(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

Another 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.

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

It's exactly the same kind of reasoning. Assuming that all the scientific/social claims against it are right (yes, they're contestable, but assume they are), gay marriage and abortion should be permitted as a policy matter, because they're better than the status quo. All things being equal, a child should be raised by a loving heterosexual married couple. In the real world, far too many children have no such home, and a loving homosexual married couple is far and away better than any of the other alternatives.

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

All things being equal, a child should be raised by a loving heterosexual married couple.

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.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

You missed the critical part where I said, "Assume that the scientific studies are true." I don't really care what's going on in nature and in other species, but there are plenty of studies showing that a (human) child does best growing up with a mother and a father. I also happen to think that a loving homosexual couple is as good as an adoptive loving heterosexual couple (there may be some difference due to an adoptive home vs. natural child living situation.) But assuming for the sake of argument that a loving heterosexual married home is optimal, that still doesn't imply that gay marriage and gay adoption should be banned. Which is my point.

"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?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I suppose in some way, yes, and it certainly quiets some of my eyebrow raising over what appeared to be what you were saying. There is still a fundamental flaw to comparing what is "ideal" with what is "healthy." An ideal is based upon an opinion. The 'ideal' environment for a child to grow up in can be tested by science, but the label of "ideal" upon a situation is unscientific. There is no preference in science, only in the application of scientific results to common situations. Again, there is no causal relationship between "heterosexual couple" and "happy, healthy child." Often, with the problems and complications of intersexual politics, the opposite is true. Happy, healthy children come from loving homes that were able to support, nourish, discipline, and educate them. The houses best equipped to do this have traditionally been heterosexual married ones because the alternative was either forbidden outright (being gay = crime, as I said), or so severely denigrated as a practice as to make the people unable to live any other way miserable (which is a lot like the damning of the bottle-feeding posse...).

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.

[happyelfling.livejournal.com]

You make a lot of good biological points about normal offspring-raising patterns in animals, but don't forget that we don't even have to look outside of human society to find plenty of examples of cultures where the norm is something other than the current Western heterosexual family unit model.

(says the sociology major)

[happyelfling.livejournal.com]

(not that any of those other societies have homosexual family units as a "natural" option - but just that the heterosexual family unit does not have a monopoly on "natural" and that these things, of course, constantly evolve and change)