If it’s Friday, I must feel like saying something inflammatory

At this point in time I feel mostly bored with politics and political discussions. Who’s running for president again? Just kidding. I am just barely keeping up with the news. I mainly just know what is going on at the Facebook. I assume Facebook will tell me if any major tragedy strikes. Also, if it’s someone’s birthday. I don’t know what the rest of the world is doing, but on the Facebook people are, apparently, still hung up on the birth control issue, i.e. the government mandating that employers pay for insurance that covers contraceptives. Did I say that even-handedly enough? Because I don’t want to make anyone mad before I’m ready.

As to whether or not insurance companies should cover birth control, my opinion is “whatever.” The health care system in this country in 2012 has a lot of problems. I tend to think that this is not the one most deserving of my attention.

I took birth control pills for a few months back in 1997. Was taking them when I got pregnant with my first child, actually. Ha ha, what a funny time to look back on (now). As I recall, my insurance company paid for them. I mean, I had a $10 co-pay, so I assume my insurance company paid for whatever they cost above that. It’s possible that the cost of the pills was $10 even, but that seems unlikely. If my insurance company hadn’t paid for them, I might have been pissed. Because, you know, it’s medical. What is medical insurance for if not to pay for a medical expense? If I have to get a doctor’s prescription before I can buy them, how is that not a medical expense? So yeah, I get the outrage. However, it’s been a lot of years and a lot of dealing with insurance companies, and I’ve faced the facts of life:

1. Insurance companies don’t want to pay for anything. (That much is a duh.)

2. We’ve become dependent on a system of health care where a third party is supposed to pay for most things, which has increased the amount of things we expect to be covered but also the amount of things insurance companies try not to pay for.

3. The more things insurance companies have to pay for, the more expensive insurance gets. Your personal feelings of indignation over what ought to be covered don’t really enter into this equation.

So this is actually a complex problem, the whole health care/insurance thing, and far too complicated for the scope of this blog post–or any blog post of mine. If I wanted to write about the complexities of the health care and insurance industries and how government relates to all of that, I would hopefully not be giving that skill away for free. So pay me some money and I’ll give you my opinion on how we should manage the health care/insurance thing. Meanwhile, whatever.

No, all I want to write about here is the personal irritation I feel about how people have framed this debate, especially as seen on the Facebook, which hosts lots of indignant people with strong opinions who think their logic is unassailable. This isn’t for money or a good grade that I can put on my transcript, so I’ll just make a list of arguments that bug me.

1. Insurance companies pay for Viagra, so why not birth control pills?

On its face this seems outrageous. I mean, why should old guys whose penises have stopped working still get to have sex? It’s called Mother Nature, dude. Survival of the fittest. Deal with it! I mean, stuff like hearts and livers and kidneys and even gall bladders should be expected to work properly, but your penis? Really? You must think a lot of yourself. Newsflash: No one cares if you never have an orgasm again as long as you live! (Except maybe your wife, but then, what is she doing with an impotent jerk like you?)

Actually, there’s a reasonable explanation for why insurance companies would pay for Grampa’s Viagra but not Suzy’s birth control. Note: I only said it’s reasonable, not that you’ll like it. The reason is that Viagra (and other drugs designed to treat erectile dysfunction) helps a man’s body work the way a healthy man’s body works. If a man can’t get or sustain an erection and it isn’t due to some psychological problem, he has a health problem. Not one he’s going to die from, but one that he may feel he’s going to die from will seriously impact his quality of life. By contrast, birth control pills (and other hormone-based contraceptives) make a woman’s body work in a way that healthy women’s bodies aren’t supposed to work. A healthy woman is supposed to be able to get pregnant. IMPORTANT NOTE: I did not just say that a healthy woman is supposed to get pregnant, only that she is supposed to be able to get pregnant. A woman who can’t get pregnant has a health problem. Not one she’s going to die from, but one that, if she wants children, she’s probably not going to just shrug at and say, “Oh well.”

Viagra treats a health problem. Birth control pills, while perfectly safe (for most women), are not generally associated with treating a health problem. Of course, they can be and often are used to treat health problems. VERY IMPORTANT ASTERISK–more on this in a moment. (Patience, grasshopper.) But getting pregnant is not a health problem. It’s not a disease. Have we forgotten that chapter of feminism? Healthy women who haven’t gone through menopause can get pregnant. Of course they might not want to get pregnant, which is where birth control pills come in, but for the woman who is taking the Pill for contraceptive purposes, she is not attempting to make her body work the way it’s supposed to but attempting to make it not work the way it’s supposed to.

Believe me, mes enfantes, I have no moral or philosophical problem with contraception or people using contraception to their hearts’ content. I’ve used it myself. Religiously. I think it’s the best thing since sliced bread and the internet. Access to birth control is good. Access to indoor plumbing is good, too. Couldn’t live without either one. Can’t imagine why anyone would want to.

Of course, there are non-contraceptive uses of birth-control pills. If you believe the Guttmacher Institute (and you may not, but whatever), the majority of birth-control pill users take them for non-contraceptive purposes, including reducing menstrual cramps and other “side effects” of menstruation (including migraines) and treating endometriosis and even acne. These are all health problems, so in principle, health insurance that purports to cover treatment for endometriosis and chronic pain related to menstruation and, yes, even acne ought to cover birth-control pills. You will get no argument from me there. No, absolutely none.

But–and here I finally reach my point–this line of logic doesn’t lead to arguments about an old man’s Viagra. Why on earth would you bring up Viagra unless you were just really upset that insurance companies enable beyond-their-prime men to have sex while perfectly healthy young women (who deserve to have sex and are a lot more pleasant to think of than impotent men) are not receiving any assistance with enhancing their own sexual experience (by not having to worry about getting pregnant)? The implication is clear: Viagra is only covered because the evil insurance companies care more about letting dirty old men have sex than allowing healthy young women to have sex and not worry about getting pregnant. Well, probably they do, for the reasons I just mentioned above.

But if you want to tout hormone-based contraception as a medical expense, maybe you should keep Grandpa’s sex life out of it. Don’t imply that you’re begrudging him his Viagra. For an effective argument, you might try something like “They cover insulin for diabetics and Prozac for people with depression–why not birth-control pills for women with endometriosis or chronic menses-related pain (or even acne)?” And of course, since there are women whose health and even lives may be threatened by a pregnancy, you could also say, “They pay for my grandpa’s pacemaker, so why not my birth control?” (A bonus to this approach: When Rush Limbaugh accuses you of being a slut who wants the taxpayers to pay for your slutty sex life–which he probably still will–he’ll look even more like a jerk.)

Of course, an insurance company can decide it doesn’t want to pay for birth-control pills to treat endometriosis or any other health problem because insurance companies have the legal right to suck. But as I said before, that’s a separate issue. Not for this blog post (which is discussing annoyance with rhetorical tactics, not outrage at injustices).

2. Covering birth control is cheaper than covering pregnancy and childbirth and health care for the resulting children.

True. But not a good argument for providing everyone with free birth control–because generally speaking, people don’t get pregnant because they lacked access to contraceptives. Unplanned, unwanted pregnancies are usually the result of people a) using contraceptives incorrectly or b) playing Russian Roulette with their fertility because they couldn’t be bothered with using contraception. Don’t let your own prejudices run wild with this last sentence. I’ve known married, middle-class women who engage in “b” with alarming frequency. Fortunately, those women could afford to have more kids, financially and emotionally (although the “emotionally” part was more eventually). If you’re a woman of limited resources, you really have no business with “b.” If you become pregnant, I blame you, not your insurance company or the government. And here I go off on a bit of a tangent–but only a bit, because I can’t tell you how many times I have seen comments like this on the Facebook: “I’d rather pay for birth control than for women getting pregnant to collect more welfare.” First of all, that person is revealing kind of an ugly streak. Second, they don’t seem to understand human nature very well.

I never find myself wishing that my tax dollars had gone to pay for someone’s birth control instead of her full-blown pregnancy and resulting baby because as the wording of “b” makes clear, you can offer someone contraception–even free contraception, contraception that may reside in their very own home a few feet away–but you can’t make them use it all the time. I don’t feel sorry for myself because my tax dollars are going to be spent on this woman and her child; I feel sorry for this woman and her child because she made an unfortunate choice that significantly increased their chances of living in poverty for several years if not the rest of their lives. I assure you my tax bill can handle your poor choices; I’m not sure you can.

So there’s one reason I don’t like that argument. The other reason is that we’re talking about insurance companies (so far), not the government. First of all, most people just don’t seem to get how insurance companies work. Without getting into issues that are beyond my pay grade (i.e. blogging for free), let me break it down for you: The more things (procedures, drugs, etc.) that insurance companies have to pay for, the higher premiums they have to charge (unless they want to go out of business, which most don’t). The more insurance companies cover the cost of these things, the more insulated consumers become from the cost, the higher the cost gets. If insurance companies have to cover all kinds of contraception at no additional cost to the consumer (aside from higher insurance premiums), there will be no incentive for drug companies to lower their prices or to stop them from going up. If the customer doesn’t care what it costs (because she’s not paying for it) and the insurance company can’t refuse to pay for it, why shouldn’t the drug companies charge as much as they want? And don’t think for a minute that they won’t. (Or have we forgotten this chapter of capitalism?) This is especially sucky news for the uninsured, but also sucky news for the insured because (can you guess why? I’ve already mentioned it) they will pay higher premiums.

Second of all, I don’t want to live in a society with the mentality that paying for contraception makes dollars and sense whereas paying for pregnancy and babies should be avoided. Pregnancy and babies are really important to humanity, even if not everyone wants them at every stage of life. I’m not jumping on the bandwagon that says they’re too expensive and insurance companies shouldn’t be such chumps. (If people are allowed to get hysterical and claim that opposing the contraception mandate is a slippery slope to Handmaid’s Tale territory, others of us should be allowed to get hysterical and claim that the mandate is a slippery slope to a world where only rich people are allowed to have children.)

I haven’t even touched on the issue of religious freedom, which is in fact a relevant and important issue, but it seems to be lost in the effort to point out how hypocritical and stupid insurance companies are for not covering birth control. But I don’t have time for that. (Technically, I don’t have time for this, but I’m bored and want to avoid work.)

Here’s my bottom line: Why are we spending time arguing about a government perk that serves already-employed, already-insured people who probably can already afford their birth control? Most forms of contraception are not that expensive. Yes, there are fancy-dancy versions of the Pill for women who for some reason can’t take the cheaper versions, but most forms of contraception serve most women well and are not that expensive. To make birth control pills even less expensive and increase access for those who don’t have insurance, they should be made available over the counter (with pharmacist screenings for safe use), as is already done in several countries. Not only would the increased price awareness among consumers lead to competitive pricing, but women wouldn’t have to pay for the doctor visit necessary for a prescription. Poor, uninsured women win (along with all the other women who would like some birth control pills). (Of course, a woman who needed birth-control pills for non-contraceptive purposes would still need to see a doctor to know that she needed them.) Another plus: Rick Santorum would have to get elected and go full Handmaid’s Tale/Third Reich on us in order for the public to lose access to birth control pills. (That is not nearly as likely a scenario as Facebook would have you believe.)

Well, I could probably go on, but I’m already at 2,425 words and the kids will be home soon. So I guess this concludes this edition of Inflammatory Friday. Next week: Abortion!*

*Totally kidding.

Explain it to me like I’m four years old

What is the deal with Occupy Wall Street?

I wasn’t too clear on what it was to begin with, but I didn’t take it too seriously because I live in Oregon, where people are always protesting or setting up urban camp sites, so big whoop. However, as time went on and OWS just kept showing up in the news, I tried to figure out what it was all about. I hear stuff, I read stuff–but none of it really makes sense to me. I get that they’re upset about the banks being bailed out, and it appears that they’re also upset about student loan debt and the fact that the top 1% of earners have so much more money than everybody else, but beyond that, I just don’t really get it. What is the point? What are they trying to accomplish? What will persuade them to stop occupying wherever they’re occupying?

I don’t really want a conservative’s take on it. I know that conservatives think it’s stupid. I’m a conservative, and I think it’s stupid, but that’s mostly because I’m so frustrated that I can’t ascertain the purpose of what they’re doing, and yet it keeps going on and on, so maybe I should try harder to understand it, and then I can feel like I know enough to judge whether it’s actually stupid or just misguided or if there’s some legitimate point to a movement whose methods simply aren’t my cup of tea. (I don’t like camping.)

I know I have non-conservative readers who can explain this to me. Pretend I don’t know anything about Occupy Wall Street. Pretend I am scrubbed free of ideology and have no pre-conceived ideas of what it’s all about. Just tell me what it is and what it’s for. What are they trying to do?

Thither Thursday

I am using “thither” as an adverb–as in “that’s where Thursday went.”  You don’t hear a lot of people using “thither” anymore, as an adverb or otherwise.  It’s pretty much a dead word.  I don’t know that it needs to be revived, either.  But it’s alliterative, and I’m feeling that today.

Why am I feeling alliterative?  Because I can’t think up a title for this post.  It’s pretty much going to be about nothing.

This morning I spent three hours cleaning out the refrigerator.  Just so you understand, I did a really good job.  I won’t tell you about all the moldy stuff I found.  Except I will tell you about the moldy Foitella that I bought for Sugar Daddy as a Christmas gift.  It cost $22 for a wee jar, and I think I dumped at least $18 worth of it down the garbage disposal.  I think my husband is congenitally incapable of eating perishable food in a timely fashion.  I will probably not buy him another jar of Foitella…until Christmas rolls around again and I can’t think of anything else to buy him.

Three hours still seems like an awful lot of time to spend cleaning a refrigerator.  Well, it was really filthy.  Disgustingly filthy.  I deserve an award.

As it happens, I did get an award.  My sweet husband–he of Foitella fame–called me on the phone this afternoon and asked if I’d meet him at the Banana Republic so I could try on this dress he thought would look good on me.  So being the obedient wife that I am, I did as he requested, and now I have a new dress.  How does it look on me?  Awesome.  Thanks for asking.  Trust me, that one word is more accurate than any photo could be.  (I don’t photograph well.)

It looks better on me than it does on her!

And the best part is that he didn’t even know that I’d cleaned out the fridge.  He just sensed that I deserved an award.  Actually, he’s not that sensitive.  He’s just a nice husband who occasionally gives me things that I don’t deserve, and it’s just a coincidence that today I did deserve it.

You know what’s better than first-world problems?  First-world benefits!

He’s not coming home tonight, which means I can get away with feeding the kids crap for dinner.  Which reminds me, I have seen these news ads for Carl’s Jr.’s hand-breaded chicken tenders and whatnot on public benches.  Yeah, public benches.  You know what I mean, right?  Those benches that are just out there in public, like at bus stops?  Why does “public bench” not sound like a real thing?  I don’t know.  But I assure you, it is.  And there are ads on such things, which is where I’m seeing the Carl’s Jr. ads that I’m talking about.  One of the ads says, “Because machines make terrible chefs,” and another of the ads says, “Because machines make crappy co-workers.”  Two things:

1) I don’t know that machines make crappy co-workers.  I mean, certainly some machines do, but the majority of machines I work with do a very good job, and there is little in the way of “office politics” with machines.  At least that is my experience.  I’m sure there are many of you out there who would gladly trade at least one of your co-workers for a nice robot.

2) Since when is “crappy” appropriate copy for an advertisement that appears in the public space?  I guess Carl’s Jr. is supposed to be the “edgy” fast-food place, and I suppose they don’t have a history of genteel advertising–and who am I to talk, when I use the word crap all the time?  But like I tell my kids,  just because I say it doesn’t make it okay.  I don’t know.  It just seems like another symptom of our society’s decaying moral fiber.  No class, I tell you.  No. Class.

I guess there might be a third thing:  3)  Machines don’t necessarily make terrible chefs.  My waffler makes a much better waffle than I ever could by hand.  Machines get a bad rap, all in all.  Except for those evil Cylons on Battlestar Galactica.  But even some of them might have been good chefs.  It’s hard to say, as the show didn’t really focus that much on its characters’ culinary lives.  But I digress.

Getting back to my original point, I still don’t know what I’m going to make for dinner tonight.  I will probably have to go to the store and buy some food.  I will have to take Elvis with me, and that promises to be more trouble than it’s worth.  Elvis has a new obsession with the automatic doors.  He wants them to open just for him.  So he will stand there, several feet away from the door, and wait as long as it takes for them to close again so that he can run up and make them open just for him.  Of course, the more people going in and out of the store, the longer it takes for the automatic doors to shut.  They may start to shut, but as soon as someone trips the sensor, they’re going to open right back up again.  Elvis finds this very frustrating.  Do you know how many people go in and out of a grocery store on your average afternoon?  A lot.  The doors stay open most of the time because people are always going in and out.  It’s a problem, if you’re autistic and crazy.

Talking of which, I have one of Princess Zurg’s friends over at the house this afternoon.  She’s staying for dinner.  I hope she likes crap.  In any case, it will be crap prepared by a real human, so I guess I’d better get on the stick if we’re going to eat before midnight.  Gentle readers, adieu.

What do you know about co-ed wrestling?

So I read about this story a while ago–the Iowa boy who refused to wrestle a girl at the state championships–and I wasn’t that interested, but yesterday I read this opinion piece by Mona Charen, and now I’m curious because she makes a couple of unsupported assertions.  Granted, they probably went unsupported in the piece because they seem to be based on common sense, but sometimes reality does defy common sense–or at least people in real life defy it, or deny it, or whatever.  I must admit that I know next to nothing about the sport of wrestling, and absolutely nothing about the realities of co-ed wrestling–the situation on the ground, or on the mat, as it were.  That’s why I’m opening the questions up to my blog readership–all twelve of you–hoping to get more information on which to base an opinion.  Because since I can’t eat, it looks like I will be forced to spend my free time forming opinions on things that don’t really matter to me.

The first assertion Mona Charen makes is that boys are at a tactical disadvantage in co-ed wrestling because they can’t touch the girls’ breasts, but the girls can touch the boys’ chests all they want/need to.  Theoretically, a boy might hold back on his best moves for fear of accidentally touching the no-touch zone and thereby getting slapped with a sexual harassment charge.  That makes sense, doesn’t it?  But is it really true?  First of all, in co-ed wrestling, are the girls’ breasts really off-limits?  Second, do the girls really have an expectation that their breasts aren’t going to get touched at some point?  Third, how much do the boys find themselves touching each others’ breasts?  How much breast-touching happens as a matter of course in wrestling?  I just don’t know.  Given that girls have been wrestling on co-ed teams for at least 20 years, one would think that this issue would have cropped up at some point–if it’s an issue.  Which brings me to fourth, has a boy wrestler ever been disciplined for touching a girl wrestler’s breast?  The information has to be out there somewhere, but something tells me that “co-ed wrestling sexual harassment” isn’t something I want to Google.

Mona Charen’s second assertion is that contrary to what all these egalitarian-minded folks claim, co-ed wrestling is necessarily sexual because teenagers are always thinking about sex.  First, is it true that teenagers are always thinking about sex?  Sure, they think about it a lot.  Boys, especially, I’ve heard, think about sex a lot–every few seconds, according to some reports.  But always, even while wrestling?  Wouldn’t that lead to a lot of sexual confusion among single-sex wrestlers?  Second, does it matter at all if the girl you’re wrestling is attractive or not?  It’s been claimed that sex is the last thing on these wrestlers’ minds because wrestling is just so, so very physically and mentally challenging that there just isn’t time or energy to think about sex while you’re doing it.  But if the girl you’re wrestling is really attractive (to you), is it really impossible that there could be anything sexual about full-body contact in that context?  I’m not trying to be a smart-ass.  I’ve just never engaged in non-sexual wrestling, so I honestly don’t know, and I need you all to enlighten me.

Personally, I’m old-fashioned and tend to think that if my son were a wrestler, I’d rather he refused to wrestle girls.  Unless he were in some kind of death match with an evil girl villain.  Those types should always be foiled, and if it means you have to be a little less of a gentleman, well, that’s just how it goes.  But I think evil girl villains are more likely to be into martial arts.  At least that’s the way it seems to be in the movies.  Kick-boxing girls are hot, btw.  There’s nothing non-sexual about that.

.

In totally unrelated news, this was this morning’s poll on National Review Online:

Mike Huckabee Suggests He’ll Be More Inclined to Run for President if His Book Does Well. Does This Make You More Likely or Less Likely to Buy It?

Results so far:  5% More Likely, 95% Less Likely

I voted Less Likely, even though there technically isn’t a way I could be less likely to buy his book.  It’s the principle of the thing.  But that’s a subject for another day.

Let’s talk wrestling!

The operative word is “disturbed”

I have not commented on the horrific incident that happened in Tucson on Saturday because I didn’t have much to say about it, except that it was horrible and it just breaks my heart.  What else can you say about things like that?  Well, apparently you can say a lot of things–things that never even occurred to me because I was so focused on the fact that some bastard had just murdered or injured eighteen people, including a child, that I forgot all about my American duty to speculate about the shooter’s motives and whether or not he may have been inspired by some right-wing political rhetoric.  (Or any political rhetoric.)  When somebody goes on a shooting rampage, I immediately assume the person is mentally disturbed.  That is my charitable assumption.  My less-charitable assumption is that the person is evil.  But I am an American–”mentally disturbed until proven evil” is my motto.

So, yes, I’ve been silent, up until this morning, when I read this piece by David Brooks which pretty much sums up my thoughts on the whole matter.  And I posted it on Facebook because, silly me, I thought the assertion that taking care of schizophrenics will do a lot toward solving the problems of violent schizophrenics going out and shooting people would be relatively uncontroversial.  I try not to be political on the Facebook; it’s really not worth it.  To me this isn’t a political issue, at least not in the left-right/liberal-conservative sense.  A mentally disturbed young man shot and killed a lot of people.  This sort of thing transcends politics.  It’s not about what books he read or what his pet peeves were.  It’s about the fact that he was mentally ill and untreated.  That’s why he got himself a gun and shot people.  Not because of anything Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh or Adolph Hitler or Karl Marx or George Orwell said, and not because the gun was just there, ready for the taking–but because he was psychotic.  Sometimes people are.

Of course this turned into a thing, and said thing is still probably going on as I type this, but it just occurred to me that OBL would be totally pissed if she knew I was off talking about crap on the Facebook instead of blogging, and since my unofficial, semi-realistic goal of 2011 is not to piss off OBL, I decided I would just go ahead and blog about this because it turns out there is more to say than, “This is really horrible and breaks my heart.”

Here’s what sucks about mental illness:  it doesn’t make sense, and it’s not fair.  It’s not fair that some people’s brains get sick, and it’s especially unfair–to the afflicted individual and everyone around him or her–when someone’s sick brain tells them to hurt other people.  We want to make it be something else, something more complicated–or maybe simpler–than a sick mind; we want to make it something we can be angry about, instead of just heartbroken.  We want to blame people, not diseases.

I remember when Andrea Yates murdered her five children.  I was obsessed with that story.  I had to know why she did it.  Then I had to know how a woman so deeply disturbed was allowed to be alone with children–or by herself, for that matter.  As it turned out, there was plenty of blaming-of-people to do in that case, but what angered me was when people turned it into a discussion of how stressful it is to be a mother, especially a stay-at-home-mom, especially a homeschooling mom, and how we couldn’t really expect her not to snap under those conditions.  Well, you’ll get no argument from me that Andrea Yates was living under stressful conditions that would make anyone snap, but the thing is, she didn’t just “snap.”  She had a psychotic break and murdered her children–because she was schizophrenic and wasn’t being treated.

Because Andrea Yates used a bathtub and not a gun, no one thought to blame the weapon.  But whenever some mentally-disturbed individual goes on a murder spree with a firearm, the conversation always comes back to gun control.  Okay.  I know I’ve blogged about gun control before, but since I can’t remember when or where that post is (or those posts are), I will have to repeat myself.  It’s not that I’m some gun-loving fanatic.  I don’t own a gun; I don’t anticipate ever owning a gun; more to the point, I don’t anticipate ever needing to own a gun.  I’ve met some gun laws that I liked.  These are deadly weapons, after all, so I should think some regulations are in order.  My position on gun control, which has always been my position on gun control–from the time I was a pinko-bleeding-heart liberal to my current stint as a right-wing hatemonger–is that it doesn’t do what its advocates want it to do; more to the point, it can’t do what its advocates want it to do, which is to significantly reduce the number of people who murder each other.  The thing about murderers–about all criminals, really–is that they really aren’t too keen on following the law in the first place.  Once you start seriously thinking you’re going to murder somebody, your respect for the rule of law is reduced to the point where it’s really not worth quantifying.  No one with murder in his heart starts formulating a plan and gets frustrated by his inability to buy a gun legally and therefore gives up on his homicidal tendencies.  Yes, some murderers get their guns legally; but if they can’t get them legally, they get them illegally.  That’s how murderers roll.  If they want to use a gun, they’ll get one and not be too hung up on filing their paperwork correctly.

Now, just because murderers can get their guns illegally anyway doesn’t mean that there’s no point regulating guns and they should just be readily available to any old person and sold in vending machines on the street or come as free gift when you open a checking account or buy a gym membership.  Obviously, a civilized country needs rules about purchasing guns, and those rules need to be enforced.  What the rules should be we could argue about all day long, and we may or may not agree on much, but I don’t want to have a discussion on the finer points of gun legislation.  Not at the moment, I mean.  Because at the moment I’m pre-occupied with this story about a mentally disturbed individual who murdered people.  It’s true that if he hadn’t been able to buy a gun, he wouldn’t have been able to shoot people.  But he did get a gun, and he did shoot people–because he was mentally ill and not receiving treatment.

If he hadn’t been able to buy a gun, do you think he would have said, “Oh, well, guess there’s nothing I can do”?  Do you think he wouldn’t have found some other way to kill people?  Maybe not those particular people he killed on Saturday, but this person was a time bomb, if you’ll pardon the expression, waiting to go off; he wanted to inflict damage, and he was going to do it because he was mentally ill and not receiving treatment.  That’s the first cause here.  If Andrea Yates can inspire a discussion about the dangers of homeschooling, can’t this person inspire a discussion about how to recognize mental illness and make it easier for people to get treatment and easier for relatives–and the state, when necessary–to force people to get treatment when they present a danger to themselves or others?

As for the tone of our current political discourse, everyone needs to get a grip and understand that it is no more uncivil than it’s ever been.  If you knew what politicians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used to say about each other, oh, my dears, you would be scandalized.  Let’s flash back to 1998, when Bill Clinton was being impeached and Alec Baldwin goes on some late-night talk show (I want to say Conan O’Brien’s, but I don’t really remember) and said that if we were in another country we’d stone Henry Hyde to death and kill his wife and children for what he was doing to the country.  Now, was that appropriate?  Hint:  it’s a rhetorical question.  Was there any violence perpetrated against Henry Hyde or his family?  Fortunately, no.  Did Alec Baldwin really mean that we should kill Henry Hyde and his family?  I very much doubt it.  But if someone had assassinated Henry Hyde, would Alec Baldwin have been responsible?  One could argue for some measure of culpability, I suppose, but ultimately the answer is that anyone who takes their citizenship tips from an apoplectic Alec Baldwin on the Conan O’Brien show is a mentally disturbed individual and/or evil, and that is a problem in and of itself.  Alec Baldwin is another story.  Probably a whole other blog, but anyway, I don’t have time.

My point is that until an otherwise sane pillar of the community goes on a killing spree and says, “Well, Sarah Palin said we should target this person for defeat,” or “Rush Limbaugh said we need to get this person out of the Congress,” color me skeptical on the notion that our political discourse has just gotten out of hand to the point that it’s inciting violence.  We live in a violent country.  Most of the violence–the vast majority of it–is not politically motivated in any way.  And all I want to say about Jared Lee Loughner is that his political leanings are irrelevant because his politics were incoherent–because he was mentally disturbed and probably psychotic.  Sometimes people are.  And we don’t take their treatment seriously enough.  There’s certainly a whole other blog to be written on that topic, but not today.  For now, I’m done.

New Huck Finn: Unclear on the concept

When I first read about the new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which will excise all instances of “n—–” and replace it with “slave,” I thought, “That’s lame.”  That was a couple days ago.  I was a little pre-occupied with some other stuff.  This morning I have showered and unloaded the dishwasher and eaten breakfast and my five-year-old is still asleep, so I’m thinking, “What shall I blog about?” and what’s on my mind is this lame publishing company that thinks it can write a better version of Huckleberry Finn than Mark Twain did.

Now, it’s not as though the original version of Huckleberry Finn is going to be phased out or something.  This is just an alternate edition, kind of like an abridged version of a really-long-novel-that-doesn’t-really-need-to-be-that-long (does it? because I’m a little short on time).  And in the words of Keith Staskiewicz, who wrote the EW article linked above,

The original product is changed for the benefit of those who, for one reason or another, are not mature enough to handle it, but as long as it doesn’t affect the original, is there a problem?

I think there is a problem.  It’s one thing if you want to take “s—” out of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” for the radio edit–because let’s face it, what does that song even mean?  I don’t know.  It’s her s—.  (And it’s bananas.  B-A-N-A-N-A-S.)  Not much violence is done to the artistic intent if you replace “s—” with, say, “stuff,” although one might well argue that “stuff” isn’t quite as musical as the other.  But I digress.  We’re not talking about a pop song that half of you reading don’t even remember and the other half of you might be angry with me for putting in your brain because now it’s going to be stuck there all day.  Am I sorry?  No, because I was making a point, which is that we’re talking about the seminal American novel that everyone has to read at some point in his or her education because it’s important.  And if you change the language in which it was originally written, it’s not like an abridgement–it’s like a bad translation that fails to capture the essence and intent of the original. It is an inferior product.

“Nigger” is not interchangeable with “slave.”  If it were, “nigger” would not be offensive, or “slave” would be spelled “s—-.”  (Not to be confused with “s—.”) “N—–” has a connotation that goes way beyond “slave.”  A black person wasn’t called a “n—–” because he was a slave; he was called a “n—–” because of white racism.  White racism justified black slavery, but beyond that, even black people who were technically free were not equal under the law or in society.  Replacing “n—–” with “slave” not only screws with the novel’s voice , but it severely diminishes Twain’s anti-racism message.  Good golly Miss Molly, this is like Huck Finn for second graders–I feel ridiculous having to spell this out on a blog post intended for grown-ups, but it wasn’t second-graders who censored Huckleberry Finn; it was well-intentioned adults who ostensibly care about bringing a literary classic to a wider audience.

But these well-intentioned adults are missing the point.  If you are too immature to handle the N-word in historical and literary context, you are too immature to appreciate Huckleberry Finn.  You may as well just watch the TV movie starring Ron Howard and Donny Most because the finer points of the novel will be lost on you.

As I said in my tiny-rant on the Facebook this morning–oh, how I hate to repeat things I’ve already said on FB, but I only have so many original thoughts–it’s like taking out the “F— You” in Catcher in the Rye and replacing it with “Go jump in a lake.”  Say what you will about the literary merits or moral value of Catcher in the Rye, but such a Bowdlerization would render that climactic scene fairly meaningless.  Writers choose their words carefully.  (Even I choose my words carefully, sometimes.)  Because writers know that words matter.  How you use words matters.  When you use certain words instead of others matters.  That’s why we have writers and why we have censors.  There are times when putting things a bit more delicately is appropriate, or at least benign.  It is not appropriate or benign to re-write Mark Twain.

I think I understand how offensive the N-word is.  I move in circles where there is very little vulgarity spoken aloud.  I find the F-word extremely jarring when it is spoken aloud, but if someone said the F-word in front of me, I would be merely jarred–as opposed to if someone said the N-word in front of me, in which case I would be horrified.  Because the N-word has connotations that are beyond vulgar or offensive.  That is why it’s so important that the N-word stay out of our polite discourse but stay in Huckleberry Finn. It does us no good to pretend that the word wasn’t commonly used in the nineteenth-century South or that it doesn’t have a history the pre-dates rap music.

I’ve been known to protect my children from a lot of things I consider vulgar and offensive.  (I won’t let them watch America’s Got Talent, for example.)  Our house is the Euphemism Capital of Suburban Portland.  But my children are going to read the real Huckleberry Finn, if they’re going to read it at all.  Anything less would be unacceptable.

.

Krusty the Clown: Now, boys, the network has a problem with some of your lyrics. Do you mind changing them for the show?
Anthony Kiedis: Forget you, clown.
Chad Smith: Yeah, our lyrics are like our children, man. No way.
Krusty the Clown: Well, okay, but here where it says, “What I got you gotta get and put it in ya,” how about just, “What I’d like is I’d like to hug and kiss ya.”
Flea: Wow. That’s much better.
Arik Marshall: Everyone can enjoy that.

This post is not about President Obama

This controversy is stale, so it almost feels safe to write about it.  I’m talking about the New York Post chimp cartoon “some linked to Obama.”  For those of you who, like me, don’t read enough newspapers and only find out about current events by accident, and therefore may not know about the cartoon or the controversy, suffice it to say that the New York Post published a cartoon by Sean Delonas that depicted a chimp shot dead by police officers–a reference to the recent news story about the chimpanzee who was shot by police after mauling and disfiguring a Connecticut woman–and one of the police officers says, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”  This cartoon offended many people who saw it as a thinly-veiled insult to President Obama, especially disgusting because of its racist implications.

The Post has since issued a sort-of apology, essentially saying that the cartoon was not intended to have any racial component and they were awfully sorry if anyone was genuinely offended, but folks like (the unnamed) Al Sharpton need to get a life and there’s no way they’re apologizing to him, er, them.  I’m not a fan of the sort-of apology.  You’re either sorry for something, or you’re not.  If you didn’t intend to cause offense, and moreover, don’t feel that your actions merited offense, you can feel bad about the situation, even to the point of regretting your actions because seriously-who-needed-that-hassle?-not-you–but there’s not much point in saying you’re sorry unless you’re going to admit to wrongdoing, even if it means lying through your teeth.  The sort-of apology says, “I’m sorry that your sensitivity has caused you to become angry with me. Can we get on with life now?”  Really, calling it a “sort-of apology” is something of an overstatement.  It’s not an apology, just a request to shut up already because you’re tired of dealing with it and would like the whole thing to be over.  It’s totally understandable, but it’s kind of cowardly.  Moreover, it doesn’t appease anyone who was really offended.  It’s just politesse.

What upsets me about this story is that the cartoon really is offensive–to the poor woman who had her face torn off by her friend’s pet.  It’s in very poor taste, considering the human suffering involved in the real-life incident.  I think the cartoon is tacky.  I don’t think it’s racist.

It’s true that I’m white and haven’t ever been the victim of racism, and so it’s possible I’m just not sensitive enough to these things.  I don’t know, though.  I was a lefty for many years, and I’m pretty well-schooled in Stuff That’s Racist.  I know that even stuff that shouldn’t be racist can still be racist, so it’s often better to avoid such stuff than to risk giving offense.  I’m not into offending.  I know that some folks have said they were not familiar with the old practice of comparing black people to lower primates.  My response to this is, “Wow, you’re lucky.  Do some people not even have racist grandparents?”  My first week in college I heard a fellow student refer to a group of black students as “monkeys” and the girls who were with him just laughed.  I think that might have been the first time I’d heard such a blatantly racist remark coming from someone under the age of 75.  (And yes, I did go to college in the south, but the racist-remark-spewing-and-laughing-at students in this story were all from northern states, so take that for what it’s worth.)  Anyway, my point is that while I haven’t been exposed to much of this stuff firsthand, I realize that while it’s much less common than it used to be, it still goes on.  Also, it’s kind of hard to imagine a scenario in which comparing a human being to a monkey (or any animal, really) isn’t offensive, so ignorance of this peculiar aspect of racial history is a lame excuse.

However, in the context of this cartoon, the chimp isn’t meant to represent any human being.  The pertinent facts which allow one to “get” this cartoon (as much as one can “get” something that’s only mildly amusing, even without the offensiveness) are these:  1)  There was a chimpanzee that went wild in Stamford, Connecticut, and had to be shot dead by police officers.  2)  There was an economic stimulus bill passed by Congress that some people thought was really stupid and crazy.  3)  A chimp is pretty smart, for an animal, but it’s not nearly as smart as a human, especially when it’s scared and instinct takes over.  The cartoon implies–intentionally–that the stimulus bill was so stupid and crazy that it might as well have been written by a scared chimp on a rampage.  Ha.  Ha.  That crazy stimulus bill.  However, some folks–a lot of folks, actually, including Al Sharpton–took it as “the stimulus bill was so stupid and crazy that its author–Pres. Obama–must actually be a chimp.”

No, it doesn’t matter that the bill wasn’t actually written by the president (indeed, I think he had hardly anything to do with its formulation, but that’s another story).  On that much I agree with folks who took offense to the cartoon.  The bill was championed and signed by the president, so he owns it and may as well be the author.  I just think it’s overreaching to infer that the chimp in the cartoon is meant to represent the president or any other human being.  That completely removes the punchline of the joke (such as it is).  You would have to believe that not only was the cartoonist a racist but that he assumed everyone else would be racist enough to understand that the chimp was supposed to be the president–and also, that he didn’t mean to be funny but merely to make a vicious statement about the president and about all black people.

Should the cartoonist have been savvy enough to predict that some would misinterpret the cartoon?  Well, it’s easy enough to say so in hindsight.  Perhaps he should have.  But I don’t think it’s so far-fetched to say that the cartoonist honestly did not foresee it, and neither did his editors.  Some people–a lot of people, actually–can look at a chimp and just see a chimp.  It should be heartening that so many people exist, but it’s not.

If the chimp represents the president–or Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid, or any of our human elected officials–then the cartoon is worse than racist.  It’s saying not only that this person is a chimp–insulting in itself–but that he or she deserves to be shot dead for advancing a particular political agenda.  That’s disgusting and morally reprehensible, all racial angles aside.  If this chimp represents the president, the cartoon is a thinly-veiled assassination fantasy, which is so sick that it almost makes the racial aspect seem trivial–almost, except that in our society, race is never trivial.  The controversy over this cartoon makes that clear enough.  Race has a way of inserting itself in everything, even where it should have no significance.

I’m not about to tell anyone how sensitive they “should” be about anything.  People feel what they feel, and “You’re too sensitive!” is not a useful statement.  But look at this:  we live in a world where someone draws a cartoon that references a chimp and an unpopular piece of legislation, and the first thing a lot of white and black people think is, “That chimp represents our black president.”  That is sad.  Sad and depressing.  Coincidentally, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech last week in which he said the United States was a “nation of cowards” about race.  Unfortunately, he is right.

Madhousewife is the Political Cartoon Czar for the Obama administration.

Channeling Al Gore

I was listening to a podcast about climate change, and it reminded me:  I don’t care about climate change.  I’m not a climate change naysayer because I don’t know anything about climate change because I just don’t care.

I’ve always been this way.  When did they first start talking about global warming?  Was I still a liberal then?  I don’t remember.  What I remember is that back in my college days they were still talking about the hole in the ozone layer.  I didn’t care about that either.  I know, what a jerk, huh?  Yeah, I was hip to reducing, reusing and recycling, but the whole business with the ozone layer, I just never got into it.  I was a vegetarian, which I figured was ecologically responsible enough to make up for not caring about the ozone layer.  At least I hoped so, because I had all these letters to write for Amnesty International, and there were only so many hours in the day, you know?

And now look at earth and its state of affairs.  When was the last time anybody mentioned anything about the ozone layer?  I never followed ozone layer news, since, as I just told you, I didn’t care, so I don’t know–did we solve the problem with the ozone layer?  As I recall, it had something to do with CFC’s.  What were CFC’s?  Chloro-flouro-carbons?  I thought it had something to do with all the freon in the air conditioners.  They used to say aerosol cans made the hole in the ozone bigger, but then it was the air conditioners.  I remember, I had just given up using hairspray (for humidity reasons, not reasons of conscience), and I was disappointed to learn there was no moral benefit to my sacrifice.  I loved me some air-conditioning, though.  Dangit!

So does anybody out there know?  About the ozone layer, I mean.  Is our ozone layer okay?  Do we need to be worried anymore (again)?  Did we find out the hole is really not a big deal?  Or is it that global climate change is such a bigger deal that it makes all the fuss over the ozone layer just seem silly?

I can tell you one thing.  I am not prepared to care about climate change until I find out the truth about the ozone layer.  There are still only so many hours in the day, and I have a lot of laundry to do.

(I confess, I am kind of hoping that the ozone layer might still matter and that it has something to do with air conditioning, because then I can feel so awesome about not having air conditioning.  Except that I seem to recall the real problem was car air conditioners, and I have a car air conditioner that I use a lot in the summer.  Dangit!)

Here’s another question:  Do any of you care about global climate change?  I’m just curious because I don’t know anyone who talks about global climate change like they care about it.  When I was a big knee-jerk liberal, my big issues were poverty and oppression.  (Actually, those are still my big issues.) Occasionally I worried about all the garbage we were producing.  (Actually, I still worry about that.  It’s awful because my family produces more garbage than any other family on our block.  It’s embarrassing.  Also, I’m afraid that they’ll run out of landfills and they’ll start mistaking my house for one.  But now I’ve gone off topic.)

Do YOU care about global climate change?  If so, would you mind caring just a teensy bit more so I don’t have to?  There are only so many hours in the day, and I seriously have so much laundry to do.

Take my poll!

Atheists, spreading the love and the good news

I had the radio on for a few minutes today, long enough to hear part of a talk show where the host was interviewing some cat from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  Now, I didn’t listen for very long because I can think of few things more tedious than a conversation between a religious conservative who thinks religion is an important part of public life and an atheist who thinks religion is the most destructive force in public life.  I suppose someone has to have those conversations.  I’m just glad it isn’t me, and I’m glad my radio has an “off” button.

But it reminded me that I’ve been missing the atheists at the Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe as of late.  They used to meet the last Wednesday of every month, but they haven’t been there for a while.  I was curious, so I went looking for them on the internet, and I found out that they now rotate their meeting locations.  I know you’re all as relieved as I was to learn that the group hasn’t split up; they’re just broadening their horizons.  Maybe they’re collectively trying to lose weight, too, who knows?  Anyway, it’s too bad.  I’ll kind of miss them.  I mean, I could never get much writing done while they were in the cafe because, you know, of all the talking.  Groups of people tend to talk.  But at least their conversations were interesting–to me, anyway.  Because you don’t often see a bunch of atheists getting together to share their secular-ness.

So I guess the PC term for atheist is “Freethinker.”  That term sort of makes me roll my eyes, but as Freethinkers have been rolling their eyes at the likes of me for centuries, I’ll just suck it up and deal.  So these Freethinkers in our fair suburban city have started a community to support secularist people living and raising families in a society greatly influenced by religious beliefs.  I think this is very smart of them.  I for one don’t know how I would get by without my religious community.  All spiritual issues aside, religious communities are very handy things to have, for the purposes of making friends and finding babysitters and receiving practical support in times of need.  Also, they give you something to do.  But you don’t see a lot of atheist get-togethers, you know?  Not like the churches, which are always having barbecues and hosting AA meetings and whatnot.  Probably because a) there aren’t as many atheists as there are non-atheists, and therefore, b) atheists have a hard time finding each other, because c) if you find it difficult being an atheist in a non-atheist world, are you really going to bring up the subject in polite company?  I wouldn’t.

The atheists at my chocolate cafe were talking about starting a school, last I heard.  I think this is an excellent idea.  This country needs more Freethinkers united for a common good.  I hope to see many Freethinker schools and homeless shelters and 4-H clubs as time goes by.  Because once the Freethinkers have carved out their collective niche in society, they can stop boo-hooing about how alone they feel in their rationality.  Sorry, couldn’t resist.  Seriously, though, organized Freethinkers can only mean more competition in the marketplace of ideas.  And that’s good for everyone, wouldn’t you agree?

It was interesting to hear the atheists Freethinkers discuss their obstacles when it comes to forming these coalitions and completing ambitious programs.  As one of them said, churches wield great power over religious people because they can always threaten you with hell if you don’t do what they say.  (I’m paraphrasing.  I promise you the Freethinker said it nicer.)  Religious people have the threat of eternal punishment and the promise of eternal reward for doing x, y or z.  This Freethinker also said, “Even in groups of atheists, you have people waiting to be told what to do.  They’re not all rude and obnoxious like me.”  (Haha.  We all laughed at his self-deprecating remark.  Who says the godless have no sense of humor?  Not you.  Not anymore.)

They talked about the unique opportunity atheists have to promote greater awareness of a reason-based worldview and how this would not be accomplished by sitting around kvetching about religion, but by doing things that are affirmative and positive.  People are turned off when you ridicule others and oversimplify their beliefs.  Atheists need to attract people in more positive ways.  At this point I marveled at how much like a missionary training session this meeting was turning out to be.  Well, that’s the way you do it when you’re in a movement.  What do you expect?

Then somebody said, “Well, I’m ready for a eulogy.  Who wants to pray?”  And we all laughed again, because atheists praying is pretty ironic.

They didn’t pray.  Instead they made arrangements to meet again and wished each other Reasonspeed.  Or something like that.

So I’ll be missing them, my Freethinking, cocoa-swilling brethren (and sistren).  I hope that they find success in their endeavors, but I do wonder how they will overcome the inertia that plagues all too many human beings who otherwise have the best of intentions.  Someone at the meeting said that
only 1 percent interested in non-religious philosophy seek out others and get involved in organization, and that atheists need to figure out why this is. Religious organizations have the whole carrot-stick/heaven-hell routine, and people fall into line.  Seriously, if other religious people are like me and the religious people I know personally, the flesh is often weak–but where the flesh is weak, the spirit is willing to open up the can of whoop-a** known as Crushing Guilt and keep wailing until the flesh stops making Baby Jesus cry.  (Or, you know…Abraham, or somebody…depending on your faith tradition.)

Not that people without religion don’t have guilt, but where are their guilt enablers?  Well, perhaps Freethinkers are so awesome, they don’t need guilt enablers.  Maybe all they need is Barack Obama.  (But what if they’re Republicans?  Children could be left behind!)  As the self-deprecating Freethinker said, “All we have is reason.”  Is reason enough?

How do you spell “relief”?

So this weekend I took part in a discussion on the Brain, Child website about this essay in the Winter 2008 issue, “Relieving Myself,” by Heather Caliri.  Caliri is a writer in San Diego (she also has a blog, which as of this moment I have not yet perused, but here’s the link for your pleasure).  Caliri wrote about her experiences with Elimination Communication (EC), or diaper-free parenting.  The philosophy, in a nutshell, is this:  parents don’t need to depend on diapers, but they can learn to read and respond to their babies’ subtle cues and thus teach their children to have a sense of their own elimination needs and never endure conventional toilet-training hell.

I’ll be honest with you, kids:  the first time I heard about EC, around the time my last baby was born, my reaction was, “You have got to be effing kidding me.”  (Truly spoken like the woman who personally kicked Kimberly-Clark’s stock through the roof.)  My second thought was that it must be awesome for the people who have the patience for such things, but I would never be one of those parents.  And you, dear readers, know from careful study of this blog that I am still not one of those parents (and never will be).  (I once mentioned something to my step-mother about diaper-free parenting; her response was, “And what are you supposed to do with your other 20 minutes a day?”  Haha.  Good one, step-mom.  I thought she was being generous!)  However, I was intrigued by Caliri’s essay because she was clearly not out to persuade anyone else to use EC, merely documenting her own experience, and I thought it was a very insightful, often humorous piece about the nutty stuff we do in the name of good parenting.  (Not that EC is inherently nutty, but one can drive oneself nuts with any aspect of parenting.)

I wasn’t entirely surprised, though, that one of the first comments on the discussion page was a slam on Caliri’s hygiene standards and etiquette.  Not to give anything away (Sugar Daddy, avert your eyes because there’s a plot spoiler ahead!), but in the final scene Caliri is in a restaurant bathroom with her baby, Lucy, who proceeds to pee in the restroom sink.  This has some stylistic resonance, if you’ve invested in the preceding narrative, but some people evidently thought it was just really gross. 

Myself, I would be lying if I claimed not to have my own thoughts along the line of, “That’s not something you expect to see in a public restroom (if you’re lucky).”  However, my reaction was mitigated by the following:

1.  It was a baby.

2.  There was running water, not to mention a nearby soap dispenser.

3.  After nearly ten years of up-close-and-personal interaction with human waste, not to mention the three years I spent in the People’s Republic of Eugene, there is little that actually shocks me anymore.

4.  It’s not like it was my sink.

Just kidding on that last one.  Actually, if Caliri were visiting my home and wanted permission to let her baby relieve herself in my bathroom sink, I could hardly refuse her on grounds that my bathroom sink is a holy shrine to cleanliness.  But seriously, the fact that I was physically removed from the situation certainly allowed me the emotional distance to take the episode in stride.  After all, I’d already survived an earlier scene where Caliri let Lucy do her business by the outside wall of a neighborhood apartment building, sans smelling salts.  I actually thought that lifestyle choice a tad more gauche, maybe because I’ve lived in apartment buildings in neighborhoods where people had issues with personal boundaries.  But also because I couldn’t envision Caliri hosing the stucco off after the fact.  (Certainly not without a handy soap dispenser.)  However, no one else on the discussion board mentioned the wall-peeing, only the sink-peeing and how beyond-the-pale it was.

Ordinarily I don’t enjoy being a de facto defender of public urination–not any more than the ACLU enjoys defending those awful neo-Nazis, I’m sure–but my sympathies were with Caliri because she’d written a really interesting essay about an issue much larger than toileting, and her point was getting lost in the collective condemnation of her bathroom manners.  Sure, maybe a baby peeing in a public sink is uncool.  I won’t try to argue otherwise, because, you know, it’s not a choice I would make.  (Then again, trying to save the world one less diaper at a time is obviously not a choice I’ve ever made either.)  But I didn’t think it was fair to make that one part of the essay the centerpiece of the conversation, when the article was not about the relative merits of EC, but about Caliri’s own parental hangups and how she got over them.  I thought that, as a writer, Caliri would appreciate some feedback on something other than her choice to let the baby pee in the sink. 

Alas, ’twas not to be, because people were really, very put-off by the sink-peeing, and also by BC editor Jennifer Niesslein tsk-tsking them for harping on it and making it personal.  That led to some people wondering if they were supposed to all pretend they agreed with someone instead of giving their honest opinion(s), and whether tolerance only went one way at Brain, Child–also, whether we were all privileged, self-absorbed white women and whether we were going to silence women’s voices for the sake of niceness.  Valid questions, all of them, but in the meantime, poor Caliri’s article was not really being discussed; it was her personal character that was on trial.  It made me very grateful that my essay for Brain, Child never made it into the online content.  (Not that there was any sink-peeing in that one.  Maybe a little nose-picking, but that might not have been in the final edit.) 

I’m pretty much done with that discussion, edifying as it was, but some lingering questions remain (for me), so I will put them to you, gentle readers:

1.  Am I “out of the mainstream” because my objections to public sink-peeing have more to do with decorum than public health?  (I dunno, baby pee + running water + soap = ?)  In other words, am I just gross?

2.  Do women, as one BC commenter said, equate hard-hitting commentary with rudeness?  Do we wish to “make sure everybody ‘feels comfortable’ at the expense of dialogue”?

And for the sake of science,

3.  Do you prefer your dialogue hard-hitting, or comfortable?  Are you by any chance a woman?