isolation, poorly educated about the culture, and instilled with a sense of fear and hatred of the Iraqi people. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere, right? These soldiers certainly cannot take their attitudes back into the U.S. and act in any similar fashion without expecting some kind of punitive reaction by Americans. Why can they behave with such disregard for human life over there, and how well can they be expected to adjust when they come back over here?

parents just don't understand

2007-07-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Paul Kurtz, for founding the Center for Inquiry. Thank you for restoring my confidence in science (and a little more confidence in scientists themselves). I feel like I can finally be comfortable saying that science is not itself a religion, a faith followed by educated 19th-century men. When scientists let science do the work it is supposed to do (namely, adhering to the scientific method without a care as to whether your hypotheses are correct or incorrect), it is a very good thing, a very rational thing.

I realize that much of my dislike of science has stemmed from a dislike of particular scientists.

First, the holier-than-thou group: because they study science and the 'real world', they think that they are better (i don't know how - morally? physically? mentally?) than us lowly scholars of literature and culture. They talk down to us, they lack interest in our own observations, they lose themselves in experiments, dreams of saving the world. The problem with these people is that they lack a certain respect for cultural awareness, social history, communication and persuasion of the masses. Societal change can only operate through a societal conversation. Without the knowledge of how people communicate, persuade, interact, and how they have done so over time, how can one expect to implement whatever precious discoveries one has made? In their wonder at the beauty of nature, moreover, they sometimes lose a sense of the beauty of humanity, the beauty of personalities and social bonds, the thunderstorm of the creative mind. Good poetry, an ancient piece of glassware, can be just as awe-inspiring as the proton pump that allows Venus flytraps to snap shut so quickly.

The second group of scientists that irk me are those who have something seriously invested in the results of their experiments. These people aren't really doing science, yet they feel free to design their experiments or skew their reporting of their results in such a way as to draw conclusions that are unrealistic for the scope of their experiment. Most of these people are social scientists, I suppose. For example, though, the still unsolved claim that abortion raises a woman's risk of getting breast cancer. (oh and check out this creepy as hell website)

The third group, particular to my field of study, is the group who (badly) tries to use scientific method in the humanities. Many of these people would fall into the second group (biased scientists), and think that they can "prove" things about literature, societies, cultures, by use of hypotheses and tests. Why do they irk me? Some don't know how to run an 'experiment' on literature, or history. I'm still not convinced that the scientific method can be used to study the psychological or cultural aspects of our world. (Here I think of the colometric studies of 19th-century German scholars that prove whether text manuscripts are accurate or not). The other reason why they irk me is that, due to the nature of the field itself, these scholars cannot act like other scientists - they cannot collaborate with their peers, they cannot expect to publish a study which culminates in negative or inconclusive results. Just once, I would like to read an article that proves to me that Plato's chronology can't be pinned down. Just once.

looking toward '08

2007-07-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

So I've been following the Democratic presidential candidates this year a little more closely than in the past few elections. The main contenders present an interesting conundrum of issues: while Clinton, Obama, and Edwards all seem to be forward-thinkers and have decent platforms, I worry that Americans simply will not, when push comes to shove, elect a woman or a Black person.

Which makes me want to put my eggs in Edwards' basket. But for some reason, the media is giving him less coverage, he's doing worse in the polls, even though his 'poverty' campaign is one of the best platforms I've seen since Dennis Kucinich. And maybe that's why he has not been as successful. Anyway, Scholars and Rogues has a really good analysis of why the American public might not be willing to hear about poverty and privilege and wealth gaps. And it gets back to my earlier post about Rocky Balboa and the American sense of toilocracy.

I suppose the brain-popping-realization of classist practice in this country is much easier to take when you're 18 than when you're 50, lower-middle-class, working your ass off to make ends meet, and can't figure out why you haven't experienced the American dream.

2007-07-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

So a sad farewell and good luck to Theresa Duncan, author of this blog, source of many genius thoughts and observations. It seems, from laobserved, that she has probably committed suicide in New York.

Another Scorpio, another outsider to this crazy lonely mess called L.A., another savant. So let's be sad briefly, and then be inspired to live our lives harder and more vividly.

read this.

2007-07-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

So in case y'all are not boingboing readers, you should really read this guy's tale of a trip on a conservative cruise ship. It is alternately hilarious and deeply disturbing.

I was in England when the Glasgow airport thing happened, and when the London car bombs almost went off. One of the frequent topics of conversation after these events was: how could doctors, who had sworn the Hippocratic oath, feel ethically able to kill innocent people? While none of my rationalizations seemed to satisfy the family I was staying with, I think, reading Hari's post, that it is easy to see how someone could see themselves as ethical and humane people and still justify the murder of innocents.

Oh, and I saw SiCKO yesterday. Excellent movie. Depressing movie. Another instance of unethical treatment of people for monetary gain. Makes me more convinced that I do not want to spend my life in this country, for fear of falling through the supposed net of social welfare. My favorite moments of the film were where the doctors of other countries were interviewed, when they could say that they were happy to be able to treat people without worrying about how much their services would cost, or whether the person was insured. I would be intrigued to know why the AMA doesn't support universal health care. Surely the doctors could do better jobs if they weren't worried about the financial damage they were doing to their patients.

Relationshipping: a sidebar comment

2007-07-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

Fact of human existence #1: Self-care is the hardest work you will ever do.

I've come to accept that to love another person, to be in a relationship with another person, is to walk a fine line between caring for that person and caring for yourself. Sometimes self-care can be found in caring for the other person, but sometimes it can't. If you are lucky, or devious, or deciduous, you can find a person to love who also gives you the space and encouragement for self-care. But maybe I've been going about it the wrong way.

I used to think that ideally, people are the best friends when they want to help you get to the person you want to be, when they see that future you as clearly as you do, and when they can insert a relatively-objective 'game-plan' by which they can help you get there. But what does this really mean? How does it flesh out in real practical life?

I think of myself as something like a heroin addict. Not a real heroin addict, but the kind of heroin addict you see in movies - good heart, can't break his habit, needs a tough-love kind of friend to do some work for them, lock them in a room, be there through the recovery, etc. I tend to care for myself with the tough-love strategy, and I guess I thought it best to have someone who would do the tough-love thing with me. But the heroin addict, at some point, antagonizes the caretaker. There is something about him that doesn't want to change his behavior. This antipathy might be temporary, during the recovery process, or it might last longer. Is it right to risk this kind of reaction with a loved one?

And this is why we hire therapists - someone with whom we are not afraid to have mixed feelings, who will help us be more genuine to our ideal self. Therapists help us avoid putting our partners, our families, in the caretaker position. But what did people do before there were professional therapists? Certainly there must have been some reliance on family and friends for support.

But I also begin to think that this reliance on others for caretaking is not universal, and perhaps a detrimental character flaw. Maybe I am refusing to 'man up' and do the work of self-care myself, for fear of seeming selfish or rude. Certainly, the best self-caring I've ever done was when I was living with a person with whom it was a joy for me to be completely selfish. So maybe I should be that selfish, not feel guilty about it, and, partner-wise, be looking to find someone who is happy with my (inevitably enhappying) improprieties.

Now there is a selfish post if I ever saw one :)

Since I'm holding forth on movie heroes (Rocky B.)

2007-07-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

I also saw (before I left for England) the lastest Rocky Balboa movie. I got to thinking about the type of hero/person Rocky is meant to represent, and it made me think of an episode of "So You Think You Can Dance."

I think this episode was from season two. Anyway, the story is: this kid (bad dancer) is auditioning for the second year in a row to be on the show. His mother is in tow at the audition. He does his piece and gets reamed by one of the judges (stern British guy), who tells him point blank that he will never be a dancer. At this point, the mother gets up and yells at the judge that her son can be anything he wants to be - if he works hard enough, he will be a good dancer. She seems to believe this to be true - passionately, hysterically. Her son, perhaps, believes it as well.

Now, this example is laughable, but it brings up an interesting philosophy of American culture. Do we really think that we can do anything we want to do? My parents certainly told me that when I was young, even though we were not wealthy or well-connected. The idea seemed to be that through work and committment one could acheive anything.

Now, I don't believe in a truly Aristotelian argument - that people are born with certain talents and should pursue careers that fit them (he also famously said that certain people are born to be slaves). I do think that humans have the ability to learn things and change the way their minds and bodies work. I also believe, however, that some things require a lifetime of shaping, a lifetime of particular opportunities and particular practice (supposedly, we acquire the ability to be tone hearing -as opposed to tone deaf- within the first year of our life). The 'good' dancers on that show, for example, had lessons and teachers and recitals and diets and expensive lycra bodysuits. They probably had these things for most of their lives, and the access to these things is what has conditioned them to have an aptitude for dancing. As the show proved, one cannot (barring extreme talent for a thing) simply self-teach for a year or two and become good.

Yet somehow this guy and his mother firmly believed in the philosophy of hard work and gain. This brings me back to Rocky, another person who, I think, embodies this philosophy. Rocky is not a smart guy. He is a bit naive about a lot of things. I think of the scene where he begs the council to let him have a boxing license - the council is acting on behalf of his bodily health, but he insists that his body is his own to govern, even if he destroys it in pursuit of his goals. He firmly believes that, with enough training, he can turn himself into the fighting machine he used to be. Though Rocky barely survives the fight, the movie ultimately, unfortunately, perpetuates this philosophy, that hard work will get you whatever you want, that hard work can transform you into someone else.

This philosophy is a flaw in American thinking. It is connected to the myth of self-reliance (that you can boot-strap your own way from poverty to wealth, invisibility to fame, fat to skinny, ugly to beautiful, etc.), and it may be why some Americans are so unhappy and overworked. How many movies do we see in which the above transformation is successful? How often do we blame ourselves for laziness or lack of committment when in actuality we are working ourselves to death in search of the unattainable?

I am also not advocating that we stop working, or become lackadaisical with ourselves. I still believe in our ability to change and grow. But I do think that a movie like Rocky Balboa and its promotion of this American 'just work harder' philosophy obfuscates the reality of disparate wealth and access in our country. It is a fact that people who are born into wealth have more opportunities than people who are born into poverty. It follows as well that the wealthy, because of their access from birth to these opportunities, will seem more 'talented' at their chosen profession/hobby, on average, than their less well-off peers. We do not all start off on an equal playing field. And the equal playing field is what we should all be working towards, lest our younger generations face our same feeling of dismay, exhaustion, and confusion that can only be felt after an unsuccessful fight between one's forehead and a brick wall.

Die Hard 4.0

2007-07-06T06:54:00.000-07:00

Good movie. Excellent movie. Incredibly energizing. Timothy Olyphant: you are the hottest thing on two legs.

But the point? Do we learn anything from this movie? A few issues I have:

1. John McClane as a problematic hero (ties into 2. and 3.)
2. What good is American money in a post-apocalyptic economy?
3. The "firesale" would surely affect other countries: it is not just an American problem

I guess I was tainted in my opinion of the film because I saw it in England, amongst English people. I was thus hyper-aware of the American-ness of the whole thing.

First, John McClane. A good cop - respects the law (when appropriate), has respect for most human life, trained to notice stuff and drive well and take punches (or bullets) and think on his feet. But why, throughout the entire movie, the repeated threats of physical violence out of his mouth? It seems to be his iconic thing - he *will* get to the bad guys, he *will* punch out or threaten anything in his way, and then he *will* beat the crap out of the bad guys for doing what they did. And he will do it all ironically, resignedly, resentful of the fact that he 'has to be that guy.' What does this say about our ideas about justice? That we resent being the bully, but somebody has to be 'that guy'; we might as well 'grow some balls' and accept that physical violence is a fact of the world.

Maybe I read too much into the script, but it seems like a defense of American foreign policy. We resent being the most powerful nation in the world, and we resent having to boss everyone else around to keep the world a safe place, but if we didn't do it, the whole world would go to pot. We are saving lives through our violence and intimidation.

I find it troubling. #3 also spells out why I think the movie is, if anything, too solipsistic in its range. All the news reports, all the damage and damage control - it all came from and affected only Americans and American soil. Since when are our economy and satellites and utilities only dependent on what happens in our country? And since when would the rest of the world ignore us if such a 'terrorist hack' were to occur? Whether we like it or not, our country is deeply integrated with the rest of the world - we depend on other countries for the livelihood of our economy, and what happens in America has repercussions worldwide. The movie, in all its American aggrandizement, cannot imagine itself out of that symbiosis.

But yeah, go see the movie. And be prepared to cream yourself whenever Olyphant is on the screen.

an individual dealing with american culture

2007-07-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

So I've been reading a lot about Seneca lately (you know, the old Roman philosopher dude) and the innovations he had made in the formulation of selfhood, behavioral modification, and happiness of Roman Stoic philosophy.

Prior to Seneca, a person who wanted to live a "virtuous" life would turn, inevitably, toward the opinion of the society. One would formulate their decisions, self-presentation, and attitude based on the reaction and expectations of the society. So a senator could know that he was living virtuously because he would gain the approval of the people around him. Even when alone, moreover, the guiding voice of virtue in his head would be the voice of public opinion - the expectations of the society were internalized as his model of behavior.

When Seneca began his theorizing, the Empire was in a sorry state: emperors with unlimited power (and often abusive of that power), aristocrats out for money or brown-nosing their way into power, afraid to criticize the emperor even for the most atrocious of deeds. In short, "public opinion" was fucked. Seneca therefore tweaked the guiding model of Stoic philosophy, encouraging people to turn inwards rather than outwards for their models of behavior. There were no living icons to follow - he had to create one and follow it, even when it encouraged his behavior to go against what had become the cultural norm.

Which brought me to think about American culture. I think American culture is very much screwed up, and (at least for those of us who are not blessed with kabillions of dollars in family wealth) moderating one's behavior by the cultural expectations of our day will likely result in depression, eating/exercise disorders (anorexia, bullimia, bingeing, or obesity), ill health, exhaustion, and happiness generated only by our children and our material goods. My initial thoughts focused on our obesity problem and restaurant portion sizes, but I suppose it applies to any one of our many cultural standards.

In simple terms, we have two levels of decision-making. The first level, a basic level, is our conditioned instinct. Freud called it an "id," it has been seen as our "bestial" or "appetitive" part, and it is our baseline for decision-making - what we want. There exists a second level of decision-making - as Bartsch terms it, "what we want ourselves to want." This level of thought is where we have a sense of right and wrong, what we ought to be doing, what we idealize for ourselves as the "correct" mode of behavior. Now, it is this second level of decision-making that often coincides with conditioned cultural norms - we know that a bright red dress will stand out at a cocktail party, so, however much we like the red dress, we choose the black one because it is more fitting to the social expectation.

So what can we do when our culture tells us that it is appropriate to gorge ourselves on unhealthy food, exploit others for the sake of personal gain, pimp out our giant rides (using up our savings), take up space, bomb other countries under false pretense, work overtime, rub antibacterial gel all over ourselves five times a day, etc.? The results of conforming to this, as I've said above, are not good for us individually or for the rest of our citizens. It could also be argued (but this is a topic for another time) that our conformity without questioning the norm only perpetuates these unhealthy and unethical cultural practices and beliefs.

We need, therefore, to divorce ourselves from public expectation. We need to reject the large restaurant portions, the giant cars, the antibacterial gel, popcorn at the movie theatre, guns in our houses, the pedestrian-bereft suburbs, and mom's apple pie. We need to sit and imagine actual ethical behavior and create our own interlocutor to guide us toward virtuous living. Wow, and maybe that's why evangelical Christianity has taken up so easily as of late - a set of guiding principles alternative to (and more ethical, in some senses, than) those capitalist and exploitative secularities that have gotten our country into its current state. I suppose Jesus is a better interlocutor than Colonel Sanders.

Of course, modern Christianity has its own problems (a huge topic, but for starters, the believers should think more about modelling their own decisions after Jesus; he seems to have been a pretty ethical individual), and for the non-believers, we need to do a little bit more legwork to come up with our own standards for ourselves, standards that will help us be happy and ethical people.

Which brings me back to Seneca. Aside from philosophy, he also wrote a bunch of tragic plays, in which (as Bartsch has argued in The Mirror of the Self) characters who have created their own set of guiding principles, against the expectations of their societies, commit horrible atrocities that make perfect logical sense in their own heads. By breaking ourselves from societal expectation, we also risk losing all sense of ethical behavior and guiding ourselves by a faulty set of beliefs (like those bloody misled Objectivists). Nevertheless, we must rethink our formation of self if we hope to save ourselves from the harm our culture currently inflicts on us.

addendum to previous

2007-07-03T06:43:00.001-07:00

For a look at a scholar who has done some very interesting cultural things with her science background, check out Anne Fausto-Sterling's work.

A new humanist from the humanities?

2007-07-03T03:45:00.000-07:00

Has anyone read the book by John Brockman, Science at the Edge? I'm intrigued by anything about the so-called "new humanists" (of which I count myself), but I was particularly disturbed by some of Brockman's opening statements.

First, he seems to assume that humanities is a closed-circuit discipline, firmly and irreversibly separated from the "hard" sciences. I partly agree with this, though I see many of my colleagues (all in the humanities) attempting to bridge that gap in their research and writing. It is certainly something I intend to do (maybe unsucessfully) in my upcoming dissertation. He seems to define the "new humanists" as scientists who have recognized the apparently dismal state of the humanities and choose to communicate their research in a humanist way to the general public - i.e., what their scientific knowledge means for you. What irked me first is the way that he continually disses 'the humanities' (as if they were monolithic anyway). He assumes that humanities 'icons' are not interested in science, not interested in communicating anything other than pessimistic messages about the "sick modern society." He describes the state thusly:

"Meanwhile, the traditional humanities establishment continues its exhaustive insular hermeneutics, indulginig itself in cultural pessimism, clinging to its fashionably glum outlook on world events." (p.4)

This he contrasts with the "openness" of science, which explores endless questions, without bias, accepting of contradictory findings, always studying some objective "something." His "new humanists," the scions of a more optimistic and useful intellectual endeavor, come strictly from the world of scientific study, not from the humanities.

To be fair, his critique is of those academics whose scholarship operates uninformed by the 'scientific' aspects of their field. He states:

"One can only marvel at, for example, art critics who know nothing about visual perception; 'social constructionist' literary critics uninterested in the human universals documented by anthropologists; opponents of genetically modified foods, additives, and pesticide residues who are ignorant of genetics and evolutionary biology." (p.3)

This is something with which I firmly agree. But researching this material and using it is not outside the ability of humanities scholars. At any rate, it is just as feasible as Brockman's scientists who use their research to make claims about modern cultural issues without studying history or literature or the theories of cultural studies. Moreover, I think his faith in the ability of science's cultural claims is a bit unrealistic: one of the reasons the humanities distanced itself from the sciences in the first place (beginning perhaps with anthropology in the early 20th century) is that the humanities allows for the notion that no science is entirely objective - there is always a subjective (human) element in the creation of scientific knowledge. The scientific method failed to provide consistent data in the early studies of human cultures. Cultural theory, history, etc. aim partly to identify and account for this subjectivity of study. It began as a corrective for science's claims of authority and objective truth.

Similarly, I agree with Brockman that the past is not useful when studied merely for the past's sake. History should be (but arguably always is) a 'presentist' project. I think, though, that there are humanities scholars who can manage to create useful and accessible scholarship for the modern day.

Another one of his points that I find interesting (and useful for a debate about the various merits of the humanities and the sciences) is his assertion that "humanities academians talk about each other, [while] scientists talk about the universe." (p.6) His assesment of the scientific community (in opposition to the humanities community) is interesting:

"[Scientists] are both the creators and the critics of their shared enterprise.... Through the process of creativity and criticism and debates, they decide which ideas get weeded out and which become part of the consensus that leads to the next level of discovery." (p.6)

This brings up an interesting observation of mine, namely, that the scentific community is in fact looking for a consensus. They work collaboratively, they encourage collaboration, and their work is conceived of as a useful piece of a big puzzle, one which they should share with the rest of the scientific community. Humanities academics work in an entirely opposite way. We are taught to guard our opinions as intellectual property, we are taught not to work in groups (much less publish in groups), and we are taught to differentiate our own independent voices from those voices that have gone before us. We are not (at least nowadays) looking for consensus, or seeing our work as a piece of an objective identifiable puzzle.

But why would the humanities want to look for consensus? Our barest assumptions - that study itself is a subjective process, that interpretation is unique and dialogic and changing, that what we study is also always changing - lead us to believe that there is no pinnable objective "thing" parallel to that real and present universe that the scientists supposedly have, and no concrete method comparable to the scientific method, which, as Brockman states, functions broadly across the scientific disciplines. Where this leaves us, though, is unclear. Certainly, the in-fighting of academics in the humanities does not help the society as a whole learn and progress. Collaborative and dialectical work should be encouraged and rewarded in the humanities. Scholars should make an effort to learn the science of their field as well as the literature, history, etc. But those people who work in the humanities should not be discounted as lost causes; there is a prodding from their side as well for more 'humanist' modern work.