Pro tip: If you are going to complain about guilt and high expectations don’t go around telling people that their giving in to “tyranny” by making the choice to breastfeed and that they just happen to be ruining the women’s movement for everybody.

If guilting a mother for formula feeding is bad, so is guilting a woman for breastfeeding. I know, it seems obvious but apparently these things need explaining.

I’ve been a feminist for as long as I could articulate what that word meant and even though I am not a mother I have always kept it ‘on my radar’ so to speak because rights for parents will always weigh heavily on the rights of women. On no other issue have I seen feminists more willing to tear other women down than when it comes to breastfeeding.

And why? I just don’t get it.

Yes there will always be that one nosey brat in the park who feels it’s there right to tell a mother they should be breastfeeding if they happen to pull out a bottle. But there’s just as many who will tell a breastfeeding mother that she is gross for ‘whipping’ her breasts out to feed a child. No one in this situation tends to get off easier than the other.

So why would you add to the pressure?

What I really don’t get is pushing this view that women who choose formula aren’t actually free to do so. Even in Canada, with fairly generous maternity leave, the majority of women will feed formula. Less than 25% will go to six months of exclusively breastfeeding. Not exactly a mob of formula feeding oppression.

Is there any benefit to the feminist angle Badinter is taking with the ‘mommy wars’ here?

Badinter’s primary focus is this idea that women are making more work for themselves. That it’s more work to breastfeed, more work to use cloth diaper, more work to co-sleep etc. To be a “natural” parent plays into patriarchal ideals of keeping women-folk busy with the children instead of out there in the “real” world.

Now, I have not read Badinter’s book on this matter (working on the library system here) so I am not going to pretend to be able to offer a direct rebuttal, however these conclusions ring false to me.

First of all, are these things actually “more” work? I think to say so make far too many assumptions. The first being that bottle feeding will somehow equalize the work load of caring for a child. Yeah dad isn’t going to be so ace at breastfeeding, but why are we assuming he’s going to be sterilizing bottles?

This would be the problem I have with most of these assumptions. To conclude that these activities will place more work unfairly on women has to assume that men have no part in raising children, but for the only way the ‘mainstream’ methods create less work is if we believe men will alwasy be there to help.

You would hope that men would do whatever they could to help regardless of diapering, or sleeping, or feeding arrangements. Though even at my age I know many a father who will pass off a baby as women’s work regardless of the fact that they happen to be using bottles. Formula feeding will not equalize an unequal partnership nor will breastfeeding upset a couple set on equality.

Let’s give everyone a little more credit than all this, and hold the judgement sauce.

Blame the wimminz!

Now the ‘boys and their toys’ stereotype has never really existed in my household. We both have our smartphones; I’m a little bit Android and he’s a little bit iOS. The gadgets, such as the camera, tend to be my purview, at least, I certainly use them more.

We both enjoy video games, although in different ways. He’ll play Skyrim on the PC; I will play Arkham CIty on the PS3. For other  entertainment we’ll ‘nerd out’ on cheesy sci-fi

It goes below the surface as well. I started coding when I was about nine years old, went from websites to databases to application programming. I then avoided that career path like the plague due to the hostility I often felt in the classroom.* My partner can’t stand the nitty gritty of code; he’s a IT support specialist who loves networking (computers, not people).

So unlike most households, we both have a lot of ‘geek cred’ when it comes to technology, so maybe I’ve been just a little sheltered.

Still, in the age of grandparents using “the FaceBook,” I thought that the majority of people would realize that technology is just the way that we interact with our lives and that it tends to cross gender barriers.

Apparently I’m far too charitable.

Of course women buy more tech! All they do is shop! Then to add that extra layer of insidious sexism, there’s also someone to declare that all women do is shop with their husbands money. *sigh*

Oh, it gets worse.

Did I mention the part where, of course women buy technology, because they are obviously so stupid that they are distracted by shiny things? Unlike our hero male, the Smart Consumer™. Women are just so stupid they buy things they can’t even figure out how to use! Even though the same survey stated that women used their electronics frequently.

Many also tried to debunk the results by saying it was a survey of Home Shopping Network watchers/customers (insert sexist remark about couches/bon bons here). The Mashable article quite clearly stated that the survey was done by an independent company, Parks Associates. Where they got the survey subjects was never mentioned in their own report, but they also researched matters I can’t imagine HSN would be interested in, such as movie downloads and sharing content, or how often a product is used. HSN mentioned the results at the Consumer Electronics Show, but besides that, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence either way if they were involved in the research or not.

Many people would like you to believe that sexism is a thing of the past. These people also seem to be the same ones who want to metaphorically slap a bitch for thinking she knows how to use a smartphone.

*Although hey, maybe it’s just as well, the only thing getting outsourced faster than programmers are call centres.

Yeah, it’s a little disturbing.

Pierre Dukan of The Dukan Diet* fame, has suggested kids who stay at a healthy BMI should receive extra marks for being the right weight. His diet plan is really nothing special, think Atkins with a twist, but hey Kate’s mom◊ lost weight on it! Or something?

The flaws, of course, are quite obvious, schools are for learning, not dieting.

Not that I have a problem with teaching healthy eating, and I think schools could be doing better than they are. Most cafeteria lunches are pure junk, pop and candy is often available in the school hallways and to top it off school’s often promote unhealthy food like pizza for school fundraisers. Unfortunately the athletics portion is in disarray as well, not only is there constant pressure to cut back time and/or funding for physical exercise but it is often set up in such a way that those who are most likely to need it (aka, the less athletically inclined) are also the most likely to be discouraged from pursuing physical activities in and outside of class time. Policing weight loss, however, is not the responsibility of the school.

In fact weight loss should probably not be considered a primary goal for most overweight children. The pressure of dieting is something that should not be placed on the youth. Unless a child is suffering additional complications, other than “fat,” priorities should be placed on better eating and encouraging an active lifestyle. Schools can teach it, but it’s up to parents to implement it.

Which exactly why awarding grades for weight loss is doubly pointless. Teenagers certainly have more control than their grade school counterparts but even if they are educated on healthy eating they are hardly the one’s doing the grocery shopping. Not only does awarding points for being an “ideal weight” reward those who are naturally svelte for simply living, it will reward the better education of certain parents, or parents who have more time on their hands to cart little Timmy back and forth from all his extra-circulars. It has very little to do with the merits of the child themselves.

Sadly Dukan states that he’s using grades to encourage parents, even sadder, he thinks it’s a feature rather than a huge red flag.

Also I have to say, for someone who was apparently a general practitioner before he became a diet guru he seems to have a stunning lack of knowledge of children’s growth and development. In an interview for the Canberra Times Dukan suggest that kids should lose 2kg (or about 4.5 pounds) over a two year period. Do you see the problem here? A child can easily gain five pounds over two years and yet be at a healthier body composition. They grow and fits and spurts, body composition fluctuates greatly (especially during puberty) and height tends to achieved more quickly than weight. Seriously I’m having a hard time believing a doctor said something so silly.

Not that BMI is any better at figuring out whether someone is ‘healthy’ when it comes to the quirks of puberty. So is Timmy at a better BMI because he’s been making better food choices? Or has he just grown a foot over the past year, because that’s what boys tend to do? Oh wait, it doesn’t matter if he’s scarfing pizza, it’s all about appearance.

So, this plan attempts to burden young children, is discriminatory and to top it off the potential implementation is horribly thought out. ‘Nuff said.

* Seriously how did something with that name ever get popular?
◊ A pox on both our houses if you know who I’m talking about here.

“Well, if you apply that preventative medicine universally, what you end up with is you’ve prevented a generation. Preventing babies from being born is not medicine.”

OMG, Obama is forcing sterilization on people!

Oh wait, no. Obama is just requiring health insurance to cover birth control as a preventative heath measure. Because, as we all know, once a woman takes any measure to prevent pregnancy they will never be able to conceive again.

That was some sarcasm for the uninitiated.

Maybe I missed something, but is the world in the midst of being underpopulated? No?

Considering I know more women who have had children as the result of failed birth control versus either those who have never taken prophylactic methods to prevent pregnancy OR those who have purposefully remained childless* I’m thinking population isn’t really a concern. In fact what I am thinking is that this is actually pretty racist. Kind of like you get the feeling he’s worried about the ‘coloreds’ outbreeding whitey.

The statement was made by Rep. Steve King from Iowa and surprise, surprise. He’s white, catholic and has a problem with minorities. He’s for racial profiling, against equal rights for gays and wants to kick all illegal immigrants out of the country. He’s also been particularly charming about the US President, suggesting that Islam extremist would applaud his election and that Barack Obama’s policies, “demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race – on the side that favors the black person.” C-LAS-SY!

The we have the crazy religious perspective from Jeffrey Kuhner of the Edmund Burke Institute.

“In short, liberals want to create a world without God and sexual permissiveness is their battering ram. Promoting widespread contraception is essential to forging a pagan society based on consequence-free sex,”

OK, seriously? Who the heck uses the phrase battering ram when talking about sex(ual) permissiveness? It’s just begging to be taken out of context. “Oh dear, Winston’s idea of foreplay was “Effie, brace yourself.”♠

Besides that? So. Many. Questions! Like: How come pagan religions were a their peak LONG before the creation of over-the-counter hormonal contraception? More seriously: Who actually believes in “consequence-free sex”? Those who promote comprehensive sex education, encouraging individuals to be safe from disease and to choose pregnancy when they are ready for the commitment that entails? Or those who think having a dozen kids will be all hunky dory as long as you’ve signed a marriage certificate regardless of health and financial stability?

Trust me, those who encourage access to birth control generally have a much better handle on the effects of sex.

What worries me however, is not only the increasing amount that reproductive choice is being attacked but how more and more things we take for granted are being attacked. Abortion was always a sticky issue but then they went after comprehensive sex education in schools and now birth control?

“Slippery slope” is considered a logical fallacy but the world isn’t logical. As social conservatives gain ground chipping away at abortion rights in the USA they become more embolden to attack other areas of women’s reproductie lives.

* Which may be because I’m still fairly young in the grand scheme of things
♠ I wonder what rating this movie would have had without the William’s ad-libs.

There was a great article on the Ms. Magazine blog written by Frances Whittelsey about how we don’t talk about hysterectomies. We don’t talk about how they are overdone, that there are alternatives and that many women suffer serious health consequences because of them. Yet what many of these women suffer still falls to silence.

Whittelsey asks aloud why women don’t get more involved in their sexual health when a decision about a hysterectomy are to be made. Why do we spend so much time and effort looking sexy and not on having a satisfying sex life?

I think it’s probably because women have long been trained to trade sexual satisfaction in exchange for looking good.

It seems to be almost a funny thing to say in the age of Sex in the City and the rabbit vibrator, but a woman’s sexuality really isn’t about her. A woman’s sexuality is still perceived as an attraction, a show, an advertisement.

I recently finished Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter and I really thought that Orenstein did an excellent job of exploring of feminine ‘performance.’ In the end it’s not the pink, or the fairy tales, or pretending to be a princess that is the problem with the Princess culture. It’s the consumerism; the buying, the accessorizing, the complete obsession with ‘good looks’ being the defining characteristic of what a woman is. What starts out innocently as painted toes and plastic tiaras ends with mini-skirts and crop tops. Mass consumerism of products that focus on outer beauty teaches young girls to focus on their outer beauty.

Combine that with culture that then views a woman’s sexuality as a transactional item. Not only is it used to sell, well, every thing but we frequently speak of it as though it were a currency. Sex and beauty are seen as commodities that one could trade for other wants. Sex is talked about as something that women can either “give up” or they can “save it.” As if it (sex!) were money in a piggy bank. And just like cold coinage, sex retains no emotional value. It is not seen as something for women; her sexuality is divorced from her sexual pleasure.

So is it really that surprising when these women reach their adult years their sexuality is still about performance? About looking good rather than their sexual enjoyment? So yes, it is not too difficult to believe that women are putting more effort and thought into their face cream than the future of their sexual health.

I find it interesting that Whittelsey claims that the extreme hysterectomy rate has not received the same amount of attention as other feminist health issues, which is true. One of the examples she lists however is the rate of cesarean sections.

It’s an interesting parallel, because hey, they both involve cutting up uteruses, but the coverage often given to c-sections is not exactly positive.

The mass media headline was that women were driving up the c-section rate for a convenient and painless* delivery. This spawned the ‘too posh to push’ tagline. Women were simply to self-absorbed to go through a vaginal birth.

Unfortunately the feminist response was lacking. That too posh to push junk? Sexist as hell, and many feminists rightly called it out as such. But that was it. Most never went further; they never thought to ask, is there a problem here?

Any literature that I read from a feminist perspective didn’t actually care to comment on the actual c-section rate, and if they did they pretty much argued that even if 100% of births were elective c-sections, it would be OK, because that was what women were choosing. Which irritated the hell out of me.

I’ve said this before but “choice” is meaningless if you don’t have a full picture of the facts. It’s kind of like choosing a door on a game show. You can see you can pick Door #1, Door #2 or Door #3 but, as you can’t see what’s behind those doors, it’s just a crapshoot.

Now you can probably see how this fits in with the hysterectomy problem. Being a personal medical choice, the feminist line is to trust women and leave it up to them. Women making their own decisions = not a problem.

But it does become a problem when women are prevented from making informed decisions. In the case of both hysterectomies and c-sections women are often not told of the long term health risks. In both cases they are often not given their full range of options and sadly they are often given inappropriate reasons for why they need to have the procedure.

In the end, it’s all up to individual women but they shouldn’t have to fight their way through this in the dark. Get informed, spread the word, encourage second opinions, and talk to your doctor like you’re interrogating them. When people are full aware of the options, it is much easier to make the right choice for themselves.

* Whoever came up with that one has certainly never had major abdominal surgery.