(no subject)
Jun. 14th, 2006 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenAnother news-generated rant that also has to do with my current topic of investigation: babies.
You uppity womens better be nursing those babies!
I cannot believe the context to which these studies have been distorted. Right there in the article, they admit that the women who tend to do what this new "Health Initiative" (more like a stealth initiative to sabotage male-female equality in child-rearing, more on that later***) wants--breast feed for six months tend to be a) wealthy and b) older. Meaning that they have either established themselves comfortably at work such that they can take the time to do what this push demands they do, or that they are at liberty to do it because they don't work at all (many women who worked all along in their lives tend to stop with later pregnancies because by then they're dealing with a passle of kids).
Also, hello? Wealthy people can afford better health care. Period. That means all the diseases that exclusive breast-feeding provides? Not causally linked to breast mllk antibodies! How many of those wealthier, older, and more-at-liberty moms with the "smarter," "healthier" children are able to take their kids at least twice a year to a pediatrician versus the working-class ones or the poorer ones who can't afford it or get time off to go?
And the article is damned right to ask the question: what if you can't breast feed because you can't, and not just because you can't afford the time off (12 weeks is the most maternity leave you get)? Because your mammary glands just aren't up to the demands of a hungry baby? Or if you have, I dunno, HIV? Hello? I wonder, since antibodies are this be-all, end-all in popular perceptions of immunology, if people have considered the many difficulties facing an Rh- woman with and Rh+ baby. I'm almost certain that, even when she's been immunosuppressed to support the child in utero, she's not supposed to nurse the child after because those precious antibodies could make it violently ill! Don't forget folks: antibodies are not always your friends (that's why we have autoimmune disorders--like asthma, which they mention as being possibly prevented by breast-feeding; I'd have to read up more on that to know how that works...)
Beyond that, what "evidence" is there? I love the analogy of the rooster crow = sunrise. It sure looks like that's the case (unless your rooster's broken, and somebody else's rooster picks up the slack). So, without surveying what kind of medical care the wealthier breastfeeders were getting, without doing a genetic history to see which of the nonbreast-feeding mothers might have been predisposed to the diseases their children were subject to, we should take it on faith that breastfed babies seem to be healthier, thus couldn't possibly be healthier for any other reason??
***This fucking administration has made every attempt to put women back in the dark ages with their relations to men, the world that governs their rights, their children, and their own bodies. Women are the primary targets of the abstinence drives because they are the convenient targets--they get pregant, so we can tell they've been having TEH SEX. They are also targeted because of this bullshit, perverse male obsession with paternity that is instead presented as "purity." The patriarchy wants to ensure its members have the privilege of lineage, so we must keep the women sacred until the men want them so there can be no issue of paternity when she falls pregnant. That's why we can't teach those sluts and whores how to use condoms. For all the men know, they could be like storing sperm up there to hatch out whatever eggs they want. Crazy.
So, women are being shamed away from sex because it's wrong to do for them and makes them dirty. Then they are being denied access to education that might save them from literally being contaminated with diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Then, they are increasingly being denied emergency contraceptives. They are being denied on all fronts where Plan B is concerned: education, access, and provision, in that Plan B is not discussed in sex ed (which they should change the name of if they're not going to educate about sex) then access is being restricted because they have to find a doctor willing to give a prescription and provision will be equally hard to obtain because you have to find a pharmicist who won't refuse you because his company gives him permission to foist his religious conviction onto you (even though it's to to the dereliction of his duty).
So the right wing-nuts have made women feel dirty for being, just like men, fond of pleasure and sex, gotten and kept them pregnant whether they wanted it or not, and now we are going to see that those women stay at home with those babies because it's unhealthy not to breastfeed. They keep pulling this "It's not natural," or "It's unhealthy" shit, and people, used to trusting doctors who tell them when something's out of the ordinary or life-threatening by using those terms, BELIEVE THEM.
And don't think this doesn't also tie nicely with the homobigots' push to make being gay a crime in and of itself. Sure, lesbians can get pregnant and nurse, but what about gay men who adopt young babies? Well, they sure can't breastfeed, and stupiding up a child by denying them breastmilk is tantamount to child abuse. Therefore, gay men can't adopt babies. How hard would that argument be to make with this breast-feeding initiative? Not very, I just made it in about three sentences. It's more of that oversimplified false logistical bullshit that conservatives use to QED erroneous conclusions.
It's criminally cyclical. Gays can't have babies because they can't breastfeed. Well, if they can't have babies, which is the purpose of marriage (says the Bible, and we can't question the Bible--it's straight from God's mouth!), then they can't have marriage, can they? And if they can't marry, they're just fornicating every time they are together. Fornication is wrong. They should separate and find nice women to make babies that can then be breast-fed, and this would all be okay.
You uppity womens better be nursing those babies!
I cannot believe the context to which these studies have been distorted. Right there in the article, they admit that the women who tend to do what this new "Health Initiative" (more like a stealth initiative to sabotage male-female equality in child-rearing, more on that later***) wants--breast feed for six months tend to be a) wealthy and b) older. Meaning that they have either established themselves comfortably at work such that they can take the time to do what this push demands they do, or that they are at liberty to do it because they don't work at all (many women who worked all along in their lives tend to stop with later pregnancies because by then they're dealing with a passle of kids).
Also, hello? Wealthy people can afford better health care. Period. That means all the diseases that exclusive breast-feeding provides? Not causally linked to breast mllk antibodies! How many of those wealthier, older, and more-at-liberty moms with the "smarter," "healthier" children are able to take their kids at least twice a year to a pediatrician versus the working-class ones or the poorer ones who can't afford it or get time off to go?
And the article is damned right to ask the question: what if you can't breast feed because you can't, and not just because you can't afford the time off (12 weeks is the most maternity leave you get)? Because your mammary glands just aren't up to the demands of a hungry baby? Or if you have, I dunno, HIV? Hello? I wonder, since antibodies are this be-all, end-all in popular perceptions of immunology, if people have considered the many difficulties facing an Rh- woman with and Rh+ baby. I'm almost certain that, even when she's been immunosuppressed to support the child in utero, she's not supposed to nurse the child after because those precious antibodies could make it violently ill! Don't forget folks: antibodies are not always your friends (that's why we have autoimmune disorders--like asthma, which they mention as being possibly prevented by breast-feeding; I'd have to read up more on that to know how that works...)
Beyond that, what "evidence" is there? I love the analogy of the rooster crow = sunrise. It sure looks like that's the case (unless your rooster's broken, and somebody else's rooster picks up the slack). So, without surveying what kind of medical care the wealthier breastfeeders were getting, without doing a genetic history to see which of the nonbreast-feeding mothers might have been predisposed to the diseases their children were subject to, we should take it on faith that breastfed babies seem to be healthier, thus couldn't possibly be healthier for any other reason??
***This fucking administration has made every attempt to put women back in the dark ages with their relations to men, the world that governs their rights, their children, and their own bodies. Women are the primary targets of the abstinence drives because they are the convenient targets--they get pregant, so we can tell they've been having TEH SEX. They are also targeted because of this bullshit, perverse male obsession with paternity that is instead presented as "purity." The patriarchy wants to ensure its members have the privilege of lineage, so we must keep the women sacred until the men want them so there can be no issue of paternity when she falls pregnant. That's why we can't teach those sluts and whores how to use condoms. For all the men know, they could be like storing sperm up there to hatch out whatever eggs they want. Crazy.
So, women are being shamed away from sex because it's wrong to do for them and makes them dirty. Then they are being denied access to education that might save them from literally being contaminated with diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Then, they are increasingly being denied emergency contraceptives. They are being denied on all fronts where Plan B is concerned: education, access, and provision, in that Plan B is not discussed in sex ed (which they should change the name of if they're not going to educate about sex) then access is being restricted because they have to find a doctor willing to give a prescription and provision will be equally hard to obtain because you have to find a pharmicist who won't refuse you because his company gives him permission to foist his religious conviction onto you (even though it's to to the dereliction of his duty).
So the right wing-nuts have made women feel dirty for being, just like men, fond of pleasure and sex, gotten and kept them pregnant whether they wanted it or not, and now we are going to see that those women stay at home with those babies because it's unhealthy not to breastfeed. They keep pulling this "It's not natural," or "It's unhealthy" shit, and people, used to trusting doctors who tell them when something's out of the ordinary or life-threatening by using those terms, BELIEVE THEM.
And don't think this doesn't also tie nicely with the homobigots' push to make being gay a crime in and of itself. Sure, lesbians can get pregnant and nurse, but what about gay men who adopt young babies? Well, they sure can't breastfeed, and stupiding up a child by denying them breastmilk is tantamount to child abuse. Therefore, gay men can't adopt babies. How hard would that argument be to make with this breast-feeding initiative? Not very, I just made it in about three sentences. It's more of that oversimplified false logistical bullshit that conservatives use to QED erroneous conclusions.
It's criminally cyclical. Gays can't have babies because they can't breastfeed. Well, if they can't have babies, which is the purpose of marriage (says the Bible, and we can't question the Bible--it's straight from God's mouth!), then they can't have marriage, can they? And if they can't marry, they're just fornicating every time they are together. Fornication is wrong. They should separate and find nice women to make babies that can then be breast-fed, and this would all be okay.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:30 pm (UTC)It's a control/health nut thing, the product of government busybodies who, not content to run their own lives, are much more interested in controlling ours. The Office of Women's Health, even after 6 years of Bush control, can't be considered even remotely right of center. The senator pushing for restrictions on formula feeding is Tom Harkin (D-IA), definitely not a member of the scary religious right.
Nope, the whole thing is about the very dangerous trend in America of seeking perfection at the cost of freedom. It's part of the motivation behind disallowing gay marriage and gay adoption (sure, they're better than the alternatives of promiscuity and foster care, but a married heterosexual couple is optimal!) It's the motivation behind most of our restrictions on risky behavior and eating habits, and it's why the FDA refuses to recommend smokeless tobacco as a safer alternative to smoking. It's part of the motivation behind refusing plan B (It's better than an abortion, but the best thing would be for young kids to just not have sex!)
It's one of the most dangerous political trends out there, and this is just another facet of it. Though I'd find it moderately amusing if the pro-choice Dems yelling "Keep the government out of our wombs" ended up pushing for the government to attach itself to women's breasts.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:40 pm (UTC)And never mistake a mid-western Democrat for a liberal. Ever, dude. Liberal out there means you might live together before you get married. That you might skip church once a year. I hyperbolize, but yeah, that's not far off. Democrats and Republicans together voted on the anti-abortion law in South Dakota that's one of the most restrictive anywhere. The problem with modern politics is that we get caught up in one label--Dem vs Rep--and ignore the other myriad labels people wear (thus a South Dakotan Dem might still be anti-choice, Christian, blue-collar, and anti-war).
Though I'd find it moderately amusing if the pro-choice Dems yelling "Keep the government out of our wombs" ended up pushing for the government to attach itself to women's breasts
I'd prefer the government not to hang itself on any part of my anatomy, thanks. I find the perverse joy they get out of constantly trumpetting on the subject freaky as is.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:52 pm (UTC)Apparently, according to our health officials, the only reason women have for existence is the birthin' of babies.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:58 pm (UTC)And really, what are women good for? Someone famous said that marriage wouldn't survive the partnership of two whole people? And men aren't giving up their right to be whole people any time soon, so I guess we have to.
Unless we find guys who get that if marriage can only support one-and-a-half people, that means each partner has to make 25% of his/her personality mesh intractibly with 25% of his/her partners. In some cases (yours, I'm thinking), that's not so hard :)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:21 pm (UTC)I mean, uh...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:53 pm (UTC)That they're more anti-bottle than pro-breast (yes, that's an odd phrasing) doesn't tell you anything. The health nuts have also been far more anti-soda than pro-healthy beverages, which is why they've claimed that kids should be drinking orange juice instead of diet soda to combat obesity (blatantly and obviously wrong.) What it tells you is that the forces behind this are ideologues of some stripe; it doesn't tell you which brand of ideologue they are.
Why do I care which type of nut's behind this sort of thing? Well, I'd like to believe that no one political wing creates all the silliness in America.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:02 pm (UTC)And yes, that's the problem, that this is being a negative crusade. Things that are negative crusades should, and almost never are, be treated as bad things. That's why we should celebrate, but don't, political ads that don't stoop to mudslinging. But it's easier to say "PUT DOWN THAT COKE!" than it is to say "You should drink OJ and also go for a half-hour walk." Doing something proactive is contrary to the overall lazy creature that is man (and woman; I don't believe I'm any less lazy for having ovaries, nor any woman for that matter).
Which is why we want diet pills, plastic surgery, and, apparently, supplemented forumla.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:59 pm (UTC)Hate to beat it in, but I guess you don't like Obama on the same principle either?
Please don't make generalizations on issues you don't have experience with or can't back up.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:09 pm (UTC)My overall point though remains valid--the label of Democrat or Iowan is not the sum-total of the person (as clearly, I did not obey my own thesis in my assumption that it was).
I admit to having issues with the newly right-of-center Dems, too. I hate that, in order to win votes, they must stray from the liberal ideal of the party. Clinton won by taking over the center. Then we couldn't decide between two guys who wanted the center, and, when push came to shove, Bush got it (by hook or by crook, and because there are more conservatives voting than liberals, a sad failing of the left's devotion to democracy). He then ran back the right when he couldn't figure out what the hell he was doing, and dragged the left along the line with him because the current pack of Dems are mostly spineless and just want to be in government again. I see this as a trend (when the Dems aren't supporting Hilary, I smell trouble), and I misapplied my frustration with it to Harkin.
It's telling, though, that a man with a cushy job should be the person to push the issue, though.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:40 pm (UTC)I agree that there are problems with the Dems moving to the right, and I see why you get worked up about it. But part of the reason Dems have trouble in the midwest in general is that there's the attitude of the party that something is different out here. It is, but it's not what many coastern lefties think it is. The bigger difference isn't religious vs secular, it's regulatory vs libertarian. If the Dems want to win in Missouri (to give an example), they should be focusing on the parts of their policy which guarantee rights, not trying to win votes on the religion issue. Yes, this may mean being softer on issues like gun control, but if you can win on two points by giving ground on one, it's better than losing on all three.
</rant>
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:47 pm (UTC)You prefer mouth/jaw/throat cancer to lung cancer? Smokeless tobacco is only safer than cigarettes for the people around the user.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:50 pm (UTC)As an alternative to smoking, anything short of harder drugs would be better. So, yes, smokeless tobacco would be "better." It would also be better if, instead of geting run over by a car, it only ran over your foot. You still might never walk properly, but at least you'd be more mobile than if you'd lost your pelvis.
That's a bogus analogy.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:58 pm (UTC)Similarly, assuming all the scientific claims are right, women should still be allowed to bottlefeed and children should be permitted to be raised without breast-feeding. It's better than the incredibly intrusive alternative.
These are all cases where the perfect is the enemy of the good.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:20 pm (UTC)You are in some seriously murky waters, friend. You just compared "natural" (used unironically here, but the quotes are for ironic emphasis now that I may steal the term for the leftish argument) non-smoking individual as the ideal of lung/cardiovascular/etc health to the happy, heterosexual married state. Thus, you imply that, in nature, that is what is "natural."
Nature says, "Yeah, right," then she goes and has a cigarette. In nature, we are one of a tiny handfull of creatures that is (or attempts) monogamy. In the grand scheme of things, monogamy is unnatural, so raising children in a monogamous pair is unnatural.
If you are arguing that, for the physical health and that ever elusively determined "well being" of children, a heterosexual couple is the best for the purposes of caretaking, Nature says, again, that you are wrong. Insects vastly outnumber people, and they lay eggs and forget about them. Or one partner does most of the work (sometimes because the female has bitten off the head of the male, which should worry the patriarchy the more they push to make women have babies). So, biologically, there is proof that not all beings need nurture from parents of any sort or even both to survive and thrive.
Take a species closer to us, if the insect example does not suffice. Most monkeys are polygamous, with the lead male either entertaining a harem or suffering a few lesser males for the purposes of protecting the offspring. That most natural social environment that has successfully kept monkey babies alive long enough for one of their stupider offshoots to evolve into man is most definitely not one man, one woman, though I grant that it is heterosexual.
Thus, you cannot state that the "natural," most basic healthy state of a person or persons rearing a child is that of two people of different genders working together. Your analogy to smoking versus not smoking fell apart long before this explanation, too, moreover, because you made the point that doing one bad thing to a body was better because it wasn't doing a worse thing. The point of gays and single parents raising children is that it isn't a bad thing in the first place. That's where your analogy ceases to be logical and becomes anti-gay. Anti- a specific group is anti-equality, and anti-equality (at least of opportunity; I say nothing about individual ability) is anti-American.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:33 pm (UTC)"Natural" has nothing to do with it. "On average, better for the individual/society" is what I'm looking at. With smoking, it's rejecting a better but not optimal solution (switching to smokeless as opposed to just quitting or continuing), even though it is better than the status quo for many people. With gay adoption, it's rejecting a better but not optimal solution (allowing children to be adopted by a gay couple as opposed to a heterosexual couple or continued foster care,) even though adoption by a gay couple is clearly better than the status quo of foster care. Yes, it's arguable as to gay adoption being non-optimal, but assuming it is, banning gay adoption is the same type of mistake. Does that make more sense?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:48 pm (UTC)In the analogy of the body that doesn't smoke, that chews tabacco, or that is a smoker, there is a clear sense of what is healthy, and "ideal" doesn't factor into it at all. One wad of tabacco or twenty, one pack a day or one pack an hour, adding tabacco to your life is damaging, often irreparably (ask my dear family friend--oh wait, you can't, she has died of emphysema), and there is no way to argue that you would have been better off free of either vice. It is not "ideal" that you don't smoke, it is healthy.
In your analogy, I felt you confused the two. To call something "ideal" is to pass moral judgment because you create a sense that anything else is not ideal, thus not worthy even if it is all right. By the same token, confessing that "well, not everyone can be ideal," you attempt to create within the non-ideal that there are gradations of depravity or non-idealness. True. With health, there are also degrees, so it may seem like the two are forensically equivalent, but they are not. A non "ideal" home of two homosexuals raising children being compared to the inarguably damaging practice of chewing tobacco is a comparison that passes moral judgment with the false connection "health." Perhaps homosexual homes are not ideal. That does not mean that they are unhealthy or pose any risk in the long run for children in them. I take issue with the implied with your non-ideal homes as being ultimately killers, unlike ones that are immeidiately destructive (the "smoking" homes). "Oh sure, gays might seem happy now, but 40 yrs down the road, those kids are going to be fucked up." That's the implication, and it smacks of homophobia, however unintentional. Be wary of it.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:43 pm (UTC)(says the sociology major)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 05:54 pm (UTC)And isn't funny how, at the turn of the last century, we were told not to breast-feed too long lest we create insatiable oral fixations in small children? Damned if you do...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 07:45 pm (UTC)Damn right!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 06:58 pm (UTC)Have you noticed that I'm a sickly basketcase with a low-IQ? Same with my brothers, all bottle-fed, malnourished idiots.
Studies can say all they want. It's the bizarre social implications and the demonizing of parents who choose to raise their children the way they feel is best that really gets me angry. Basically, women must sacrifice their entire lives to childrearing, or they're depriving their children and saddling them with undue burden of health and happiness. I'm just repeating what you said, but I'm just glad to hear this from someone -- that article made me vastly uncomfortable, and I didn't want to be the only one.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 07:56 pm (UTC)My mother didn't let me watch some R-rated movies when I was kid, even though I'd seen Predator a bazillion times before I hit puberty. There were some she just drew the line at, and others she gave up doing so or never actively stopped me going to see. Nowadays, she'd be considered a neglectful parent. But it wasn't because she didn't care. She simply raised me well enough that I had the tools that allowed me to understand that TV and movies are fake, people are real.
But those steps, those real positive steps are always overlooked in the new crusade to force people to homogenize their child-rearing choices. I believe I was bottle-fed and breast-fed. Am I more brilliant for it? Probably not. I'm smart because I had a nanny who taught me to read before I went into kindergarten and parents who put an emphasis on education = life and put me in a school district that did the same. Nature influences, sure, but nurture, god, nurture is sooooo important. And they're confusing the two with the breast-feed debate.
So fucking stupid (and misogynist) it hurts...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 08:08 pm (UTC)Obviously, you are just as confused as your heterogenously-feeding, selfish, malicious mother.
For the record, I am also totally fine with either choice. I think this debate is the one that should be labeled "pro-choice," actually, because for most women that's the case. It's not a matter of life or death. Obviously, there are cases in which a woman is forced to turn to an alternative source of nutrition for her infant rather than breastfeeding, but neither child nor mother's lives are in danger, and this certainly isn't the case in the usual circumstances of making a choice.
The current Choice argument needs to be relabeled. I know I've said it a million times, but I think this is a good illustration of an actual choice in the same arena of women's issues.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 10:04 pm (UTC)