The Cons of Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is not all it’s cracked up to be. And the reasons for breastfeeding that most people give are not very smart, unfortunately.

Reason #1. “It’s best for my child! Studies show it is!”

Answer: These studies are stupid. Sorry, but there it is, and here’s why: they all assume that correlation equals causation. I dare anyone to show me a study about breastfeeding that doesn’t do this. Guess what else breastfeeding correlates to? Being educated and having money. So what really makes the difference – are smart, healthy children smart and healthy because they were breastfed, or because they were raised by educated, middle-class parents? Who knows? Breastfeeding “research” sure doesn’t.

Reason #2: “Well, even if it doesn’t necessarily make my baby smarter, it DOES make it healthier!! I care about my child’s health!”

Answer: Again, I dare you to produce research that doesn’t assume that correlation equals causation. I double dare you to produce research that compares breastfeeding to modern formulas (most studies are longitudinal and therefore compare breastfeeding to the formulas of 15 or 20 years ago).

Reason #3: “But the American Academy of Pediatrics/Dr. Sears/my mom/my OBGYN/La Leche says so!’

Answer: Appeal to authority is no argument. All those people are wrong unless they have thoughtful, logical research to back them up.

Reason #4: “But it’s good for the mom too! It helps her lose weight and stuff, and keeps her from getting cancer and stuff.”

Answer: Sure, maybe. Care to show me the research (remember, nothing that assumes correlation equals causation).

What about the downsides to breastfeeding?

Downside #1. Breastfeeding takes Dad out of the equation and makes bonding all about mommy and child, not parents and child.

Downside #2. If you work, you have to pumps. Pumps aren’t cheap, despite Mrs. Obama’s laudable efforts to make them a little more affordable. Pumping can be a logistical nightmare.

Downside #3. You must spend more time with the baby – whether you have that time or not and whether the baby needs you, specifically, or not.

Downside #4. Pushing breastfeeding as the ultimate Unshirkable Responsibility is not only based on ignorance and poor research, but it makes women who can’t breastfeed feel terrible.

There are reasons to breastfeed – it’s free, for one. But like anything else it has its downsides, and its strident champions need to be more compassionate, and more knowledgeable.

Are We Equals?

Birth Control and Dignity

Birth control is one area of life where women in the U.S. and other Western countries often have little dignity.

Consider some questions. Why do you need to get a pap smear to get birth control? Why is it often difficult for a young woman to get an IUD? Why do doctors seldom, if ever, mention non-hormonal methods of birth control? Why is hormonal birth control only available by prescription in the first place?

The answers to these questions are not what you think. IUDs are not particularly dangerous; pap smears have no relation to birth control; non-hormonal birth control can be very effective; and doctors are not looking out for your health when they prescribe birth control, because they never conduct tests to see what type and level of hormone would work best for you and if they refuse you birth control, it is for political, not health, reasons.

There really are no tests to determine which pill (or patch, or ring) would work best for a particular woman. It’s plain old trial and error. The doctor just guesses, maybe throwing in a recommendation for what she likes best or has the most samples of or flyers for. Insurance companies, by and large, don’t reimburse doctors for writing a birth control prescription (and since it’s just a flying leap in the dark, I am not sure that I can blame them) and yet doctors do like to get paid for their time, so the mandatory pap smear came into being. Doctors justify it “for your health.” That’s nice, but if men couldn’t get birth control unless they were tested for a cancer that affects less than 1% of the population, it wouldn’t be so nice.

The whole system is not without its benefits. But it could be so much better.

Women, know your options. Research everything I have just said. Research non-hormonal birth control. Make an informed decision (because your doctor won’t). There is nothing elegant about a woman flat on her back “for her own good,” or a woman nodding uncomprehending “yes”s. You should have knowledge, because knowledge is both power and dignity.

Here are some starting points:

Toni Weschler, Taking Charge of Your Fertility. This book is one of the most informative and useful I’ve ever read. The accompanying website, tcoyf.com, lets you chart anywhere for free.

LadytoBaby.com. This is a Canadian website, where you can buy, among other things, the FemCap without a prescription.

Some interesting articles:

• “Let the Pill Go Free.”
• “Should the Birth Control Pill Be Sold Without a Prescription?”

Dealing With Cretins

Feminism, while not easy in theory, in way easier in theory than in practice. In practice, you have to deal with cretins on a pretty much constant basis. These leads to dilemmas, like:

“How to I tell Uncle Willy to bugger off about my not changing my name?”

“How can I  deal with the guys who tell sexist  jokes?”

All of these dilemmas – there are tons more – are dilemmas because of some unspoken assumptions. One is, “I should educate them.” Another is, “I should be polite while doing it.”

Here’s a different way to deal with the  cretins. First of all, take a tip from a French saying and save your saliva when it comes to incorrigible cretins. When it comes to ones who may not be incorrigible, forget politeness. It’s Quiz Time:

“So, so-and-so, how many feminists can you name?”

“Hmm, interesting. Ever actually read, say, Gloria Steinem?”

The answers to these questions are always a) “Uhh…” b) “No” or c) ["smart"ass remark].

Your counter-response: a contemptuous pursing of the lips and something along the lines of “So, you actually have no idea what you’re talking about” or “figures.”

And there you go. Uncle Willy and dumbass acquaintances / co-workers will at least keep their mouths shut around you from now on.  And if every person takes this tack, eventually, they’ll have no-one to make their dumb remarks to.

Rihanna

Some people – including, apparently, Rihanna – are all worried that Chris Brown’s career will be hurt – nay, ruined! – because of all the stinky publicity about his little incident, which was, after all, just “life.”

Here’s a question: since when has violence against women hurt any man’s career? Only hurting dogs does that.

Becoming a Woman

“No No No!!!” These were the words my new boss had scrawled in red ink across my draft memo. After more than a decade as a big-firm lawyer in the area of complex insurance coverage contracts, I was rather shocked to see such a savage display of temper, and even more shocked to think that my writing, always rated rather highly by other employers, merited such treatment. Little had changed over the past decade – not my hard-driving work ethic nor my clear writing style. The explanation seemed obvious to me, though at first I didn’t want to believe it: I was now a woman.

I had transitioned from male to female in 1998, and my new employer neither knew nor suspected that I was transgender. Now I was receiving the condescending treatment that some of my female colleagues had complained about all along.

More here.

Feminists Don’t Have to Be Pro-Choice

If there’s one thing that the doomed selection of Sarah Palin has proved, it’s that feminism has become abortionism – both to most anti-feminists and to many feminists as well.

What was the most common criticism of Palin, after the chuckling over her multiple, shall we say, faux pas? Something along these lines: She’s not a feminist because “she wants to take away a woman’s right to choose while banning sex education in schools, so that essentially the only choice left for a girl is to become an uneducated teenage mother” (Bi-College News).

Come on now. Susan B. Anthony couldn’t get a legal abortion and certainly never had sex-ed, yet somehow she managed to do OK-ish.

The real problem is deeper than this one hyperbole, however; over and over, in the past weeks, the response to the idea that Palin is a feminist has been “she can’t be because she’s against a woman’s right to choose!”

Let’s be clear: Palin is hardly a feminist role model; only smart women get to be feminist role models. But this insistence that one be pro-choice to be feminist stems from a fundamental ignorance of basic ethical philosophy.

Pro-lifers are all, whether they know it or not, members of the deontological school of ethical thought, that is, they don’t take the consequences of their decisions into account. This is not an insult; all it means is that, if a woman’s life is hard hit financially or emotionally by having a baby, a pro-lifer may (or may not) feel badly about that, but the consequences to the woman don’t alter their decision. The idea here is that you should do what’s right come hell or high water. In most contexts, this is undisputably noble: Antigone insisting that she bury her brother even though she knows she will be sentenced to death for it, for example.

Pro-choicers, on the other hand, are utilitarians. Utilitarians think that you can’t possibly judge whether a deed is good or not without looking at all of its ramifications. Pro-choicers judge the ramifications of legalized abortion to be better than the ramifications of abortion being illegal.

For too long, people who argue about abortion have treated it like it’s a special case, a debate unto itself. It’s not. It’s one more example of a fundamental (and pretty tangled, the more you look into it) philosophical problem.

NF is solidly pro-choice. But NF also recognizes that a problem in philosophy that has attracted minds like Kant, Bentham, and R.M. Hare is not one with a definitive answer. Nobody, therefore, should treat those who disagree with them on this with hatred, as long as the disagreement is an intellectual one (raving loonies don’t count). And no feminist is required to be a utilitarian; therefore, no feminist is required to be pro-choice.

“Ease Up on Palin”? Why?

New Feminist‘s comment on this thread wasn’t seen fit to be posted, but we’ll say what we have to say anyway:

Palin was not a good choice because the cost of energizing the Republican ticket was alienating moderates – an inevitable problem, it’s true, and one that has little to do with Palin per se. A moderate choice wouldn’t have energized the Republican base, and had Lieberman been on the ticket, McCain would still have lost and the veep pick would still be getting part of the blame for that loss. So on that head, Palin is not to blame.

Nor is she stupid, but quite savvy; she is, however, willfully ignorant (who doesn’t know at least the name of at least one goddamn news source?)

Nobody demonized her; she hurt herself. Quit trying to protect the pretty lady and act like her ignorant comments wouldn’t have been any big deal until the media started … what? Twisting her words? Making stuff up? Hell, SNL’s parodies didn’t even have to change her words to be funny. It’s called reporting, people. Journalism majors, take note. Conservatives, stop bitching about the Mega Industrial Media Complex – you sound like liberals.

And finally, critiquing Palin’s effect on the ticket is not “making fun.” No dogs need be called off, because none were set. In any case, Palin is a hunter – she should be able to handle a little hunting.

It’s TRULY Morning in America

When the Republicans said it, it was a way to use people’s hope as a way to keep office (remember that, all you squawkers about Kool-Aid)?

Now, it’s actually true. It is Morning in America, and with hard work it will be a bright and glorious day.

The Burden of Knowledge

Does someone want to talk to you about how Sarah Palin is a feminist Role Model who just doesn’t fit feminist stereotypes?

Does someone want to whine about the massive sexism they thinks undermines boys’ achievement (it couldn’t possibly be macho ideals)?

Does someone want to carp at studying women’s literature and history?

Tell them that the burden of proof has been replaced with a burden of knowledge, and that burden’s on THEM.

Ask them to give some indication that they’re familiar with the word “feminist” beyond FOX and National Review’s pablumized vestigial memory of two things they read once about Betty Friedan.

See if they can name three feminist thinkers. That’s all, just three.

See if they can name two schools of feminist thought. That’s all, just two.

And then after the silence, tell them to shut the fuck up.