Monthly Archives: February 2017

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The Serpent’s Egg

We all see the world through our own experiences, paint it with our own colours, fly our own flags. They seem real to us –unique and even necessary to our identities. As if it’s enough to be simply what we wear; as if we are only what we’ve been taught to show. But sometimes we need distance to understand that there are other equally compelling ways of defining ourselves. Other less travelled roads.

I say this, of course, as an unwitting member of a large club in which I was enrolled without being required to read the rules. But I guess most of us say that, don’t we? Male privilege –it’s something that’s hard to see if it’s all you’ve known. Easy to deny –and certainly easier to excuse- if you’re the privileged one. Especially if you can’t even understand the claim; to a sock, everything is a foot. It’s why we have them…

I worry that it is a learned attitude, however –like assuming all girls want to play with dolls, and all boys want to play with cars. A self-fulfilling prophecy if it’s taught early enough –valid only because we know it’s how it should be. Harmless, perhaps, if it does not disadvantage either side, but untenable unless dispassionately assessed. Unfortunately, we all tend to bring our own agendas to the analysis. Our own talking-points. Our own pasts…

A state in Australia is making a brave attempt to bring some historical context to the issue, and create some early awareness of the challenges of gender perspective and gender stereotypes: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-37640353 ‘Students will explore issues around social inequality, gender-based violence and male privilege.’ This is not to suggest that Australia is any different in its treatment of women, but it is a welcome departure from many countries that don’t even acknowledge the problem. ‘Primary school students will be exposed to images of both boys and girls doing household chores, playing sport and working as firefighters and receptionists. The material includes statements including “girls can play football, can be doctors and can be strong” and “boys can cry when they are hurt, can be gentle, can be nurses and can mind babies”.’ And it doesn’t stop with primary school education. ‘A guide for the Year 7 and 8 curriculum states: “Being born a male, you have advantages – such as being overly represented in the public sphere – and this will be true whether you personally approve or think you are entitled to this privilege.” It describes privilege as “automatic, unearned benefits bestowed upon dominant groups” based on “gender, sexuality, race or socio-economic class”.’ Good on them!

But I think we have to be careful to walk the middle path. Accusations are seldom neutral; they often engender anger and even retaliation from those accused. So, perhaps predictably, in Australia ‘a report on a 2015 pilot trial accused it of presenting all men as “bad” and all women as “victims”.’ It’s one thing to illuminate the entire stage for a play, but still another to spotlight only one particular area. Decontextualize it…

*

Jeannette seemed like a fairly typical young woman as she sat relaxed in her seat and talking to several other women in the waiting room. Her long auburn hair danced lightly on her shoulders when she laughed, and her eyes sparkled as she leaned over to accept a toy from a little boy who had toddled over to her on a whim. Dressed in a loose grey sweatshirt and faded jeans, she wore a fresh, newly-pregnant smile that every woman in the room could see. And even the older ones followed her with their eyes –memories of bygone years. Her joy, theirs to enjoy -if only vicariously, and for too brief a time.

But her smile faded as soon as she sat across the desk from me in my office. Her eyes were predators shackled for the moment, the cage doors open nonetheless.

“I understand congratulations are in order, Jeanette,” I said, looking at my computer screen, and missing the change in her face. “Your family doctor says this is your first pregnancy…”

“The father doesn’t want me to keep the pregnancy,” she said tersely, her lips thin and tight, and as I looked up, she sent her eyes to savage my smile, and her forehead seemed to pucker as they left.

I had never met Jeannette before, although I had apparently seen her mother as a patient several years ago. That was all the GP said  -maybe it was why he had sent her to me for her pregnancy. I took a deep breath and leaned forward in my chair. These are always difficult conversations. “And how do you feel about that, Jeannette…?”

I could see her face relax a bit, as if my response had caught her by surprise. “I… I don’t think it’s fair!” She searched in her pockets for something, and then grabbed a tissue from my desk and dabbed her cheek. “I mean he’s blaming me for getting pregnant…” She took a deep, stertorous breath and sat back on her chair. “He refused to wear a condom –he said it would show I didn’t trust him…” I could see her squeezing her hands. “I didn’t, actually… I mean we’d never slept together before, but we were good friends… and…” Her eyes had softened with tears so she dropped them onto her lap and grabbed a handful of tissues. “Well, we were both drinking –he kept filling up my wine glass and…”

I remained silent and waited for her to continue.

“And he doesn’t even believe it’s his anyway… I was too easy he said!” Her face hardened again and her eyes dared me to agree. “I got really angry. ‘You were pretty easy, yourself’, I told him. And that’s when he punched me in the stomach and left…”

I have to admit that my mouth fell open. “Did you report him, Jeannette?”

She looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face. “He’d just deny hitting me, doctor!” she said through gritted teeth as if it were obvious. “And he’s already telling my friends it was consensual sex…”

I took a deep breath and tried to keep my expression neutral. “Did you tell your GP all this?”

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t understand. I just said I was pregnant…”

I sat quietly for a moment, wondering how to proceed, when she suddenly smiled warmly at me. “Can I ask you something, doctor?”

I nodded with a smile –sometimes it’s all you can do.

“If I were your daughter, what would you say to me?”

I thought about it for a bit, then looked at her and sighed. “When you do dance, I wish you
a wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do nothing but that.”

Her face brightened even more and her eyes sparkled in the sunlight from the window behind me. “That’s from Shakespeare’s ‘Winter’s Tale’ isn’t it?”

I nodded, surprised both that I quoted that line of all things, but also that she knew what I meant.

“Better start filling in that antenatal form on your screen, don’t you think?” she said, barely able to contain her face.

And we both laughed. Sometimes poetry has the privilege, I realized –not gender…

 

 

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The Mote in Thy Sister’s Eye

We all live in different worlds, don’t we? I suppose that’s what makes travel so interesting: to see how widely dissimilar regions and disparate societies recognize and deal with comparable problems. How, for example, they might attempt to solve the ever-growing dilemma of urban pollution. The Chinese, remember, shut down many polluting factories for part of the Olympics they hosted. It was a short term fix, to be sure, but the effects were visibly evident.

Activists, or even cities in other countries have attempted different, longer term solutions with varying success. A common one seems to be restricting the amount of vehicles on the roads, whether by licence number, type of vehicle, or on certain days of the week. The success depends on whether or not it strikes a chord in the society but, probably more importantly, whether or not it is voluntary or officially mandated. And by whom…

There is always the possibility of unintended, unforeseen consequences however bold and thoughtful the concept. Consider the deceptively simple idea of ‘car-free Tuesdays’ in Iran: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37430493 ‘[…] campaigners in Iran began marking “car-free Tuesdays” to encourage people to leave their cars at home in the hope of cutting down on pollution.’ The BBC article was reporting on a story in the Tehran Times, and I’ve included the link. ‘Tuesday was chosen because it is in the middle of Iranian week when traffic congestion is high and air pollution at peak.’

All well and good, even if unofficial and as yet unsanctioned, ‘the campaign was kicked off by Mohammad Bakhtiari, 25, who has majored in architecture and is a member of a local NGO with 1,000 members known as “the guardians of the environment of Arak city.’ It seemed like a good idea –it is a good idea- but there are issues… The idea was to encourage people to use alternate, less polluting forms of transportation –buses, or perhaps car-pooling, but especially bicycles to get around the city. Iran is a very conservatively run theocratic society, and women have long had to conform to various religiously mandated restrictions. And yet, ‘It had been understood women that [sic] could cycle as long as religious concerns were respected. But when asked recently, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, said women were not allowed to cycle in public or in the presence of strangers.’

Of course I’m not from Iran, nor do I even pretend to understand Islamic legal opinion, but I think that this fatwah –if such it is- involves a fair amount of cognitive dissonance even in a society that is used to seemingly arbitrary restrictions being imposed upon it. Presumably atmospheric pollution was not something anticipated in religious jurisprudence –it’s barely appreciated in civil law even today. A Fatwah, I’m given to understand however, is expected to break new ground –otherwise it might be considered simply a ruling –a considered opinion on the interpretation of existing writings. So I’m puzzled as to why, given the chance to become responsible caretakers of the Divine Creation which all religions purport to acknowledge, that the opportunity would not be seized and glorified. It might even go a long way towards mollifying some of the public antipathy about some of the more obviously capricious restrictions.

Just a thought, though… Why can’t women do their parts? If they adhere to religious codes of dress and conduct, aren’t they as much stewards as anybody else? Of course it’s now gone Twitter… And the social media campaign founder Masih Alinejad has said, “It is unacceptable in 2016 when you hear that a group of female cyclists have been arrested in Iran for the crime of riding a bike in a public place and made to sign a pledge promising they will not cycle in public again.” She is speaking out from the relative safety of New York, however. And I am writing from the relative safety of New Zealand… I ask myself why that should matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Acknowledging the Mind’s Eye

Sometimes, in the midst of a problem –in the midst of an era- the resolution derives not so much from the answer as from the acknowledgement that there is an issue to begin with. I find it interesting that Nature has given us an ability to adapt more efficiently -to ignore, I suppose- that which arises gradually than that which falls upon us as an event –interesting, because that allows us to discount something until it results in complications. Difficulties. It is the Janus view of evolution, I suppose.

An article in the BBC news alerted me to one novel approach to encourage acknowledgment of an issue that has plagued some societies for what seems to be millennia: sex selection –or perhaps, more honestly,  destruction:  www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-37034444

It got me thinking… We tend to cherish and preserve what we value; we neglect, or abandon that which we don’t. Denigrate it, even. Perhaps an occasional nudge in the ribs may cause us to look around and see where we have wandered –realize that there is really no need to stand so close to the edge.

But it does give one pause for thought –how do some of these things become imbedded in a culture? Surely they don’t start out as intentionally malevolent. Or is that being revisionist and unduly naïve? I’d like to think that some of the customs, however egregious we find them now, were products of a different time when other priorities required precedence. Confusing times, perhaps, when we barely knew who we were in our overarching need to identify and fend off them. Troubling times beneath the roiling waters in which we are just beginning to be able, however slowly, to surface for air.

And the problem, as always for those of us less afflicted, is acknowledgement –recognition that there is more to do. There is always more to do…

Despite being a gynaecologist for more years than I can remember, I suppose I have always lived in a man’s world. It’s hard not to wear the clothes you were assigned. And yet, every so often, that usually-locked door is knocked ajar briefly, and the light from within is blinding. Unintentionally heuristic.

I was sitting in a busy coffee shop recently and managed to find a tiny unoccupied table against a windowless and shadowed wall in the corner. Perhaps it camouflaged me -made my presence less noticeable, my gender less obtrusive- but as I sat there staring silently at the busy room, fragments of conversation from the next table floated past like dust motes in the feeble light. Two women were catching up on their lives. I didn’t mean to listen, but sometimes words are beacons: currents, vacuuming up the air between –meant to be heard, meant to inform. It’s hard to ignore words when you sit in shadows.

“And so how is Janice doing now?” a grey-haired woman in pigtails wearing black track pants and a yellow sweat shirt asked between gulps of coffee and grabs for the oversized chocolate cookies she had balanced precariously on her plate. She clearly had little need of more calories, but the presence of her more sizeable friend likely justified the debauch in her mind. It works for all of us, I think.

Her friend just shrugged amicably. “You know what it’s like, Dory,” she said, and launched into her bagel as if she were packing a box. “Kids are kids…”

Dory munched softly on a cookie and considered the issue. “She’s hardly a kid, now, Alice. She’s, what, seventeen?”

Alice nodded her head equally thoughtfully and her long dark hair slid back and forth over her shoulders like a wash cloth. Although considerable larger than her friend, she carried her weight gracefully, and with the gravitas that suggested a person of authority. Dressed in what seemed in the dim light to be an expensive white silk blouse I could make out little ruffs on each wrist. I don’t normally notice such things, but with each movement of her arms, they risked coating themselves with cream cheese from an impertinent bagel, now lying in fragments in front of her. “Eighteen…” She took a delicate sip from her coffee and sat back on her chair as if the subject required a little more thought.

“Still, she should know where she’s headed by now…” Dory left the question of direction open, but her eyes betrayed her opinion. “I mean, who she is…” she added, italics begging for attention.

Alice sighed and leaned forward again to pack another item into her waiting mouth. “I think she’s always known.”

“And how about you?”

Alice smiled and nodded. “Some things a mother just knows, Dory.”

Dory was obviously trying to understand, but her confusion was apparent, even to accidental eyes watching from the shade. She shook her head, disapproval hovering over her like a cloud. “Did you ever to speak to her about it, Alice?”

Alice’s eyebrows both rose at the same time. “Whatever for, Dory?” she said, genuinely puzzled at the remark.

It caused Dory to sigh rather more loudly than necessary. “Well, I would have thought…”

Alice refurbished the smile she’d sacrificed to the bagel and leaned an elbow on the table. “Thought what?”

Dory straightened her back like a boxer ready to receive a blow. “Well… that…”

“That my daughter would think the same way as her mother? She learned the Theory of Mind when she was five, Dory.” Her friend visibly winced at that. “The world is different for each of us, Dor,” she said, reaching out and grasping Dory’s hand. “And the question should not be why, but rather, how can I best negotiate it…?”

Dory tried to smile, but even from the shadows I could see her lips twitching with the effort. “Do you think if…” But she was clearly too embarrassed to finish her thought –and anyway, I could see Alice shaking her head and squeezing her hand affectionately.

“Somethings just are, Dory. And my main duty as a mother is to help her to accept them.” She let go of Dory’s hand and picked up her coffee for a sip. “And to help others to accept her…”

“But…” There was a hint of helplessness in that one word.

“But what’s not to love, eh?” she said, glancing towards the door and standing up to wave at a smiling teenager gliding towards them like a boat about to dock. And then Janice waved back, just like anybody else…

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Unquiet Meals

I suppose Age has blunted me –or at least made me suspicious of fads, curious about recent phenomena that wear the clothes of certainty, vogues that hitchhike on the backs of something else never meant to carry the weight… But one must not be caught rubbing the poor itch of one’s opinion, to paraphrase Shakespeare. One must seek either corroboration or refutation in equal measure; one must make the time and effort to critically analyze what one would fain discard. So it was with no little frisson of excitement that I read just such an attempt in the BBC News. Gluten allergy, and its social and physiological disguises, was the subject: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37292174

I have never denied the existence of true gluten allergy, Celiac Disease. Its prevalence obviously varies with the group being measured, but it averages to around 1% of the population and is a true auto immune phenomenon where the body detects the presence of –in this case, gluten- and views it as hostile. It then produces some countermeasures –autoantibodies- which, in turn, can have effects on various organs, the small bowel often being the one that results in the diagnosis.

The existence of a non-celiac gluten sensitivity, however, is more controversial. Studies –including the one the BBC reported- seem to vacillate wildly, so I suppose it is merely another example of confirmation bias as to which one you choose to believe. Me? I remain skeptical, firmly encamped in the valley floor between the two hostile mountains that glare and threaten each other from a safe distance. And if some of my patients choose to avoid gluten in their diets, so be it -I’m an obstetrician/gynaecologist, not a dietary immunologist. But sometimes my concerns peek above the mischievous gluten dust.

You know, you can’t tell the gluten-free apostles from the gluten abusers in the average waiting room. I can’t, anyway. Geraldine looked, well, normal as she sat slouched in her chair in the corner. Although my day sheet said she was in her thirties, my eyes said forties. Her blond hair was streaked with silver –although nowadays that may just be a whim- but her face was folded into little wrinkles like previously crumpled paper that had been hurriedly smoothed. She was dressed in black jeans that belied any definite attempt at ironing for the appointment, and her oversized grey sweatshirt matched her face for creases. The very idea of needing to avoid gluten apostasy did not spring unbidden to mind, I have to admit.

And yet the sullen face that watched me as I extended my hand in greeting did suggest that Geraldine was unhappy with her referral. In my practice, this is usually an indication that the patient was hoping that, contrary to what they Googled, I would still turn out to be a female. Although I am quick to disavow them of this, I find it still takes a few minutes more to gain their trust.

Once she had reslouched herself in a decidedly less comfortable seat in my office, I brought up the note from her doctor on my computer screen. It was a one word note –not terribly unusual from this particular GP, but not terribly helpful, either: ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ it said in bolded and underlined capital letters –rather striking, really.

“So, Geraldine,” I said, feeling my way along my words, “how can I help you?”

She glared at me for a moment, and then withdrew her eyes to the safety of her lap. “Didn’t my GP tell you?” It was at once hostile yet tinged with resignation –as if the GP was simply passing a rather complicated buck onwards. As if I were only one more stop on the journey.

Her answer was so uncomfortable it caught me unprepared. “Well…”

“He just wanted to get rid of me…” she said, venom dripping from the corners of her mouth at first. But she thought about it for a moment and neutralized her face. “He never listens, anyway.”

I tried to smile –sometimes it works. “Listen to what, Geraldine?”

Her eyes rose quickly from her jeans, like two birds flushed from a bush. “He doesn’t believe in gluten,” she said, a little too quietly for me to judge the temperature of the insinuation.

“How do you mean?” I walked right into it.

The cage door of her eyes flew open, and her mouth unlocked like Pandora’s box. “He refuses to believe that gluten is alive and flourishing in the world…” I’d heard similar words from religious acolytes proselytizing on street corners; maybe gluten was now another proxy for the devil.

“So…” I said, but before I could finish my thought –well, actually before I could even develop one, she interrupted.

“He doesn’t believe me. For years I was plagued with diarrhea and bloating so he sent me to a GI doctor who tested me but couldn’t find anything. All she could say was that it wasn’t Celiac Disease.” She stopped for air. “And now, whatever I tell my GP he just shrugs and says, it’s not the gluten.”

I pretended to type something on my computer screen, but I was just doodling.

“Anyway, I decided to cut out gluten in my diet, and the bloating stopped. The diarrhea stopped… But, then I started…” she added cryptically.

“Started what?” It wasn’t the most gynaecologically phrased question of which I am capable, I admit, but it was all I could think of in the moment.

Once again her face contracted like an animal about to spring. Or flee… “Started having sex!” she said, italicizing the last word. And then, mercifully, before I could gather my thoughts about why anything she’d had to say had anything to do with sex, she explained. “You can’t have sex when you’re bloated all the time, doctor! You can’t have sex when at any moment you might have to get up to go to the toilet!”

Okay, call me naïve, but I hadn’t thought of it quite like that before. It was a different world out there. “But eliminating the gluten in your diet helped, you said.”

She nodded her head vigorously. “I was a new woman.” She stared disconsolately out the window behind me for a second or two. “So I decided I’d better up my birth control method. I hate condoms and diaphragms… and I refuse to wear an IDU…”

“An IUD, you mean?” I said, attempting a gentle correction, but her eyes tried to ravage my face immediately.

“Whatever! So my GP put me on the pill!” she said, italics and contempt now mixing freely with the original venom on her lips.

“And…?”

“And I got bloating again, doctor!” Her eyes executed a predator roll somewhere near the ceiling before heading for me again. “So I did some computer research and discovered that the pills contained lactose and cellulose as fillers…” She folded her arms across her chest and waited to see what I thought of that.

“You’re wondering if they are code words for gluten, Geraldine?”

“Wondering?” she said between clenched teeth, the word only barely able to squeak through at the last moment. “Wondering?” she repeated more loudly and forcefully, articulating each syllable as if maybe I hadn’t heard her correctly the first time. “Are you another gluten atheist, doctor?” she asked scornfully.

“No, gluten exists, Geraldine,” I said, conscious of falling into her religious idiom. “But so do common side effects of the birth control pill.”

She tilted her head like a cat figuring out the best way to attack the mouse. “Nope, I know this was the same kind of bloating I got with the gluten.” Her fists clenched, daring me to contradict that.

But there was something about her face… “How long did you take the pill?”

She shrugged and then played around with her eyes, uncertain where to roost them. “A month maybe… And then I took them on and off for a while to see if they made a difference.”

“And…?”

Another shrug. “And yes, stopping them got rid of the bloating for a while.” She stopped and decided to stare at me. “And then it came back, even though I wasn’t taking them.” She took a deep breath and then sat up straighter on her chair. “I asked my GP if it could be some residual effects of the gluten and he decided to send me to you.”

“When was your last period, Geraldine?” Common things are commonest, eh?

A smile managed to crinkle its way onto her lips, and her eyes softened like sponges in water. Her expression turned almost mischievous. “I thought you’d never ask, doctor.” Even her voice, now, was pleasant.

“You’re pregnant?”

She nodded happily. “And it’s going to be a gluten-free pregnancy…” And then as a concession, “Is that all right with you?”

I smiled and nodded. No matter what I said, she’d do it anyway, so I thought it’d be safer to do it under supervision. “I’ll send you to a dietician to help you choose the proper foods for the pregnancy.”

She rolled her eyes again –but this time it looked more like a victory role. “Sorry about the theatrics, doctor –I just had to be sure where you stood on all this.” And then her face fell, if only just for a second. “Funny,” she added, “I thought you’d be more of a challenge…”