Feminism on the P-list (wa Re: childbirth etc.)

[davemarc]

Portions of the following may seem to be personal attacks.  If so, I
apologize.  I do not want to engage in any personal attacks.  I want to try
to move this thread in a less personal and more productive, interesting,
and Pynchon-related direction.  

Thanks for your patience.

davemarc

***

> Charles F. Albert <calbert at pop.tiac.net>

reponding to davemarc, who writes

> > Let me get this straight.  Charles feels that nature has screwed over
> > women?  That the male medical establishment hasn't?  
> 
> Please identify the agent that mandated that women bear children.
> 
> Still waiting.....

Wait no longer.  

1.  Charles seems to think that childbearing is something of a curse for
women, a way for nature to screw women over.  It seems to me that one of
Dana's points was that patriarchal societies, not nature, have defined
menstruation and pregnancy as curses, a way to "screw over women" (just to
use that charming, just possibly patriarchal phrase (cf.  Chasing Amy)). 
So this is one of those examples of Charles illustrating Dana's point.  I
happen to feel that it isn't nature that's screwed over women. 
Reproduction is nature itself, more common to living things than
intellectualization--which is what labels reproduction as being a curse, a
blessing, etc.

2.  But as far as identifying "the agent that mandated that women bear
children," I can think of patriarchal societies in which it was mandated
that women bear children.  Nazi Germany and communist Romania, for example,
are two recent examples of state-sponsored baby-making that are
patriarchal.  And abortion wasn't exactly legal in the US until after the
rise of feminism.  And of course many classic examples of mandated
childbearing can be found in Christian religions, most notoriously
Catholicism--portrayed in Mason & Dixon as one of the great empires of the
18th Century.  (Anyone recall mandated childbearing in M&D?)  Seems to me
that if there's been any agent that's mandated that women bear children,
it's not been nature but the enormously wealthy, powerful, and
male-dominated Catholic Church.
> 
> Does the nature of the medical establishment change now that women 
> are included? And I still ask, is it thumbs down on ob\gyn or not?

I'm rather amazed by these questions.  Perhaps it doesn't matter at all
that women have finally received the right to vote in many parts of the
world.  Perhaps nothing's changed in the US as a result of blacks and women
and people aged 18-20 achieving suffrage and the right to serve on
juries....

Anyway, I am happy to inform the Internet community that, yes, the nature
of the medical establishment has changed now that women are included. 
Women's medical issues are taken far more seriously and sympathetically. 
Ob/gyn care has improved considerably, and it's benefitted from the revival
of midwifery and other feminist-related developments over the past
half-century.  I imagine that lots of women felt as alienated going into
all-male maternity wards in the 1960s as Oedipa did during her odyssey in
the male environs of The Crying of Lot 49.  
>  
> > Even if I weren't aware of the points Dana raise (the well-documented
AMA
> > assault on midwifery and normal female biological functions), my
awareness
> > that many male doctors colluded to put unwanted wives in the loony bin
and
> > typically made light of women's pain--from menstrual cramps to
depression
> > to typewriter-wrist (a working woman's maldy that finally became
> > legitimized as repetitive stress syndrome as soon as men started using
word
> > processors)--
> 
> You make a point of stating "MY awareness". Are you assuming that I 
> am non-sentient? Even worse, are you suggesting that I am unaware of 
> what you describe above? 

No, I am not assuming that Charles is non-sentient.  And I am not
suggesting that he is unaware of what I described.  I was just making a
case in response to this kind of exchange--

Dana had posited: 

> It's the way
> midwives were exiled by orthodox (read patriarcal) medicine, the
> way hysteria was associated with our organs,the way menstruation has lost
> its cool original ideology as a cyclical return in tune with the cosmos.

And Charles response to Dana was:

"Are women better off with or without obstetricians and gynecologists? 
Are women who practise these arts collaborators?
I'm beginning to wonder if you should be allowed to read without 
supervision."

I saw no indication in this retort that Charles felt that Dana's points had
any validity whatsoever.  What I saw was unmitigated contempt for her
non-hysterical remarks. 

> I think some of these gender issues are no 
> longer relevant, and that some elements of feminism border on 
> hysteria. That does not preclude me from objecting to what is truly 
> repressive, I just don't take every opportunity to get up on the soap 
> box to glibly generalize and hurl unwarranted accusations. But, Dave, I
am profoundly 
> moved by your superior capacity to feel.

So what, specifically, are the gender issues that are no longer relevant? 
No need to tell me that some elements of feminism border on hysteria.  As
I've noted before when discussing feminism, some elements of all movements,
including feminism, are likely to border on hysteria or be flat-out
hysterical.  Sometimes the hysteria is justified--why shouldn't a feminist
who's been a victim of rape or another form of abuse be hysterical? 
Anyway....

No one's keeping Charles from objecting to anything in any way he wants. 
But if Charles is going to respond to what he thinks is hysterical behavior
with the same--glibly generalizing about feminism, sarcastically suggesting
that an opponent shouldn't be allowed to read, not even trying to make his
posts address non-hysterical remarks or even Pynchon--he shouldn't seem so
shocked if he might come across as a hysterical extremist himself and
receive some criticism, too.
> 
> I've read enough Pynchon (say, the plastic surgery scene in
> > V.) to realize that Charles's contemptuous rhetoric
> 
> You have, in the past, proven a pretty reasonable guy, but this is 
> bullshit. And as I recall, no-one coerced Rachel (did I remember that 
> right?) to have the rhinoplasty. It was the free choice of a 
> sovereign individual.

Here's a great case of extremist-sounding rhetoric that makes Charles seem
hysterical.  He's quick to use insulting language to characterize my
interpretation of a passage in V.--so quick that he hasn't even bothered to
check the book first.  I'll be happy to address his analysis of the passage
when he's taken the time to prepare himself more thoroughly.  In the
meantime, I will note that to posit that something in Pynchon is as simple
as being "the free choice of a sovereign individual" is extremely
problematic.  Programming, conditioning, and behaviorism--whatever you want
to call it--has got to be in Pynchon's Top Ten Themes.  It may even turn
out to be Numero Uno.  
> 
> > only illustrates the
> > case she's making.
> 
> If she has made ANY case to you in the past few days, then I would 
> suggest you develop a critical faculty. As you have noticed, other 
> members have objected to the tone of Dana's more exaggerated notions, 
> but I am sure you will set them all straight by trying to make an example
out 
> of me.
> 
I don't intend to make this personal.  I'm trying to move the subject
towards Pynchon, and trying to minimize the insulting rhetoric that's being
tossed around.  This list has chronically lost feminists--not their
critics.  I think that's a problem.  It strikes me that one thing that has
made this list intolerable to feminists is the hostility incurred by the
merest suggestion that an aspect of a patriarchal society has been hostile
towards women.  The incurred hostility *illustrates the case being made by
the feminist.*   If you disagree with a feminist point of view, no matter
how insulting it may seem, why not try taking the high road and elevating
the discussion a little bit?  Who knows?  There just might be some
interesting exchanges as a result.

I believe it was Charles who wrote that feminists should be able to take
the heat of p-list criticism a little better, last a little longer in an
intellectual slugfest.  Why?  Why should anyone--Charles, Dana, Paul,
Steelhead, Jules, moi--have to endure verbal punches on this list?  There's
an alternative:  engagement.   Let's all get engaged, shall we?  

davemarc