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A Sympathy in Choice

‘As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.’ –so Shakespeare’s Goneril, King Lear’s evil daughter, advised her father. Her advice was deceptive -hostile, even- but there are times I feel that my judgement, too, has being unjustly impugned. Positions that I feel have been reasonably based and cogently argued, are attacked and maligned as if, because they dared to question the prevailing ethos, they are dangerous -or worse, should not even be heard. Should be retracted and the author forced to recant.

Some people are sensitive like that –so wrapped up in their own causes, they fear that anything similar, but more controversial, might detract from their not-yet successful endeavours. Understandable, perhaps, if they fail to thoroughly examine the merits and deficits of the other approach –refuse to consider how the one may complement the other, and vilify it to make those who would adopt it seem apostates.

Gender issues seem particularly vulnerable, maybe because they have recently been heavily exposed to public scrutiny. They are seen to be so fragile, that any attempts at critical analysis are often seen as foundational attacks, rather than efforts to better understand and underpin their framework. Comparisons are fraught, to be sure, but only when they can withstand the scrutiny of impartial examination, will they be accepted as mainstream -sufficiently natural to fade seamlessly into the Gestalt.

Of course, public confusion over terms (LGBTIQ, etc.), and the amalgamation of so many different communities of difference, makes easy and seamless acceptance perplexing for many who watch, bewildered from the edges, but progress is occurring nonetheless. Homosexuality, gay marriage, and adoption to gay couples are only the issues most recently being fast-tracked into conventional thinking. Not everybody agrees, of course, but then again what do we all agree on? Even religions and political parties still divide us.

But race (whatever that is) seems unduly stubborn. Despite the fact that DNA studies have consistently failed to demonstrate any genetic basis for racial categorizations, there seems to be an almost tribal requirement to allocate people into us and them –for othering, in sociology-speak. For seeking comfort and succour from those who most resemble us. Safety. Security. There is an assumed empathy in those who share the same assignation, an expected commonality of experience when compared with non-members. And there is not only an assumed history that unites, but also a presumed genealogy that ensures loyalty to whatever the group believes. Disavowal of what it does not.

And yet, it is a very social construct. What, for example, constitutes a valid pedigree? Any family membership in a group, no matter how far back in time, and whether or not it is inside the legal boundaries of wedlock? Or, suppose you do not look like your parents or their assumed grouping –or, conversely, you do, and yet were adopted? What if –more problematically, to be sure- you identify with another group, either because of outside influences, or a certainty within yourself, that you belong? What if you were mistakenly brought up as if you were a member, suffered along with it, saw the world through its eyes, but later discovered you had been adopted from another group? Does it make any difference? Are you somehow a less valuable member if you don’t carry the proper cards?

So, what if you decided you wanted to ‘be’ a member of another group –in the case in point, another ‘race’. Can one be transracial? And further, what might that mean? Does, ‘identifying’ with a ‘race’, qualify as anything? I have to say that I had never thought much about it until I came across an absolutely riveting article entitled In Defense of Transracialism, in the March 2017 edition of Hypatia, a journal of Feminist philosophy, written by Rebecca Tuvel, who teaches the philosophy of race and gender at Rhodes College.

I felt it was exceedingly well substantiated with cogent arguments, and compelling documentation, so I was dismayed when I discovered (in a piece from a different source: https://theconversation.com/i-wanna-be-white-can-we-change-race-78899?) that the article elicited ‘an open letter signed by hundreds of academics who demanded the journal retract the article.’ And further, that ‘the associate editors of the journal issued a long apology saying that the article should never have been published.’ I was only slightly mollified that the ‘Editorial Board responded with its own statement in support of the author’. The reaction of the academics merely underlined the unwillingness to entangle themselves in an equally scholastic attempt to explore the similarities between gender identification and the ability to racially identify. Tuvel suggests that there are many features in common, and although her argument is too long to easily summarize, I was willing to share her point of view by the end.

I suppose the most notorious case she discusses, is that of Rachel Dolezal, the former head of a local NAACP who was born to white parents but lived for many years as a black woman. ‘[…] Dolezal’s experience living with four adoptive black siblings since she was a young teenager coupled with her strong sense of dissociation from her biological parents, her later marriage to an African American man with whom she had a child, and her strong sense of familial connection to a black man named Albert Wilkerson, whom she calls “Dad,” all impacted her understanding of her own racial identity.’ That she did not officially qualify as ‘black’ and could therefore not possibly know what it meant to be black seemed unduly important to her detractors. Her duplicity alone disqualified her in many eyes and rendered her professed enthusiasm for her blackness a mockery. Invalid. White privilege…

Dolezal, became the unwilling focus of identity politics in which, perhaps understandably, the LGBTIQ community did not wish to become entwined. Any argument in her defense, it was suggested, does a disservice to the political context of transgender communities, and the violence of racism. And yet, in drawing parallels with those aspects of personal identity which are inherently fluid, Tuvel allows us to see that boundaries are also fickle, and over stretches of time, evanescent. Arbitrary. Even unstable.

But, loathe as I am to side with Shakespeare’s Claudius, and although taken out of context, there is something to his contention:

‘That we would do, we should do when we would, for this “would” changes and hath abatements and delays as many as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents. And then this “should” is like a spendthrift sigh that hurts by easing.

Thank you, Rebecca Tuvel; more than simply opening my eyes, you have opened my mind.

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Within the Book and Volume of Thy Brain

Is it naive to mention that there is an almost magical bond between a mother and her baby? A bond that, while certainly not less in the father is, well, different? At first, I assumed it was probably related to the closeness of breast feeding –yes, the oxytocin and its effects on bonding, and the magic of skin-to-skin contact- but this seemed to be a very reductionist way of looking at it –a post hoc ergo propter hoc approach. No, the amount of head-swaying I would see, the purring of the sing-song words barely audible from across the room, the eye contact with the bundles in their arms… All this seemed more like the devotion of religious acolytes than could be reasonably reduced to simple biological cause and effect in the little carpeted area where my patients would sit, waiting for their postpartum checkups. I can’t help but think of Shakespeare: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, as Hamlet observed under admittedly different circumstances.

I mention this decidedly apostatic thinking because it occurred to me that some things are difficult to fit into a satisfyingly rational, or secular framework. Many years ago, I remember seeing a woman -Lorraine was her name, I think- who, my day-sheet informed me I had delivered 2 or 3 months previously. Anyway, she was coming in to discuss contraception and she had brought her little baby with her. I could see her sitting on the other side of the room talking and nodding rhythmically to the little tyke. Even from a distance, I could see they were locked in ocular embrace. Then, slowly, she reached into a bag at her feet and pulled out what seemed to be a large picture book. She nestled the baby in one arm and held the book open with the other hand so the baby could see it. From where I stood behind the front desk, I couldn’t really tell what pictures the baby saw, but she was naming what I suppose were animals, and whatever else came up from page to page.

Perhaps the baby was paying attention, but it seemed entirely too comfortable in her arms, and her voice far too much like a lullaby for it to keep its eyes open.

When her turn came to talk to me in the office, she told me that she’d noticed me watching her with the picture book.

“I’m a first grade teacher,” she said, showing me a collection of children’s drawings carefully pasted onto stiff pages and stapled into a folder. “And when the kids found out I was going to have a baby, they all decided to draw pictures for me to ‘read’ to it.” She drew little air quotes around the word. “And I thought, why not? It’s sort of like reading, isn’t it? The kids thought so, anyway…”

I have to confess that, although I always loved reading to my children, I enjoyed it more when they seemed to understand the words. When they reacted to my play-acting voice that attempted incarnation of the characters, painting the scene in words, pretending we could see the story. I enjoyed the immersion as much as they did, I suppose –we were the story, in a way. Each of us.

Now that I think of those times, I feel vaguely guilty that the experience was as much about me as it was about the child sitting beside me on the couch, or lying on her bed with saucered eyes in a room lit only by the lamp beside my chair. Each of us was as hungry as the other to discover what the words would tell us, our imaginations primed and insatiably curious as our minds watched the movie being played behind our eyes.

Sometimes, of course, I would read a book of their choosing, but both my son -and later my daughter- seemed to prefer it when I made up stories for them. No pictures –just verbal descriptions that neither of us could guess beforehand. Word riffs.

But Time moves on, and so does our knowledge of developing brains. It would seem that certain content, particular themes and even types of books, may be more helpful at different ages. I can’t say that it came as a surprise that infants, too, benefit from being bathed in words –it’s how vocabulary begins, after all. What I remain somewhat agnostic about, however, is that there might be a preferred order of progression. An article in the Smithsonian Magazine hoped to disavow me of this skepticism, however: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/babys-brain-benefit-read-right-books-right-time

For example,  the author, Lisa Scott, Associate Professor in Psychology, University of Florida: ‘[…] found that when parents showed babies books with faces or objects that were individually named, they learn more, generalize what they learn to new situations and show more specialized brain responses. This is in contrast to books with no labels or books with the same generic label under each image in the book. Early learning in infancy was also associated with benefits four years later in childhood. […]These findings suggest that very young infants are able to use labels to learn about the world around them and that shared book reading is an effective tool for supporting development in the first year of life.’

I’m certainly not disputing the findings, nor offering any alternatives –I’m merely wondering whether or not it has that much of an effect on subsequent development of the child as it matures. As she points out earlier in the article, ‘Researchers see clear benefits of shared book reading for child development. Shared book reading with young children is good for language and cognitive development, increasing vocabulary and pre-reading skills and honing conceptual development. Shared book reading also likely enhances the quality of the parent-infant relationship by encouraging reciprocal interactions – the back-and-forth dance between parents and infants. Certainly not least of all, it gives infants and parents a consistent daily time to cuddle.

‘Recent research has found that both the quality and quantity of shared book reading in infancy predicted later childhood vocabulary, reading skills and name writing ability. In other words, the more books parents read, and the more time they’d spent reading, the greater the developmental benefits in their 4-year-old children.’

I suppose what I’m getting at is that perhaps the best message to get across to parents is the importance of reading to their child –interacting with the child- rather than getting them concerned that they’re not doing it the right way. That they’re using the wrong materials, or in the wrong order. Raising a child is hard enough at the best of times. Indeed, the author acknowledges this at the end of her piece: ‘It’s possible that books that include named characters simply increase the amount of parent talking. We know that talking to babies is important for their development. So parents of infants: Add shared book reading to your daily routines and name the characters in the books you read.’

But, then again, maybe this is just preaching to the converted. Mothers already know most of this –Lorraine did, at any rate.

 

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The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley

Two steps forward and one step back –isn’t that  always the way with progress? Reward coupled with unintended consequences? The Industrial Revolution with worker exploitation? Nuclear power with the Bomb. Nothing, it seems, comes without a price. Even religion, the great leveller, once established brooks no rivals. Life itself, is a succession of survivors outcompeting the other contenders.

But simply to focus on the successes is to miss the important lessons to be learned from the failures. In biology the difference between winning and losing might hinge on a single change in a single gene, or more instructively, on an adaptation of an existing organ for another, more useful function in a different environment –an exaptation. Arms and hands for wings, in the case of bats, or for fins, in the cases of aquatic mammals like whales and dolphins.

In the early days after the discovery of X-rays, their ability to see through things was thought to be miraculous, and many possible uses were suggested. It was not until much later, after countless reports of cancers, burns, hair loss and worse, that the dangers of its careless use were acknowledged. Then, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of its many unwanted side-effects, grew carefully investigated treatments like irradiation for tumours, CT scans for internal visualizations, or fluoroscopy for placement of medical kit like stents, anti-embolism balloons, etc.

Unfortunately, even nowadays, the sundry complications of progress are often inadequately predicted in advance, probably because most things are multifaceted and changing one parameter has a knock-on effect on the others. Clearing forests for agriculture changes the animals that can survive in the changed ecosystem; monoculture to maximize demand for a particular variety of crop, say, increases the likelihood that the plants –previously diverse- may not be able to withstand the onslaught of a disease or infestation that would otherwise have only affected a small portion of their number. Evolution would normally have winnowed out the susceptibles, leaving only the resistant plants to reproduce. But all of this is Grade 9 biology, isn’t it?

What led me to think about this was an article in the Smithsonian Magazine discussing the effects of making friction matches on the women and children involved in their manufacture: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/friction-matches-were-boon-those-lighting-firesnot-so-much-matchmakers-180967318/ – 6ZQ6WshMH2Ghpoys.03

‘Like many other poorly paid and tedious factory jobs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, match makers were predominantly women and children, writes Killgrove [in an article for Mental Floss]. “Half the employees in this industry were kids who hadn’t even reached their teens. While working long hours indoors in a cramped, dark factory put these children at risk of contracting tuberculosis and getting rickets, matchstick making held a specific risk: phossy jaw.” This gruesome and debilitating condition was caused by inhaling white phosphorus fumes during those long hours at the factory. “Approximately 11 percent of those exposed to phosphorus fumes developed ‘phossy jaw’ about five years after initial exposure, on average”. The condition causes the bone in the jaw to die and teeth to decay, resulting in extreme suffering and sometimes the loss of the jaw. Although phossy jaw was far from the only side-effect of prolonged white phosphorus exposure, it became a visible symbol of the suffering caused by industrial chemicals in match plants.’
So much so, that by 1892, newspapers were investigating the problem. ‘“Historical records often compare sufferers of phossy jaw to people with leprosy because of their obvious physical disfigurement and the condition’s social stigma,” Killgrove writes. Eventually match makers stopped using white phosphorus in matches, and it was outlawed in the United States in 1910.’

Civilization is the steady accumulation of successes over failures. Trials and errors –mistakes which perhaps seem to have been largely anticipatable in retrospect- summate to useable compromises. It’s how a child learns; it’s how evolution learns.

But the point of this essay is not so much to highlight the exploitation of workers in the past as to suggest that there can be sociological as well as biological evolution. After all, the etymological root of the word is the Latin evolvere –to unfold.

Occupational Safety and Health -as a distinct discipline, at least- is a relatively recent development stemming from labour movements and their concern about worker safety in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. As Wikipedia explains it: ‘The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system.’

Although this provided jobs and undoubtedly improved many aspects of living standards, the driving force was production, and in its early stages, had little regard for worker safety or health. Enter the labour movements in the early 19th century, along with great resistance to their demands. In many instances they were seen as antithetical to progress –antithetical to Capitalism, for that matter. And yet, in the fullness of time, the benefits of a healthy workforce to economic success evolved from an initial, grudging pretense of acceptance in some countries to a legal framework of protection in others.

There is certainly a long way to go along this path to be sure, and exploitation still seems a default that is all too easy to overlook. Especially since it is the poor and vulnerable who are usually the victims –people with little voice of their own, and even less power to resist.

But are things actually changing? Does knowledge of exploitation make a difference? We know slavery is still practiced; we know that refugees are still being brutalized and abused in places like Libya; women are still being kidnapped and sold into prostitution despite the best intentions of agencies like the World Health Organization.

So, do the gains experienced in some areas, offset the tragedies in others? We cannot appreciate the broad sweep of History in the few years we are allotted, and evolution –even social evolution- can be deceptive and disheartening. But remember the words of Khalil Gibran:

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.

I have to hope he saw something that I missed along the way…

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Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie

I sometimes wonder if in another life I was actually a woman –perhaps in one of those what-if lands that we whisper to our children as they are nodding off to sleep. A place where roles are not so much reversed as fluid –changing as necessary, dissolving when needed. Not a perfect place –even a child expects some inequalities, some inevitable disputes- but a place where things even out in the end. Where disagreements are resolved, and fairness, like dust motes in a sunny room, coats even the darkest corners if you decide to look.

And why a woman? In this heavily gendered world, why would I espouse the mysterious side –the other side- when, for now at least, I find myself in an advantaged role? Why, if I have never entertained the idea in any but an intellectual sense, with no real desire to change my here-and-now, nor any wish to partake of other than a thought-experiment, would I think that in a once-upon-a-time story, I might have been what I am not?

I suppose, in part, it is because of the inequities to which many of us with a Y chromosome have so successfully adapted -swept under the carpet in our attempts to fashion the world in our own image. Like the sound of traffic that becomes barely noticeable to city dwellers, we have become myopic to all that isn’t immediately relevant to our own vicinity -our Lebenswelt. And it just seems so unfair.

I don’t want to sound too naïve in my jeremiad, too Pollyannoid in my expectations, but I do expect actions to be judged by what they achieve, not by who performs them. I do not expect a litany of excuses, or worse, a denial that excuses are even necessary.  As a recently retired obstetrician/gynaecologist, perhaps I am overly attuned to the denizens of my former world, but I find myself disheartened by examples of their contributions being overlooked, or at least undervalued. An article that I came across one day, outlined some of the problems: https://theconversation.com/womens-ngos-are-changing-the-world-and-not-getting-credit-for-it-88360

It discusses the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in various countries –although this article specifically examines women’s NGOs and their work in India and Tanzania. ‘NGOs work with governments, community groups and the private sector — to develop and implement programs, monitor and evaluate their progress and help train people working on those projects.’ It would seem that these ‘[…]women’s NGOs played crucial roles in development projects, often mobilizing, organizing and building projects that otherwise would never have launched.’

In India, for example, ‘Women’s NGOs also conducted research to determine whether local communities could afford to pay for basic urban services. They negotiated subsidies, fair pricing and flexible terms of payment with utilities on behalf of marginalized people. They arranged access to loans from micro-finance institutions for households that could not cover the cost of water or electricity connections. And by insisting that water and electricity bills be issued in the names of female heads of households, women’s NGOs strengthened women’s access to property and housing.

‘The NGOs also educated stakeholders about the realities of life for the urban poor, and shared lessons learned in one urban area with NGOs in other cities in India.’

But, the success of their interventions often led to the marginalization of the NGO’s role in whatever successes they’d achieved. ‘[…] women’s NGOs had made vital contributions to the success of development projects, but they were easily marginalized and trivialized once those projects got off the ground. In India, after the success of the pilot projects, the other partners declared that they would “go it alone” and no longer involve the NGO partner in delivering basic urban services.’ Of course, the idea is to encourage self-sufficiency so the NGO can back away, but in many situations, their contributions, as women, were minimized in favour of the usual power brokers. ‘Although the contributions made by the women’s NGOs were critical to the existence and success of the initiatives, they were often dismissed as supplementary and dispensable by the other partners. Because the NGOs’ role of organizing, mobilizing and helping local communities participate in development initiatives was seen as a “natural” extension of women’s care-giving work, it was easy for other partners to diminish and dismiss their contributions. And because the other partners did not fully appreciate the contributions of the women’s NGOs, they were unwilling to share credit for the success of the project.’

The authors -Dr. Bipasha Baruah, Professor & Canada Research Chair in Global Women’s Issues, Western University and Dr. Kate Grantham Research Associate, International Development, McGill University- suggest  some strategies ‘to strengthen and validate the role of women’s NGOs in development partnership projects: A memorandum of understanding (MOU) that defines the specific roles and responsibilities of each partner should be an essential requirement for multiple-stakeholder projects. The lack of such formal agreements entrenches the perception that the role NGOs play is not particularly valuable.’

Call me naïve, but it is dismaying, to say the least, that such formalities are required to validate a helping hand -almost like requiring a contract be drawn up before helping someone cross a busy street.

And yet, as the authors point out, ‘It’s unfortunate they must “justify” their long-term involvement in such initiatives, but it may be incumbent upon them to make their contributions to the project more visible to the different partners and to the development community at large.’ And perhaps more especially, ‘[…] the specific challenges and opportunities that NGOs working on gender equality, or those that define themselves as feminist NGOs or women’s NGOs, face — when participating in multiple-stakeholder projects.’

Okay I understand, I guess. Let’s see… Outside agencies have to help women help each other, because otherwise the communities will forget who helped them. No, that can’t be right… Okay then, outside agencies have to publicize the fact that women are able to help… Uhmm, no? Well then, how about the agencies claim credit for facilitating the things that women have been doing for millennia…

I’m clearly getting old and cloistered in my years. Many of those things I had once assumed were self-evident, I now find were merely wide-eyed hopes -inexperienced beliefs, as devoid of truth as the fairy-tales I told my children. I have obviously not tasted all that I am supposed to sample despite my age –and yet, I still believe that help knows no gender. Goodness is not biased, nor is succour credited only to those crowding around and pointing at themselves when the patient is finally ready to be discharged.

But, perhaps I read too much poetry, too much Kahlil Gibran, when I was young; perhaps you cannot believe poetry; perhaps it is simply not enough –even if it speaks truth to power:
‘there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; they give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Is Man a Piece of Work?

You see it all the time, don’t you –portrayals of great male warriors triumphing over equally determined rivals, their muscles rippling with sweat, their eyes scanning the crowd daring any others to step forward. It is a classic scene, presumably so reminiscent of the glory days of yore when men were really men –a classic depiction of a decidedly monolithic world where pursuit of power alone determined ethics and values. Where might was not only right, it was also appropriately so. What else could drive a nation, a culture, a belief, to success?

And what about those of us not favoured with bulging muscles who either could not, or would not compete in the marketplace of war? We wore the yoke –the etymological root of subjugation.

Although largely undisputed, I have always felt that this view of history was probably a victor’s view: partial, and likely doctrinaire. Perhaps even unrealistic. And yet a reading –or nowadays, more likely a movie portrayal- of the classic heroes would do little to disavow this opinion. Every so often, though, there seem to be other, quieter voices crying in the growing wilderness of masculine insecurity that cast doubts on the impenetrability of the foliage. Voices that find paths hidden in the woods.

‘Homer’s Iliad has been used by some men to hail the virtues of traditional masculinity in the 21st century. Typically, the famous work of literature serves as a sort of manual of manliness. […] Aside from longing for the (grossly misunderstood) glory days of a triumphantly Christian Europe that traced its heritage to the Greeks and Romans, the new champions of the West obsess over an idealized version of the past that bears little resemblance to the real Greece and Rome.’ https://theconversation.com/toxic-masculinity-fostered-by-misreadings-of-the-classics-88118 -This from an article in the Conversation.

‘The classical world furnishes us with examples of manhood, masculinity and heroism that have inspired some men to react against the supposed feminizing of Western culture, especially in the university setting.’ But, as one might expect, the reality was likely far more nuanced than its adherents would have us believe.

The article’s author, Matthew Sears, Associate Professor of Classics & Ancient History, University of New Brunswick, uses Homer’s Iliad, a classic tale about the Trojan War, as an example. He says that when he first read it, ‘[…] the final showdown between the opposing heroes Hector and Achilles [was] an utter letdown. Hector, in fact, runs away rather than face his opponent. Only after Achilles has chased Hector around the walls of Troy three full times does Hector turn to fight, and only then because the goddess Athena tricks Hector into thinking that a Trojan ally would be by his side.’

This seems to glorify the strength and reputation of Achilles, of course, but also denigrates Hector, the Trojan hero. But more interesting –to me, at least- ‘By using different Greek words for manliness, Homer distinguished between Achilles’ toxic masculinity and appropriate expressions of manliness.’ I’ve left the link in for readers who may wish to pursue this further. ‘Readers do, however, tend to recognize in Hector, the greatest Trojan warrior, a far more sympathetic figure, embodying classical manhood by fighting bravely and selflessly for his city and family against impossible odds and an implacable enemy.’

And yet, this is still a masculine trope, albeit a different variety, isn’t it? No, Hector doesn’t win, but he fights for what he believes in against impossible odds… A real man, although not a victor like Achilles. But wait -the complexity increases! ‘Not only does Hector’s nerve fail him at Achilles’ final approach, […]the Trojan prince waits outside the safety of the walls not because of any higher principle or courage. Rather, he waits because he has made the mistake of not ushering his soldiers into the city much earlier, which would have spared countless men a grisly death at Achilles’ hands. Hector must therefore save face lest some lesser man chide him.’ –Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, in the immortal words of Yeats.

‘Before fleeing, Hector also ponders whether he should lay down his arms and attempt to strike a deal. Instead of fighting to the death, Hector considers offering Achilles not only Helen and the treasures she brought to Troy, but every last ounce of treasure in every last household in the city, effectively selling out all the Trojans instead of facing death himself. Only after deliberating over these two options does he turn to run.’

But doesn’t that make Hector more of a person, not less of a man? As Sears puts it, ‘Aren’t we all guilty of taking a stand when it’s easy and when we’re among friends, yet balk at the chance to speak out when there might be real repercussions? […] From the gut-wrenching fear and indecision in Hector’s breast, to the plaintive laments of his father, Priam, as he begs his son to come inside the city walls […] the heroes of Greek epic are terrible fodder to use to justify […] toxic masculinity.’

It seems to me that there is a current of fear raising the hackles of many men nowadays. In this age of mirror-speak, many fear not seeing what they expect. What they deserve. Every unwelcome reflection is too easily mistaken as historical revisionism –that the attribution, for example, of the relative lack of contribution of women in history, is related not to its suppression, but rather to its absence. And for many, I fear, that the recording of history has largely been the preserve of men, seems unimportant. Merely an excuse, to delegitimize the world view it wishes to espouse.

So, have I become a modern day Judas, selling out my side, if not for money, then out of weakness? Someone not ‘man’ enough to oppose the feminizing of Western culture, to speak out against political correctness –or worse, who agrees with it? I suppose the answer lies in how the question itself is framed. I do not understand the various gender divides as competitions, or as assignations of unequal resources or restricted abilities. Nor, for that matter, do I see us as equals –of course there are physical differences, different aspirations, different Weltanschauungen- but so what? Everybody is different from everybody else. We are not clones. No one is actually ‘equal’.

I think that the time has come to forget about the ever-changing definitions of equality and rejoice in what makes each of us unique. What we need to espouse is fairness –in every interaction. All the rest is poor translation.

 

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What is the Merit of Originality?

‘I am not young enough to know everything,’ as Oscar Wilde once said, and maybe the rest of us aren’t either. It is often an unquestioned assumption that New trumps Old, that innovation usually leads to improvement, and that by standing on the shoulders of giants, the view is necessarily better. Clearer.

But there is wisdom in both the long as well as the panoramic views. Neither changing  your shoes nor altering your hat, really improves the safety of a voyage -nor does it address the original goal of a safe arrival of everybody on board. Appearing modern, seeming prepared, only helps if it helps –a leak is still a leak, especially if there are only lifeboats for a few…

Let me explain. I happened upon an article in the journal Nature that chronicled the introduction of a new, and highly accurate method of diagnosing TB through genetic analysis.  https://www.nature.com/news/improved-diagnostics-fail-to-halt-the-rise-of-tuberculosis-1.23000?WT ‘The World Health Organization (WHO), promptly endorsed the test, called GeneXpert, and promoted its roll-out around the globe to replace a microscope-based test that missed half of all cases.’ It sounded like a perfect technological fix for a disease that has so far avoided effective control. ‘Some 10.4 million people were infected with TB last year, according to a WHO report published on 30 October [2016?]. More than half of the cases occurred in China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines. The infection, which causes coughing, weight loss and chest pain, often goes undiagnosed for months or years, spurring transmission.’

Unfortunately, ‘[…] the high hopes have since crashed as rates of tuberculosis rates have not fallen dramatically, and nations are now looking to address the problems that cause so many TB cases to be missed and the difficulties in treating those who are diagnosed. […] The tale is a familiar one in global health care: a solution that seems extraordinarily promising in the lab or clinical trials falters when deployed in the struggling health-care systems of developing and middle-income countries. “What GeneXpert has taught us in TB is that inserting one new tool into a system that isn’t working overall is not going to by itself be a game changer. We need more investment in health systems,” says Erica Lessem, deputy executive director at the Treatment Action Group, an activist organization in New York City.’

But I mean, just think about it for a minute. ‘The machines cost $17,000 each and require constant electricity and air-conditioning — infrastructure that is not widely available in the TB clinics of countries with a high incidence of the disease, requiring the machines to be placed in central facilities.’ Sure, various groups agreed to subsidize the tests in 2012, but: ‘each cost $16.86 (the price fell to $9.98), compared with a few dollars for a microscope TB test.’ So which test would you choose if you were a government strapped for cash to provide for healthcare for a broad spectrum of other equally pressing needs?

‘Even countries that fully embraced GeneXpert are not seeing the returns they had hoped for. After a countrywide roll-out begun in 2011, the test is available for all suspected TB cases in South Africa. But a randomized clinical trial conducted in 2015 during the roll-out found that people diagnosed using GeneXpert were just as likely to die from TB as those diagnosed at labs still using the microscope test.’ That seems counterintuitive to say the least.

So what might be happening? ‘Churchyard [a physician specializing in TB at the Aurum Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa] suspects that doctors have been giving people with TB-like symptoms drugs, even if their microscope test was negative or missing, and that this helps to explain why his team found no benefit from implementing the GeneXpert test. Others have speculated that, by being involved in a clinical trial, patients in both arms of the trial received better care than they would otherwise have done, obfuscating any differences between the groups.’

‘Even with accurate tests, cases are still being missed. Results from the GeneXpert tests take just as long to deliver as microscope tests, and many people never return to the clinic to get their results and drugs; those who begin antibiotics often do not complete the regimen.’ Clearly, technology alone, without an adequate infrastructure to support it –without a properly funded and administered health care system- is not sufficient.

And it’s simply not enough to have even a well-funded health system that benefits just those who can afford it, leaving the rest of the population to fend for itself, and only seeking help when they can no longer cope –often when it is too late. Health care is a right, not a privilege –no matter what those in power would have us believe.

I’m certainly not arguing that improving technology is not part of the solution, but sometimes I wonder if it is merely putting new clothes on a beggar. Handing out flowers in a slum.

Let’s face it, real Health Care is more than a sign on a door, more than a few people in white coats. It is a kind of national empathy. A recognition that even the poorest among us, have something valuable to contribute; that even those who have strayed from society’s chosen path, are who any of us might be, but in different clothes.

The myth of Baucis and Philemon tugs at my memory: They were an old married couple living in a small village in Anatolia (part of Asian Turkey nowadays) who, unlike everyone else in the town, welcomed two peasants at their door who were seeking refuge for the night. The couple, of course, were unaware that they were actually welcoming two gods, Zeus and Hermes, disguised as humans. A common enough trope, perhaps, but an instructive one, I think -one that transcends virtually all cultures, and borders: the idea of helping others without any expectation of reward. It is not an exchange -a transaction- so much as an action. Agape, in fact.

Health care is like that. Or should be… It’s not about the glittering display in the shop window –there to impress the passersby- it’s about the people in the shop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by

The Feminist Egg

Once upon a time, I suppose that one of the characteristics of Age was its hubris. After a certain age, it was easy to dismiss most new things as mere variations on time-tested themes –additions, clever perhaps, intriguing even, but still accretions. Ecclesiastes lived in old minds: The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. And yet nowadays, even the quickest peek over the shoulder calls that into question. Maybe it always did, but without the publicity it now entertains.

New things –truly new things- are often the hardest to accept, especially if they fly in the  face of cherished beliefs sufficiently entrenched as to be regarded as not merely true, but obviously true -common sense, in fact. It took generations to accept evolution –and now it seems only sensible that the random acquisition of those traits that help survival will be the ones selected for in the next generation. It was not an upwardly purposeful spiral that inevitably led to homo sapiens; evolution doesn’t change cows to humans –it just eventually creates cows better able to survive in whatever milieu they find themselves. And randomly –the unfit are still granted existence, but if they are not suited, they pass on little benefit to their progeny.

It’s true that animals –mammals, especially- do attempt to influence desirable traits in their offspring by choosing healthy partners exhibiting those characteristics. Hence various mating rituals and dominance contests amongst the males; hence elaborate male bird plumage, presumably a proxy, recognizable by a receptive female, as indicative of a primus inter pares. And yet it was probably regarded as curious in premodern societies that a female would be accorded any important choice, let alone that of selecting what she wanted in a partner. Although there has always been a cadre of women who have made their marks throughout recorded history, the examples are sadly limited –curtailed no doubt, because it was usually men writing about what they felt was important to document.

Fortunately, times are changing, as is the realization that each side of the gender divide is equipotent. Just how fluid the roles are is a constant source of wonder to me. Even in these days of Darwin, I am amazed at the still unsuspected porosity of the envelope. And while it no longer seems unusual or unlikely that an information-processing organism like, say, a bird might be able to select an appropriately endowed mate based on observable clues, it is still surprising –to me, at least- that selection duties might be conferred on a more microscopic scale: on an egg, for example.

I first encountered this idea in an article from Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/choosy-eggs-may-pick-sperm-for-their-genes-defying-mendels-law-20171115/  I have to say it reminded me of Hamlet’s rejoinder to the sceptical Horatio on seeing Hamlet’s father’s ghost: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

The competition in sexual selection was thought to be pre-copulatory –‘After mating, the female had made her choice, and the only competition was among the sperm swimming to the egg. This male-oriented view of female reproductive biology as largely acquiescent was pervasive, argued Emily Martin, an anthropologist at New York University, in a 1991 paper. “The egg is seen as large and passive. It does not move or journey but passively ‘is transported’…along the fallopian tube. In utter contrast, sperm are small, ‘streamlined’ and invariably active,” she wrote.

‘Beginning in the 1970s, however, the science began to undermine that stereotype. William Eberhard, now a behavioural ecologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, documented all the ways that females can affect which males fertilize their eggs even after mating.’ For example, ‘Internal fertilizers have their own methods of what Eberhard dubbed “cryptic female choice.” Some female reproductive tracts are labyrinthine, complete with false starts and dead ends that can stymie all but the strongest sperm. Some females, including many species of reptiles, fish, birds and amphibians, that copulate with more than one male (which biologists estimate are a vast majority of species) can store sperm for months, even years, altering the storage environment to stack the odds to favor one male over another. Many female birds, including domestic chickens, can eject sperm after mating , which lets them bias fertilization in favor of the best male.’

The plot thickens. These strategies seem only to select whose sperm to allow access to the precious as-yet unfertilized eggs. But even sperm from the same individual can vary. So, are things just left to chance? Are we still talking Darwin here? And are the combination probabilities proposed by Mendel that depend on randomness still in the picture?

It would seem that the egg itself may have a say in which sperm it uses, and that unlike the voting system in many democracies, it may not be just the ‘first past the post’ -the marathon winner- who gets the prize.

The article presents several theories as to how the egg may be able to ‘choose’, but as yet there seems to be no clear indication as to whether it always happens, or whether it is just able to weed out some potentially damaging or clearly unsuitable ones by the signals they emit –or fail to emit… Sometimes, anyway. Mistakes clearly occur; abnormal genes do manage to slip through, leading to abnormal embryos –some of which are unable to develop enough to survive.

But that there may be yet another layer of protection built into the system –another unsuspected surveillance system- is what intrigues me. And that, once again, it seems to invest the power of a truly critical decision with the female is a cautionary tale for those who cling to the shredding coattails of androcentrism. It is simply another piece of evidence, if more were needed, that Life and all that it enables, is not a zero sum game. It is not a contest between genders, but a journey together. Still…

Let there be spaces in your togetherness.                                                                                      And let the winds of heaven dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but each one of you be
alone – even as the strings of a lute are alone though the quiver
with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not in each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the Cyprus grow not in each other’s shadows. –Kahlil Gibran –

I couldn’t resist.