| Put Down That Fat Bias! |
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| 05:48pm 29/11/2009 |
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Fat at 40 is better than thin, scientists warn
"Contrary to the widely held belief that it is healthier to be slim, researchers in Japan found that the life expectancy of the overweight at 40 was six years longer than that of their thinner counterparts.
The study found that among those aged 40, the overweight category topped the polls in terms of the longest life expectancy, with expectations of an average of 40.5 extra years for men and 47 years for women. Those classed as "normal" weight followed closely behind, with 38.7 additional years expected among men and 46.3 among women, the study showed. However, researchers found that those defined as slim were bottom in terms of life expectancy, with 33.8 further years predicted among men and 41.1 among women.
Health concerns surrounding the slimmest also eclipsed those of the overweight, with higher risks of heart disease and other illnesses as they age, according to Masato Nagai, a graduate student involved in the research. "Those who are too slim are reportedly said to be at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and are more likely to develop pneumonia as nutritional deficiency lowers their resistive force," he said.
Last month, Danish researchers found that those with slim thighs measuring a circumference of less than 23 inches were at greater risk of heart disease and death. "
Unfortunately, some reporters just don't get it:
"Middle age spread link to frailty
People who are overweight or obese in middle-age run the risk of being frail in later life, say Finnish researchers."
Guess what this study actually found?
"A study of more than 1,000 men found the highest risk of death and illness in those who put on weight in their 40s but lost it when they got older."
That's right. Being fat didn't make them less healthy. Weight loss made them less healthy. Great big surprise, but apparently starvation isn't very good for you. It's actually an interesting little article once you see through the reporter's anti-fat bias.
Anyway, the point is relatively simple and I've made it before: fat or thin doesn't make you healthy or sick. Being healthy makes you healthy. Being thin can be unhealthy. Being fat can be unhealthy. Being thin can be healthy. Being fat can be healthy. Losing a bunch of weight and putting on a bunch of weight can both be unhealthy. So love your body. Nourish it well. Eat well, live well, and focus on being healthy, not on hitting a particular number on the scale. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| The Holidays are Coming |
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| 12:19pm 29/11/2009 |
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It's time to start planning for the 12 days of Solstice! Anyone remember my post on this from last year? At any rate, you're all welcome to celebrate with us, especially those of you who are in town.
The 12 nights of Solstice start the evening before the day the solstice generally falls, and end New Year's day.
Night 1, Dec. 20/21: Pears should be eaten with dinner and a traditional Christmas tree (real, fake, potted, whatever,) set up in the living room this evening. Partridge and pear ornaments may be placed in the tree.
Night 2, Dec. 21/22: The lighting of the fires. During the day we decorate the tree and home with Christmas lights, (and turn them on in the evening and the rest of the evenings thereafter.) Chocolate turtles should be eaten for desert after dinner.
Night 3, Dec. 22/23: This one is easy. We eat chicken. (Three French Hens) And we can further decorate the house with wreathes and holly, if we feel like it.
Night 4, Dec. 23/24: I suppose just about any birds would do for four calling birds, but we could alternatively attempt to do something involving real birds, such as set out birdseed for the birds or go to the zoo. I'm pretty sure setting out birdseed is traditional, but I have also heard that if you feed the Canadian geese in the winter, they'll stick around in the summer, so you shouldn't. Perhaps there is a park somewhere that folks are allowed to feed the birds? Or we could go caroling!
Night 5, Dec. 24/25: Ring-shaped bread made with saffron. (Making bread at home will probably take all day.)
Night 6, Dec. 25/26: Roast goose and apples, celebrate Isaac Newton's birthday. Klarfax is not in favor of eating goose.
Night 7, Dec. 26/27: Swan shaped cookies?
Night 8, Dec. 27/28: Milk, milk, and more milk products. Drink like a baby cow! Maybe we'll even make cheese.
Night 9, Dec. 28/29: Everyone comes over and you have a dance party!
Night 10, Dec. 29/30: "Jump up and down day" seems like it'd get old after a few years. Not sure what to do with Ten Lords A-leaping. Address the children as adults day?
Night 11, Dec. 30/31: Listen to/play music together
Night 12, Dec. 31/Jan. 1: Drum in the New Year; in the morning clean up and haul out the trash.
Any further ideas? |
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Read 5 - Post |
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| Disordered Eating |
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| 12:06pm 29/11/2009 |
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We are a nation plagued by disordered eating, a condition created, I believe, by the diet and food industries. What's the difference between an eating disorder and disordered eating? Degree, mostly. Disordered eating is bad for you. Eating disorders will kill you.
There is an obvious contradiction in telling you not to worry about what you eat and then telling you to eat well. The problem is that food paranoia leads to disordered eating, which leads to all sorts of bad things. You have to abandon your food paranoia before you can begin to eat well. You have to accept that hamburgers are not all bad (nutritionally, I'm not claiming that the cow is particularly happy about it,) that cupcakes have their time and place, and that butter is your friend before you can even do anything else.
We are a nation that has been deceived. Countless perfectly good, natural, real foods have been pushed off our tables by industrially-derived convenience items. Butter is a perfect example. Butter is made from cows, who cost money to keep clean and healthy. Butter gets squishy at room temperature, which makes shipping a pain. But corn oil can be produced cheaply, and once hydrogenated won't go squishy even at room temperature. When I was younger, my parents kept a can of Crisco in the cabinet above the stove.
The food industry has sold us on Crisco and margarine, claiming that they're healthier for us than all that calorie-laden butter. Unfortunately, it turns out that all that hydrogenation creates trans-fats, and trans-fats'll kill you. Oopsies.
The other day, I was preparing a 'Welcome back' dinner for my mother's boyfriend. I was mixing the mashed potatoes when she commented to him that my husband and I are so thin, we "can afford to eat real butter."
Considering that butter has fewer calories than margarine, maybe we're thin because of what we eat, not despite it? Note that my mother is overweight, depressed, constantly sick, in horrible shape, and has cancer. Her response? Dieting. Which makes her gain more weight. Nevertheless, my mother (who does not even know what tran-fats are, much less that they cause cancer) sees fit to inform me that my diet is going to give me high cholesterol and ruin my health.
When I challenge my mum on the source of her nutrition information, she replies with a dismissive, "everyone knows that," or "just Google it, you'll find tons of articles." Yeah, somehow I've managed to read 10 books on food and not encountered this from a single credible source, but it must be true because, "everyone knows it." Turns out my mother gets her information about butter from margarine ads. She is truly the perfect consumer.
Unfortunately, my mother is not alone in her delusion that if she eats margarine, fat-free ice cream, and Diet Coke, she'll lose weight. I just pick on her because I am well-aquainted with her eating habits and health problems. My mother suffers from seriously disordered eating.
The food industry has convinced us to throw out real food and replace it with fake food, convenience food, fast food, diet food, low-food food. While I have nothing against speed and convenience, the result is often devitalized, de-fooded food. Diet food is nothing more than food with the food taken out. It may fool your brain, but it won't fool your body, which will keep craving more food and more calories until it gets the nutrients and calories it needs. When you feed your body food with the food taken out, it takes a lot more food to get your nutrients.
For the record, vitamins + water are not all you need. You actually need fats. You need proteins. You need sugars (though I question the need for refined sugars.) You need a variety of foods and you need most of all to enjoy your food. Food is your ally. Food is delicious. Food is fun. If eating is a chore or a bore or filled with stress, you're doing it wrong.
Not long ago, I was a victim of disordered eating. No, not eating disorders, thankfully. I've had the good luck to never have any weight to lose, except after pregnancy, and that weight melts off on its own. Still, I suffered from the American affliction of disordered eating. I did not enjoy food. There were so many foods I disliked or wouldn't eat for one reason or another that eating out anywhere was a pain in the ass. Eating at a friend or relative's house was a nightmare of trying to find something I could eat without offending them. And just maintaining my weight was increasingly difficult.
I realized that things had to change. First Klarfax introduced me to good food and the notion that I should actually enjoy eating. Enjoy eating? Eat for some purpose other than putting enough calories into my system to keep it running? Yes, by all means, yes. We eat every day (at least we ought to). It is such a constant activity that if you don't enjoy it, you'll be suffering. And besides, food tastes good. You're supposed to enjoy it.
Second, I realized that my eating habits were not healthy. Losing weight is not healthy, especially not when you don't have any to lose. Everyone jumps all over fat people for their "unhealthy lifestyle", but no one gave a shit that I was unhealthy, because hey, if you're thin, that must mean you're healthy. I had to gain weight, and that meant overcoming most of my significant food aversions. I had to eat meat, chocolate, bread, milk, eggs, hell, I even had to pay for food and wash my damn dishes.
Then I encountered Glassner's book, The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong. Glassner talks about the dangers and failures of the "philosophy of naught", of choosing foods based on what they don't contain rather than what they do contain. The philosophy of naught sets food up to be your enemy. Food should never, ever be your enemy.
While I don't necessarily agree with everything Glassner said, his basic principle is sound. Food is your friend. Enjoy your food. I took advantage of my increased appetite during pregnancy to overcome some of my food aversions and become accustomed to some new foods, like milk and tomatoes. And my life has benefited greatly as a result. I still can't stand the taste of raw tomatoes, but I do derive great pleasure from all forms of milk.
Before we can begin to eat well, we must first abandon disordered eating. We must realize that food is our friend, our ally, and not our enemy.
Previous entries in this series:
Stop Dieting
Definitions and References
Food is Your Friend |
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Read 4 - Post |
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| Empathy |
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| 08:20pm 28/11/2009 |
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So today I was crying (which unfortunately scared the bejeezus out of Tron, for which I still feel bad,) and Link saw me crying and said, "Mommy crying," and brought me his blanket and put it over my head. It was very sweet. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| Food Paranoia |
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| 10:14pm 22/11/2009 |
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Lesson one: Diets don't work
Lesson two: Food is your friend
Let's explore lesson two a bit. Food is your friend. It is your ally. It is delicious and nutritious.
You were born with wonderful instincts which tell you what and how much to eat. Please ignore the fact that my toddler eats carpet lint. Carpet lint is clearly an important food group.
You should enjoy your food. There are only two legitimate reasons for not enjoying food: actual illness, and poverty. Both of these reasons are very sad, but I will assume for the moment that the folks reading this are able to afford tasty food and well enough to eat and enjoy it.
If you don't enjoy your food, something is seriously wrong. Food is delicious. I mean, it's food. If you approach your food with trepidation, or dread, or fear that it's going to make you fat or clog your arteries or kill you or just be really damn boring because you're only eating foods which won't do any of the above, then you are a victim of food paranoia.
Food paranoia is a serious problem which leads to all sorts of disordered eating. Disordered eating won't just kill some of the joy in your life, it can also kill you. So let me repeat it again:
Food is your friend.
Does this mean you should go out and eat ice cream every day for dinner? No. And frankly, I think you'd feel pretty crappy after a while if you actually did that. When you listen to your body, really get down and listen, most of the time your body wants healthy, nutritious food. Yes, sometimes you want icecream and sometimes you want cupcakes and sometimes you might even get a hankering for a cheeseburger. Fine! It's absolutely fine to eat sugary, fatty, and otherwise 'unhealthy' foods once in a while. You aren't going to die from eating the occasional bowl of ice cream, nor even gain a bunch of weight.
Some of us do need to learn moderation. Some of us really do want to eat chocolate or cupcakes or ice cream every day. My mother really will eat two pints of (fat-free) ice cream for dinner, and then complain that she keeps gaining weight. I really can't recommend this. This is not healthy eating. If you eat like my mother, you need help. If you're eating to deal with emotional problems in your life, this is a serious problem. But eaten in moderation, almost all foods are fine. And given a selection of tasty, healthy foods, your body knows what to eat.
Really. It does. Take a nursing baby. A newborn baby cannot really even think about what it's doing; it just knows to suck when it's hungry and stop when it's not. When a baby goes through a growth spurt, it drinks more. When it's done with its growth spurt, it drinks less. When it's hot, it takes short drinks more often, getting more of the watery foremilk. When it's hungrier, it drinks longer, getting more of the fatty hindmilk. Babies are born knowing how to eat to get all of the nutrients they need.
Toddlers, given a selection of nutritious foods, will have horrible diets from day to day, but over the course of a week, will eat enough of each kind of food to nourish their bodies. When we interfere with toddlers' (or babies') eating habits, we interfere with their natural ability to regulate their food intake and provide for their own nutrition, leading to disordered eating.
In one study I read about, people were polled about what food they'd take with them if it were the only food they could have for a year on a desert island. The choices were spinach, hot dogs, and chocolate. The most popular choice was spinach. The correct choice is hot dogs. Hot dogs will keep you alive the longest. You'll die pretty quickly on an all-spinach diet.
But we have been misled into believing in the diet orthodoxy, that food is your enemy and that fatty foods especially must be avoided. People think spinach is healthier than hot dogs, so they pick the spinach, depriving themselves of essential nutrients. I'm not saying you should eat an exclusively hot dog diet. But you also shouldn't try to live on spinach.
Eat food for what it has, not what it lacks. |
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Read 4 - Post |
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| My Dear Antisocial Child |
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| 10:14pm 21/11/2009 |
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We went to a birthday party today for one of Link's little friends. It was held in a room with various interesting things to explore, including a giant life-sized picture of an ostrich and a Christmas tree. There were about six or seven other small children at the party, from 18 months to 4 years. (And Tron.) The kids were all reasonably nice and played well together, except for Link, who had no interest in them and spent the entire party trying to explore and destroy the room. Given that Link has inherited a double dose of the shy and a goodly portion of fuck you, it's not too surprising that he totally ignores other kids his age and runs off to explore. What I find a bit odd is that none of the other kids made any significant attempts at exploring the room, not even the shiny Christmas tree covered with lights and baubles. |
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Read 6 - Post |
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| Definitions and Caveats |
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| 09:21pm 21/11/2009 |
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Timmypowg posed a good question back on my previous post about food: What's the difference between dieting and eating good food in moderate amounts?
The real difference is a matter of philosophy and outlook.
When you eat for health, food is your ally, supplying you with crucial and delicious calories and nutrients.
When you diet, food is your enemy. Hunger is your ally. Dieting is purposefully restricting caloric consumption to less than caloric expenditures in order to force the body to auto-cannibalize. There are a few diets (such as Atkins) which propose to induce starvation without restricting calories, but the basic idea is the same.
Obviously, anything which turns food into your enemy does not promote healthy attitudes toward eating.
Now for a few caveats before we go on. I am not a nutrition expert, and my cooking skills are decidedly sub-par. (Meat scares me because I honestly don't know how to cook it.) But I am attempting to educate myself, and after 9.5 books on the subject of food (I'm about midway through The Untold Story of Milk,) I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of things. I have a decent idea of which foods are good and which ones are bad. It's pretty simple, actually. Real food is generally good. Fake food is generally bad.
Anyway, here are the relevant books I've read or am reading:
The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong, by Barry Glassner. (I am a little surprised at this book's reviews on Amazon. It was my very first food book, inspired my love of food books, and helped me get over some of my major food hang-ups and start seeing food as a friend rather than a problem. But I guess in today's America, many people just aren't going to like a book which advocates that we enjoy our food.)
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals If you haven't read this one yet, go read it it now.
In Defense of Food: an eater's manifesto, also by Pollan. This is a short quick read, more like, "bits I couldn't quite fit into Omnivore's Dilemma, but they're worth reading anyway."
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin. Salatin is a cranky old man who wants the gov't to stop interfering with his farm and stop making so many damn laws and regulations. He also runs the amazing, humane, environmentally conscious sustainable local agriculture almost-totally organic farm Pollan visited back in Omnivore's Dilemma. This is definitely a worthwhile book if you care about any of these issues.
My Child Won't Eat!: How to Prevent and Solve the Problem, by
Carlos González. This and the next book are about nutrition for kids and babies, and they offered me a great deal of insight into the problems I was having with Link's eating, and the problems he was having with me having problems with his eating. Basically, to sum up the most important points for me, kids have natural instincts which will, given proper support and good food, lead them to eat what they need for their bodies, so back off and stop worrying. Attempting to force or manipulate a child into eating more than they want just because they're small (or conversely, attempting to restrict their food just because they're big) is not only disrespectful of the child, but also harmful.
How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much, by Ellyn Satter.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver. If you liked Pollan, you will probably like this one, too. It's not so much explicitly about nutrition and politics and whatnot, but it is an inspiring read about one family's decision to attempt to eat as locally and environmentally consciously as possible.
Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol, by Mary Enig. If you want to learn all about the chemistry of fats and which ones are good and bad for you and where to find them, this is the book for you. If you aren't into lipid biochemistry, you might not enjoy it very much.
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Dr. Weston Price. This book is awesome and I recommend it to anyone who eats or has teeth. Dr. Price was a dentist who traveled around the world back in the 30s, looking at people's teeth and trying to figure out why some people had perfect teeth with almost no cavities, while other people's teeth were rotting out. He concluded that the cavity-free peoples he studied ate traditional diets rich in nutrients, while the afflicted were eating the "devitalized foods of western commerce," chiefly white bread, sugar, canned veggies, and perhaps some skim milk. The only problem with this book is that it is about 100 pages too long.
Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Delicious Cheeses, by Ricki Carroll. Okay, this one won't tell you a lot about nutrition, but it is unarguably about food!
Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, by Sally Fallon. Yes, this is a cookbook, but it has lots of general information on food, too. Mary Enig wrote part of the introduction. I haven't finished it.
The Untold Story of Milk, Revised and Updated: The History, Politics and Science of Nature's Perfect Food: Raw Milk from Pasture-Fed Cows, by Ron Schmid. I just passed the halfway point in this one, and am still on the fence about it. I do not feel well-enough educated on the matter to fully evaluate the author's credibility. Obviously the author is in favor of raw milk from clean, grass-fed cows. He makes some good points. It is a subject I will have to research further, since we go through 4 gallons of milk a week around here, I'd really prefer to be drinking milk that's good for me, not bad. The forward is by Sally Fallon.
It should be noted that four of these books (Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, The Untold Story of Milk, Nourishing Tradition, and Know Your Fats,) are linked. This could mean they're all really good, or it could mean they're all really bad. |
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Read 4 - Post |
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| Bright Sided |
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| 07:42pm 21/11/2009 |
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Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickled and Dimed: on (not) getting by in America,) has a new book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. I haven't read it yet, but ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) audesapere has, and she reviewed and recommended it on her blog, so that's good enough for me to start offering some reactions and opinions on the matter. And it's a matter I care about rather deeply.
I don't consider myself all that negative a person. I consider myself a cheerful person who is nevertheless aware that not all is well in the world. "Good afternoon, everything's going to Hell in a handbasket!", as it were.
What's the difference between a pessimist and an optimist? The pessimist is right. That's not just a joke, it's actually true. I remember this study, they quizzed pessimists and optimists on facts about the world, world events, and so on, and found that the pessimists had more correct answers. Interestingly, though, they found that the optimists were more likely to read the paper--which they discovered by hiding 20$ bills in the papers and then seeing who found the money. The optimists would say that they continued to seek out information about the world, never giving up on it. The pessimists would say that even with more data, the optimists were STILL wrong. The optimists simply can't process negative data properly.
Apparently I don't like optimists. Maybe it's because sleep-dep makes me grumpy, but I am constantly annoyed at the levels of denial, wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance, and pure fantasy people are willing to engage in just to avoid negative thoughts. These people absolutely refuse to engage constructively with problems because they cannot first be bothered to stress themselves with heavy-duty negative thinking. And I hate the way these people expect me to be so damn chipper and 'supportive' all the damn time. Do I look like a support group? My next door neighbor has actually told Klarfax and myself that she won't be friends with us if we're negative around her. (but she is dealing with some serious issues, so I try to respect her request and not say anything too depressing.)
But anyway, people just don't want to strain themselves by thinking about anything negative, and resent and get mad at people who force them to do so, whether by merely bringing up some inconvenient truth or just simply being an inconvenient truth. Coupled with that, I think, is our national over-dependence on psychiatric drugs. Now, don't get me wrong--I don't think drugs are all bad. They can help people who truly have problems lead functional lives, and they can help people who temporarily have problems work through their problems and get past them. But they're not a fix, they're a crutch. Most people have real problems in their lives, and focusing all our attention on 'chemical imbalances' in the brain and trying to solve all the problems through drugs does not address the underlying roots of many people's problems. But in a society which refuses to admit that problems even exist, it becomes extremely difficult to actually deal with our problems. So we paper over them instead, taking drugs until we can't feel the pain anymore. Taking more drugs benefits the pharmaceutical companies, while real change to improve people's lives might cause them to question the status quo, ask difficult questions about real problems our country is facing, and demand actual changes from the ruling classes. And there's no money to be gained from that.
So we're kept comfortably numb and docile, forbidden from saying anything about the problems of the world and socially ostracized or medicated into compliance if we do, surrounded by people who are, for whatever reasons, so incredibly fragile that they must shield themselves from any and all negativity.
One of these days, the elephants we've been ignoring are going to turn around and trample us. And then the pessimists will say, "See? See? I TOLD you there was an elephant in the room!" And the optimists will say, "AUUUUUGH MY SPINE!" but what they really mean is, "If you hadn't kept mentioning it, it wouldn't have noticed me!" |
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Read 14 - Post |
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| 12:59pm 21/11/2009 |
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I worry that "the devitalized foods of Western commerce" are slowly killing us. |
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| STOP DIETING. It Doesn't Work. |
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| 07:51am 19/11/2009 |
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There will be many posts on the subject of food. This is the first.
Dear America: You have apparently been on a continuous diet since at least the mid-80s. Maybe the 50s. And in that time, you have only gotten fatter. Newsflash: It isn't working.
Diets don't work. Not even the special non-diet diets from Weight Watchers, which pretend that teaching you to obsess over calories without paying any attention to nutrition will make you lose weight effectively.
STOP DIETING. Stop counting calories. Stop eating diet foods. Stop eating low-cal, low-carb, no-fat, low-fat, artificial crap. Stop eating aspartame. The only people who get exceptions are diabetics and other such folks with actual medical reasons why they need to eat a specialized diet, and even they should avoid diet foods.
STOP PRETENDING WEIGHT LOSS = HEALTH. It doesn't. If you get the flu and lose 30 pounds due to vomiting and diarrhea, you are not now 30 pounds healthier. Repeatedly restricting your body's intake of calories and nutrients does not make you healthy. Actually, it will make you even fatter, which is why it won't even help you lose weight.
Here is the secret to being healthy: Exercise, get enough sleep, get some sunlight, and eat well. We'll go into more depth on what "eating well" actually means later, but for now content yourself with eating REAL FOOD in moderate amounts. (For the record, margarine is not real food.)Stop eating so damn much sugar. (What's that, you say? You don't really eat that much sugar? Bullocks. I got a book on sugar what says we Americans eat about 100 pounds of the stuff a year. Your body was not designed to process 100 lbs of refined sugar every year, so knock it off.)
And then, whatever you weigh, that's what is healthy and natural for you. |
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Read 20 - Post |
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| peppercorns |
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| 07:04pm 15/11/2009 |
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Link has decided he likes eating whole peppercorns directly out of the grinder (but still refuses to try ice cream.) |
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Read 10 - Post |
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| 09:21pm 14/11/2009 |
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Just to be clear, if you're on my Flist in the first place, this probably means I respect you. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| Atheist billboard moved after threats |
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| 12:58pm 14/11/2009 |
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A pro-atheism billboard in Cincinnati was being moved to a different location in response to alleged threats two days after it was put up, sponsors said.
The copy on the billboard reads: "Don't Believe In God? You are not alone." It was put up Tuesday but was taken down Thursday because the owner of the property where it was posted reported receiving threats because of the message, WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, reported Thursday.
Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason, which sponsored the billboard, said the organization was contacted by Lamar Advertising of Cincinnati on behalf of the landowner.
"We weren't given the landowner's identity or precise details," Edwords said. "Nor did we pursue them. It was sufficient to learn that multiple, significant threats had been received and that Lamar would act quickly to alleviate the problem."
"Everything that has happened shows just how vital our message is," Shawn Jeffers, co-coordinator for the Cincinnati Coalition of Reason, said. "It proves our point, that bigotry against people who don't believe in a god is still very real in America."
Source |
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Read 5 - Post |
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| Observation: |
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| 08:16am 12/11/2009 |
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I only get comments when I post something offensive/controversial (or at least factually wrong.) Cute baby shit? *crickets*
I like getting comments, so I've begun experimenting with upping the controversy content of my posts. I'm trying to walk the line between getting people interested and actually pissing people off. Subtlety ain't my strong suit, of course.
Viva la Fox News. |
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Read 4 - Post |
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| Religion taints men's souls |
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| 05:40pm 08/11/2009 |
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I often forget that Atheists are a minority in America. I tend to just assume that everyone is like me (yes, I know assumptions are a bad idea.) So it's not uncommon that I meet someone, they seem like a nice, reasonable person (maybe they even have kids around Link's age) and then I discover they're religious. Ew, god.
Some religious beliefs (such as the Jewish rules about hand washing, or Christian charity,) are good. Other religious beliefs, (such as transubstantiation or avoiding pork,) are silly but mostly harmless. And some religious beliefs (such as circumcision or opposition to birth control,) are actually harmful. If people only held the first category of beliefs, I would respect them. Unfortunately, most religious folks also hold absurd beliefs, and many hold harmful beliefs. They would be nice, reasonable, decent folks, if not for their irrational belief in god.
This is why I've met very few people whose religious beliefs I actually respect--and I find it difficult to be friends with them. In a society where 85+% of the people are at least nominally religious, this has a serious impact on my pool of potential friends. |
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Read 27 - Post |
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| Babar |
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| 04:56pm 07/11/2009 |
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I started this post long ago, but just finished it, so here you go:
Been doing lots of reading while nursing. Finished the Iliad (my book snobbery would be increased if this weren't the summer blockbuster action movie of 700 BC or whenever,) and am considering getting some Russian lit, as my snobbery is defective in this area. (Besides, did you know Tolstoy was an anarchist?)
Up until yesterday, I always referred to my book snobbish elitism at least somewhat jokingly. Yesterday I realized that works intended for/appreciated by wide audiences really do annoy me. Anarcho-Syndicalism, by Rudolf Rocker: good book. Uppity Women of Shakespearean Times: oh please tell me the sarcastic second wave feminist attitude is supposed to be a joke. And don't call the witch trials a "Holocaust" against women--that's both wrong and wrong. High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers don't Belong in the Classroom: annoyingly written, poorly supported with relevant research, and often crippled by poor arguments. Should we Burn Babar? by Herbert Kohl, by contrast, is a great book.
In the titular essay, Kohl looks at one of his childhood literary favorites, Babar, and examines the themes of racism, colonialism, and sexism in the book, and asks, in essence, what we as a society should do about books like this--books we liked as kids, say, but which we now realize contain unsavory messages for kids. Kohl doesn't actually think we should burn Babar, but he does think we should make wise choices when it comes to choosing books for our kids.
That's a fine point, which I intend to leave aside for now to focus on his analysis of Babar itself.
Once upon a time, Babar was a regular elephant in the forest, until a hunter came and killed his mommy. Then a very rich human lady took Babar to the city, gave him clothes, taught him to read, etc. Babar's cousins came to visit him, and he bought them clothes, taught them to read, etc. The cousins' mothers came to the city to fetch them back to the forest. The 'civilized' elephants drove home in a car and their non-clothes wearing mothers walked behind them. Upon their return, Babar announces that he and his cousin are getting married, and the elephants make him their king because he wears clothes and can read. Babar then gives his hat to another elephant, making him his general, and leaves on his honeymoon.
Kohl gives an excellent (and interesting) deconstruction of the themes of racism (Babar as the untutored 'savage', made fit to rule simply because of his contact with western ways,) classism (being rich and acting like the rich is definitely superior,) and sexism (Babar's cousin is never seen even being asked about the marriage,) and the obvious problem that Babar's mother is killed at the beginning of the story, and yet Babar adopts the culture of his mother's murderer without batting an eyelash or even attempting to track the fellow down and stomp on him.
("I am Babar the Elephant. You killed my mother. Prepare to die.")
Much of the analysis is focused on the final question of Babar's grief, and why it isn't dealt with in the story. Personally, I think the answer to this is obvious: it's because the story isn't actually about Babar.
Oh, sure, he's the main character and all. But the story is actually about how to be a good colonialist and deal properly with all them uncivilized brown folks.
The hunter is a bad colonist. He kills Babar's mommy, and we can't have that. He represents the colonial tradition of mass-murdering the natives. The very rich lady is a good colonist. She uses the great wealth at her disposal to transform Babar from a wild, naked elephant to a civilized, educated, clothes-wearing elephant, who promptly spreads the glories of civilization to his friends and is recognized by the other elephants as their rightful leader due to his adoption of western civilization.
Well, when I put it like that, it all sounds rather presumptuous and a bit assholish.
But isn't this what good liberals are constantly trying to do? Folks join programs like Teach for America or the Peace Corps in order to bring the wonders of education to the poor and illiterate. Is this nothing but cultural imperialism, trying to impose our values on others?
It seems to me that the true presumption lies in assuming that we have something to teach them, and not the other way around. We all have valuable lessons to teach (and learn from) each other. But I also think we need to be sensitive to the fact that even in the education department, the recipients of our charity might not always want it.
I've gotten rather far off the original topic of Kohl's work, which is truly excellent, but it inspired quite a bit of thought. |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| clarification |
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| 03:54pm 07/11/2009 |
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Sex and gender are BOTH socially constructed.
Sex is based on biological traits.
Gender is based on personality traits.
Sex is usually more straightforward, but not always. And gender is not always a matter of simply matching or not matching one's assigned sex. |
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| The Problem with Cisgender |
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| 08:43pm 06/11/2009 |
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1. What is "cisgender"? This is the first problem with the term: very few people know what it means. It's basically a chemistry joke for the trans community. In a cis-bond, both atoms are on the same side of the bond, whereas in a trans bond, one atom is on the opposite side. (See picture.) So where a trans person has their sex and gender on opposite sides, a cisgendered person's sex and gender are on the same side.
 
Tran bond...........................Cis bond
2. What's the point? The point of the term 'cisgendered' is to avoid terms like 'normally gendered', which place trans folk at something of a nomenclatural disadvantage--it's kind of like "peach" being labeled "skin tone" in the crayon box. It makes people who aren't peach colored feel abnormal. Additionally, the term is used to point out cisgender privilege. (Unfortunately, it does this poorly, for the reasons outlined in this post.)
The problem, though, is that cisgendered people are not (on the whole) going to accept that they are 'cisgendered'. They're going to continue with the thought that they are 'normally gendered', for the simple reason that about 99% of people seem to share their gender experiences.
Ultimately, I think the term "cisgendered" should have remained an inside-joke for the trans community and its supporters. It is not a term I would try to use with the rest of the world, because the rest of the world doesn't know it in the first place and won't accept it in the second. And beating your head against a brick wall isn't fun. But there is a third problem with the term:
3. It's wrong. Sorry, but it is.
Here is how most people around here think about the traditional gender dichotomy:
Male--------Female
However, transfolk rightly point out that this is a massive oversimplification. For example, one may be biologically (sex) male, but mentally (gender) female. Or vice versa. So now we're up to four genders:
cis male, cis female, trans male, and trans female
where the gender and sex line up for the cis folks, and the gender and sex don't line up for the trans folks. Now, the trans folks do generally admit that there is more variety in the trans world than this--gender neutral and bi-gendered folks are also around--but we'll lump them into 'trans' for now, because our point is not to examine the trans side of things, but the cis side.
You see, it isn't so simple as having one biologically determined sex and one socially constructed gender.
What makes a person biologically male or female? Is it their XX or XY chromosomes? XXX, XXY, and XYY folks automatically don't fit here. Not to mention that I don't have chromosomal information about most people I meet--most of the time, "has a penis" or "has boobies" is the actual distinction.
But we can go further than that. Some XX people produce more male hormones--a characteristic of male sex--than most other XX people. Some XY folks produce abnormally large amounts of female hormones.
Heck, many animal species don't have this XX and XY business at all. Temperature determines whether an alligator egg will develop into a male or female alligator, for example. What really determines "maleness" and "femaleness" in most species is that males contribute sperm and females contribute eggs in reproduction.
For this reason, in some societies, post-menopausal women are seen as a separate group, more akin to males than females, because they can no longer carry out the essential female trait of reproduction. Likewise, since males are attracted to females and females to males for reproductive purposes, homosexuals represent different forms of biological male and femaleness.
So we have now a whole host of traits which can be considered when determining a person's biological sex--ostensibly the simple and straightforward part of the equation--genetics, hormones, physical appearance, reproductive capabilities, mate selection, etc.
Now, gender is a social construct, which is to say that it's a culturally-determined set of traits and behaviors associated with a particular sex. What it means to be female varies a lot, for example, depending on whether you're attending a meeting of the society for women engineers at MIT or a sorority meeting at University of Alabama.
Gender is relatively simple when a person's traits are similar to those of others around them whom they perceive as being of the same sex; matters become more complex when a person has a mix of traits characteristic of both genders, or when they lack certain traits considered essential by others (eg, in a community where all of the women lurve babies, someone who didn't like babies wouldn't fit in.)
Ultimately, the simplistic vision of a dichotomy where some people's gender and sex align and some people's sex and gender are opposed neglects the true complexity of life, in which both sex and gender contain a multiplicity of factors and a great many people are neither cis nor trans. |
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Read 14 - Post |
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