Tag Archives: culture

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To Be or Not to Be

We are all creatures of our cultures; we are all influenced, if not captured, by the ethos that affected our parents. And for most of us, it is where we feel the most comfortable. It does not require any clarification, or justification -it just is the way things are. The way things are supposed to be. Anything else is not simply an eccentricity, it is an aberration.

I think one of the aspects of Age that sometimes earned respect in times past, was the ability of some elders to stand aside from the fray and place things in context, examine long held opinions and wonder about their value. Unfortunately, often these voices of wisdom were rare and societal acceptance even rarer. At least until the time of social media, Zeitgeist moved like a snail, and only things like war or disasters could reliably hurry it on its journey. We were limited by geography to parochial assumptions of normalcy. We had no reason to doubt that our values were appropriate, and in all likelihood, universal.

Gender was one of those self-evident truths about which there could surely be no dissenting views. We are what genitalia we possess, and our sex is assigned accordingly. Period. Indeed, for years I saw no reason to question this belief. I could understand same-sex relationships easily enough, but the need to interrogate the very idea of ‘sexual identity’ did not occur to me. As I said, I am a creature of my Time, my Culture.

There was a fascinating article in Aeon, an online publication, that helped me to understand how very blinkered my view had been. It was written by Sharyn Graham Davies, an associate professor in the School of Languages and Social Sciences at Auckland University of Technology:

https://aeon.co/essays/the-west-can-learn-from-southeast-asias-transgender-heritage?

‘[T]he very word ‘transgender’ came into common usage only in the past 20 years or so, and even the word ‘gender’ itself was popularised only in the 1970s. So we couldn’t even talk about transgender in a sophisticated way until practically yesterday.’ Indeed, some people seem to think that the whole idea of ‘transgendered’ people is not only strange, but also a novel, made-up aberration. ‘But there’s a problem if transgender is considered a particularly recent issue, or as a peculiarly Western phenomena. The perceived novelty of transgender people often leads to the accusation that they don’t have a right to exist, that they are just ‘making it up’, or even trying to cash in on some celebrity status, like that acquired by Caitlyn Jenner, the American TV personality who in 2015 transitioned from Bruce Jenner, the Olympian decathlete.’

Among other cultures, the author highlights the case of the bissu, an ‘an order of spiritual leaders (often framed as a priest or shaman) who are commissioned to perform all sorts of tasks for the local community, such as helping those in power to make important decisions on topics such as marriage alliances, crop harvest dates and settlements of debt.’ They were likely first described in a letter written in 1544 to João de Albuquerque, the Portuguese bishop of the Indian state of Goa, by António de Paiva, a Portuguese merchant and missionary, when he was in Sulawesi in Indonesia.

And from the author of the article, we learn that ‘The [local] Bugis people thought that when a being became a woman or a man, that being could no longer communicate with the gods. Men and women were in some sense cut off from the gods that made them. But the gods had a means of communicating with humans: the bissu. Because the gods left the bissu undifferentiated – a combination of woman and man – they are accorded a position of influence. As the bissu bring together woman and man in one person, they can mediate between humans and gods through blessings.’

Interestingly, ‘Early indigenous manuscripts also talk of the bissu occupying a special social position because they combined female and male qualities. But the analytic tools available to these earlier commentators were slim – there was no word for anything like ‘gender’. Therefore, it is difficult to assess whether the bissu were considered a ‘third’ gender or as crossing from ‘one’ gender to the ‘other’ (transgender). However, what we can say is that there was a powerful sense of what today would be called ‘gender pluralism’

But this concept of pluralism was not confined to Indonesia by any means. For example, ‘According to Peter Jackson, a scholar at the Australian National University in Canberra, gender was not differentiated in Thailand until the 1800s. Before then, Thai princes and princesses dressed the same, with matching hairstyles. But in the 19th century, to impress the British, the Thai monarchy decided that women and men should be clearly differentiated with unique clothing and hairstyles… So in fact the Western gender system created ‘transgenderism’ – crossing from one gender to another made no sense in Thailand when there weren’t two strictly defined genders.’

So Graham Davies sums up her arguments about transgenderism by saying, ‘Human nature is diverse, and any attempt to split all 7 billion of us into one of just two categories based on mere genitals is both impossible and absurd. Transgender people have played crucial roles in societies throughout history.’

I find the article intriguing for several reasons, but I suppose the most compelling is that it calls into question what seems for most of us to be self-evident: that gender assignation should be commensurate with genital (or, nowadays, chromosomal) possession. Perhaps it is a good starting point in a culture that demarcates societal roles according to gender, but even a short step back would challenge the need for such rigid rules. Yes, maybe DNA does dictate that only the female is able to become pregnant and propagate the species, but why should it also demarcate other aspects of identity? Why should gender matter in a vocation, say, or even in a sport…? Surely it would be better to depend on quality of performance. And, for that matter, why should it be irrevocable once assigned?

I realize how naïve that sounds -self-identity seems to be such an important component of our ability to function in a multifaceted society. ‘While transgender often implies a crossing from one gender to the next, the use of third gender is a way to try to frame a separate and legitimate space for individuals who want to be considered outside this binary. The debate over terms and labels is fiercely contested, as any comments around the ever-increasing acronym LGBTQIA (for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual) suggest.’

It seems to me that a helpful way to think about these roles is to understand that they do exist, and they have probably always existed. They are not new phenomena, nor are they bizarre. In fact, they are ‘abnormal’ only in that they usually do not represent the majority in most modern societies. But ‘abnormal’ does not mean aberrant -or necessarily perverse.

And yes, I also realize that the acceptance of cultural relativism swings on a wide pendulum over time, but I have to go back to something one of my favourite poets, Kahlil Gibran, wrote: Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.” Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.” For the soul walks upon all paths.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye?

Isn’t it interesting how differently we look at things? How the same bridge crossed by ten people becomes ten bridges? How beauty is so subjective? So ephemeral? Just think of how Shakespeare opened his second sonnet: When forty winters shall besiege thy brow and dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now, will be a tattered weed, of small worth held.

And yet to some, beauty -however evanescent- seems a prize worth having, no matter the sacrifice. It seems unfair that it should have been doled out to some, but not to others. There are cultures where the inequity of this disparity is taken seriously; there are countries where beauty is felt to be a right to which all should be entitled no matter their social strata.

So accustomed am I to my own cultural mask, I have to admit that I had not realized that Brazil was such a place until I came across an article in the Conversation that addressed the issue. It was written by Alvaro Jarrin, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. https://theconversation.com/in-brazil-patients-risk-everything-for-the-right-to-beauty-94159 ‘Brazil considers health to be a basic human right and provides free health care to all its citizens. […] In Brazil […] patients are thought of as having the “right to beauty.” In public hospitals, plastic surgeries are free or low-cost.’ But, ‘public hospitals remain severely underfunded, and most middle-class and upper-class Brazilians prefer to use private medical services.’

Jarrin feels there is a darker side to this medical largesse however, in that the surgeries are frequently performed by more junior surgeons, just learning their techniques (albeit likely under the supervision of more experienced surgeons as is frequently the case even in the USA).

He goes on to say, ‘Yet these patients, most of whom were women, also told me that living without beauty in Brazil was to take an even bigger risk. Beauty is perceived as being so central for the job market, so crucial for finding a spouse and so essential for any chances at upward mobility that many can’t say no to these surgeries.’

‘Plastic surgery is considered an essential service largely due to the efforts of a surgeon named Ivo Pitanguy. In the late 1950s, Pitanguy […] convinced President Juscelino Kubitschek that the “right to beauty” was as basic as any other health need. Pitanguy made the case that ugliness caused so much psychological suffering in Brazil that the medical class could not turn its back on this humanitarian issue. In 1960, he opened the first institute that offered plastic surgery to the poor, one that doubled as a medical school to train new surgeons. It was so successful that it became the educational model followed by most other plastic surgery residencies around the country. In return for free or low-cost surgeries, working-class patients would help surgeons learn and practice their trade.’

The author seems to feel that the reconstructive aspects of plastic surgery -techniques for the treatment of burn victims and those with congenital deformities, etc.- have taken a back seat to techniques geared to aesthetic enhancement, however. ‘Since most of the surgeries in public hospitals are carried out by medical residents who are still training to be plastic surgeons, they have a vested interest in learning aesthetic procedures – skills that they’ll be able to later market as they open private practices. But they have very little interest in learning the reconstructive procedures that actually improve a bodily function or reduce physical pain. Additionally, most of Brazil’s surgical innovations are first tested by plastic surgeons in public hospitals, exposing those patients to more risks than wealthier patients.’

As a retired (gynaecological) surgeon myself, I have to say that I take issue with the naive view Jarrin seems to have about the training of the resident surgeons he reports. After all, clearly it would be better for the young surgeon to learn techniques under the careful guidance of an experienced mentor, than to suddenly be expected to possess the required expertise once she has passed her exams. Indeed, a selection bias is perhaps equally applicable to the anecdotes Jarrin quotes to demonstrate his contention. But, in fairness, I may be guilty of an insidiously perverted form of cultural relativism myself: I see my own world even when it’s not…

Cultural relativism, first popularized in the early twentieth century, attempts to understand and judge other cultures not by our own standards, but by theirs. It is a contextually rooted approach that can be devilishly difficult to achieve. We are all inherently cultural solipsists; we learn customs from the cradle and mistrust or actively disavow any deviations from those to which we have become habituated.

Even beauty itself is fraught. What is beautiful? Surely it is an ill-defined shadow on a rather large spectrum, its position tentative and arbitrary, depending as it must, on time and measurement. Shakespeare knew that. We all know that… Or do we? Are there unequivocal, objective criteria that must be met, or are they entirely subjectively defined? Culturally allotted? Surgically assigned?

No one has defined beauty more bewitchingly, in my opinion, than the poet, Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese-American writer and artist in The Prophet. When the prophet is asked about beauty, he replies:

… beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

… beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

I cannot criticize the cultural ethos of Brazil, or its need for beauty; I can only wonder whether they will ever find what they are so desperately seeking. Who can touch a rainbow just by reaching?

 

 

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Whether ’tis Nobler in the Mind

I may have inadvertently stumbled upon something important. I may have found a boundary marker that potentially distinguishes New Age from Old Age. Of course, definitionally I could be way out of my league –New Age being construed as anything that happened after I left university- but considered as a panoply, I think it works, if only conceptually.

I happened upon an article in the CBC news app while scrolling through my phone, that struck me as interesting: http://www.cbc.ca/1.4302866 -perhaps because I had never thought about technology in those terms, and perhaps because I felt embarrassed that I had been caught doing just that.

The premise was that we seem to turn to various apps on our devices for problem solving of many sorts. Everything from comparing shopping prices to trends in fashion to the latest news. And, as we are increasingly discovering, these digital peregrinations revisit us in the form of directed advertisements hoping to cash in on our whimsical journeys. Nothing is thrown away in the digital world –even our whims are stored, categorized, and pragmatically redistributed. And if notions, then it seems a small step to include moods. Emotions –positive, or otherwise- should be equally trackable.

In fact, I learned that ‘Google announced it now offers mental-health screenings when users in the U.S. search for “depression” or “clinical depression” on their smartphones. Depending on what you type, the search engine will actually offer you a test. […] And Facebook is working on an artificial intelligence that could help detect people who are posting or talking about suicide or self-harm.’

Perhaps this is where I feel the shadow of a boundary issue. There seems little question that mood disorders transcend age and gender; what is more problematic, however, is whether there may be a generational divide in confiding those emotions digitally, or even believing that solace could lie therein. The problem is not so much in putting these issues in writing –diaries, and correspondence, after all, have long been a rich retrospective source for biographers. The difference, it seems to me though, is the intent of the disclosure –diaries have traditionally been personal, and usually, not meant as a way of communication, but rather a way of sorting out thoughts. Private thoughts. Letters, as well, were directed to particular individuals –often trusted confidants- and not meant for publication outside that circle. Have the older generation –Generation R, for example (Retirement, to attach a label)- been sufficiently swept up in the digital river, to feel comfortable in clinging to its flotsam like their children?

I’m certainly not gainsaying the efforts of the internet giants to expand into the mental health realm –it seems a natural progression, so perhaps this is a start… and yet it’s one thing to key in on various words like ‘depression’ and have the algorithm kick in with a screening test, but another to sift through the context to determine the appropriateness of offering the test. I suppose random screening like that may be helpful for some, but as Dr. John Torous, the co-director of the digital psychiatry program at Harvard Medical School and chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s workgroup on smartphone apps, observes, ‘”One of the trickiest things is that language is complex … and there’s a lot of different ways that people can phrase that they’re in distress or need help.”’ Amen to that.

Quite apart from translational difficulties and the more abstract and culturally-fraught issues with their changing metaphors and societal expectations, there are other language problems –even in the dominant language of whatever country: changing vocabularies, local argot, and misspellings, to name only a few.

To state that human culture is complex, is a trope, and to believe that artificial intelligence will be able to keep up with its multifaceted, ever-changing face, anytime soon is probably naïve. And, as the article points out, privacy –no matter the promises of the internet provider, or the app-producer- is another weak link in the chain. Quite apart from malicious hacking, or innocent and trusting confidence in the potential for help, ‘Our phones already collect a tremendous amount of personal data. They know where we are and who we’re speaking and texting with, as well as our voice, passwords, and internet browsing activities. “If on top of that, we’re using mental-health services through the phone, we may actually be giving up a lot more data than people realize,” Torous says. He also cautions that many of the mental-health services currently available in app stores aren’t protected under federal privacy laws [at least in the United States], so you’re not afforded the same privacy protections as when you talk to a doctor.’

In a very real –if mainly age-related- sense, I am relieved I did not grow up in the digital age. I am fortunate that Orwell’s prescient ‘1984’ was available, not as a quaint attempt at predicting the future, but as a warning about a creeping surveillance that seemed so malevolently unrealistic when it was written –it was first published in 1949, remember. And when I read it, the date was still sufficiently far in the future that it seemed more science fiction than predictive. Yet, as the years wore on, and society changed in unexpected ways, the horrors of the theme, for me at least, became more and more uncomfortable. More and more possible, despite the reassuring smoke blown in our eyes by those eager for progress, and mesmerized by the possibilities.

I mention this, not to suggest that I was unique in this discomfort –I was obviously not- nor to imply that what we are now experiencing is evil, or even threatening, but merely to explain the hesitation of many of those my age in accepting, unreservedly, the digitally-wrapped gifts so readily proffered. It is not a venue to which I would likely turn for health issues, or emotional sustenance.

For me, there is something more reassuring about an eye-to-eye encounter with another member of the same species, able to understand the vagaries of language, and compare the nuanced phrasing of my words with the expression on my face. Perhaps, I’ll change -perhaps I’ll have to- and yet… and yet I’d still feel better dealing with an entity –a person– able to experience the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. And yes, someone who has read and understood what Shakespeare meant.

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Let No One Put Asunder

At my age, I suppose I should have learned to expect the unexpected, to revel in the entrepreneurism of a new and alien generation, and to wonder at its ability to see opportunity in the predicaments of others. But then again, why not? Isn’t that what lawyers are all about? And doctors…? Where would we be without predicaments?

Alright, I accept that the approach may seem cheeky, or even downright calculating, but I have to say I sometimes admire the attempt –a Swedish hotel chain is ‘offering a refund to couples who get divorced within a year of staying at one of its places.’ http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-39382059 The idea being, apparently, ‘to encourage spouses to spend time together and work on their relationship’. And so, ‘It’s offering a “relationship guarantee” on mini-breaks at its hotels, so if things subsequently don’t work out and the marriage ends within a year, then the chain says it will reimburse the cost of a two-night stay’.

Of course, they’re not fools; nobody wants to be taken to the cleaners -they’re out to make a profit and, perhaps naively, figure that those who decide to vacation together for a while might not be that close to the brink. And, naturally, ‘There is some fine print: couples must be already married, stay in the same room and reference the relationship guarantee when booking. If they subsequently divorce and want to claim a refund, they have to submit court documents as evidence’.

I don’t know… At first glance, it might seem that they’re either very naïve, or really convinced they have an effective therapy -I mean, the divorce to marriage ratio in Sweden (2010, at least) was 47%. On second glance, however, the marriage rate in Sweden according to Eurostat Demographic Statistics –OECD Family Database (2014)- was only around 6 per 1000. So who, exactly, is sufficiently wide-eyed not to notice they may be on to something? I’m reminded of most private insurance agencies who offer great deals as long as you are low risk and have no major ongoing disabilities.

But it speaks to something larger, I think: the institute of marriage itself. Marriage is something which is incredibly difficult to define. In its simplest form, it is an officially sanctioned union between two people that affords legitimacy to any offspring and entails certain rights and responsibilities -and these vary from one society to another. In Western cultures it has been the religious –or secular (usually governmental)- authorities that are required to sanction and guarantee those issues. But in other societies, families, traditions, and deeply held beliefs often prescribe the boundaries, duties, and also the rights of each person in the relationship. Hence the cross-cultural misunderstandings and misgivings. We tend to ascribe the most legitimacy to that of the society in which we were raised.

Guilt, is not imposed, by and large, it is acquired -usually at a very early age- by deviating from the expectations of those we love and trust: our family, and immediate friends, bonds that link intimately with cultural and, often, religious beliefs. Sexual mores and intimacy are no exception -in fact, they are often the incentives offered by matrimony.

But marriage is becoming more popular recently, even in Sweden, with the ongoing influx of migrants from other cultures who were raised with different familial and religious obligations to which they feel they must adhere -obligations which may not be as easily dissolved, or as readily ignored as in the host country. After all, ‘Marriage is a matter of more worth than to be dealt in by attorneyship’ according to Shakespeare.

So is the hotel chain actually reading those trends, too? And are there other conditions –loopholes- that are not immediately apparent in their advertisements? Fine print? Exceptions? I don’t know, but I certainly wish them well. It’s a gamble on their part, to be sure… But I think I’d put my money in real estate, frankly.

Perhaps I’m just being far too cynical, though. Far too… divorced –there, I said it- but I’m willing to bet that they haven’t read the famous definition of how realistic are the expectations of marriage by none other than George Bernard Shaw in his preface to ‘Getting Married,’ 1908: ‘[W]hen two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition until death do them part’.

Pick your side on divorce and marriage, but they do seem to follow each other around and around like a tail the dog. I have to say, part of me is tempted to quote Samuel Johnston’s sarcasm (out of context) on the hotel chain’s promise -that it’s ‘The triumph of hope over experience’. And yet, when I stop to think of it, why not credit them with the courage of their conviction? Why not Alexander Pope’s ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’…?  After all, that’s what they’re trying to accomplish in those couples who stay with them… And that’s what we all hope for, isn’t it?

 

 

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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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The itsy bitsy teenie weenie?

I am no longer simply bemused at the secular paranoia that seems to be growing like Topsy in the Western world; I am becoming irritated; I am becoming annoyed that it is now even conflating fashion with politics and spreading like blight in a deliberately monocultured crop. Pick your battles, folks –this is a demeaning one. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/16/burkini-ban-defended-as-french-mayors-urged-to-cool-local-tensions?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Or is it just silly: burkini -coined merely to suggest the word ‘burka’ and also contrast it with its other ‘ini’ cousin the bikini? An attempt to denigrate opposites? Have we grown so accustomed to less being more on the beach, that more is now less? Have we already forgotten how shocking the bikini was when it first appeared in the middle of the last century? How it was banned from many beaches then, and declared sinful by no less an authority than the Vatican?

Admittedly, the bikini reveals considerably more of the female anatomy and no doubt arouses different sorts of… well, passions, shall we say, than the iteration I’m discussing. But some of the burkini styles and colours are quite beautiful and, at least from my prairie -and admittedly male perspective- far more attractive than the burka parent. It is, for all intents and purposes, a tempest in a teapot.

Terrorist events in France have undoubtedly kindled a controversy over an issue that would otherwise have been merely a dispute over aesthetics –“Why would anybody want to wear something like that, on a beach? It must be so hot…” And that would have been that. Except for the resistance of some governments to clothing with even a hint of religious affiliation, the burkini would have quietly slipped into normalcy – become as obvious as nose-rings or purple hair. A barely noticeable mise-en-scène.

Of course there was that skirmish on a Corsican beach in August between some villagers and three Muslim families: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/15/corsica-mayor-bans-burkini-violence-beach-protests-sisco-france  But, interestingly, it was not at all certain whether any of the women were wearing burkinis at the time… The mayor decided to ban them anyway.

I can understand the reason… sort of. The idea, presumably, was to defuse tensions -not draw attention to cultural or religious differences in a time of us and them. Even when, in fact, they are actually us. The problem, I suspect, is that we are living in an inter regnum –a time when differences, no matter how picayune or superficial, may assume larger than life proportions –a significance that, when viewed years hence, might seem recondite –if not puerile. But it’s all very confusing, not to mention counterproductive, even now.

Surely inclusivity engenders familiarity and acceptance –on both sides. Banning something often breeds resistance and anger. And banning an innocent article of clothing is both capricious and inflammatory. If there were ever anything that could engender feelings of separation and non-acceptance, it is the belittling of the honest attempts of a culture to adapt to something that so enamours the population in which it is enmeshed -something that allows Muslims to visit beaches while letting them adjust their customs to what may never have been envisioned as a desirable or even feasible activity by their ancestors.

I remember a patient of mine that had a different take on the issue. Fatima was a devout Muslim woman who had nonetheless adopted many of the dress codes, so familiar on our streets. I was seeing her and her husband for antenatal care in their first pregnancy and once they both realized that I was nothing to be feared, we were able to talk openly about many things other than her pregnancy.

At the beginning, for example, she would always arrive wearing the more inclusive covering of a niqab –albeit a colorfully patterned one. Then she began wearing a hijab to our visits. I asked her why.

I remember she looked at me and her eyes twinkled as her mouth wrinkled into a shy smile. I noticed her husband was smiling, too.

She immediately shrugged, as if it was an unimportant observation on my part. “I wanted you to know when I was smiling,” she said mischievously. Then, her eyes suddenly became the interrogators –gentle inquisitors- and hovered about my face for a moment. “And quit looking at him,” she giggled. “He’s terrible at choosing clothes anyway…” It was a good-natured rebuke; Fatima evidently disliked our western stereotypes.

Although it was her husband that was the reason for her presence in Canada –he was doing some post-doctoral research in oceanography- Fatima was also fluent in English and more observant about our own vagaries than I was.

It was a hot summer that year, and conversation naturally turned to Vancouver’s love of its beaches.

“I really don’t understand Vancouverites,” she said with a laugh. “They flock to the beach and strip down so they can lie on the hot sand like wieners on a barbecue…” We all laughed. “I think it’s just a fad, though,” she added, her face turning serious for a second.

I nodded. “Maybe someday, someone will design beach clothing that is comfortable and cool, but still protects them from the sun…” I said it without thinking, I have to admit.

“We already have,” she said and winked.

How parochial we can be in this country, despite the vaunted cultural mosaic of which we are so demonstrably proud.

Cultures change –but more slowly than fashions. Maybe the rest of us will someday find ourselves covering up more of our skin on beaches to prevent UV damage; mothers are already dressing up their toddlers as they muck about in the sand… Beaches themselves are a fashion, after all. There was a time not so long ago when people feared the sea and –at least in Britain- only aristocrats seeking the putative benefits of both spa and beach for reasons of health were able to afford the areas where this was offered. In time, of course, the rabble followed and now we merely view beaches as de rigueur. But given the fickleness of contemporary life, perhaps this too shall pass, as the adage has it.

Fortunately, however, France’s highest court has allowed us to breathe deeply again, and step back a few paces for now -it has decided to suspend the ban on burkinis: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37198479 Sadly, the issue has not yet been put to bed; there is still considerable resistance among politicians and elements of the population who fear an upheaval of the status quo, and a slide into the morass of sectarianism. Several mayors have even threatened to ignore the ruling.

French law notwithstanding, it seems to me that the noticeability of an article of clothing like the burkini should not merit more than a transient raising of an eyebrow –if that- and certainly not a clash of Civilizations. Its proscription will not discourage terrorism, but perhaps its approval might. Who knows what a welcome might do to a culture so long viewed as other: strangers in a strange land…?

 

by

An Unfamiliar Worry (for some)

I don’t know how the world used to manage with just men at the helm. There are so many things –obvious things- that simply pass by us uncharted. I don’t think its intentional; it’s more likely that those things just do not affect us in the same way. They have different consequences; we assign them different priorities –if we assign them at all…

There are, of course, some issues at which men seem relatively proficient at first glance- such as dealing with the needs of refugees arriving in Europe or wherever, from war torn areas of the world. When they arrive, attempts are made to provide for their health and safety while they are being processed. Because of the large numbers arriving, this often means settling them temporarily in camps where the basic needs of shelter, food, and medical care can be provided.

But those are relatively easy things to plan for -easy things to discuss at any  rate. Add in education for the children, maybe phone service so they can communicate with their families back home, and perhaps even, as icing on their cakes, leisure activities, and… Well, apart from a chance of permanent resettlement or, of course, improving the chaos in their home countries so they could return, what else could refugees possibly need? Or want?

Full disclosure: I am a man, and despite my forty-plus years as a gynaecologist, I’m afraid my brain is still sometimes stuck in Y mode. One would have thought that if anyone could transcend gender –wear other shoes- a gynaecologist might be in the running. But I missed this one: ‘About one in four of Zaatari’s [Jordan’s largest refugee camp] residents need sanitary pads. The UN does distribute them now and again to women aged 14 to 45, but there are never enough to go round.’ Sanitary products, even if they are available, can be expensive; the temptation is probably to use whatever personal money is available for other, more survival-oriented necessities. I learned this from an insightful article in BBC News: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34925238  A British woman named Amy Peake not only discovered the need, but found a simple machine in India that would allow women  to make sanitary pads cheaply and on site. ‘On top of that, Peake discovered, there is a desperate need for incontinence pads for the many wounded, elderly and disabled people – and traumatised children. “The children are really suffering,” says Peake. “The problem is that the mothers have been trying to cope for so long that basically they’ve given up. Night after night of urine and they can’t keep them clean.’

There are so many things in everyday life that most of us take for granted until they are not available –things like a clean and timely change of clothes, the ability to maintain personal cleanliness in a culturally sensitive manner, and in private if desired. Although necessary, it is simply not sufficient to provide only the obvious -food, shelter, and so on- and then assume normalcy will ensue; we are all products of societies laden with traditions and expectations –this is what it is to be human. To strip these away is not only cruel, and disrespectful, it is also degrading. Inhuman. After all, they were living lives much like us until forced by war and unspeakable danger to flee from their homes for the sake of their families. For the sake of their futures… They are not merely bodies in need of sustenance, they are mothers and fathers… children… and so are we. So the question we must continue to ask ourselves is whether we would be comfortable treating our own families in the same way as these refugees. Would we feel that we have been sensitive to their needs?

Admittedly, in times of crisis and overwhelming numbers, some things must be prioritized, while others, perhaps less important to survival, need to be relegated to the background. But not neglected. Not forgotten. The refugees, already traumatized and exhausted by the hardships of their journeys and often bewildered by the contrasts with their previous lives, are ill equipped to complain. They are initially powerless, and confused, but very soon understand that once the basics have been provided, once the threat to life and limb has receded, there is another thing they desperately require: dignity. If they are ever to be assimilated into another country, another culture, another life, they must regain their self-esteem. Their pride.

We must not forget that different societies may view the world in different ways. Things to which we in the West have long since been accustomed are sometimes still problems elsewhere. Attitudes about the management of menstruation is one such problem. In many traditions, it is not only a secretive event that must be concealed from others for fear of ridicule, but also dealt with by whatever is at hand. The stigma around menstrual periods is complicated and culturally sensitive as I have already discussed in several other blogs:

https://musingsonwomenshealth.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/menstrual-taboos/, https://musingsonwomenshealth.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/menstruation-and-sports/, and even: https://musingsonwomenshealth.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/the-tampon-tax/

So I’m not sure why this article came as such a revelation. Maybe it was a reminder that we all see the world from our own perspectives: two people crossing one bridge is really two people crossing two bridges… And yet, to a third who is watching from the edge, it’s still the same bridge.

I should have known!  ‘But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.’ as Lenin said.’ so I suppose I’ll have to accept that Time is a series of tests, and you only get marked at the end… I hope.

I can only offer the words of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello:

‘I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at…’