Standpoint Theory

I was just thinking about how we were talking about the Garland Thomson reading in class and standpoint theory earlier when I was talking to one of my best friends. She has Interstitial Cystitis. She's been extremely frustrated lately with the doctors here because her doctor where we're from in Columbia has seen and dealt with IC before but none of the doctors here seem to know what she's talking about and even when they get her medical records they are pretty much unable to help at all. She just said something that made me think of standpoint theory when we were talking about all of this because she said, "I know that it's not all that common, but I just forget that a lot because my mom has it, and my sister has it, and one of her friends has it." I just know we were talking about how when you're not in the majority you see things in a different light. It's not like it's an incredibly common problem and yet it's harder for her to see the problem with diagnosing and treating this because she feels like it is much more common than it really is.

Man with suicide victims heart take his own life

"Man with suicide victims heart takes his own life"
I found this article awhile ago, it is from April 2008, but it is an interesting aspect of organ donating that we didn't get a chance to discuss.
In the article a man receives a heart transplant and ends up dying the same way that the donor did, as well as marrying the wife of the donor. The cause of death was a self inflicted gunshot wound.
This article is an example of something we see in movies and television and sometimes hear about in the news, when the organ recipient begins to take on traits of the donor.
I wonder if there is any medical truth behind this phenomenon or if it is something that is thought up in the mind. Can an organ of one body really transfer the thoughts and feelings into the new body?
To me this really just seems like a coincidence, not a medical miracle. Also if the donor had killed himself then I believe it is safe to assume that he suffered from some sort of mental disorder or disease. Then the recipient dies the same exact way, is it possible for mental disease to cross over even when the source of the disease was not located in the transplanted organ? I really can not believe that this is possible.
These types of stories begin to blur the line between mind and body. There's the idea of qualities associated with the mind being associated with the body, and maybe proving that there is an even greater connection between mind and body that was previously thought.

Research Project

The Bad Girls Club

Above is the link that takes you to the home page for the Oxygen show "The Bad Girls Club" that I have chosen to do my project on.  I'm really excited about it because I often find myself either loving the show or hating the women because they continually perpetuate crazy stereotypes about women.  On the one hand, they show bodies as being tools of destruction, while some of the girls seem to use their bodies as tools of empowerment.  I'm a little confused about how I'm going to tie everything together.  Any thoughts??

12-16: small, average, or large?

Yesterday, I was in Greenville with my roommate because she needed new shoes for something or another. While we were there, we stopped by a Circuit City because she wanted to see what deals she could find. When we pulled into the parking lot, I noticed the buildings next to it: Sizes 12-16, Weight Watchers, and a fitness store similar to weight watchers. When my roommate saw it, she said “isn’t it kind of funny seeing a plus size store next to all these other stores geared towards fitness?” It was funny seeing these three stores side by side and hearing her comment. It made me think of in class how we talked about how back in the day, Marilyn Monroe was a size 12 and that was perfectly acceptable. It wasn’t considered as being big. I think it’s funny how things change. A size 12-16 is not large, but more average. However, it was portrayed as being large sizes because of where it was located. Put it next to a Cato’s with real plus sizes then it would be considered a store for smaller people. Funny how people think these days.

House

I don't usually watch TV because I don't have cable (I found that when I do have cable, my homework suffers even more than it does without the distraction) but since Santa brought me a digital converter, I get more channels than I did with just my rabbit ears. Hurray for modern science! So I've watched House (link to the episode) a couple of times because he's a jerk but he's always right so he gets away with his attitude and accompanying problems. Tonight, they got a little boy who had an extra y chromosome but they couldn't find 'his' uterus. Since he had passed out after basketball practice, his parents brought their beloved little freak of nature to the hospital for testing, certain it was because he was...different. He preferred dancing to basketball but the mother couldn't handle it so she forced him into more masculine sports and insisted her son wasn't ready to know the truth. In the end, he was sick because the mother was so over-protective. It was nicely done; House's closing words were that the boy was fine, just dehydrated. All the testing messed him up. "Just because you gave birth to a freak of nature doesn't mean you have to treat him like a freak of nature". Harsh, but so true. I blame myself when certain things happen to my son (he got into his first playground fight at school last week; I'm still traumatized). Parenting is difficult even in the most normal, conventional times with Perfectly Normal Kids (and Perfectly Normal Parents, of course) so how would I compensate for a genetic defect? Even if it isn't a defect so much as an abnormality, a diferent-ness, in your first or only child when you have no idea what you're doing? Bill Cosby says parents with only one child aren't really parents; if something is broken, you know who did it. It's not challenging enough. With a Perfectly Normal Child, that is. You don't notice the abnormalities as much when there are more children since every child is unique in different ways, each abnormality makes each child special in a different way. When there are more, it's easier to overlook the individual difficulties and see the bigger picture. Or maybe I just enjoy short bursts of chaos. I find it easier to deal with the big picture when there are several kids visiting rather than just my one needing entertainment; that's when I look for things to worry about.

Fragmentation of the body, continued

So, I started posting this as a response to the Will Smith post and Juliane's response about the fragmentation of the body of both an organ donor and recipient, but my response got too long :)

I found Juliane's comment about the fragmentation of the body an interesting viewpoint that got me thinking . . .


We place such a sanctity on the "body" that even after death, the body is still treated with care and consideration. It is dressed in its best clothes and placed in a beautiful box. People gaze at it and cry and say goodbye to the person who had lived in the body. We expect funeral directors to treat the body with dignity. We expect pall bearers to carefully carry the body from place to place. We bury it in the ground and we place a marker on top so that for all of eternity, the body can be located.

Why is the body as a whole sacred? What happens to a limb or organ that is removed? Is it simply discarded in a biologically safe way? It must be, right? Otherwise, we would be attending funerals for body parts? How many of those kinds of funerals have you seen? I can recall one, on the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, when the little boy's arm is buried.

My father-in-law passed away this month and I went to his funeral. He had been embalmed with his wedding band on and the funeral home was having a terrible time getting the ring off of his finger. My ex-husband was livid because they were in danger of damaging his finger in their attempts. I use this to illustrate that a limb, when attached to the whole, is just as sacred as any other portion of the body. So, why don't we have funerals/burials/rituals when just a limb is gone?

Is the body sacred so long as it contains the "life" of the person? Is my hand not as much me as my face? My heart? My brain? Because I can still exist without my hand, my hand is less valuable than my brain, right? But according to one of our writers in the last section (I don't have my book, sorry!), it is the sum of all the parts that make the whole have value. All cannot function without the service of the one.

I just thought this was interesting to ponder.

The Thinker or Hercules . . .

I really don't like how myspace bulletins have invaded facebook, but I can't help but read them. It's like a car accident. It's horrible, but I just can't look away . . .

I was reading a post today and one of the questions was "strong in mind or strong in body?" I thought this was an interesting question because it brought me back to the first days of this class when we were discussing what is a mind and what is a body and which has dominion over the other. The answer to the post was "strong in mind" and my first implusive answer was also "strong in mind." Why do we value this so much?

When I think of the kind of men I'm attracted to, they are always strong in body. I'm totally into the "hero" type (whatever THAT might be!). My ex-husband is a Soldier. Although he's skinny as a rail and probably only weighs 130 pounds soaking wet, he's stronger than a mule and could easily pick me up and carry me around and I outweigh him by . . . well, let's just say I outweigh him :). My most recent boyfriend is a former marine. He's also really into weight lifting. He dead lifts 405 pounds. He amazed my brother by pretty much carrying a dryer upstairs by himself. Why do I tell you these things? Because I say I would rather have someone "strong in mind" when in reality, strong in body is significantly important in my attraction to someone, but even with that reality, I would not say that this is the more important that strength in mind. Why, you ask?

Because these men are also strong in mind. Perhaps these men are even stronger in mind than the majority of the men I encounter and that is why I find them more attractive.

Perhaps "strong in body" is a manifestation of "strong in mind." It is a tangible, extrinsic value we can see and touch. It is evidence that substantiates our initial belief. A person who is strong in body is rarely of natural strength. A strong body implies self-discipline, the ability to sacrifice the hedonist calling of humanity, the ability to put "other" before "self", which, let's face it girls, is a rare commodity in a man. To me, a "strong mind" is one that can exert control over one's actions. A "strong mind" can check impulses, can exercise restraint. A "strong mind" does not act without rationale.

What would your answer to this question be? What do you think "strong in mind" means?

Will Smith and Mechanized Body

This picture takes me back to two of our discussions.  The first is the idea of the mechanized body and the other of organ donation.  even though the picture does not represent an organ donation, it does show the way bodies are put back together on a whim.  The picture shows Will's arm from the movie I, Robot where he has a robot arm.  He got the arm because he lost his trying to save a young girl.  In the movie, the robot chooses to save him because he has a higher chance of survival than the girl in the movie.  Surival becomes just a term in the movie because in saving him, the robot causes him to lose his arm and he must get another from a robot.  This thus makes his body parts and it also mechanizes him.  He becomes like a machine.  The part of him that is most machine is barely considered a part of him and he must hide the secret forever.  In this case, his donor, though not of organs, is the thing he hates the most.  Very interesting.

Law & Order SVU

I was watching Law & Order SVU yesterday, once during the day and the other at night, and both episodes were centered around a transgendered person!
In the first episode the male was taking hormones and looked like a women but had yet to have surgery. She ends up killing someone who was going to "out" her to her boyfriend, who didn't know that she was transgendered. An issue that comes up in this episode is that once she is sentenced to prison should she be put in a male prison or a female prison? I think this is a very tough decision to make!
In the second episode a boy is accused of attempting to kill his father because he refuses to let the child go on hormone blockers during his adolescent years, which when taken make the re-assignment surgery easier. In the end it turns out the child's guidance counselor was the one who tried to kill the father because she was transgendered and didn't want the child to go through the same pain and difficult times that she had. It was a pretty crazy story.
I just thought it was strange to see two shows in one day about transgendered people, and I feel like I have been seeing it so much on television. An observation I had is that all the transgendered that are portrayed in shows or even on reality tv are always male to female, I have yet to see a female to male "star".

Odd mom--or rather, even

My son has just turned 8. I remember when he was little and everything was magic and my memories of how much labor hurts started to fade and I thought about having more kids. But by that time, I was a single mother and I felt that one was enough for me to care for. But Nadya Suleman had her son just two short months after I did, and has had thirteen more children since then. She had several single births, one after another, a set of twins and then octuplets!
And even more interesting--she's a single mother. And they were all--ALL of them!--in vitro!
She had an accident at work that prevents her from further employment and allows her a meager amount of money to live off of. So she's got time to put into all these kids, but seriously, fourteen?!?!!? As a single woman living alone, she's way outnumbered by these little cherubs she has created. I really wonder what she was thinking. I watched the interview and she seems to have her head together. She was well spoken, thoughtful and deliberate. She didn't seem frazzled or stressed at all. I was stressed waking up in the middle of the night for one diaper change or feeding and could not imagine twins much less EIGHT little poop machines! The babies were still in the icu during the Dateline special; I wonder how calm and collected Nadya will be when they're all under her roof and her singular care. How will she tend to the toddlers who are walking and getting into things while changing eight diapers? By the time you've changed the last one, it's time to start over and change the first one again!

I have friends with 4 and 5 children and cringe when I accept invitations to their homes because it is difficult to keep up with that many children when they're all in diapers and all the...aromas...that little ones make can be overwhelming. Nadya also intends to complete her master's degree with her brood in tow. I'm certain it can be done. One of my best friends, and my personal hero, is a single mother of four (ages 3 to 13) and she recently graduated Anderson University with honors. Nadya must have a very firm constitution to even consider such overwhelming odds but wow! and she's the same age as me.
If you want to make your mark on the world, plant a seed and help it grow. Nadya Suleman has planted a forest and I hope for the children's sakes she is strong enough to help them all grow.
I do love children, and hope to have more some day, but if it proves difficult for me to become pregnant, I think I would look into adoption or fostering because there are so many children born with no one to love them. Why create fourteen children out of a chemistry set when she could have rescued that many or more from a life without love? People who adopt or foster several children are also accused of mental instability and greed (just taking the children in to get a paycheck for their care) but what makes them different from Nadya? The national attention or the fact that she got hers all at once from a test tube?
And she's not the only one. Most litters are born of some form of artificial method, whether fertility drugs or in vitro or some combination. There's a CNN web page dedicated to the subject here
Even with all the criticism, Nadya seems to think she can handle them all by herself. With taxpayer assistance, of course. Even if she does complete her masters degree and becomes a counselor, can one income really support all those kids? My friend with her four kids and degree from AU has a full time job (she's a teacher at the alternative school in Anderson), recently purchased a home, and still struggles to keep her head above the water even with child support to supplement her income. Nadya has no one to share her financial burden except her parents and everyone who, unlike herself, is employed and therefore contributes to her household expenses via their taxes. Is it responsible to assume that the government will take care of "me and all my children" when she has no other means of support? I sort of think it would have been more responsible to use the settlement money from her injury to support a smaller number of children comfortably rather than stretch her dollars to make more and expect someone else to pick up the grocery check. What if one of her kids wants a dog? Or new clothes? Or has special dietary needs? The old addage that it takes a whole village to raise a child gains new meaning when there is a whole village of children who each require the assistance of an entire village to help.

World's Tallest Woman Picture

Sorry I forgot to add the picture before I published my post! Look below to read more about Yao!

World's Tallest Woman

The other night I saw the most interesting show on TLC.  It was about the world's tallest woman, De-Fen Yao. This woman born into a poor farming family in China, is currently 7 feet 9 inches and still growing due to a tumor pressing on her pituitary gland.  

 Yao's health is seriously compromised by her size, and even though her condition could be treated and controlled, doctors in China have turned her away.  Since she has no way to pay for the medication needed, or the multiple surgeries, she cannot have the treatment that she so desperatley needs.  During this documentary they took her to the hospital to be evaluated, she hadn't been seen my a doctor for four years.  They found that they tumor had increased in size, along with her height.  But rather than telling Yao this, (informing the patient) they told her brother about her tumor and that she would soon die of complications if not treated.  After ten days in the hospital Yao still had no idea that her tumor had increased or of her condition.  It was her brothers duty to relay the doctors message to her, the doctors don't usually tell the patients themselves of their conditions.  This reminded me of the discussions we had today about the different cultures and their healthcare.  

Another issue shown on the documentary, was when the best neurosurgeon in China came to visit the rural hospital to see Yao, after seeing her and evaluating her case, he decided he could treat her free of charge and told the doctors at the rural hospital this.  But the original doctors treating Yao had too much "pride" and wouldn't tell her about the opportunity. So she ended up going home not knowing her condition, without the proper medication, and without treatment, The commentator said this was a common practice, because suggesting and allowing another doctor to treat her would show weakness.

In the end the neurosurgeon contacted Yao privately to see if she would except his treatment. She said yes and that is where the show ended.  But I think this is a very insightful look into another cultures norms and how their healthcare is practiced.  For them it would seem that a person dying of a curable condition would be better than showing weakness, or asking for help.

Human Organ Trafficking: NOT A MYTH

I was just boggling to know that this does exist. So I took it upon myself to do some research and I found out that not only is this happening but some want it to be legalize. So I found this article in NewsWeek that talk about human trafficking and the author we read today for class, Scheper-Hughes.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/178873

Relative Abnormality

So I have been trying and trying to get this clip of Francis Chan speaking to post but I cannot! Instead, I will summarize and explain.

Francis Chan grew up in Hong Kong for the first 5 years of his life, then he moved to the United States. When he was in college, he visited his grandmother in Hong Kong. Now he is a man who is about 5’9” or so, not extremely tall by our standards here in the US. However, while visiting his grandmother, everyone would see him and say, “wow, you so big!” When he is telling the storyHe says that he did not have the heart to tell that that it wasn’t that “he so big” but that “they so small.”

I was just thinking about the concept of being “abnormal” and why we consider things to be abnormal. I think that the concept of abnormality is very much a cultural phenomenon, which is not an outstanding idea or anything by any means, but I just thought this was a funny anecdote that demonstrated the idea. It’s very much socially enforced by the “norms” of that society and perhaps abnormality is not always transferable across cultures. I had more to say about this but I've kind of forgotten it right now since I had a little cooking mishap a couple of minutes ago so perhaps I will add an additional comment later!

Lacanian philosophy . . . maybe :)

The student who came to class yesterday was interested in how the use of "beautiful" women as opposed to "normal" women in advertising played into the advertisement's effectiveness in marketing its product. I got to thinking about how funny it is that the word "beautiful" is clearly used to segregate this one population from the usual, but the positive connotation of this word places this group into a class of "other" which is not abject. This made me think of Lacan and his concept of the "little other" and the "big other."

If normal is defined as "conforming to the standard or common type; usual" (which it is because I looked it up LOL), then anything that does not meet those parameters is by default "abnormal." When we saw the picture of the man in women's clothing, we agreed the depiction was "abnormal," yet we did not use this term to define the beautiful women. Why? Because the "abnormal" women represented a state of achievement, an illustration of "the best" within the construction of our current culture. It was an "other" which we desire. Society finds value in those differences.

In cases in which society does not find value in the quality which makes someone/thing "other", those in possession of that quality are cast out -- they become the abject; therefore, the abject does not define all "other" as we have used it, but a specific category of "other" that implies intentional exclusion by the "normal" population; whereas, this other population of "other" possesses traits which we desire, but lack, leading to an exclusion by consequence rather than intent.

This deliniation is the basis of Lacan's concept of the "Little Other" and the "Big Other."

These women fall into the category of "Little Other."Although they meet the criteria of "other" as contrasted to "normal", the desire to emulate them thrusts them into a specialized category within that larger group. The "Big Other" contains all other "others", be they scorned (the abject) or simply different (not like us, but without any contention).

I know a football allegory is probably not the most effective in a class full of women, but to put into perspective -- I like Alabama. This is my "little other". I very much dislike Auburn. This is my abject. I don't particularly care either way about Clemson. This is simply "other." Both Auburn and Clemson fall into my "Big Other."

You might argue that you have no desire to look like these women. This can be very true. You may not want to look like them per se, but everyone wants to achieve this state of "beauty." When considering this argument, you have to really understand what symbology the word "beauty" really implies. It is not necessarily a physical manifestation observed by others, but rather a more ambiguous state of "something pleasing." The word "beauty" is defined as "the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind," so the state we are trying to achieve is this intangible element of satisfaction, "the state of fulfilling the desires, expectations, needs, or demands of." If you think of "beauty" in this broader context, we all want to be beautiful.

This is why we didn't consider these women as the abject in yesterday's discussion. How coincidental was the timing of this exercise with the explanation of Lacan's theory? LoL

Babies

On Tuesday we discussed the Lacan concept of "an infant experiencing his or her body in separate parts"(Davis Reading, pg.173).

My neighbors just had a baby girl this past November so it has been interesting to really get a look at a babies growth in the first few months. This past weekend the mom was telling my roommate and I that her favorite thing to do is give the baby a bath. She told us that the baby has just recently discovered her hands, and that in the bath she is constantly splashing and swirling her hands in the water. She also told us that the baby has no concept of her legs yet. She'll just sit there and let the parents wash her and her only fascination is with her hands.
I thought this story was not only cute, but an example of babies slowly discovering their body; how it works and what it is capable of.

Beauty in the abnormal

I've always had my body so everything it does is normal to me. I look around and see that I look like everybody else, more or less. When I had my son, I was glad that he was normal. But what do you do if your child is abnormal? There are a wide variety of birth defects that can make a child abnormal: Downs Syndrome, congenital hernia, the girl (Katie) who we saw interviewed that discovered she was a boy when she had her hernia fixed. Even twins are sometimes abnormal. One of my friends had twins at her first ultrasound but only one at the next, a disappearing twin. Conjoined twins are often the but of jokes (South Park Elementary nurse is a conjoined twin) and are featured on freak shows and county fairs.
One set of conjoined twins, however, has stepped out of the role of Freak and lead perfectly normal lives. I saw them on the TLC a few years ago and was fascinated by the fact that they were so normal! They are separate down to their navel, where their spines fuse into one, and they share the lower half. Each twin has control of her side of the body and they cooperate enough to bicycle, play soccer and piano, type, and even drive! It seems that 'normal' is what they are since that is all they have known, so it's normal for them. I checked for recent updates to find that they are now 18 and in college. They have two 'normal' siblings.
When asked the awkward question in class, would I 'fix' my child if he/she were born different, I opted for no, in part because of the interview I'd seen with the Hensel twins. Had they been separated at birth, had their parents chosen to make them look normal, they would not be able to do the things they do now. Many times when conjoined twins are separated, they do so only to sacrifice one twin to make the other look like everyone else. These girls' parents opted to keep them both, just the way they God made them. I like to think I'd be able to do that but it would be difficult since it's such an obvious abnormality. Unlike trans-gendered people who have both male and female parts, whose abnormal parts are generally kept from public view, conjoined twins have no way to hide their differences.
Here is a 5 minute minidocumentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkKWApOAG2g&eurl=http://xenophilius.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/peers-into-the-lives-of-two-headed-twins/&feature=player_embedded

Lesbians on the Loose

Hey friends!
I was thinking about our discussion in class Thursday (for half of which, I'm sorry to say, I was spaced out on a cold medication buzz) about how women are portrayed in magazines. There really isn't much variation in how women are portrayed in the media in general! I was searching through some magazines to see if I could find something different, and I came across Lesbians on the Loose. It's an Australian Magazine (that now has international components). So I just looked through the site briefly but a lot of the pictures seem to fit the 3 categories in the Creed readings. I just thought it was an interesting addition to what we were talking about in class!

Here's the link:
LOTL homepage

GENDER AND SOCIETY

"Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them."

--Margaret Mead

Thought this would be interesting to read.

http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/gender.html

Bridgestone Commercial

I saw this commercial and was a little taken aback.  I understand that they are trying to be funny and appeal to men (usually the ones buying the tires), but I found it offensive to women! First the woman,  Mrs. Potato Head, is nagging so bad that Mr. potato Head feels the need to rip off her lips, second, the catch at the end is... "Bridgestone, for drivers that want to get the most out of their car", does that include taking away your wife's ability to talk? 

Click here to view the video

Burping

I babysit two girls, ages 11 and 6, and yesterday we went out to lunch together. The three of us were sitting eating lunch when the little one let out a large burp. Her face turned red with embarrassment and she started to uncontrollably giggle, her sister followed in with the laughter. I laughed as well and asked her "What was so funny?" She responded by saying, "I acted like a boy." I was kind of surprised by her answer, I expected her to just say, "I burped!"


But I got to thinking...
Everyone burps but if you were asked to put burping under a male or female trait it would no doubt be male. Burping is something that we socially link to males.
The little girl didn't feel embarrassed from burping, she felt embarrassed because she did something she thought was boyish.
So in conclusion this is really just a cute story to illustrate what we have been discussing in class regarding gender and social constraints.