A Brief Defence of My Current Hero, Denis Walsh July 13, 2009

J-Bro sent us a link to an article in yesterday’s Daily Mail entitled “top midwife says labour agony is a ‘rite of passage’ and pain relieving epidurals weaken the mother’s bond with babies”. In it, we learn that

Dr Denis Walsh, an influential midwife, said the agony of labour should be considered a ‘rite of passage’ and a ‘purposeful, useful thing’.
He criticised the ‘epidural epidemic’ sweeping the NHS, saying maternity units should abandon routine pain relief and instead embrace a ‘working with pain’ approach.

And later

Dr Walsh said labour pain was a timeless component of motherhood. ‘Over recent decades there has been a loss of rites-of-passage meaning to childbirth, so that pain and stress are viewed negatively,’ he said.
But Sally Russell, of the Netmums website, said he was talking ‘absolute rubbish’.
‘What he is promoting suggests to me that women who can’t go through normal birth for whatever reason find they are stigmatised and made to feel they have let themselves down, and that’s very damaging.’

SO, big dumb MALE midwife versus women just trying to do the best they can to cope with horrible pain, right? No. Not at all. Denis Walsh has made it his mission to write about and try to put into practice good, well-designed midwifery and obstetric research, with a particular emphasis on respect for the woman as a dignified person in a highly vulnerable and difficult circumstance. I know this because–in preparation for a second delivery, of which I was formerly shitless on account of a *terrible* first–I happen to have recently read Walsh’s midwifery text Evidence-Based Care for Normal Labour and Birth. Here is a brief run-down of what I took from his text wrt epidurals:

* epidurals interfere with, slow, and generally throw off the body’s efforts at expelling the fetus, thus greatly increasing the instance of assisted delivery. (For those not in the know, “assisted delivery” means they slice into your genitals with a sharp knife and then shove heavy metal tongs up your vangina to yank the baby out. It is not fun, and even if it’s “simple” (as you’ll hear in the interview linked below), it is certainly not nice–nor are the lasting pain and disfigurement caused by it. And charmingly, in many instances of use (take my experience, for example) it doesn’t even seem to be medically indicated.)
* Midwives (a) have in some delivery ward contexts become so accustomed to routine intervention and pain releif that they’ve simply lost the ability to accurately judge ‘how it’s going’: they see a woman screaming in labour pain and think something’s gone wrong, when in fact she’s simply in labour. Because of this, midwives are quite often quick to try to “fix” the situation by offering epidural; (b) are sometimes simply not willing to take part in helping women to manage pain; in a nutshell, they simply don’t like putting up with screaming patients; and so they like for their patients to receive epidural as quickly as possible.
* Childbirth is a frightening experience, especially for women who aren’t well-educated about it, and as such, midwives tend to influence very heavily what decisions women make for themselves in childbirth.

Walsh’s recomendations are aimed at midwives. And what they amount to is “hey midwives, instead of setting these women up for almost certain genital mutilation because you can’t be bothered (or you don’t know how) to support them through their pain, let’s all reeducate ourselves on being an effective support for labouring women; let’s try to save a few women from the knife–truly give them all the options by making labouring without epidural back into a real choice”. Walsh is deeply concerned that women’s bodies–and indeed women–should be respected in the process of delivery; that the midwifery and obstetric communities not behave as if anything and everything to yank the fetus out quickly is fair game; and that delivery be conducted in positive, effective ways identified by good research. Another example of this concern is Walsh’s writing about “coached” second-stage labour (where midwife shouts at you to PUSH! PUSH! -which btw, seems to be totally ineffective and even dangerous in some cirsumstances):

One wonders how women delivered babies over the centuries without the stern, exhorting voice of the midwife, coaching them every step of the way. In twenty years of practice I have yet to hear a woman say ‘Thank you so much for shouting at me at the end there. In fact, I am so grateful to all of your for aggressively telling me how to do that pushing bit. your volume 10 instruction made all the difference…’ … There is little doubt in my mind that this style of care could be construed as bullying…It is quite simply no way to talk to another human being regardless of setting or context. (From EBCfNLB, pp.94-94)

Denis Walsh is not the slimy pig-man who’s out to demonize women who choose pain relief, as the Daily Mail (or the BBC, for that matter) would have us believe. He’s a midwife who wants midwives to act as advocates for women: to put the needs of the labouring woman on the map, rather than letting the midwive’s own needs as professionals or the the baby’s (purported) needs push all mention of the woman’s well-being out the window. I, for one, am very thankful I’ve read his work in preparation for the birth of my second child.

(The bit about ‘preparing for the responsibility of motherhood’ by experiencing pain, btw is also Mail spin. There’s evidence that the hormone rush one experiences from the intense pain of labour is actually the cause of the “love at first sight” that some women experience at the birth of their babies. Walsh thinks a further reason to value normal delivery is that this hormone-induced intense love probably helps the women who experience it to cope with those grueling first few weeks with newborn. He does not claim that being in pain makes one more responsible, nor does he claim that pain relief in childbirth makes you a less-good mother!)

You can listen to a six minute interview with Walsh and a (female; just to stir the pot) obstetrician set up as his adversary on bbc online. Or if you’re interested, I highly recommend Evidence-based Care for Normal Labour and Birth.

Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings July 13, 2009

Live coverage and live blogging can be found at a number of sites.  The inestimable SCOTUS blog is a great place to start and to find other resources.

Regina Benjamin for Surgeon General July 13, 2009

Obama’s Surgeon General nominee sounds fantastic so far:

A decade ago, the New York Times called her “angel in a white coat,” a country doctor who made house calls along the impoverished Gulf Coast, paid whatever her patients could scrounge.

From those early days she has emerged as a national leader in the call to improve health disparities, pushed by the need in her own fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Ala., and its diverse patient mix _ where immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos make up a growing part of the population.

Her nonprofit clinic was rebuilt by volunteers after being destroyed by Katrina, only to burn down months later. Benjamin later told of her patients’ desperation that she rebuild again, recalling one woman who handed her an envelope with a $7 donation to help.

“If she can find $7, I can figure out the rest,” Benjamin said last fall as she received a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” money she dedicated to finishing that job.

Benjamin became the first black woman and the youngest doctor elected to the American Medical Association’s board. She also received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights in 1998, and Pope Benedict XVI awarded her the distinguished service medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.

But you can bet forces will mobilise against someone who really cares about poverty and inequalities in health care, so get ready for the fight…

AAP on Women in Philosophy July 13, 2009

I’m later to this than I should be (in fact, I keep worrying I may have already blogged on it!), but far better late than never. The Australasian Association of Philosophy has put together an enormously impressive, very thorough report on the state of women in Australasian philosophy. But there’s more going on than just the report. There’s the fact that the committee behind it included not just women philosophers, but men, including very senior men. There’s the fact that *every* Australasian Head of Department has formally committed to supporting it. And there’s the fact that there was funding from the AAP and a University of Wollongong grant to support it. This sort of widespread institutional support is a rarity in efforts of behalf of women in philosophy, but it really shouldn’t be.

Anyway, it’s well worth a look. You might start with the executive summary. It’s apparently going to be discussed at a department meeting of every Australasian philosophy department (recommendation 8, on page 14). Just this level of engagement with the issues is an amazing thing, and hopefully it (and the other recommendations) will have a significant effect. (Thanks, Rae!)

The eternal moonwalk: A tribute to MJ July 12, 2009

Have a look.  It’s at least a voyeuristic experience.

Ginsburg on SCOTUS: does gender matter? July 12, 2009

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is interviewed in the NYTimes.  It’s a rich article, one illustrating how  the relevant experiences and perceptions of many women and girls may be nearly inacessible to a group of men:

Q: What about the case this term involving the strip search, in school, of 13-year-old Savana Redding? Justice Souter’s majority opinion, finding that the strip search was unconstitutional, is very different from what I expected after oral argument, when some of the men on the court didn’t seem to see the seriousness here. Is that an example of a case when having a woman as part of the conversation was important?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think it makes people stop and think, Maybe a 13-year-old girl is different from a 13-year-old boy in terms of how humiliating it is to be seen undressed. I think many of [the male justices] first thought of their own reaction. It came out in various questions. You change your clothes in the gym, what’s the big deal?

Do judges bring their own experience to decisions?

Q: You have written, “To turn in a new direction, the court first had to gain an understanding that legislation apparently designed to benefit or protect women could have the opposite effect.” The pedestal versus the cage. Has the court made that turn completely, or is there still more work to be done?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Not completely, as you can see in the case involving whether a child acquires citizenship from an unwed father. [Nguyen v. INS, in which the court in 2001 upheld, by 5 to 4, a law that set different requirements for a child to become a citizen, depending on whether his citizenship rights came from his unmarried mother or his unmarried father.] The majority thought there was something about the link between a mother and a child that doesn’t exist between the father and a child. But in fact the child in the case had been brought up by his father.

They were held back by a way of looking at the world in which a man who wasn’t married simply was not responsible. There must have been so many repetitions of Madame Butterfly in World War II. And for Justice Stevens [who voted with the majority], that was part of his experience. I think that’s going to be over in the next generation, these kinds of rulings.

There’s lots more  in the very interesting article, but these  two passages do make it how very clear how much individual understanding can be a factor in the court’s decisions.  A last comment from Ginsburg:

Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

 

Women asking for it. Not. Oops. July 12, 2009

The Daily Telegraph published a story with the headline “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists”. The story went on to claim that women who are outgoing or drunk are also more likely to be raped. The wonderful Ben Goldacre of Bad Science followed up on the story. Turns out the “study” didn’t say anything like this, it was actually very preliminary work by a Masters student, and it was called “Promiscuous men more likely to rape”, in the author’s own press release.

Many thanks to Flaffer and possibly others (I think there were some, but I can’t find the emails)!

The Sunday cat visits some old friends July 12, 2009

 

and discovers human watching Moire, the  ninja cat, in box:

 

While Maru discovers human in box:

“Go easy on equality” July 11, 2009

The UK’s Communities Minister has said that equality isn’t necessarily the best goal. OK, I’m thinking, maybe he’s going to discuss the Difference Principle (Rawls’ principle dictating that inequalities are allowable only if they’re to the benefit of the least well off)- that would be an interesting thing for a political to do! But no…

Basing fairness purely on “society’s response to those in greatest need” risked being unpopular, he said.

Hmm, that actually sounds pretty close to the Difference Principle so that’s definitely not what he’s going for. What, then, is this Labour politician arguing?

He told the Fabian Society: “We must confront the difficult truth: that this form of egalitarianism, the one that defines fairness solely in terms of society’s response to those in greatest need, is badly out of step with popular sentiment.
“A rejection of inequality – both absolute, relative and of opportunity – is absolutely core to who we are. But we will be more successful – not just electorally but in challenging unacceptable inequality – if we adopt and own a different, more nuanced view of fairness and equality.”
Mr Denham said Labour had to relate to the aspirations of people on middle incomes, adding that this group felt excluded by policies and language aimed at ‘the poor’.
He said this group were in fact more concerned about those in higher social classes.

Rejecting inequality is core to who we are, but we need to adopt a *different* view of equality. One not so concerned with, well, equality. What should it do instead? It’s very unclear– but looks like the idea is to focus on the aspirational middle class. So there you go. (Thanks, Mr Jender!)

Want to give the appearance of diversity? Photoshop! July 10, 2009

Only please not as badly as the pictures to be found here.  At least make it  look as though they are in the same place:

Sometimes, of course, customers are not fans of diversity; in that case, a good rule is to remember to change the whole body, which, as you will see if you go to the site, is not always done.

Thanks, jj-son.

Women of the Central Division APA July 10, 2009

Check out these election results:

*Claudia Card has been elected Vice-President for 2009-2010
and President Elect for 2010-2011.
* Julia Driver has been elected Divisional Representative for 2009-2012.
* Lynn Joy has been elected Member at Large of the Executive Committee
for
2009-2012.
* Lisa Downing, Gabriel Richardson Lear, Valerie Tiberius, and Linda
Zagzebski have been elected to the 2009-2010 Nominating Committee.

Thanks, Sally! (And is it just me, or does the title of this post very unfortunately sound like the name of a calendar?)

Massachusetts sues the US July 9, 2009

and rightly so!

The Massachusetts attorney general, Martha Coakley, sued the federal government Wednesday to overturn a section of the law denying federal benefits to spouses in same-sex marriages.With the suit, Massachusetts becomes the first state to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act, which was passed by Congress in 1996 and prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage….

“We cannot and should not be required to violate the equal-protection rights of our citizens in Massachusetts who choose to be married,” Ms. Coakley said, adding that the act forced the state “to disregard the marriages of same-sex couples when implementing federally funded programs.”

Yes!

An archaeologist of black dance July 8, 2009

Germaine Greer’s piece on Michael Jackson, some of which is excerpted here, contains the following possibly hyperbolic observation:

Nowhere will his contribution be more obvious and his influence more strongly felt than in the world of dance. No choreographer of the last 30 years has been unaware of Jackson’s achievement. He rewrote the vocabulary of dance for everyone, from kids competing in talent shows to the royal ballets of Europe.

Creativity is surely seldom ex nihilo; rather, it consists at least in part in borrowing and reworking previous elements.  It is stunning, then, to see some of the precedents of Michael Jackson’s dance.  Here’s a sample:

Note the toe dancing in  Billie Jean  here (2:24) and its precusors in the 1932:

On looking at this it’s hard not to think in terms of the losses to US culture racism caused.  Still, it is exciting, I think, to think of Michael Jackson as an archaeologist of black dance.

Many thanks to Dee Es, whose comment led to sites interested in this sort of excavation.

Babes of the BNP July 8, 2009

I’m not entirely sure who this is meant to appeal to–men? young girls considering a political stance? Who knows. What I do know is that it’s fabulously creepy. (thanks, rw.)

Telling a life: Plus a concluding unscientific feminist postscript. July 7, 2009

Michael Jackson’s life and death has been described in many very different styles.  One style, which I associate with certain UK common rooms, treats the life as an aesthetic phenomenon, excised from its real world consequences. Another, which has for me very different associations, does quite the opposite. Here are excerpts from two examples; see if matching them with their authors is as easy as I think it will be.  Would you qualify or add to my characterizations?

Example One:

Musical savant though he was, Jackson was, almost from the beginning, a tragic figure–so obviously trapped in that mirror, forever reflecting what others wanted him to be.

In the wake of his death, many have hailed his “crossover appeal.” There is no doubt that his musical acumen led to the integration of MTV; but that “appeal” had a more sinister undertone. If Elvis was “the White Negro,” so Michael fashioned himself into “the Negro Caucasian.” He literally erased himself before our eyes, his nose slowly disappearing, his skin fading to ghostly pallor, his voice growing higher and whispier, his body evaporating to a dry husk of barely a hundred pounds at the time of his death. It was hard not to be fascinated by him as he molted through all possible confusions of gender, race and sexuality. But his transgressivity was more than just theater; he mimed a narrative of constant paradox and infinite suffering.

By now the stories of that suffering are well documented: Jackson’s body was scarred from the abuse that his father, Joe, a former boxer, administered to him when he was a small child. …

No wonder Jackson grew up to resemble a walking, talking fright mask, playing with the putty of bodies, of childhood, of kindness, of trauma, of forgiveness. What remains inexplicable, however, is the absence of social, ethical or legal limit to the excesses of Jackson family life. … Medicine is a practice, not a commodity fun house filled with new noses and chins and feel-good opiates to be issued like goodies from a Pez dispenser.

Fortunately, the question of medical complicity in Jackson’s death is beginning to percolate in the media. Perhaps, too, his children’s custody will be more closely scrutinized. It is extremely troubling to learn that Jackson’s mother, Katherine–and therefore her depraved husband, Joe–has temporary custody of them. …
Jackson’s fame and fortune ensured that he had few barriers to the pursuit of whatever whimsical fancy seized him. He became a more brilliant and frightening version of the Mad Hatter than even Tim Burton could conjure. And with that power, Jackson arranged for the bringing-to-life of three innocent souls whose racial embodiment pantomimed all he could never be.

Example Two:

Another beautiful boy is gone, wiped out in an instant. Michael Jackson, unable to cross the threshhold into manhood, has died at 50, still a boy, coquettish, fantasy-ridden, horribly vulnerable, unable to take control of his life.

His sudden death is a strange kind of victory. He had managed to prevent his ageing and even his growing up. There was no beard upon his chin; his voice was a childish treble. Instead of entering middle age and letting himself be chained to earth, he has floated away like a wisp, annihilated on the brink of a 50-date concert tour that I for one was dreading. …

As his imagination faltered and grew dim, the fending off of maturity became desperate, demented and pointless. The struggle against ageing turned into self-harming and self-mutilation.

Ever since Dionysos danced ahead of his horde of bloody-footed maenads across the rocky highlands of prehistoric Greece, dance and song have been the province of boys. Like Orpheus, Jackson was destroyed by his fans, whose adulation and adoration prevented his living in any kind of normal society. The creativity ebbed away day by day. He became a parody of himself. It is time now to forget all that and salute the miraculous boy who will triumph over death as Dionysos did, becoming immortal through his art.

Author A:  Germain Greer, writing in an English newspaper.

Author B:  Patricia Williams,  writing in a US political journal.

The  postscript:  Posts like this may raise the following question:  Does this really belong on a feminist blog?  What’s feminist about descriptions of MJ’s life?  If we think of feminism as concerned with kyriarchy, then the answer comes quite easily.  The finally fatal tensions in MJ’s life cannot be expressed by the linear model of patriarchy.  Indeed, particularly on one analysis offered here, his resources from positions of power make fatal his responses to his positions of subordination.

The un-quote of the day July 6, 2009

From Roissy in DC:

If feminists are truly interested in not being treated like morally undeveloped children under the law, they will agree to my definition of rape. But since feminism is about power dynamics and not at all about fairness or justice, they will never agree with me. That is why feminists are discredited.

We have often wondered about the hostility to feminism, and this quote gives us several layers to look at. What do you think?

I found the quote through tracking back incoming links. If any of us goes over to comment on that blog, it would be great to carry along our major policy: BE NICE!

On being a great success in America July 6, 2009

The conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, remarks in today’s NY Times that:

Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

It must be said that people writing on this blog do tend to have sought quite a bit of education.  But we can easily see that there are plenty of people who haven’t and who nonetheless have been great successes on their own terms, or on the terms that we would ourselves be happy with.  Virginia Woolf was brilliant and produced great work, but she  did not go to college.  Steve Jobs has brought a large creativity to Apple and he didn’t finish at Reed.  Many people do what they care about at a high level, from teaching little kids to being a sustaining presence in their community and onto making, building and nurturing.  There are all sorts of heros.

None of that means, however, that any one of these other people could do what Virginia Woolf did or accomplish what Steve Jobs has done.  So why is there this persistent idea that nonetheless they could be a wonderful president?

If Malcolm Gladwell is right, then the hugely successful – the outliers – tend to put in a staggering amount of effort into their success.  However much they might  hide it, they are swots, to use the English term.  There are elements in both England and the US that are really very anti-the-swots.  Is part of Palin’s appeal just the reluctance to let the swots have the prize?

And, finally, why did she do that?!?  Just quit her job?  I expect to see her show up on Fox TV with a hugely lucrative contract and a lot of power, but this seems to be a minorty opinion.

Web tips: Quicks paths to perfection July 6, 2009

Getting a  tip about how to do something can be a bit difficult.  There are enough people principally interested in pointing out that you’re messing up because you are too dim to have figured out  some simple thing.  So your associations with getting tips might not be too good. 

Still, there are lots of really good tips.  Here’s one: if  you are holding a meeting, try to draw up and stick to an agenda.  That’s pretty easy to do, quite easy to remember, and it can make a huge difference.

  In any case, I love reading tips.  I think I must have a highly resilient American optimism that there are littel things one can do that will make a big difference.  At the same time, there are grounds for worrying about the role of tips; maybe they merely give one the illusion of planning to change.  That’s because  a  lot of tips ask you to change some part of some routine in a fairly permanent way.  That’s really hard.  “4 Tips to get your life back on course” might be interesting, but it might not be really helpful.  The flylady, on the other hand, seems to have a good idea  of what it take to really change some part of one’s life though using her tips.  See our interesting discussion of her here.

So here are some sites full of tips.  You may know others.  You are hereby invited to share, critique or change the topic!

1.  The happiness project.  This is full of tips and, yes, some awareness of what philosophers have said about the good life!  Still, the introductory description could make one worry:

I’m working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT–a memoir about the year I spent test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study I could find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah.

Try test-driving for a short period of time Aristotle’s views about happiness and virtue!

2.  Dumb little man - tips for life.   The title for this site might just be making explicit the attitude people “just giving a little tip” seem often to have.  The authors for this blog also seem to have their own tipster blogs.

Web stats and Feminist Philosophy July 5, 2009

Sometimes a page on Feminist Philosphers has raised some questions, leading me to google a topic.  That can lead to the slightly unnerving experience of finding that our page is one of the initial pages Google lists.  How Google decides what to list is determined by complex and heavily guarded algorithms.  Last week this all led to my trying to figure out what Google’s “PR” (page rank) is.  And then WordPress told us that we were getting people from the site Invesp Consulting, which had stats for ‘the top 25 philosophy blogs.’ 

"map of the internet"

As far as I can tell, web statistics are compiled with a view to determining the ‘strength and power’ of a site.  Here ‘strength and power’  refers to its commercial standing; does it sell its product or is it a good site for an ad?  Some of the ways of determining blog ranks are quite opaque.  For example, Google’s PR (page rank), just one factor in its decision about what  goes where in a response to a search,  is determined by an algorithm that is kept secret.

One consequence of this is that you’d expect the top philosophy blogs in such a ranking to be a very mixed bag.  But what you might not expect is to find a feminist philosophy blog figuring typically within the top six philosophy blogs, and often enough higher.  So I’m surprised that this very blog – FP itself – does. 

Jender and I discussed this a bit; I think it’s possible that some readers might find the facts useful.  For example, if your department colleagues think feminist philosophy can’t have much general appeal, you might point out the stats suggest otherwise.  And it’s interesting  that a feminist philosophy blog  is doing well in the stats, given how hard feminists find getting a voice in the profession is.

Do check this out at the link above, if you are interested.  There’s a pretty serious error on that  site; the click on The Splintered Mind takes you to some other blog.  For all I know, there are other errors, and if  you can see some in their figures, do let us know.

Men! Suffer no longer! July 5, 2009

Jealous of all the body enhancements women get to buy? Looking for a way to spend all the extra cash you’ve got in the recession? Look no further. Ript is here to help you.

Thanks, Mr Jender! (Who sent me the link. He’s not the guy in the photo.)