bucholic barbary (or why i'm the way i am...)
Will have to be left for another post because I am, as we speak on the home stretch. However I needed to decompress for two minutes. Let's read the news, I thought, trying to go to La jornada, and mistakenly being led to an offensively pornographic site, (if you have read enough of me, you will know by now that my problem isn't with nudity or even licencious behavior but rather with crass, anti-aesthetic pandering to the lowest common denominator). Oops, better close that out quick before one of my colleagues passes by.
What I did find was this article, originally published in English in (it says) The Independent (of where I am unsure)... I was amused, but I do have to take issue with the fact that the argument that kissing and other bucal pleasures are ignored by men... what women really want is closeness and deep connection... yeah, yeah. Here's the thing, I think that deep down men (on the whole) also want that, they are just socialized in such a way that it makes it very difficult to have that deep interpersonal connection with anyone. (Including other men, not that I am suggesting a kissing campaign, but isn't it curious that societally it is much more socially acceptable for two women to be kissing than men...) I just believe that in some ways men get a raw deal, because as women we are permitted confidants of either sex and men, those that find a way to really open up, generally can only do so with women, and with whom they are not sexually involved. Otherwise it is too damn scary. I am not going to whip out a bunch of statistics, or anything of the sort, but I am a bit bored with the same complaints, and at least in my experience, find that if anyone is more orally fixated it is the men I have known... ah well, makes for a good filler article on a Friday, I suppose.
Meanwhile... I had a lovely visit with the doctor, thank you very much (she asked: how tall are you? me- why? well, it's strange but generally it is the taller women that have deeper cervixes. Marvelous, bringing freakish bodily anomalies to new heights every day).
It began ok, I was early, as I am wont to do, being obsessively punctual to a fault. Interestingly I was bombarded with a barrage of information on birth control (which I kindly returned to them for recycling purposes... I am all set for the next four years) and surprisingly an attractive glossy little pamphlet about the benefits of folic acid consumption, something of a scare campaign: "you might not be ready for pregnancy but your body is!!!" It expounded on the fact that half of pregnancies are unplanned (I can attest to this fact) and that to combat spina bifida women needed to "prep" their bodies with the proper vitamins prior to the accidental "oops babies". Two main problems that I had with this, despite its well meaning intentions: 1) The insidious assumption that just because you had an accidental pregnancy you would bring it to term. Now, I know they didn't outwardly state any particular political posture, but it felt kind of like those sneaky petitioneers that were trying to trick people into signing a petition in favor of parental notification for "all kinds of surgery" under the guise of non-partisan voter-registration public servants (several months after the elections). 2) The other problem I had was with the general climate of "preventative" health care these days. Yes it is important to have a good, balanced diet, yes it is important to get a wide variety of vitamins and minerals every day. BUT... if, as they purport, it is absolutely necessary that you get exactly 100 micrograms of folic acid every day (through enriched cereal, say) then there would be babies being born all over the world with far more birth defects than health, which, is not the case. Rather, I think that this is a new way for the floundering agro-industry to slip itself back into the market. Just imagine the boardroom meeting at General Mills: "Grains have been demonized (thanks Dr. Atkins!)? People want to rethink the food pyramid (which of course was made long ago, under the auspices of the grain and cattle lobbies and has little to do with true scientific investigation of metabolic function or peak bodily performance)? Ok, well we have to scare the citizens into buying more of our products somehow, let's start with the women! They are the ones who do the shopping anyway!"
Now I am not discounting the importance of good prenatal care, nor scoffing at the tragic and heartbreaking effects that birth defects can have on a family, only that we need to be a little critical of the "innocent" information that is being supplied to us, by, it would turn out, state and federal agencies who are in bed with, you guessed it, the agro-lobby bent on shoving as much transgenic grain down the world's throat that it can before it miraculously discovers the detrimental effect it has, and allows us to fabricate some excuse to invade yet another third-world country for their "revolutionary" agricultural practices (introduced by...us).
Wow, I didn't realize how angry I was today. Perhaps it has something to do with the bodily invasions of this morning, or perhaps with being forced to confront myself with the scale, and all that self-loathing (no matter how much we want to not buy into cultural standards of bodily beauty) seeps out.
That was a lot more than two minutes, and because the door wasn't closed I have now been sucked into a "collegial discussion of graduate student perspectives" when I really need to go back to my work!
Grrr.
What I did find was this article, originally published in English in (it says) The Independent (of where I am unsure)... I was amused, but I do have to take issue with the fact that the argument that kissing and other bucal pleasures are ignored by men... what women really want is closeness and deep connection... yeah, yeah. Here's the thing, I think that deep down men (on the whole) also want that, they are just socialized in such a way that it makes it very difficult to have that deep interpersonal connection with anyone. (Including other men, not that I am suggesting a kissing campaign, but isn't it curious that societally it is much more socially acceptable for two women to be kissing than men...) I just believe that in some ways men get a raw deal, because as women we are permitted confidants of either sex and men, those that find a way to really open up, generally can only do so with women, and with whom they are not sexually involved. Otherwise it is too damn scary. I am not going to whip out a bunch of statistics, or anything of the sort, but I am a bit bored with the same complaints, and at least in my experience, find that if anyone is more orally fixated it is the men I have known... ah well, makes for a good filler article on a Friday, I suppose.
Meanwhile... I had a lovely visit with the doctor, thank you very much (she asked: how tall are you? me- why? well, it's strange but generally it is the taller women that have deeper cervixes. Marvelous, bringing freakish bodily anomalies to new heights every day).
It began ok, I was early, as I am wont to do, being obsessively punctual to a fault. Interestingly I was bombarded with a barrage of information on birth control (which I kindly returned to them for recycling purposes... I am all set for the next four years) and surprisingly an attractive glossy little pamphlet about the benefits of folic acid consumption, something of a scare campaign: "you might not be ready for pregnancy but your body is!!!" It expounded on the fact that half of pregnancies are unplanned (I can attest to this fact) and that to combat spina bifida women needed to "prep" their bodies with the proper vitamins prior to the accidental "oops babies". Two main problems that I had with this, despite its well meaning intentions: 1) The insidious assumption that just because you had an accidental pregnancy you would bring it to term. Now, I know they didn't outwardly state any particular political posture, but it felt kind of like those sneaky petitioneers that were trying to trick people into signing a petition in favor of parental notification for "all kinds of surgery" under the guise of non-partisan voter-registration public servants (several months after the elections). 2) The other problem I had was with the general climate of "preventative" health care these days. Yes it is important to have a good, balanced diet, yes it is important to get a wide variety of vitamins and minerals every day. BUT... if, as they purport, it is absolutely necessary that you get exactly 100 micrograms of folic acid every day (through enriched cereal, say) then there would be babies being born all over the world with far more birth defects than health, which, is not the case. Rather, I think that this is a new way for the floundering agro-industry to slip itself back into the market. Just imagine the boardroom meeting at General Mills: "Grains have been demonized (thanks Dr. Atkins!)? People want to rethink the food pyramid (which of course was made long ago, under the auspices of the grain and cattle lobbies and has little to do with true scientific investigation of metabolic function or peak bodily performance)? Ok, well we have to scare the citizens into buying more of our products somehow, let's start with the women! They are the ones who do the shopping anyway!"
Now I am not discounting the importance of good prenatal care, nor scoffing at the tragic and heartbreaking effects that birth defects can have on a family, only that we need to be a little critical of the "innocent" information that is being supplied to us, by, it would turn out, state and federal agencies who are in bed with, you guessed it, the agro-lobby bent on shoving as much transgenic grain down the world's throat that it can before it miraculously discovers the detrimental effect it has, and allows us to fabricate some excuse to invade yet another third-world country for their "revolutionary" agricultural practices (introduced by...us).
Wow, I didn't realize how angry I was today. Perhaps it has something to do with the bodily invasions of this morning, or perhaps with being forced to confront myself with the scale, and all that self-loathing (no matter how much we want to not buy into cultural standards of bodily beauty) seeps out.
That was a lot more than two minutes, and because the door wasn't closed I have now been sucked into a "collegial discussion of graduate student perspectives" when I really need to go back to my work!
Grrr.
posted by ilana at 2:15 p.m.
2 Comments:
Ahora que mi esposa está en su sexto mes de embarazo las visitas al obstetra se han vuelto semanales y también el ataque infame de todas las revistas sobre gravidez que dejan, como trampas para oso, en la sala de espera. Lo que en ellas he notado es la obsesión por recordarnos a las parejas en cinta que aún se puede gozar del sexo ("10 posiciones para enloquecer a tu marido", "Recetas para tu bebé que mejoran tu vida bajo las sábanas", etc.) // ¿No son 400 mcg de ácido fólico?
Encuentro que todas las revistas para mujer (embarazada o no) tienen en el fondo la misma ridícula (y machista) necesidad de obligarnos a pensar que hay algo que podríamos estar haciendo mejor en la cama con quien sea para aumentar su supuesto placer y así captivarlo para siempre (no quiere decir que no, verdad, pero...) Mi postura es siempre crítica, pregunto: por qué no tienen "10 posiciones para enloquecerse a una misma" y por qué siempre la presuposición de que el padre tiene que ser marido... pero eso sería demasiado contra cultura para esa revistillas tranquilizadoras de sala de espera.
También recuerdo el susto que llevé al leer en "While Waiting" que un soplido mal colocado en el sexo oral podría ser fatal para el bebé (creo que es algo como si te metieras la jeringa con una burbuja de aire te hace reventar el corazón. Así que cuidadito:)
Y "I stand corrected" sí son 400 mcg (sabía yo que eran mcg, pero creerás que se me había olvidado la anotación científica, y como regla, por una persona tan meticulosa como yo, peco de descuidada en mis referencias - como Borges (ja ja) ;)
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