My Feminine Mind

Hand-washing and White-washing

2012-01-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I read or hear about some part of history and I just have to breathe a sigh of relief that people no longer hold such misguided beliefs. Such times are often accompanied with a smug chuckle as I ponder how people could have possibly believed as they did. For example, as early as 1843 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes knew that hand-washing prevented infection, and he advocated it to reduce the rates of women dying from childbed fever in hospitals.¹ In the late 1840s, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis observed that laboring women who were attended by medical students had three times the infection rate (as high as 25%) as those attended by midwives. Horrifying to today's ears, medical students would go from dissecting cadavers in the autopsy room to examining women in the maternity wards without washing their hands in between. Semmelweis mandated that doctors and medical students wash their hands in a chlorinated solution prior to examining patients. With this simple practice, he was able to reduce the rate of childbed fever to less than 1%.¹ With such amazing results one would think that he would have been hailed as a hero for saving the lives of so many women and that the practice of hand-washing would have spread rapidly as other hospitals sought to reproduce his successes. On the contrary, despite such striking results, his ideas were met with ridicule and hostility.

Decades later, others who believed in the germ theory of disease were ridiculed as well by their colleagues. Even as late as 1910, over half a century after Semmelweis's discovery, hand-washing was still not a widespread practice among healthcare workers. Today thankfully, the Centers for Disease Control advocate hand-washing as the number one way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

Today we wonder how those physicians could have refused to wash their hands even when presented with such striking results. Maybe washing their hands between patients was too inconvenient and they didn't want to change how they did things. I'm sure most were decent people, doctors who went into the profession in order to help others. Maybe they didn't want to face that they, themselves, had been the cause of so many deaths. Whatever their reasons, they would cause the deaths of many more women who would die of childbed fever in the decades to come.

Unfortunately, there is much truth to the ancient writings, "What has been, that will be [again]; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun." (Ecc 1:9)² Today's medical debates are not about the importance of handwashing of course, but it seems that many people, including the medical establishment, are reticent to let go of long-held beliefs about how some things are done.

More recently, in 2002, preliminary findings of the Women's Health Initiative were published about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) among post-menopausal women. The results showed an increased risk of breast cancer for women on HRT.³ This study made the news and made it into magazines and although only around 2% of women were on HRT at the time, this translated into millions of women. After hearing about their increased risk of breast cancer, millions of women stopped this therapy. By the following year, this dramatic decrease in the number of women on HRT translated to an 11% reduction of breast cancer rates.⁴

It's important to know that women who have gone through (or are going through menopause) only needed a small amount of estrogen-progestin combination to experience relief of menopause symptoms. Birth control pills, used by young women, are the exact same hormones, except in much higher doses. A young woman whose body is already producing the full amount of estrogen and progesterone in her cycle, needs even higher doses if the aim is to completely shut her natural cycle down to prevent ovulation and pregnancy. Why would the medical community think that a known carcinogen in older women would be perfectly safe in much higher doses given to younger women?

In 2005 the World Health Organization classified Oral Contraceptives as a Group One carcinogen, placing it in the same league as asbestos and cigarettes. ⁵ Even though only 2-3% of women were on HRT in 2002 and presently about 28% of women of childbearing age are using the pill⁶, higher for women in the lower age-range than the higher, there has been very little media coverage. If 2% used HRT and millions stopping it caused an 11% reduction in breast cancer rates the following year, imagine the impact if millions of women stopped using the pill.

A woman has a 40% increased risk of breast cancer if she uses the pill prior to her first full-term pregnancy, at least a 72% increased risk if she used it for four or more years prior. For Depo-Provera, the effects are even worse. A woman who uses Depo-Provera for two or more years prior to the age of 25, has a 190% increased risk of breast cancer⁷.

What has been the reaction of the medical community to all this? To inform their patients of these risks? To change the way they view and treat women's bodies? Unfortunately, the reaction of the mainstream medical community has been quite disappointing, similar to their reaction to the implementation of hand-washing in the 1800s. Some ridicule physicians who refuse to prescribe birth control because they feel it is bad medicine. Secondly, they downplay the risks. They gloss over the alarming evidence and emphasize that after 10 years of discontinued use of oral contraceptives, the risk goes away, as if a whole decade of increased cancer risk were not that big of a deal.

Unfortunately many women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are being diagnosed with breast cancer. It is the leading cancer death in women aged 20-59 ⁷. Some women might not have a decade available to sit around and wait until this risk goes away. Unlike post-menopausal breast cancer, premenopausal breast cancer is especially aggressive and often unresponsive to typical cancer therapies.

Why do so many still deny or downplay the very real risks of hormonal contraceptives? Maybe because it would be inconvenient to change the way they currently practice gynecology. Maybe because they don't want to admit they have been causing the deaths of young wives, daughters, and mothers. Maybe because the myth still persists that Natural Family Planning is difficult to learn or is ineffective. [Though a study of over 16,000 poor women in India (some of whom were illiterate) showed a birth rate of less than 1% for those using the method in order to avoid pregnancy⁸ - showing that NFP is both effective and easy to learn.] How long before the medical establishment begins to change the way they currently practice gynecology? Another decade? Half a century? More? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I know that I don't want to wait around for them to change their ways before I choose health for myself now.

Addendum: (added January 28,2012 11:30am)

I have been asked about the claims that the pill lowers the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers, and so I feel I should address this. It is true that while the pill increases the risk of liver, cervical, and breast cancer, it lowers the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers. However, as Dr. Angela Lanfranchi has pointed out, it is not an either/or equation. A woman's risk of getting ovarian and endometrial cancers are low, whereas if she takes the pill for any length of time, her risk of getting the other cancers that the pill causes is higher than her original risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer. Furthermore, even if in special cases a woman is at a high risk for ovarian cancer, such as if she has a family history of it, I still feel it is a poor solution to offer her breast cancer instead. If a particular woman is at high risk for these cancers then I feel being diligent about cancer screening would be a better solution, as well as steps to reduce any other risk factors if possible.

Sources

1. Christine L. Case. Ed.D, "Handwashing." National Health Museum, 27 Jan 2012, http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/hand_background.php

2. Ecc 1:9 NAB

3. Jacques E Roussouw MBChB MD, Garnet L. Anderson PhD, Ross L. Prentice PhD, et al., "Risks and Benefits of Estrogen Plus Progestin in Healthy Postmenopausal Women," The Journal of the American Medical Association, 288 no. 3 (2002): 321-333 http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/288/3/321.full

4. Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., (lecture, Women Deserve the Truth, St. Norbert College, De Pere, WI, 24 September 2011).

5. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, "Carcinogenicity of Combined Hormonal Contraceptives and Combined Menopausal Treatment," World Health Organization, (September 2005) http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/ageing/cocs_hrt_statement.pdf

6. "Facts on Contraceptive Use in the United States," Guttmacher Institute, June 2010, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html

7. Chris Khalenborn, MD., "Breast Cancer, Abortion, and the Pill," One More Soul, 7 Dec 2009, http://onemoresoul.com/contraception/risks-consequences/breast-cancer-abortion-and-the-pill.html

8. R.E. Ryder, "'Natural Family Planning': Effective Birth Control Supported by the Catholic Church," British Medical Journal, 307 no.6906 (18 Sep 1993): 723-6 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8401097

Extended Family Living

2011-12-28T17:14:00.000-08:00

The subject of extended family living has been ruminating in my head for a couple years now. As I struggled with the demands of working and caring for family, and later on as I struggled with the demands of being a stay-at-home mom, I kept bumping into the same thought: "I don't think things are supposed to be this way." I know women who become disheartened because they don't understand why they struggle so much to keep up with housework, children, and the demands of running a house even though they have all modern conveniences, when women used to make their own clothes, work in their garden, make everything from scratch, hand-wash their clothes and so on.

There's something wrong with comparing ourselves to our fore-mothers though. Women didn't do all these things alone. They did them in community. While women used to walk miles to get water, when they walked to the river or well, they walked there with other women, chatted with them while they filled their jugs, and walked back together. Today, women in developed countries need only go to their kitchen faucet to get water, but she likely stands in her kitchen alone. Women gathered berries, made clothes, and pounded grain for flour, but they likely did this with other women, while they all kept an eye on the children playing close by, perhaps taking turns helping mitigate conflicts or helping the children with some small task (if the older children didn't do this).

It seems in many cultures the grandparents care for the emotional needs of the children, giving them much of their time and attention, while the parents attend to much of the physical work that needs to be done. I have heard of one tribe that views the parents as not having enough wisdom in order to teach the children, and this culture very clearly views it as the grandparents' duty to attend to the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional needs of the children, and it is the parents' clear duty to attend to their physical needs.

As I thought about these things more and more, I decided that I wanted community--and not the community that is a group of friends that get together for coffee and playdates regularly from all their different areas of town (though that IS nice), but I wanted even more than that. I wanted the kind of community where the neighbor that you know lives 10 steps away from your front door and you are involved not only socially, but also in the nitty-gritty tasks of daily life. It seems to me that in this country of excess, where people love their privacy and having everything in their lives precisely to their liking, that we have lost something. We live our lives exactly to our choosing without interference from others, but at what cost?

I saw a documentary called "The Lost Boys of Sudan" which documented the transition of Sudanese orphans to refugees living in the United States. They encountered electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones, computers, refrigerators, and many other things for the first time. These boys had walked barefoot across a country to escape death and civil war and had lived and survived by working together and looking out for one another. Sometimes they didn't have enough food to eat, and they had no modern conveniences but they were together. The film documents another thing that many of them encountered for the first time after coming to live in the US--loneliness and depression. They weren't used to living with only two or three other people, everyone working different schedules and basically doing their own thing. They were used to living in community.

I think all my pondering might have began the day I read an article in Mothering magazine about an extended family who decided to live together. The dad, mom, and their children lived in a house; one of the sets of grandparents had their own house; and the other grandmother had her own house. So these three groups of people sold their houses and built their own "complex" as they affectionately named it, where they all had some of their own private spaces, but also had some communal space where they all gathered for meals and hanging out regularly. They also came to some sort of agreement about how bills and groceries, cooking, and all those things of living together would be managed.

Being too poor to buy a house I thought that this dream of extended family living might be far off into my future, but, I'm happy to report that it has actually happened for me! A few months ago my wonderful in-laws decided to move to town and to rent an apartment in the same building as ours. Here's how it works for us.

I'm cooking for my family anyway, so I just plan on cooking for two extra and we have dinner almost every night together. Depending on our schedules, we sometimes hang out in the evening, playing a game or watching a movie. They contribute some money to the grocery bill and often help with dishes. I try to respect their "me-time" and not send the kids to their apartment all the time, though sometimes they go there to hang out when I'm making supper because I figure they'll be coming over in just a little while anyway. My in-laws love kids and are really good at entering their world and playing. Periodically, they'll pop-in and want to take the kids outside to go for a walk or go to the park or something so I end up having an unexpected hour or two to myself! I volunteer at Elizabeth Ministry and am there most Thursday mornings, and while I used to bring the children, my father-in-law now babysits on those days (and I'm able to get a lot more work done when they are not there).

I think this arrangement is good for the children because it seems they get the benefit of everyone's gifts. My in-laws are such nature-lovers and they have to get outside everyday. Although I theoretically know how good it is for children to get outside and explore nature, I'm so at-home in the cozy indoors that it takes a lot of effort for me to make myself take them outside. So now, they get out a lot more and explore the riverside, the plants, sunsets, and so on because of their grandparents' enthusiasm. My children also get more attention because my husband and I are not their sole source of it. Although I try to keep my priorities and not let the housework take precedence over their needs, on the other hand, supper DOES need to get cooked, and the house DOES need to be liveable, and there are just things that need to get done. So now, instead of feeling like I have to maintain an impossible juggling act, and feeling like I have to choose between my children or my other domestic duties, or my husband feeling like he always has to choose between playing with the children in the evening or having some time for himself, it seems it is easier to meet the needs of everyone with our current arrangement.

I think the arrangement is great for my in-laws as well. During the summer my father-in-law works on building their cabin in another state and my mother-in-law lives alone and works a lot. So now she gets a home-cooked meal most nights without having to cook it herself, or my father-in-law having to cook for just one or two and she doesn't need to spend her workweek alone until she can squeeze in time for a family visit on her days off. We can hang out for an hour or two and still have our day.

My in-laws and I are very similar in our views of raising children and they are very supportive of our unschooling. Our religious views differ, but I think we are respectful of each other's beliefs. We sometimes share our views of the world and God, but I haven't perceived any sort of expectation that I should "convert" to their way of thinking, (and hopefully they haven't perceived that in me!)

I'm curiuos about others. Have you ever considered or would you consider extended family living? Why or why not? Do the personalities in your family allow for such an arrangement? Do you do this already? How does it work for you?

Growing Room

2011-11-14T17:36:00.001-08:00

I've made a couple of observations lately. The first thing I've noticed is that I plan, a lot, probably quite a bit more than most others do. For those who know about the Myers Briggs personality types, I'm an ENFJ. That J in me likes things orderly and well-planned. The second thing I've noticed is that, judging from questions that I keep getting and conversations I seem to keep having, there are things that I have no intention of ever planning, that most others do.

Those things that I include in the "need to be well-planned out" list are many. I like organization. In fact, thinking of ways to streamline household duties, reduce clutter, and downsize household possessions is almost a hobby for me; I treat it as an art form that I am constantly refining. When it comes to our finances, I make a budget, and keep track of our expenditures. I plan the weekly menu and make out the weekly grocery list at the same time, adding the items needed to make the things on the menu to the list. That way, when I make the evening meal, I have the things that I need in the house, and I rarely need to think of what to make for supper before 4:00. I just look at the menu that's kept on the refrigerator and then make it.

I also make a daily schedule for myself. I like having a schedule because I feel like it helps me live in the present moment. Instead of stressing about all the things I need to get done, if I have a schedule I can relax, knowing that it is scheduled and I will have time to focus on each thing I need to do. Secondly, having a schedule helps me make sure I'm spending my time doing the things that are really important to me. I decide on the things that are important to have time for and I try to make sure the schedule reflects that. I also plan some things according to my monthly cycle. During menstruation, I know I'll need more rest and solitude so I try to keep social activities down and my husband picks up more household chores. During this time women are more interested in reevaluating their lives and discarding things that they feel are no longer working for them so I feel this is a good time for me to go to Confession. The house isn't very neat at this time as I don't have much energy or motivation to do a lot of things, but I try not to feel bad about it, because it's important to honor our needs in each of our phases. When I'm fertile, I know that I'll have a lot of creative energy to burn up so I typically plan on writing and doing other creative activities during that time.

The things, it seems, that many other people plan for that I don't are things like how many children I plan on having, or even when I will have those children. There have been times in my life when we were extremely poor and caring for my family was often overwhelming. During those times, I certainly didn't want to have more children. We had all we could handle. But who can say that she can predict how she will feel in the future? Children become more independent. Finances improve. And hearts and minds change. People who at one time thought they were finished, sometimes decide that they would like more children. So although I practice Natural Family Planning, and have used it in order to avoid pregnancy right now, I have never wanted to make a permanent decision about when I will be finished having children forever. I have only ever known that right now I want to avoid pregnancy, or right now, I would like to try to achieve. Before I was married I used to say that I wanted four children, close in age to each other. Now? It's possible that our family is complete right now, at two children, or maybe it isn't. I don't know. And having children close in age? My views are changing on that too. I've had the privilege of spending time with families who have both teenagers and toddlers. It has been really beautiful seeing the concern and tenderness that the older children bestow on the youngest members of their family. I've also read some articles about the humanizing effects that babies have on people. So now I'm open to the possibility of having children that are spaced further apart.

Another question that I get asked frequently is how long I plan on homeschooling. I've talked to people that plan on homeschooling through second-grade, others who plan on it through high school. Me? I don't plan. Situations change, finances change, and children and families change. Again, how can I predict what the future will hold? Maybe one or both my children will decide at some point that they want to go to school. I've known homeschoolers that had these great dreams and plans about all the things that they were going to do with their children, but in reality it just wasn't turning out that way, and after careful thought and consideration, they all decided that school was the best option for them right now. I've known schoolers who were anti-homeschool and never imagined that they would be going down that path, but then, for a variety of reasons, they do. Therefore, I plan on homeschooling as long as it works for our family.

Other things I don't plan? Precisely what my children will be learning at any given time. For brevity I typically say we are homeschoolers, because people know what that is, but more precisely we are unschoolers and I don't spend my time creating and implementing lesson plans. But, in my schedule, I make sure to have time to spend with my children doing creative and enriching things. I try to make time to ensure that I am doing my best to bring the world to my children and my children to the world. I rarely plan exactly what we will be doing for "homeschooling" on any given day, because I leave that up to my children to decide. If I suggest something that they have no interest in, we don't do it. If there is something that they are interested in reading about, exploring, making, building, then we do, and preferably for as long as they are interested in doing it. I don't plan what we will learn next year or the year after that. How can I know what they will be curious about then? How can I know what talents they will want to develop or what new knowledge will be interesting to them?

I know this culture is big on planning. Babies are born and their lives are planned for them pretty much through high school, if not through college. High school graduates are expected to know what their major will be and what profession they plan on entering. A popular interview question is "Where do you want to be five years from now?" Adults are expected to know precisely the timeline of their career advancements and on what schedule marriage and children will enter that timeline. If things don't happen according to such preset schedules for learning, advancing, achieving, avoiding, etc., people can feel like failures. So I really love schedules, I do, but for some things, I prefer to simply allow room for growth.

Pornography Hurts Everyone

2011-10-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the most important lesson that I have learned in my life is that I am my body, and that my body is good. I cannot claim to value myself if I don't take care of and honor my physical self. I've also learned that while my whole body is sacred, certain parts of my body are especially sacred. I know this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they are the parts that do something so marvelously profound as to give life to another human being, and conversely, if those parts are abused or assaulted, the utter violence that it causes to the very core of a person tells me that those are no ordinary parts. These parts have a special dignity and deserve extra care and reverence.

Because the private parts are so intimately connected to the very core of a person, it follows that they must never be used as someone's plaything, or as a means of profit. People are not things. Even within marriage, spouses must not use each other. In saying this, I hope to make it clear that I am not advocating sex only as a means of procreation and then only in the missionary position and with a very serious and stern purpose and expression. On the contrary, my experience is that when I completely enjoy, reverence, and respect the person my husband is, and the more respected, reverenced, and loved I feel, the more passionate, fun, tender, exciting, and fulfilling sex is. Sex that occurs outside of such a relationship, or viewing another's most sacred parts outside of this context, (e.g. pornography) is always inherently violent, because it reduces a complex, intricate, amazing person to a thing.

Pope John Paul II has said that the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of a person, but that it shows too little. All of a person's physical parts are on display, but all the unique and intimate parts of his or her personality are left unknown. In pornography, the sexual parts of a person are not used to communicate love to another but used to exploit the person.

I remember a couple years ago coming across an essay that described one porn film. What the author described was the absolute humiliation of another human being, a woman, which apparently many men find "entertaining." I remember I cried that day. I remember how betrayed I felt because the men who are called to witness the selfless love of God the Father, the men who are called to image the love of Christ who sacrifices himself for our good, instead so often choose to sacrifice the vulnerable for their selfish ends. What the author described wasn't even "hardcore" porn. It was mainstream. I thought, this is a multi-billion dollar industry? I remember I didn't even want to leave my house for a couple of days because of how unsafe this new awareness made me feel. I wondered how many people that I encountered every day in the store, on the sidewalks, in church, in restaurants, in the post office--how many found pleasure in the humiliation of another person? That is to say, how many found my own humanity as a woman unimportant or even nonexistent?

Those who believe that pornography is okay often assert that the movies aren't real. They are actors and actresses. But for that actress, it is real. She is being humiliated on camera, not for the purpose of raising awareness of domestic violence or verbal and sexual abuse or some such thing, but so that others might receive gratification in it.

Gratification.

Such people also like to argue that she is an adult who is there of her own free will. I ask though, is it okay to humiliate people if they will let you humiliate them?

Since then, I have learned that pornography is extremely harmful to those who view it, as well as its workers. Many people suffer from pornography addictions in our present age and through the work of brain scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and others, it is now known that many deviant sexual behaviors cause chemical changes in the brain similar to those experienced by drug or alcohol addicts. Mark Kastleman, a co-founder of a pornography recovery program, writes that such behaviors "trigger the brain into releasing powerful neurochemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine and endorphins, producing a 'rush' or a 'high.'" It also harms their social relationships. Kastleman writes:

In this fantasy world, people imagine things like, "She wants just me." "He adores me—I'm desired, craved, loved." The person sees the experience as exclusive, private—"It's just me and her." The experience is seen as exciting, pleasurable, taboo, and privileged—giving the facade of intimacy, exclusivity, loyalty, and trust. And all of this is easy, convenient, instant and sometimes cheap or free. It does not require the risk and work of developing and nurturing a true intimate relationship.

Just as pornography isolates the inner person from his or her body, those who become pornography addicts become more and more isolated as they retreat from real, connected, and deep relationships with others. Though pornography is a fantasy, addicts often use it as a substitute for real intimacy.

Some feel that though most of porn is degrading, there exists such a thing as "feminist" porn, where women choose to take part and are in control. I feel, however, that whenever a person's sexual parts are used or viewed outside a loving relationship, the person is objectified. Even in "feminist" porn, women's most private bodily parts are sought after, without the knowledge of their hopes, dreams, thoughts, fears, etc. "Empowering porn" to me sounds like "empowering cutting." I, myself, used to cut in order to feel more in control. I, myself, have dressed and acted "sexily" in order to feel powerful. But cutting did not empower me and neither did using my body to stimulate men. They merely gave me illusions of power, while reinforcing the lie I believed about myself that I was a thing to be used, or that it was okay if others saw me as an object. Being looked at by others as something less than a person is degrading. What has truly empowered me is beginning to believe that I am a person with profound dignity, and the presence of others who treated me with great respect (even when I didn't believe that I was worth that respect).

It is well-known that victims of trauma will often recreate their trauma in an attempt to make sense of it. That is why girls growing up in an abusive home will often marry an abuser, or why kids with an alcoholic parent will often become an alcoholic. Dr. Mary Anne Layden, a clinical psychologist writes,

Most strippers, as with other women who work in the sex industry, are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Research indicates the number is between 60%-80%. One study found that 35% of strippers have Multiple Personality Disorder, 55% had Borderline Personality Disorder, and 60% had Major Depressive Episodes. These are severe psychiatric problems and many of them are connected to childhood sexual abuse. These are women who when they were little girls would get into their beds each night and roll themselves into a fetal position and every night he would come in and peel her open. The physical and visual invasion of little girl's bodies damages them psychologically and gives them a psychologically unhealthy view of sexuality. Often as adults they reenact their childhood trauma by working as strippers, Playboy models, and prostitutes. The men who, now as customers, physically and visually invade the adult women's bodies, reenact the role of the perpetrator. These women work in the sex industry because it feels like home.

It makes me sad that those who do not know their incalculable value do not have hordes of people to raise them up and show them their true worth, but instead have many people willing to exploit and reinforce the falsehood that they are things.

Aside from learning that I am not a thing, another invaluable lesson that I have learned in my life is that human dignity is an absolute. Nothing can take a person's dignity away. Nothing a person does, and nothing someone does to another, can take away his or her dignity. Dignity is ours. May we live according to this truth and communicate this truth to others—especially to those who are in need of hearing it most.

Links:

Struggling with a pornography addiction? You can get help here.

"If Pornography Was Good For Us, We'd Be Healthy By Now."

Empowering the Poor with NFP

2011-09-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

I want to tell you story. In some ways, the story is not new. We've all heard it dozens of times—the story about a family living in abject poverty, a family so poor that they can't feed the children they have yet they keep having more. In other ways, this story I'm about to tell is new. It's new because of the story's ending. In India there are many such families, but some women provided a unique solution. Rather than trying to secure funds for condoms, hormonal contraception, clinics, and medical personnel to run the clinics, the Missionaries of Charity (the religious order founded by Mother Teresa) simply taught the people Natural Family Planning. For those unfamiliar with Natural Family Planning, it is a means by which a woman observes the naturally occurring signs in her body to know when she is fertile and when she is not. If a couple wishes to avoid pregnancy, they abstain from sex during the week she is fertile. If they wish to achieve pregnancy, they take advantage of her fertile time.

The familiar adage says, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." Rather than a solution that requires that the poor have continued access to medical clinics and health care personnel, and the continued source of funding that would be required to ship and distribute condoms and other devices, the sisters simply empowered poor Hindus, Christians, and Muslims with the knowledge of how their bodies work, a knowledge that would serve them their whole reproductive lives.

Mercedes Wilson, founder of Family of the Americas Foundation, writes this about how she first learned a natural method of family planning:

I first learned about the natural signs of fertility in 1968 while living in Melbourne, Australia. Having read an article in the local paper about a new natural method of family planning, I visited the center where the Ovulation Method was being taught. To my amazement, in less than half an hour I learned this simple and safe method that enables a woman to postpone pregnancy without endangering her physical and emotional health with chemical agents or dangerous devices.

We were taught the scientific fact that the only time the man's sperm can survive in the woman's body is when the natural signs of fertility are present. In fact, sperm survival is dependent on the presence of a particular type of cervical mucus obvious to a woman during her fertile phase, which is about 100 hours per cycle.¹

Since this meeting, Wilson has spent about 50 years teaching NFP to people (including the Missionaries of Charity) throughout the world.

In 1993, the British Medical Journal published a study regarding the effectiveness of NFP in India.² It is from this study that comes some of our best source of NFP statistics. It is difficult to get statistics regarding the effectiveness of NFP for a couple of reasons. One is that, in the US, not a lot of people practice it, so it is hard to get enough participants in order to have a representative sample. Secondly, it is difficult to get statistics derived solely from people who truly used the NFP method, which relies on abstinence during the fertile period if the couple wishes to postpone pregnancy. Some methods of fertility awareness allow a couple to use a condom or other barrier device during the fertile phase. The problem with this is that the condom has a typical-use effectiveness rate of 85%. Therefore, statistics from people who relied on condom use during the fertile phase will show that such Fertility Awareness methods have an 80-85% effectiveness rate. In India however, where the poor learned NFP and relied on abstinence during the fertile phase, a study of 19,483 poor women had a pregnancy rate of less than 1%.

The benefits they received went beyond the ability to plan their family size, however. Mercedes Wilson tells of how women in India would be dragged away and forcibly sterilized against their will. Women could be spared this violation, however, by carrying a card with them that stated they used NFP. In this instance, not only were the poor empowered with the knowledge of their own bodies, its use also protected them against government abuse.³

NFP has also had great success in China. The effectiveness rate in couples using NFP to avoid pregnancy has remained at about 99%. In this country where the one-child policy is strictly enforced, use of NFP has also lowered the abortion rate in some communities. In a study comparing two similar communities, one in which NFP is widely practiced, and one in which the IUD is widely used, the IUD community had seven times the abortion rate as the NFP community (though they had been statistically similar prior to the introduction of NFP).⁴Furthermore, the simple use of the Billing's Ovulation Method allowed 14,524 out of 45,280 (32.1%) previously infertile couples achieve a pregnancy.

Though many people maintain that the poor of the world need sustained Western intervention and complicated, expensive, (and sometimes abusive and ethnocentric) population control programs, the success of Natural Family Planning shows that simple knowledge of the fertility cycle is all that is needed. Once people have this knowledge, they can then be autonomous in deciding if and when to expand their families.

Footnotes

1. Mercedes Arzu Wilson, "Love and Fertility." (Family of the Americas: Dunkirk, MD, 2006) Preface, v.

2. R.E.J. Ryder, "'Natural Family Planning': Effective Birth Control Supported by the Catholic Church," British Medical Journal. 307 (18 September 1993).

3. Mercedes Arzu Wilson, (lecture, Master Teacher Institute for the Ovulation Method, St Norbert College, De Pere, WI, 22-25 Sept 2011).

4. Shao-Zhen Qian, "China Successfully Launching Billings Ovulation Method" World Organisation Ovulation Method Billings. 2002. http://www.woomb.org/bom/trials/chinaLaunching.html

For Those in the Area

2011-07-28T00:27:00.000-07:00

For those in Wisconsin an event is coming up at Elizabeth Ministry retreat center at which I will be a presenter. Please come to any you are able. If you come to all that is great; if you can only attend one, that is fine too. I hope to see you there.

The Disempowerment of Women

2011-06-07T01:20:00.001-07:00

Parenting experts often discuss the importance of how parents talk to their children. Parents are reminded to keep discussions positive and to uplift children by our encouragement and trust in their abilities. Call a child stupid or worthless often enough, the child will believe it and live up to the label. On the other hand, belief in a child's capabilities will likely help that child have belief in himself and help him live up to his more positive traits. The names, labels, and words we use have power, as well as the fundamental beliefs and assumptions they express. In regards to women, and the attitude that society conveys about our place and our worth, I feel that unfortunately, society vacillates between the verbally abusive parent and the well-meaning, but unhealthy helicopter parent, who feels s/he must do everything for the child, perhaps out of genuine concern, but which ultimately teaches the child that she is not capable of doing anything on her own and so the child develops low self-esteem, never having learned the invaluable lesson: I am capable.

One way that society tells women that we are not capable is by its attitude in regards to childbirth. Over and over again movies and television repeat the story of how dangerous childbirth is and how incapable women are of doing it without a team of medical specialists controlling the process and saving women from our own dangerous bodies. A woman choosing to have a homebirth is seen as foolishly taking her life (and her child's life) in her own hands--despite evidence that shows that for low-risk pregnancies (which is the majority of pregnancies) giving birth at home is as safe if not safer than a hospital birth.¹ But society acts as though every woman is the exception and so women are taught to fear birth and to fear and mistrust their bodies, and indeed, their own selves.

I think birth is like parenthood. Sometimes you're happy and excited. Sometimes you cry. Sometimes you're hopeful; sometimes you think, "I can't go on." But it always ends with you doing more than you ever thought you could and loving someone more than you thought you were capable. This is an experience that is important to allow women to have.

After birth, if the woman decides to breastfeed, she might face another uphill battle. My first child was born in the hospital and the day of my daughter's birth the pediatrician told me that it is often helpful to start out giving the hungry infant a bottle and then when she has relaxed and is no longer crying to then offer her the breast. Firstly, colostrum is perfectly formulated for a newborn's needs. Secondly, the infant suckling often is what stimulates the woman's body to make enough milk. Her body supplies milk according to the demand of the baby. Early formula supplementation is a recipe for an inadequate supply later. Unfortunately, from attending many La Leche League meetings, it does not seem that advice as horrible as what I received is rare. I have seen many frustrated women trying to recover from low supply caused by poor medical advice and many women do not. Some even give up breastfeeding altogether, since it has become such a frustrating and emotionally-draining endeavor. I know that for myself I was quite surprised when I could actually breastfeed my daughter exclusively for six months. Although most women can and the exception cannot, it seems so many women doubt their body's ability to give their children this perfect food.

I feel the distrust of women's bodies go beyond the events of pregnancy and childbirth. This distrust extends to our most basic functioning in our reproductive cycle. Rather than seeing fertility as the normal and healthy state that it is, the culture treats fertility as a disease, something to be suppressed at any cost. And in fact, not long ago, some were seeking to classify contraceptives as preventative medicine. I must ask, preventative medicine for what? Femininity? Is femininity a disease? It seems to me that it is only in regards to women's bodies does standard medicine take something that is normal and healthy, and purposely induce a state of abnormality.

All these things together conspire to send the message to women that we are flawed, that our bodies are just accidents waiting to happen if we do not hand over ourselves to the medical industry to control each function. The culture seems to paint the female body as an oppressor—an oppressor intrinsically opposed to our own dreams for an education or work-place success. Like the tired old tropes from yesterday's literature, this female character cannot be trusted. She's deceitful and cunning, and if you naively give her your trust, you'll be sorry. This revamped villain, however, wants to harm us by dangerously bearing as many children as possible and then kill us early when we are no longer able to bear any more work, having been worn out in the births of so many children.

The thing wrong with this picture is, like the other caricatures of femininity, it's not accurate. My body is not my enemy. My body is myself. And I honor myself, not by being at war with my body, but by respecting and living according to its natural rhythms. Last month I wrote about how learning to be receptive to the natural processes of my body healed me from a traumatic past and taught me unforgettable lessons about my true worth and dignity. And so, to the hovering misogynist culture, I want to say that I don't need to be liberated from myself. I simply need liberation from your oppressive interference. I don't need to take carcinogens to plan my family size. I can practice Natural Family Planning. I don't need you to control the birth process, or for you to give me misguided breastfeeding advice, so certain I won't be able to do it; I just need your support and your belief in my amazing abilities. Trust me on this.

Added September 28, 2011: Rather than saying this culture treats fertility as a disease, I feel I should have instead said "This culture treats women's fertility as a disease." For women are only fertile approximately 100 hours a cycle, yet the majority of birth control methods affect and suppress women's natural functioning every day of her cycle, with perhaps a few days of reprieve (but not long enough to allow her body to recover). Also, as an update, legislation has now passed that mandates that insurance companies cover birth control without copays, classifying them as "preventative medicine."

Links:

http://www.theunnecesarean.com/

http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/

http://relentlessabundance.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/bonni-hall-endorphins-labour-pain-and-bonding/

Work Cited:

1. Cassidy, Tina. Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born. New York: Grove Press, 2006. (p. 73) Print. http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Surprising-History-How-Born/dp/B001F51WM4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308187868&sr=8-1

When I Became Pregnant

2011-05-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

When I became pregnant I wasn't exactly the model of mental health. I had just begun actually dealing with trauma from my childhood rather than just pushing it inside and pretending it never happened. Dealing with it was a good thing, of course, but I was deep in the throws of nightmares and flashbacks and I was putting forth a great deal of energy to finally confront my dragon. I was suffering the symptoms of PTSD pretty badly and cutting was the way that I typically dealt with strong emotions.

I was engaged to the wonderful man that is now my husband. Intellectually I knew some pretty good reasons to wait until marriage to have sex, and interestingly, my agnostic fiancée also wanted to wait. When it came right down to it, though, I honestly didn't believe that I was worth the wait. I didn't believe that someone could love me just for me or that I was worth the sacrifice it took for someone to achieve self-mastery over something so powerful as his sexual drive. Having no belief in my worth as a person, like many women in this culture, I believed that I needed to "trick" my fiancée into staying with me by tantalizing his senses with my body. He actually resisted for some time, but eventually we had sex. Four months before our wedding, I became pregnant. I wish I had respected myself and Chris's gift more, but this realization did not come until later.

Pregnancy was a really difficult time for me. The all-day nausea, the lack of control over my body, the million and one little aches and inconveniences were all overwhelming at times. I felt vulnerable, emotionally and physically, especially as my belly grew and I realized I couldn't even run or in any way fight off an attacker if I had needed to.

We were poor too. I made $900 a month working at a group home for people with developmental disabilities. Chris was a full time student and made $200 through work study. That left us a combined income of $1100 a month. When I was six months pregnant my husband had to have an emergency appendectomy, and upon discovering he had a heart condition, a cardiologist inserted a pace maker four days after the first surgery. That added thousands of dollars in medical bills to those we already had from my prenatal care. When I was eight months pregnant I was placed on modified bedrest and could no longer work. I hadn't worked at my job for a year and so I did not qualify for the family medical leave act and I lost my job and our insurance. That's when we got on foodstamps and medicaid.

Chris and I fought about money. I would lay awake at night worried about how we would provide for a child. About once every other week I would cry and cry and end up cutting myself to calm down. My husband made a little extra money designing websites for people and I edited a book for a local author (who happened to be Chris's aunt). Family also helped us out. When my stress-level was at one of its peaks, and I had spent the day home alone crying, I went to my doctor appointment and she wanted to induce me. I was four days overdue and she was going on vacation and felt bad about leaving me undelivered for a colleague to take care of. At about 4:00pm, with my husband as my coach, I was induced. Despite being on pitocin, I somehow miraculously managed to handle the pain without too much pain relief. When I was five centimeters dilated, I received one dose of some narcotic to take the edge off things.

Thus, having no idea how we would provide for our child and without any sort of substantial income coming in, I finished birthing my daughter at 12:50am on a Friday morning. My husband, with genuine awe and pride in his voice, looked at me and said, "You did it!" And for the first time since I got pregnant I felt empowered. I had done it.

I am a small, not-very-shapely woman and I had wondered throughout my pregnancy if I would be able to vaginally give birth. Could my body really do that? The feelings that started in pregnancy intensified after childbirth. For the first time, perhaps in my life, I felt awe and surprise at what I could do. I didn't know I was capable of doing something so marvelous.

The immensity of the love that I felt for my newborn completely surprised me as well. Now I have never been one of those "mother-women." You know, those women who love to hold babies and smile at them and are really great with children. With the exception of my nephews, I typically preferred that children keep their distance. Of course everyone said that it would be different with my own children, and intellectually I figured that would be true. But I was taken aback by the fierce love and protectiveness I felt for this helpless infant. If her life were to be threatened at that moment, it would not have been difficult—I would not even have hesitated—to give my life for hers. It proved true, as others have said, that when I held my baby, the sacrifices of the previous months became worth it. Although I had known that I was growing a life inside me, it all had felt kind of unreal until I held that precious life in my arms and I could see the fruit of my efforts.

Having some knowledge of the benefits of breastmilk, I was committed to breastfeeding my daughter. Luckily, she took to nursing right away and we didn't have any struggles with the technical side of breastfeeding. I did, however, struggle to adjust to the amount of time and effort it took to feed a newborn. I honestly felt like the whole thing was unfair. I had to go through all the physical suffering of pregnancy and childbirth, and now, while I spent hours and hours nursing our child, my husband had hours and hours of time for himself. I also struggled with the mere idea of breastfeeding. Having an infant suck on a sexual organ felt kind of wrong to me. But as I persisted for her health, slowly a paradigm shift began to occur in how I viewed my body. I began to realize that the culture in which I lived had it all backwards. Breasts are for feeding children first, and it just so happens that many men find them attractive. It's not the other way around.

It's truly amazing how this simple reordering in my mind of the purpose of my body wasn't simple at all. It changed how I thought of myself and how I defined my place in the world. Having been sexually abused for seven years in my childhood, it was so profound to me that the very parts of my body that were associated with so much shame and pain had brought forth, and then sustained this precious child. The parts of my body were no longer designed for men's sexual pleasure. I began to finally and truly know that I wasn't a thing. In fact, I was created to give life! Not just physical life, but metaphorical life as well. I'm called to bring life to others, to bring hope, and to nurture the goodness already present in other people. I finally knew that I had dignity. Having been so utterly convinced of my pervading "badness" throughout my life, the discovery of my goodness profoundly moved me. I knew I couldn't be bad if I had brought forth something so good. Also moving, was the fact that my infant thrived on the nourishment I gave her. She was exclusively breastfed for the first six months and I was shocked when, at her first month check up, she was in the 90th percentile for her weight. She had grown several rolls and while other babies had frequent colds, ear infections, and the like, the first year of my daughter's life she experienced a minor cold that lasted for one day.

As I reflected on pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, it seemed as though God was saying to me, "This society may act like you are an object. But that is not how I see you and that is not how I created you." I had doubted my ability to carry to term, to give birth, and to breastfeed, but I had done them all. I stopped feeling resentful about how my body worked and began feeling grateful for how awesome a gift it is to be female. I wondered what other amazing things I was capable of doing that I had never considered before. I wondered what other gifts and talents lay inside of me still unknown even to me.

Although we struggled financially at first, things got better. (Now instead of being dirt-poor, we are merely poor). Motherhood really was the greatest thing to ever happen to me. My child was absolutely helpless, but her mere presence taught me so powerfully about my worth. Likewise, I had done such powerful things, not so much by my active doing, but by just allowing my body to do what it was already doing on its own. I understood that my value didn't lie so much in the things I did, but in just being who I am.

So on this Mother's Day I will be reflecting with gratitude on the most amazing gift I have ever received, the gift that surprisingly came when I myself gave life to another.

"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (Mt 10:39)

Act Like You Mean It

2011-04-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

Women are repeatedly told messages from our culture regarding our place and our value in society. When women and girls internalize negative messages from the culture, a vicious cycle can begin where the culture sends the message, the girl internalizes the message and behaves accordingly, which then leads to the harmful messages being reinforced, both to society and to the girl herself. Then the cycle repeats. Thus, I would like to discuss this damaging cycle and suggest steps one can take to break it.

Firstly, we live in a culture that puts a lot of pressure on women to look absolutely flawless, to an unnatural degree. Almost all the women we see in magazines firstly have the advantage of a team of make-up and hair artists, good lighting, and a talented photographer, and, as if this were not enough, the woman's image is typically altered by photo-editing software. Thus, her waist might be made smaller, her bust bigger, her thighs reduced, her skin airbrushed, and so on. Some time ago Dove made this video showing the extent of this process.

We are bombarded with images of unnatural women in magazines, commercials, movies, and television shows. It can be intimidating being surrounded by such images of flawless beauty daily, and living in a culture with such a narrow definition of beauty that literally no woman can live up to. Thus, many feel enormous pressure to spend a great amount of time, money, and energy trying to attain to this physical perfection. But I hope that girls and women can resist such temptations. When I see a woman, perhaps in the grocery store, perfectly made up, perfect hair, tanned skin, wearing fashionable but uncomfortable clothing, and four-inch heels, my present reaction is to feel concern for her, because I wonder if such obvious time spent on her appearance is a mask for her low self-esteem. I hesitate to speak for everyone, but I know that for myself, when I had low self esteem, my appearance mattered a great deal to me, because my whole self worth was dependent upon it. The more my confidence grew, the less such pressures from the culture affected me. I'm not saying of course that we should disregard all concern for our appearance, but I think women and girls in particular should evaluate how much time and money they are spending on it. To what degree are our lives ordered on our appearance? I have seen women who actually look kind of plastic, almost unreal, they have put so much effort and money into their looks. So much does the culture reinforce the object-status of women, some have even taken on an appearance of an actual object. Though the culture is at fault for displaying women as objects, when women succumb to this pressure, I feel it reinforces this message, to ourselves and to the wider culture.

There is a maxim that says, "If you believe, but behave for a year as though you do not believe, you will not believe. If you don't believe, but behave for a year as though you do believe, you will believe." For women who have internalized the cultural messages regarding our worth, I think it is very important to pay attention to our internal dialogue and also our external behavior. For example, when we wear high heels or any uncomfortable apparel, we are behaving as though our comfort does not matter. If we spend an inordinate amount of time on our appearance, we are behaving as though our time does not matter. If we do not have the time or money to spend developing our skills and talents but we do have time to spend on large amounts of make-up and so on, we are behaving as if our appearance is more important than the development of our own passions and gifts. When we use hormonal contraception (a group one carcinogen) for birth control when natural and side-effect-free methods of planning our family size are available, we are behaving as if our natural feminine bodies are flawed and that our health is not important. I do not wish to "blame the victim" here, by making it sound like women are at fault for others treating us as if our health, our time, and our physical comfort do not matter, because I strongly feel that it is the responsibility of each person to treat others with the respect that is their due, regardless of whether those others communicate respect and confidence or communicate passivity and insecurity. However, I feel it is important to question the messages of the culture, to question our own internal dialogue, and to question if our behavior is liberating us from unhealthy self-talk or reinforcing those same cultural stories that play like a broken record about female inadequacy and worthlessness.

My hope is that if we can retrain our thinking and our behavior toward a healthier attitude of ourselves, we can convince others to question harmful attitudes as well and thus begin to build a culture that is more respectful of the dignity of all people.

Letter to Rape Victims

2011-03-09T18:52:00.001-08:00

Disclaimer: This letter is primarily addressed to female rape victims, as it includes some reflections on femininity and a commentary on societal messages aimed specifically at girls and women. The essential core of the message however applies to all rape and sexual abuse victims, regardless of gender. I hope ALL victims will be able to receive the essence of my message, as it is not my intention to disregard the legitimate pain and violation experienced by male victims of sexual assault.

First of all, I want you to know that it was not your fault. Period. Nothing you said, did, or wore justifies a person choosing to rape you. Whatever mistakes you may have committed does not make rape your fault. This culture assaults young girls almost from the moment of birth with sexualized toys and clothes and repeatedly sends the message through advertising and media that the worth of females is directly contingent upon their sex appeal. It also tells us that our power is to be found in stimulating and sexually tantalizing men. I want you to know that even if you have internalized these lies, dressed and behaved in the ways you were groomed, and you were assaulted, the rape is not your fault. In fact, you are a greater victim. The first assault is that you were raised in a culture that did not honor and nourish your authentic femininity. Secondly, a person or multiple persons desecrated your innermost core in the act of raping or sexually abusing you. Then, as a final assault, society blamed you for behaving and dressing the way in which they taught you.

Baby step by baby step I hope you will question the lies people tell you about yourself, your worth, your blame, your power, your dignity. I hope you will take steps toward knowing who you are and that you will not stop your journey before you have an unshakable conviction about the real truth of your inherent and undefiable dignity. You are amazing and you are a survivor!

Finally, at the risk of sounding like a street-corner preacher, I must assert that people are God's holy and chosen dwelling place. This is true for all people, but especially true for women, in whose bodies God creates life. It has been said that the female gives the egg, and the male gives the sperm, but only God can give the immortal soul. God touches the body of woman in this act of creation, a dignity which is denied to men. If some think that women somehow don't matter, are somehow less-than, or that it is God's will that we are subjugated by men, I must repeat that we are temples of God. To anyone who has desecrated such sacred ground--that is, entered a woman without the proper respect and reverence that is her due--to such a person I must warn you that for each of God's temples that you have desecrated and for each time that you have desecrated them, you WILL have to give an account before God.

To the rape survivor, I know these words may take you some time to believe. I know that after a sexual assault, the self esteem takes a huge hit. I know you feel ashamed, worthless, and dirty. But you must pay attention when I say that the rape is not your shame! You have a dignity. You have a sanctity that no one can take away by any means of force or any act of manipulation or degredation. This is the truth. I know that you may have to go on a long journey before you can believe these words. I hope you will make that journey.

The Pill: Bad Medicine

2011-02-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

Would it be ethical for a doctor to prescribe cigarettes to someone who was trying to lose weight? Of course not! Although the health risks of obesity are well known and extensive, the fact remains that cigarettes are carcinogenic, and cigarette-use causes more deaths annually than obesity-related deaths. It baffles me then that doctors prescribe the birth control pill in order to treat acne, as the World Health Organization and the Americian Cancer Institute has classified oral contraceptives as a Group I carcinogen, putting it in the same league as cigarettes and asbestos. Even if someone was not responding well to topical treatments, would that justify exposing them to such a health risk as the especially aggressive triple-negative breast cancer?

Of course, many people do not know of the pill's carcinogenic classification. And of the several birth control websites I perused, I found no such warning. Although the contraceptive websites included information that their product MAY reduce the risk of ovarian or uterine cancer, there was no mention of the strong link between the use of their products and breast cancer, the most common cause of cancer death in US women aged 20-59. Julie Robison, of OSVWeekly, writes:

And at least to scientists, the link between oral contraceptives and breast cancer is no secret. Mayo Clinic proceedings reported in 2006 that women who use hormonal contraceptives for a minimum of four years before having their first full-term pregnancy have a 52 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer. In "Oral Contraceptive Use and Breast Cancer Risk: Current Status," Dr. James R. Cerhan wrote, "One might have thought that the issue of whether oral contraceptives are associated with breast cancer risk would have been settled by now, given that these agents were introduced in the early 1960s and more than 60 case-control and 10 cohort studies, several meta-analyses, a very large pooled analysis, and a major monograph have addressed this issue."

Yet despite the strong and abundant evidence showing the danger of oral contraceptives and its classification as a group I carcinogen, the medical community generally still advises that the pill is safe, despite that the WHO classification is used "only when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans." In fact, WebMD cites 1994 and 1998 studies and completely ignores the most recent and comprehensive research. Furthermore, a recent poll found that most of the women taking the birth control pill did not know of its risks and were not given such information by their doctors. The WebMD website actually states, "For most women, especially young women, experts say the benefits of birth control pills far outweigh the risk." Shouldn't this be up to the woman herself to decide? How can she make an informed decision if she is not even informed of the risks, especially for the young women who are at the greatest risk of developing pre-menopausal breast cancer if they have not yet had a full-term pregnancy? I feel that this is unconscionable and unethical, and as far as being used as a treatment for acne, I feel this reinforces the cultural message that looking beautiful should be of greater priority to women than actually being healthy.

Of course the pill is not just used to treat acne. It is standard treatment for a variety of menstrual disorders. The good news is that there are doctors who are not content to merely cover up the symptoms of women's health issues and are dedicated to actually finding and treating the cause of these health concerns. The bad news is that such practice is by no means standard. The medical facility that is pioneering such research and practice is the Pope Paul VI Institute. The Institute has this to say on its website:

Oral contraceptives[...]provide only symptomatic treatment when prescribed for women's health problems, and they do not affect the underlying causes. The birth control pill is used to 'treat' menstrual cramps, recurrent ovarian cysts, abnormal bleeding, premenstrual syndrome, acne, irregular cycles, and endometriosis.

The name of the science spearheaded by the Paul VI Institute is called NaPro technology, which stands for Natural Procreative Technology. It is so named because it works with nature, rather than against it, and seeks to preserve the normal fuctioning of the human reproductive system, or where there is truly abnormal functioning, it seeks to return it to a healthy state.

For couples needing NaPro treatment, they typically learn the Creighton Model of Natural Family Planning before receiving any treatment. In this method of NFP the woman charts specific observations regarding her cervical mucus which the NaPro trained doctor can interpret to know what is going on hormonally in the woman's body. These biomarkers help the doctor to truly treat any abnormalities.

This is another reason why I love Natural Family Planning. Aside from being completely natural and therefore side effect-free, the Creighton method of NFP can be used to help diagnose health problems. It does not cover up the symptoms of various conditions and can even give women an early warning that something is amiss in her body.

I, myself, have suffered through three miscarriages, experiencing my first in 2008. After the first two miscarriages, two different obstetricians told me that miscarriage was quite common and it was likely that something was wrong with the fetus. Miscarriage, I was told, was "nature's way of getting rid of a problem pregnancy." Typically, standard medicine will not even look for the underlying cause of miscarriage until a woman has experienced the heartache of at least three miscarriages. In contrast, the NaPro technology website has this to say on the topic of miscarriage:

Over the years, miscarriages have been observed as a somewhat “normal” finding. Often it has been thought to be “nature’s way” of ending a pregnancy which was doomed to fail in any regard. However, there has developed a somewhat more aggressive approach over the last 5 to 10 years towards evaluation and management of women with spontaneous abortion [miscarriage]. It is now well recognized that a definition of recurrent pregnancy loss includes two or more consecutive spontaneous miscarriages and that this warrants a full evaluation. Furthermore, it is becoming more and more recognized that there appears to be an association between infertility and spontaneous abortion.

A variety of factors underlie the occurrence of miscarriage. These include genetic, endocrinologic (hormonal), anatomic, immunologic and microbiologic variations. We are slowly coming to recognize that no miscarriage can be considered normal. All miscarriages are the result of a pathophysiologic reproductive event. It is the current challenge of medicine to find those underlying causes and, in some cases, underlying causes that are common occurrences are often overlooked. (Emphasis added.)

In regards to infertility, standard practice often involves the use of Clomid or even In Vitro Fertilization(IVF). For all the expense and waste of IVF however, it has a much lower success rate than NaPro technology in helping couples achieve a full-term pregnancy. Furthermore, NaPro is much less costly than IVF. Below is a chart comparing IVF and NaPro success rates according to the cause of infertility.

In Figure 51-38, a comparison is made of the “per woman” pregnancy rates between the NaProTECHNOLOGY approach and in vitro fertilization. This study shows that a NaProTECHNOLOGY approach for women who have anovulatory infertility, polycystic ovarian disease, endometriosis, or tubal occlusion, all have statistically significantly higher pregnancy rates than patients with similar conditions treated with in vitro fertilization. (link)

Unfortunately, because NaPro is not standard medical practice, the rarity of such practitioners leave many women with no other choice but to accept the standard "treatment" of oral contraceptive use to treat menstrual disorders so that they may experience pain relief and symptom management in order to function normally, or IVF to treat infertility. I feel that women deserve real health care. I feel that it is unethical that the wider medical community thinks that providing dangerous pills to cover up mere symptoms is acceptable treatment for women. Women deserve to receive real treatment of hormonal imbalances, menstrual disorders, and other health conditions without settling for subpar practices that unnecessarily exposes us to possibly greater harm.

Link: List of FertilityCare providers in the US and Canada who employ NaPro science to treat women.

Why Breastfeed in Public?

2011-01-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

From time to time, whenever there is a breastfeeding controversy, caused by some ill-informed employee or manager asking a nursing mother to leave the public place or remove herself to the restroom, invariably in the comments section on the news story there will be statements to the effect of, "I don't understand why women can't just pump and bring their milk with them when they go out in public or else give their baby formula in public." Others don't understand "why women can't just cover up or go to a private place to feed their baby and then return when the baby is done eating." I thought I might do my share in addressing some of these concerns.

I think a lot of such statements comes from ignorance regarding how important breastfeeding is to an infant, to a mother, and to society in general. Though this list is by no means complete, it contains some of the benefits of breastfeeding:

Approximately 900 infant lives would be saved in the US annually if 90% of women exclusively breastfed for six months. ¹
A 2001 government study estimated that $3.6 billion would be saved annually if 50% of US women followed the recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months. (Presently only about 12% do). Because health care costs have risen since 2001, it is likely that the savings amount has increased. ¹
Breastfed babies tend to have a higher IQ than their formula-fed counterparts. It is believed that this is because of the amount of direct skin-to-skin contact that breastfed babies receive, which is extremely important to infant brain development. ²
Breastfed infants may receive protection against Multiple Sclerosis as an adult. ³
Mother's milk contains antibodies that are given to the nursing child. Thus, breastfed infants have lower risk of ear infections, diarrhea, upper respiratory tract infections, urinary tract infections, reflux, and general stomach upset. ⁴
Breastfed infants have lower risk of developing allergies later on. ⁴
Breastfed infants have lower incidence of obesity as children and also when they are adults. ⁴
Breastfed infants have lower incidence of diabetes, and they receive protection against many cancers and even heart disease as an adult. ⁴
Breastfed infants receive protection against childhood leukemia. ⁴
Breastfed infants are at greatly reduced risk of SIDS. ⁴
Exclusively breastfed infants do not get constipated.
The longer a woman breastfeeds, the more protection she receives against all feminine cancers. ⁵
Breastfeeding releases oxytocin in the mother which reduces her stress level and helps her feel bonded to her child. In fact, breastfed children have a lower risk of being abused by their mother than non-breastfed infants. ⁶
Breastmilk makes infants sleepy, which also lightens caregiver's load.

Though the benefits of breastfeeding are substantial, breastfeeding, especially in public, can be very difficult to do. When I was pregnant with my first child, knowing some of the benefits of breastfeeding, I knew I wanted to give my child the best start. I remember the first time I breastfed in public. My daughter was 9 days old and we went to church, the youth mass at my parish. I think there may have been a row of teenage boys behind me. In the middle of church my baby started to fuss. I rocked her, I lightly jostled her, I gave her my finger. I may have even tried a pacifier. None of these things were working though; I became stressed and my daughter was becoming increasingly noisy. I really didn't want to nurse her there. It would have been so easy to leave the pew and go to the entry area of the church and feed her. But then I thought, "Women shouldn't have to feel this way. Breastfeeding is natural and healthy. Infants have a biological need to nurse often, and they should be able to eat whenever they are hungry." I wished that the sight of a nursing woman was at least as common as the sight of a baby eating from a bottle. So I sat down, used a receiving blanket as a cover, and fed my child. What I felt was...embarrassment. But I sat there and continued to offer the sacrifice of my embarrassment for the needs of my child. I don't know what the expression on my face was, but my husband leaned over and asked, "Are you okay?" I stoically nodded yes. I may have been turning red. I thought, if I remove myself from public view to feed my child then I am contributing to a culture that shames women for feeding their children. If I remove myself, I'm enabling a culture in which other women will feel the way I did at that moment. I felt angry for feeling embarrassed. I recognized that it was unjust that a culture should make me feel this way for doing something so profoundly amazing. It echoes the misogyny inherent in comments that degrade or otherwise diminish the ability and immensity of pregnancy. I don't want to make women who choose not to nurse in public feel guilty. Mothering and learning to breastfeed has many challenges and only the woman herself can decide if she can take on the challenge of combating social norms and attitudes. But for me, at that moment, despite the embarrassment I felt, I also felt resolve that what I was doing was necessary not just for my child but for other women.

In regards to the question about why can't a woman just bring her milk in a bottle when she's going to be in public with her infant, for me the question is not "Why can't a woman just pump?" but why WOULD she pump? Firstly, pumping takes twice the amount of time that nursing directly from the breast does. I find disturbing the request to heap more responsibilities and burdens on mothers than those she already has. I feel a lot of sexism is inherent in such requests. To me this mirrors the cultural loads that women already have to bear that men do not, primarily centered on our "duty" to look flawless at all times, the pressure women feel to spend enormous amounts of time waxing, tanning, shaping, putting on makeup, plumping, slimming, and so on. To bring expressed breast milk, one has to take the time to set up the pump, then actually pump, carry the milk, it must be stored properly, one has to still feed the baby, and clean the bottle and pump parts. Why should a woman do all this when she could just lift her shirt and feed her baby? Furthermore, milk from her breast is always the perfect temperature and there is never any waste.

Aside from sheer convenience, there are other reasons why women should not be encouraged to pump or feed their infants formula in public.

The World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that infants be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life, receiving no other fluids (not even water) or other supplementation. ⁷
I feel there is wealth privilege at work in such requests. Breastpumps and formula are very expensive and not all women can afford to buy them.
For IQ development, it is the skin-to-skin contact that is especially beneficial, and receiving milk directly from the breast as often as possible is ideal.
Breastpumps are not as efficient in emptying the breast as an infant is. A woman who pumps too much may begin to have supply issues. For her to maintain an adequate supply of milk for her baby, again, direct nursing from the breast as often as possible is necessary.
Studies show that when women do not feel comfortable nursing in public, they wean earlier, which impacts the health of their children and the women themselves. ⁸
For women to get the benefits of postpartum infertility, it is important that the child nurse directly from the breast. If a woman ecologically breastfeeds this will naturally space her children approximately two years apart. (For myself, as I worked when both my children were infants, I had to pump during work hours so it was important to me to nurse directly from the breast outside of work as often as possible to delay my fertility return.) ⁹
For extremely young infants, it is generally advised that the child not get a bottle or pacifier until breastfeeding is well established so that there is not nipple confusion. Babies have to work harder to get milk out of a breast than they do a bottle, so some new infants will prefer the bottle and then refuse the breast, which can then affect the mother's supply and so on.
The composition of breast milk changes throughout the day to perfectly fit the needs of the infant. Ideally, if a woman must pump, the infant should receive that expressed milk at approximately the same time of day at which she expressed it. ¹⁰

In regards to a woman going to a private place to feed her child, I feel this also places extra burdens on the mother. My children often nursed during mass. It kept them quiet and happy. Me coming and going during the service or babies screaming is a bigger distraction to others than me feeding them. Secondly, if I had to remove myself each time they wanted to suckle I would show up to church just to miss the whole thing. If I had to remove myself when my children wanted to nurse in a restaurant, I would not get the benefit of participating in the social atmosphere (which I need especially as an extrovert); I would likely have to eat cold food, and my dinner companions would have to wait for me to finish the meal that I could not eat at the same time they were eating theirs because I was off nursing somewhere, perhaps in the most unsanitary room on the premise like the bathroom as some suggest. As an aside, there are already often lines in women's bathrooms, so I feel it would be inconvenient to use up a stall to breastfeed when it could be used for its intended purpose. Once again, after all of that, I would probably feel like why should I even bother trying to go out to eat. This would have further intensified the isolation I felt as a new mother.

Any public place which I would have to remove myself in order to feed my child would be highly inconvenient, lengthening the time of the outing and making any companions wait for baby to finish. Or, if I was alone with my infant, perhaps I would have to go to a place where I would not be allowed to bring my cart (e.g. a bathroom or dressing room) and so leave it unattended while baby ate. Under such restrictions no wonder only 12% of women in the US still breastfeed exclusively at six months!

In regards to asking women to cover up, covering up with a blanket or nursing tent is not always possible. Having a blanket over my infant's head always made her extremely sweaty underneath. I'm sure it was also stuffy. It can also be difficult, especially with a very young infant, to get a good latch if one can't see what she's doing. And my second child did not tolerate a blanket. If I attempted it, she would cry loudly and flail arms and legs, which risked exposing my breast (which kind of defeated the whole purpose). It was much easier to just pull up my shirt and let her happily nurse. With her head there, not much is visible, much less than many cleavage-showing shirts anyway that I never hear anyone complain about, or hear about women wearing them being asked to cover up.

Breastfeeding comes with enough of its own challenges and we ought not add to the list of challenges that mothers face by further marginalizing new mothers and making public breastfeeding shameful. If you want to combat homelessness and poverty, help prevent cancer, allergies, asthma, and otherwise limit a lot of unnecessary deaths in general, encourage and support women who nurse in public. We need all the support we can get.

Links:

Breastfeeding and Early Weaning from PhD in Parenting

Breastfeeding Support and Normalcy from KellyNaturally

Breastfeeding and the law

Sources:

1. http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/04/05/study-breast-feeding-save-lives-money/

2. http://www.ajcn.org/content/70/4/525.abstract

3. http://www.breastfeeding.com/all_about/all_about_ms.html

4. http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;115/2/496

5. http://www.askdrsears.com/html/2/t020700.asp

6. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/123/2/483

7. http://www.aap.org/breastfeeding/faqsBreastfeeding.html

8. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/10/27

9. http://www.bygpub.com/natural/breastfeeding.htm

10. http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2009/10/02/Breast-milk-changes-during-the-day/UPI-72091254520228/

More Ponderings on Life Learning

2010-12-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

It seems most people who come to radical unschooling first adopt the educational philosophy and then gradually extend the freedom they give children in their education to include other aspects of life, such as chores, food limitations, and bedtimes. For myself, however, I did it the other way around. I first loved the respect shown to children in living consensually, but I had questions about allowing children to freely explore the world in place of curriculum, assignments, and tests.

I have already described in a previous post on the subject of radical unschooling how, after feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with my more conventional way of parenting, I prayed to Mary to help me become the mother my children needed me to be. The day after I prayed this I discovered whole life learning. Here, it seemed, was a parenting philosophy that was in line with my pro-life, pro-dignity beliefs. It doesn't make sense to me how people who talk about the inherent dignity of a person from the moment of conception, are sometimes those who are quite dismissive of the opinions and feelings of children, and can be quite strict and even harsh in dealing with them. Before discovering radical unschooling, my parenting style was strict and controlling. I thought I was doing things "for their own good" but now it seems to me what is in my children's best interests is for them to know that I have their best interests at heart. Learning to love a person in the way that they feel most loved can be a challenge, but it is necessary. We can love someone with our whole heart, but if we are not communicating that love in a way that they understand, it seems to do little good.

Furthermore, I realize now that a lot of the things that I said was for the good of my child, was really for my own convenience. I didn't feel like playing at the park any longer; I didn't feel like helping my daughter find a different outfit to put on that she would like better; I didn't feel like fulfilling her requests that were inconvenient to me, so I said no. Of course, when I am with my friends I like to take as much time as I need; if I wish to change my outfit, I can do so. But small children are not able to do many tasks by themselves and they rely on our help and on our patience in taking the time they need to explore and play (which is their work). How ironic that we expect children to learn to be patient and thoughtful, but we can so often be impatient and dismissive of their wants! I must be thoughtful my child's wants before I can expect her to be thoughtful of my own or anyone else's. I must be willing to change my schedule to accommodate her, before I can expect that she will stop doing what she is absorbed in to accommodate my needs. If children have equal dignity, then we should take their feelings seriously.

In regards to dignity, in some ways society is making progress. Society used to accept that beating a disobedient wife was acceptable and even necessary training. After all, she needed to learn how to obey. Luckily today we recognize domestic violence as a crime. Yet, when it comes to raising children, society still emphasizes obedience of children over the respect owed to them. I am certain of this: The smaller and more vulnerable a person is, the more careful others must be to respect that person's rights and uphold that person's dignity. I feel people must go out of their way to ensure that they never take advantage of a person's smallness or vulnerabilities, whether physical, intellectual, or emotional.

One value that I greatly respect in the radical unschooling ideology is not showing preference for one set of interests over others, for instance by showing approval for a child's interests in Shakespeare, but expressing disdain for his interest in video games. I feel doing so sends the message to the child that his interests aren't worthy (and therefore he himself is not worthy). I feel it also encourages the millions of ways that people invent to place distinctions among ourselves, to tier people into those deserving or undeserving, smart or dumb, valuable or expendable. I do not want to foster a competitive atmosphere where people bend themselves to fit the desired image so they can gain the admiration of others. Self esteem that comes from academic success (as mine did until about a year ago), money, beauty, or any achievement is based on a lie. I want my children's self worth to come from the unalterable fact of the Father's unconditional love for them and I want them to have the audacity to pursue the unique arrangement of talents and ways that they image God. ALL people are beautiful and amazing, and I hope we can grow as a society to appreciate the myriad ways that people are awesome.

People, children included, should be able to have their own thoughts and questions, and to pursue their curiosities, and to have such thoughts respected and not be trampled upon as not good enough or unworthy. I feel that controlling what children learn, how children learn, and when children learn conspires to send the message to the child that she cannot be trusted. Furthermore, having many rules and constantly doing things "for the child's own good" reinforces the same message. For myself, I would prefer that my children never learn one academic thing than to learn to distrust their own thoughts. If someone were to mistreat or abuse my children, I want them to trust themselves when something doesn't feel right, and not think that how they feel isn't important. If they are at the park and they are feeling pressure to make fun of the kid that everyone else is making fun of, I hope they will not do something that makes them feel bad in order to fit in with the other kids. If my daughter is dating someone who is pressuring her to have sex because everyone else is doing it and she'll be weird if she doesn't, I hope she knows that clearly such a person demonstrates that he is not worthy of such a gift as her whole self. If my daughter were to one day face an unplanned pregnancy and everyone is telling her that she has no choice but to abort, I hope she will listen to her own inner guidance. If her employer is pressuring her to take part in unethical business practices, I want her to trust herself. What she thinks and how she feels matters. It matters to me and it should matter to everyone else. Every day people cave to often tremendous pressure to do the wrong thing; they forsake their own judgement and beliefs about right and wrong to satisfy other people. I feel that respecting children's autonomy and freedom of thought reinforces the belief in their dignity. I feel this belief is essential for genuine success in life. And as Sandra Dodd says, "Children who are trusted, will trust others. Children who are given all the time they need, will be free to share that time with others. Children who are given all the freedom they need, will not begrudge freedom in others."

One area of great concern to me is the language that has crept into educational speech. School administrators that talk about children as "raw materials to be processed" and the many behavioral modification techniques that view the child as an animal to be trained rather than a complex person to be understood should have no place among those striving to truly advance humanity. I greatly wish every parent and educator would read How Children Learn by John Holt. His way of facilitating learning seems to me to be a truly human way of educating persons, whether in school or out.

Some people express reservations about life learning (a.k.a. unschooling) because they confuse it with educational neglect. I hope people will not make this mistake. We do not put a seed in a room and hope it will grow. We put a seed in soil and try to make that soil as healthy as possible; we water that seed, and put it in sunlight. If these conditions are met, the seed grows. Likewise, if children's natural curiosity is fed and nourished, they thrive. As other unschoolers have pointed out, checking their progress by constant questions and testing is like repeatedly digging up the plant to measure how deep its roots are getting. It doesn't help the plant grow, and if it is a sensitive plant, it will likely stop its growth altogether. As John Holt observes, children constantly tested stop learning for learning's sake—because the world is intrinsically fascinating and because learning is joyful—and instead lose their curiosity and busy themselves with storing pieces of information in their minds long enough to get a decent grade on a test or assignment. Holt also believes that it isn't really possible to teach someone against his or her will. If it is, why do so many adults spend so much time reviewing what their students already supposedly learned? If children are interested in something to begin with and learn about it through their own choice, they retain the information.

Most importantly, though, the main reason why children and adults should do things is because it is enjoyable. We ought to allow games to be games, moments to be moments, and we should not ruin such moments by always insisting that we turn them into "teaching opportunities." That only serves to make children believe that we don't enjoy their presence, that we don't delight in who they are as people, but that we are only interested in pressing our own agenda. How heartbreaking that must be for a child.

My four-year-old loves letters, rhyming, computers, running, mazes, art, and astronomy. I'm happy to finally love being around her. She constantly asks me to add numbers or what number two or three numbers together make. Simply from answering her questions and offering help when it was wanted, she is now able to count backwards and do simple addition in her head. She often manipulates letters and plays with letter magnets and scrabble letters and asks "What word does this make?" She can pick out Venus in the sky and she knows it's a planet, not a star. She knows our sun is a star and we live on the planet Earth that goes around the sun. She knows Jupiter is the biggest planet and it protects us from meteors. She knows the speed of the Earth is just perfect to keep us from spinning away from the sun or from falling into the sun. She asks questions about everything and if I can answer them, I do. Otherwise I help her find the answer. We live in the information age; anything is available at our fingertips. If there is something that I would like to introduce her to, I do. If she is interested, we explore it. If not, we don't.

Living this life and witnessing the many others respecting the autonomy and dignity of children through consensual living gives me hope for the future. It gives me hope that one day governments will be able to peacefully communicate with each other and seek peaceful solutions to the different ways people see things. It gives me hope that human history will stop being so peppered by power-hungry individuals trampling on the rights of those without it. It gives me hope that maybe one day people won't be concerned with what's "in" or what's "popular" but rather they will only be interested in asking themselves what they themselves truly like. It gives me hope that maybe one day we will truly believe that we are all created equal and we will strive to see the giftedness of others rather than proving our own selves worthy.

"All I am saying [in How Children Learn] can be summed up in two words—Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple—or more difficult. Difficult, because to trust children we must trust ourselves—and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted."—John Holt.

What This Woman Wants

2010-12-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

Womanhood is often difficult. For me, at least, sometimes the greatest difficulty lies in the fear that the suffering I experience will not be met with compassion, or even recognized as a truly human suffering, or worse yet, that the suffering I experience will be met with chides or derision. It pains me greatly to think of the suffering many humans experience, made greater by the thoughtlessness of those for whom they suffer. In the spirit of this holiday season, I offer my Christmas wishlist:

Firstly, menstruation can be difficult. If the process itself is not difficult enough, women also must endure endless, shaming jokes about how our bodies work and then also our thoughts and feelings especially disregarded during our cycle, (as in "Oh, she's upset, therefore she must be on the rag, which means, I don't have to take seriously what she says.") Though women may feel energetic and generous at other times, during menstruation she often does not have much energy. I wish, rather than being fodder for jokes, or an excuse to not take a woman's feelings seriously, this process would be impetus to generosity. I wish that all men would honor the women in their lives by being especially generous in listening to her thoughts with respect and compassion and by taking burdens off her as much as possible, respecting her need for more rest. I wish men would not be patronizing in this, but genuinely thoughtful.

There are innumerable self sacrifices women make during pregnancy. We couldn't list them all if we tried. I wish, rather than offers to take our children from us, all women would be shown gratitude for what our minds and bodies go through during this time. I wish women would receive encouragement and belief that we have the resources within ourselves to handle these challenges. I wish women would receive this encouragement and have trust from their partner and caretakers especially when they give birth.

Breastfeeding can be hard. It requires an enormous investment of a woman's time that she alone must give. It means we often don't have the convenience of finishing tasks in one sitting. Rather, we must stop and set things aside before we would like. Learning this kind of detachment from our tasks and projects is challenging. But I wish, rather than encouragement to wean, all women could have the powerful solidarity of others going through the same challenges and joys. I wish all women would receive the support they need to be successful at this task so many of us want to do. We know men can't breastfeed, but I wish all women would receive help from men in the tasks that men are able to do, so women don't have to feel everything is on our shoulders.

I wish people would stop trying to change women and fix women. Instead, I wish they would try to be truly present and really listen to us. I wish people would recognize that there are abundant lessons to be learned and wisdom to be gained from life as we experience it. And, when we are faced with the challenges of womanhood, I wish men would not sigh in relief that they don't have to go through such things. I wish instead they would reflect humbly on the inner strength that women must possess in order to handle such challenges. I wish, rather than trying to reduce us into something they can easily understand, men would instead recognize and honor our inner mystery.

Above all, I wish all men everywhere would recognize the humanity of women. And in this recognition respect our freedom and encourage us to be us. Just us.

Organic Feminism

2010-11-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

Over the last several months a debate has been raging in particular force over who may call herself (or himself) a Feminist. Can someone who is Pro-Life be a Feminist? Can a stay-at-home mom be a Feminist? If a woman works outside the home is she necessarily a Feminist? So I thought I might add my two cents to the debate and share some of my reflections on my own quest for an authentic, or as I call it, an Organic Feminist Ideology.

Often, in discussions about femininity or feminism the question of nature versus nurture arises. In looking at the behavior of women and girls, people wonder how much is a result of the way females are raised, and how much is an intrinsic part of their nature? This particular question is one I am very interested in and one that I ponder frequently. However, it is not the aim of this post to consider this part of the question.

In looking at the biological differences between men and women, however, it is pretty easy to determine what is nature and what is nurture. It is clearly not a part of cultural conditioning that I have a menstrual cycle; it is not a result of the way I was raised that I am able to get pregnant. It is not nurture that makes my breasts capable of breastfeeding a child. As these things are very clearly and obviously inherently feminine, it seems to me that the authentically Feminist response would be to give such processes honor and respect. If some people's reactions are to change, suppress, or eradicate what is clearly authentically feminine—how can that be part of an Authentic Feminist Ideology? And yet, I have heard many who claim to be Feminists using very degrading language in references to these processes. Referring to pregnancy as being "knocked up" is something that I would expect from a misogynist, not one who calls herself a Feminist. I am not suggesting that we always talk of these processes as though they are always experienced as a walk through the tulips, because in many cases these very processes involve at least inconvenience and often outright physical suffering. I feel, however, that it is possible to honestly acknowledge the challenges we face in these uniquely feminine experiences while not diminishing the worth of them. I feel it is an appropriation of a misogynist mindset to think that such experiences have no value or meaning to ourselves and to the wider culture and that such contributions are second-rate to more noble and valuable contributions as those generally performed by men.

In my own experiences of menstruation and especially pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, I was extremely aware of society's tendency to diminish female suffering. I made absolutely sure that my husband was aware that just because I was female I did not have some sort of magical gene that made suffering a breeze to endure. The fact that millions of women have gone through these experiences was, to me, inconsequential. It didn't make it easier for me to experience them. I'm reminded of Heller's Catch-22. Yossarian, the protagonist, is in a war and he is very upset that people are trying to kill him. Others remind him that they're trying to kill everyone, not just him, and he says, "What difference does that make?" Indeed, whether the enemies are trying to kill him or all his fellow soldiers is irrelevant to him. People are still trying to kill him. So yes, women have experienced menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding for ages, but that knowledge didn't negate its profundity nor its difficulty for me as an individual.

If societal conditions or biases exist that make it difficult for women to participate in the wider culture and to have her gifts and talents recognized, then the solution cannot be to change women to accommodate misogynist views, but the response must always be to change the perceptions and sexism of the culture.

This year many people are celebrating 50 years of the Pill and marketing it as 50 years of progress and greater freedom for women. To me, this is equivalent to celebrating 50 years of the skin-bleaching industry and calling that progress because that enabled all the people of color to participate to a greater degree in the societal discourse. How absurd and offensive that would be! If people must be white to have their contributions recognized, that is racism and injustice. Furthermore, droves of minorities rushing out to bleach their skin would not change the status-quo but would, in fact, reinforce it. Likewise, if women must take carcinogens and harm the ecosystem of our bodies in order to contribute to society in whatever way we choose, I call that sexism and oppression. To change ourselves because of other's biases never increases respect. It in fact perpetuates the disrespect because such behavior reinforces the aberrant belief of our own inadequacies and male superiority.

The multi-billion-dollar contraceptive industry would have us believe that our choice is between having 20 kids or buying their products and just bearing with the side effects and expense. As I have stated in previous posts, a safe and natural alternative exists in Natural Family Planning. NFP couples learn to observe the changes that naturally occur in a woman's body the week she is fertile and, depending on whether they wish to conceive or not, either take advantage of her fertile time or abstain. (For more information on NFP, you may wish to view my other posts on the topic.)

As the struggle for freedom of many oppressed peoples illustrates, often times the greatest struggle is not attaining physical freedom, but overcoming the colonization of the mind—the perceptions of inadequacy and inferiority implanted there by the colonizer. Women, do you really and truly like being female? Do you absolutely know that you are equal to men, as you are? Do you believe that life, as you experience it, has value and meaning? Sadly, I feel the behavior of many women suggests that the answer to these questions is no. We must confront such attitudes in ourselves and society and strive after genuine freedom, which is not freedom from ourselves, but freedom to be ourselves.

Beyond Birth Control

2010-09-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

Last week I received a question regarding condoms. Although the comment was quite snarky in tone, I felt the underlying question was a good one—and one worth addressing. I have discussed my disdain for hormonal contraception at length on both this blog and on my youtube vlog, but I have not yet addressed non-hormonal forms of birth control.

So what about condoms to prevent pregnancy? Why learn Natural Family Planning (NFP) when non-hormonal forms of birth control are available? The short answer to that is that NFP is not merely one form of several methods of birth control. NFP is much more, even aside from its ability to be used to conceive as well as to avoid pregnancy. Primarily, I think, NFP is a way of communicating with your partner.

I don't think it is a coincidence that the divorce rate for couples who practice NFP is around 1%, compared to about 50% for the rest of the US. (Sorry, I don't have statistics for other countries.) I've heard one woman say, "If you can talk about cervical mucus, you can talk about anything." She said it jokingly but I think it's true. I have sometimes felt there is an openess that my husband and I have with each other that I haven't often observed in other couples. And in the few other NFP couples I know, they all seem to have above-average marriages. Their closeness, their ability to be a good partner, and their respect for each other is apparent. For myself, I know my husband's maturity in hearing about my very intimate bodily functions helps me trust him with my intimate thoughts and feelings. In this culture in which so many women feel enormous pressure to act and look a certain way—and many even from their partners—I feel extremely grateful for being loved as I am for who I am.

I think there is more to it than just this though. In the practice of NFP something else seems to happen. Firstly, my husband and I communicate nightly about my body and what phase of my cycle I am in. And, inevitably, at least monthly, we talk about how our lives are going, our feelings about more children and why or why not we want more. These discussions have led us to discussing our finances and making plans together about how we could afford to have another child. Another time, this led to a discussion about my feelings regarding my miscarriage and my fear that maybe I was just wanting another child so I wouldn't have to deal with the pain of losing the one. On another occasion I was surprised to discover that my husband was considering not staying at his dream job for the rest of his life, but was thinking that he would go elsewhere in five years if he was not satisfied with the pay at that time. Another time my husband shared that he didn't want more children right now because he felt he had all he could handle. So then we discussed ways to lighten his load. In other words, we discuss our lives frequently and share our inner worlds and deeply intimate thoughts and feelings, and when we're planning and imagining our future, we're planning it together. Though some people divorce because they feel they have grown apart, it seems NFP couples don't have that opportunity.

In my own experience, I know that there were times that if my husband and I could have had sex, we would have, but we were abstaining that week, and we ended up getting in the most profound and deep conversation—the kind where my eyes were opened to another facet of my husband that I didn't know was there before, and I felt I had another piece of him with which to fall in love.

In a way, even though my husband and I have never contracepted, I feel that I have experienced what contracepting couples do—the ability to have sex whenever desired without concern about pregnancy. Due to nine months of pregnancy and at least six months of postpartum infertility because of breastfeeding, my husband and I have had years where we didn't chart my signs or abstain from sex monthly. Aside from the period immediately following childbirth, any other time was possibly a go. To be honest, though, I actually looked forward to the time when my fertility would return and we would get back in the rhythm, the ebb and flow of my monthly cycle. Why? Because, although I hesitate to admit it, sex became kind of boring and routine. At times I felt taken for granted and I missed the closeness I felt during those frequent sharing sessions that just didn't seem to happen as often anymore.

Perhaps this would be a good time to describe what we experience monthly. In Phase I, when I menstruate, I naturally feel more withdrawn and I want to contemplate and reflect. My husband respects my need for more solitude and my need to be with myself. Also, as I do not have as much energy at this time, he is very good about helping out more around the house and taking burdens off me to allow me more rest. We don't usually have sex when I menstruate partly because it's messy, but mostly because neither of us is in the mood. As I said, my body pulls me inward and I seek solitude.

After my period ends, but before I begin my fertile phase, we can have sex every other day. This is because if seminal residue is present it can be difficult to make observations regarding my cervical mucus. I have more energy and am more sociable than when I was menstruating. There is kind of an excitement about sex as we know that there is a limited number of days before I begin my fertile phase.

Phase II begins the time when having sex might lead to pregnancy. If we are avoiding pregnancy, then we abstain from sex. Physiologically, my body basically goes into baby-making mode. This is the time when I am most attracted to my husband and I feel most nurturing, selfless, and giving. Consequently, perhaps because I am so amiable, loving, and pleasant, this is also the time when my husband really wants me too. Sounds like a recipe for a lot of sexual frustration, right?

Though it does require some sacrifice (most things worth anything do), I've really come to look forward to this phase. NFP encourages couples to nurture their relationship without genital contact at this time. Coincidentally, many of our greatest conversations seem to happen when I'm fertile. And, our relationship has this energy to it too, like when we first started dating. My husband is really attracted to me and I feel like the most beautiful woman on the planet. I feel so wanted and cherished at this time. My husband is really affectionate, and since we both know we can't have sex, I know he isn't coming around just because he wants some, but because he actually just likes me for me. And more than that, he is actually sacrificing something he wants for the benefit of my physical health and for the health of our marriage. I feel really valuable because of this, knowing he considers me worth the sacrifice. We consciously interact with each other as friends and persons, and nurturing the other aspects of our relationship really makes it healthy.

Then in Phase III, when I'm no longer fertile—it's a green light anytime, anywhere (well, maybe not ANYwhere) until I begin my period. For me, this phase lasts about a week and a half. I've heard NFP promoters say, "What's not to love about NFP? You get a honeymoon every month!" I think this is also true. When Phase III begins, we act like newlyweds. We've spent a week anticipating and desiring each other and now it's a go. Boring and routine sex? What's that? Sex is exciting and passionate. Aiding the excitement and passion is the fact that we have just spent a week doing nurturing, thoughtful, and loving things for each other and have spent time nurturing our friendship. And about the time when we've had all we want for awhile, my period begins and the cycle repeats.

Perhaps I have a new slogan: Do you feel the need to spice up your marriage? No need to go to the adult toy store, just learn NFP! Well, maybe that's a little corny. (But it's still true.)

Slogans aside, the more I learn to notice, listen to, and respect the natural rhythms of my body, whether in childbirth, breastfeeding, or menstruation, the more respect I have for myself; the more whole I feel. It seems that so often in this culture women are asked to change or compromise themselves to fit in, or to be whatever others say we should be. NFP takes a woman, and rather than asking her to change herself, invites both sexes to change their perceptions of any so-called flaws. It asks us to overcome the initial shock and learning curve of living peacefully with ourselves, and to truly live and experience the wisdom and freedom of being our natural selves.

My Peaceful, Passionate Life

2010-08-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

Like most change that occurs in my life, it occurred when I was ready for it. God is gentle with me in that way. God doesn't push me off cliffs and tell me it's time to learn how to fly. He invites me, asks me if I'm ready, and when I am, proceeds. Because of God's gentleness I have slowly stopped fearing Him, and have started instead to trust Him, and have therefore become able to love Him freely.

I have a three-year-old daughter. Of course I want to raise her to be a polite, strong, confident, and ethical person. In my former parenting life, which sometimes seems like it was eons ago, but in reality is only about six months ago, I tried to teach my child obedience, and if she did not do as I said, I would exact some sort of punishment—usually a time out. She would not sit in a place, so I would hold her and not let her move for a couple minutes. I would not hurt her but I held her firmly enough to prevent flailing arms and legs. She would scream and cry like she had been shot.

Now I used to be a volunteer advocate for a sexual assault resource center. This meant that I received training to answer hotline calls from sexual assault survivors needing to talk, or from their family members. I could also go to the ER to support victims through examinations or evidence collection—that is, however the survivor needed support, sometimes needing a supportive person with her through that process and sometimes needing someone nearby, but in another room through the examination. I could also support a person through police interviews and reporting if s/he chose to report to law enforcement, and I could attend trials—again, to be a support and be a friendly face through the trial. And I could be there just to listen if the survivor needed to talk. I say this, because I was well aware of the personal stories and journeys of survivors and of the statistics about sexual assault. I wanted to raise my children in a way that would give them some protection against sexual violence, and if, God forbid, they were assaulted, I wanted them to be able to come to me, to know it wasn't their fault, and to be able to get healing instead of keeping silent in shame as so many victims do. I wanted to teach my children to respect their bodies and I wanted to show respect for their autonomy. And I have to say, forcing my daughter to sit for a moment, by the use of my physical strength over her own, and telling her that she deserved this because she had done something bad—did not sit well with me. I felt like I wasn't teaching her all those things that I wanted to. On the contrary, I felt like I was grooming her to believe all the victim-blamers in this world.

One in four girls is assaulted before the age of 18—the average age being 11—and one in six boys is assaulted before adulthood. I had often wondered what we must change in our parenting so that these children will speak up, so they will tell someone who will protect them, or even tell the abuser, "Stop. This doesn't feel right. I'm not comfortable with this. No." I wondered what must we change so our children will listen to their intuition and not so easily forsake their own judgement for the judgement of another. I had some issues with the conventional way of parenting, but I didn't have any better alternative.

So I prayed. I prayed to Mary, Jesus' mother, to please teach me to be the kind of mother that my daughters needed me to be. The following day I discovered something called radical unschooling.

And finally we get to it. Yes, this is a post about how I came to radical unschooling. What? It seems to be more about my spirituality than an educational or parenting philosophy? Ahh, but that's how it is with me. Just as unschoolers do not separate learning from everyday life, I do not separate spirituality from life. My life is not compartmentalized. Washing the laundry is spiritual. Cooking and eating is spiritual. Interacting with my children, making love to my husband, going to play-dates, and cleaning the bathroom is spiritual. Because everyday, ordinary moments are opportunities to grow in love, to become a better person, and I know God is with me in each moment—whether I feel warm and fuzzy and loved, or whether I feel alone and sad. God's presence in independent of my mood or my ability to perceive that presence.

A friend on Facebook suggested that I look into unschooling and gave me the name of Sandra Dodd. When I came to her website, the first thing I saw was, "Unschooling mother to Kirby, Marty and Holly, who never went to school." What?! Okay, I was intrigued. So I spent some time reading random posts from the list on the left side of the page. What struck me was the respect children were shown in this lifestyle. I watched Dayna Martin's youtube videos. I read everything about unschooling that I could find. I bought John Holt's book How Children Learn. Radical unschooling seemed like the answer to my prayer. It seemed like the recipe to raise my kids so they listen to their intuition and respect themselves and others. As Sandra Dodd says in her essay about respect, "Abundance in one person provides benefits to others. A child with all the trust he needs can trust others. A child with all the time he needs can share that time with others. One who has freedom won't begrudge freedom in others." I became really attracted to the philosophy of radical unschooling, especially the respect shown to children. This felt right to me. And the idea of providing a rich and stimulating environment in which children can learn rather than structured lesson plans and a set curriculum to teach children all they need to know was fascinating. But I had some practical questions, all the usual doubts that unschoolers have been hearing for decades. Can unschooled kids go to college? What about gaps in their education if the children only follow their passions? Will they be able to get a job? Within my month and a half of study on the subject all such questions were answered sufficiently. As an educational approach, I believed this could work, and probably work better than our current mode of educating our youth in this country.

So I started saying yes to my daughter, started looking for excuses to say yes to her requests and trying to find ways to meet those requests. Before doing this my daughter bit her nails constantly. Though there was scarcely anything left for her to bite, still she'd sit and bite. Within three days of saying yes more often, she stopped. Just like that. I had previously contemplated putting some foul-tasting ointment on her fingers to discourage this habit, but as it turns out showing respect for her feelings and wants had the same effect.

Next, my husband and I decided to relax all sweets limitations. Now previously our daughter had a major sweet-tooth. She would actually ask to eat sugar out of the bag. Looking at it from my new radical unschooling lens, this made sense. Placing limits on sweets taught her to value this food above all other food types. The first day we threw limits out of the window, she wanted candy for breakfast. I made some healthy suggestions but she wanted candy, so I let her have candy. She might have had candy for lunch too. I don't really recall. I just remember she ate a lot of candy throughout that day. (We usually don't have a lot of candy around the house, but for some reason we had some at that time.) The second day, the candy still lay there on the table, free for the taking, and she ate two pieces. She chose to eat healthy things the rest of the day. One day she decided to eat ice cream for breakfast. So I gave her ice cream. I decided on cereal for myself. After three bites of her ice cream, she decided she'd rather have cereal. So I put her ice cream back in the freezer and gave her cereal. I should mention that we are vegetarian and buy primarily organic food. The cereal she chose was not sugar-coated sugar, but it actually had nutritional value. I was amazed that my sugar-loving child chose cereal over ice cream.

Similarly, not too long ago we went to a gathering at a friend's house. On the table was candy, fruit, pretzels, and chips. My daughter snacked on fruit and pretzels that evening. My husband asked her if she wanted a gummy worm. She didn't. My daughter, at three-years-old has learned to listen to her body. By allowing her to make choices, and make "mistakes", she has figured out that she feels her best when she eats healthy food. Although she still likes sweets, she understands they are best enjoyed in moderation. (Usually.) Once in awhile, she will overdo it on the sweets, but I think doing this for a day or two, out of many many more healthy eating days is probably not a bad thing. Also, not being able to rely on parental force to get what I want forces me to rely heavily on modeling appropriate behavior. If my daughter is overdoing it on sweets, I much more readily look at my own behavior and ask myself if I am modeling healthy eating choices. Of course this is something that parents want to do anyway, but it can be very easy to rely on punishment to deal with unwanted behavior, rather than reflecting and taking the time to get at the root of the problem. By allowing my daughter to go through her own process, I hope she will be free from cycles of binging followed by fad diets later on, or from gaining the "freshmen fifteen" the first time she leaves home. I hope she will be free from allowing junk food to make her feel bad, and yet continuing to eat it and letting it ruin her health because she can't say no to it. I don't want her to have food issues. I want her to have freedom.

I know most of us have been taught that children need us to impose structure and rules regarding food, bedtime, chores, and the like for their own good, because they are incapable of making good choices otherwise, but I feel differently. I believe children need to be treated in a way so that their dignity remains intact, and they need some freedom to make choices and make mistakes in a protected environment. Of course they need guidance, but it should not be domineering and overbearing.

God created us with dignity. The creation story of the Israelites is unique in this regard in comparison to many of the creation stories of Israelite contemporaries. Many believed that the gods created us to be their slaves. But this is my pearl of great price. God created us with dignity. This dignity demands freedom. And the Creator of this freedom respects its value so much that even God himself does not transgress it. This seems to be a clear lesson to me that I must take great precaution not to tread on the freedom and dignity of those over whom I have power.

And me? My days are much more enjoyable and peaceful now. Before there were many days when my husband would come home from work and I was just physically and emotionally exhausted from dealing with power struggles all day. And I was so desperate for "me time". I had to wear my "mom hat" all day and that meant I had to monitor all behavior and verbally correct each action or utterance that was not perfectly genteel. I needed to teach appropriate lessons and had to police each action and exact the required punishment for offenses and everything was on my shoulders to know everything and be everything. Now, I don't need as much me time because I feel like I can be me all day, even around my children. This is perhaps the greatest gift of this lifestyle—the freedom to truly see and connect with my children. I can now be truly present to them and not have that presence ruined by always coming at them with an agenda or needing to teach them something.

My daughter's trust in me has grown too. Before she wouldn't allow me to look at or touch her foot if she had a sliver in it. And I wondered, how can she ever believe that God is trustworthy, that God truly wants what is best for her, if she couldn't even believe that of me? Now she allows me to see her boo-boos. For the first time she told me that she missed me when I was away and she was happy to see me even though she was happily playing with other kids and different toys.

So I'm still new at this, and I rejoice in the little successes when I'm able to come up with creative ways that meet everyone's needs and keep all dignity intact, when I'm able to look behind the behavior and see the need and then work to meet that need. And my family and I are extremely grateful to the answer to my prayer.

"Frequently parents forget that children are people. I don't try to treat Kristen as an adult, but I do try to treat her as a person, with a child's sensibilities." - Kent McCord

Link: Children's reactions to parental coercion

A Letter To My Child

2010-08-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

This is a letter I wrote to my child after my first miscarriage. I have decided to share it for inclusion in the Pregnancy Loss Week Blog Carnival.
Please join us at Fertility Flower for the week of August 23-27, 2010 where there will be featured articles, posts, and artwork about pregnancy loss.

Your dad and I wanted you to come to us so much. When we learned that you were growing inside me we were happy and we told everyone we know. Even though no one knew you and no one could see you, everyone was happy to learn of your existence. And so for a few weeks I went about my daily activities contemplating your presence in me. I felt so beautiful and special growing you inside me. I wondered about your personality. When I learned that you might leave me so soon, I cried. I shouldn't be sad because I know that Jesus loves little angels like you so much. But I still am. And everyone that knew about you shares our sorrow. When I learned that your soul left your little body I was comforted by the fact that my body still held you. You are so precious to me, even in death. But now your body has left me too. I rejoice at having had you with me, even if for so short a time. I loved you and I love you still, my beautiful child.

~Your Mama

A Look at Sex-Positive

2010-07-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

I suppose the only way to begin such a post as this is to come right out and say it. Because that's the nature of trauma. It's surprising, unexpected, bewildering, and leaves everything different. Beginning at the age of six, I was sexually abused by someone that I loved and trusted. The abuse lasted for seven years. I can say this now, because I finally understand that this isn't MY shame. I can say this because I finally feel as though I have healed; I have finally come to terms with my abuse; I finally trust myself; I finally like myself, and I am no longer afraid. Of course saying this doesn't mean that I still don't get sad from time to time, or that I never have bad days. But on the whole, I am happier and healthier than I have ever been.

Experts say that sexual assault and sexual abuse is about power, and that the hardest thing to face for the survivor is his/her loss of power. Yes, the power that I should have had over my own body was taken from me. The power that comes from feeling safe in the world, from feeling like a valued and valuable person, the power that comes from having healthy self-esteem, was all unjustly taken. But for me, facing and healing from this reality was not the most difficult thing. What caused the most emotional pain, what was the hardest to face, was the reality that my abuser considered my very humanity inconsequential, if not non-existent. That most sacred and most valuable part of who I am didn't matter to him. What should have been absolutely apparent—my personhood, my dignity—he didn't recognize. To know that someone could desecrate the most sacred aspect of who I am and not even realize the gravity of such an act, was frightening, heartbreaking, and the betrayal crushing. My abuser didn't see my humanity, and of all the things that happened, it was this singular fact that I felt was the most violating.

Like most victims of childhood sexual assault, I did not tell anyone. I couldn't understand why this person who I loved and trusted would do such a thing to me. So I thought that he was abusing me because I didn't have the same amount of dignity that other people had. I was different. I didn't deserve respect. This profound and utter sense of shame colored my whole world. Although exteriorly I was normal, inside every action of mine was motivated by fear. This vague, yet overwhelming feeling of 'badness' pervaded everything I did. I worked over-time at being perfect because I couldn't handle any sort of criticism, no matter how gentle. The thought of someone disliking me was more than I could bear. Someone being angry at me, even if I was angry first, elicited my fight-or-flight response. My blood pressure rose, my heart rate would increase, and I would become absolutely panicked. What if someone discovered my secret? That is, what if someone found out that I really didn't have any value? What if they discovered that I was just pretending to be smart, merely pretending to be kind and good-natured? What if they discovered that I was pretending to have dignity? What if they discovered that I was really a fake? Then what? That what was an unthinkable possibility for me, one that I worked hard at concealing. I became a people-pleaser, unable to handle any kind of negative thoughts about me. I thought it was my duty to ensure everyone else's happiness, even at the expense of myself—another reason I never told anyone about the abuse. I knew it would make my parents very sad to learn of it, so I took it upon myself to protect them. And this is how I lived my life until about five years ago.

It is with this background that I would like to address this letter that I came across some months ago on Feministing.com, as well as the whole "sex-positive" ideology. I really felt for the writer of the letter and have often thought about her since.

It seems to me that a culture that thinks that sex can be casual will never understand the utter violation that is a sexual assault. If sex can be casual a sexual assault would be equivalent to a slap in the face—infuriating, unjust, but after a couple of days stewing over it, one would just have to get over it and move on. In fact it might be this misunderstanding that guides so many people to say that exact thing to survivors. "It happened. You can't do anything about it. Just get over it." To one who feels as though her very humanity has been stripped from her, this sounds like, "You don't have any right to feel the way you do, because, frankly, you are not that important. You don't matter that much, like a little 25 cent ring that gets lost. No big deal. No use fretting over something so trivial. Just move on." This has the effect of reinforcing the message from the abuser: You don't have value.

If sex is no big deal, then my experiences and the experiences of so many other survivors don't make any sense. If sex is casual, why do I have PTSD? Why do the majority of survivors exhibit behavioral signs of having experienced a significant trauma? Why are survivors so much more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and to attempt or commit suicide? Why, even when I never experienced physical pain or violence in connection with the abuse did I have a complete personality change as fear became the predominant emotion of my life? Why have I struggled with flashbacks, nightmares, and cutting? Why do the majority of women and girls who have eating disorders have a past of sexual assault? If sex is something to do casually, for fun, to experiment with like it's a new haircut—WHY?

Given these questions that run through my mind, I consider another option. What if sex is like a sacred fire? Something good and powerful, but something which must be treated with respect, because if misused it can cause great destruction? What if, as the theologian Christopher West suggests, sex is intimately connected to the meaning of life itself? Biology suggests this. After all, in the natural order of things, we are all here because two people had sex (and actually much more than two considering all ancestors). What if a person's most sacred essence was closely connected to their physical reproductive organs? If this were true on a deeper, spiritual level, it is mirrored on the physical level in that the sexual organs contain our actual code that is transmitted to offspring. What if sex is so powerful, so holy, so meaningful, and so profound that we have not yet begun to plumb the depths of its meaning? Mr. West states that sex is like a rocket ship. Pointed in the right direction, it's meant to lead us to the heavens. But pointed elsewhere, it can lead to massive destruction. As a casualty of such destruction, this makes sense to me.

I agree with the sex positivists that the old notions of female sexuality are misogynistic. We need to move beyond the whole Victorian angel/whore paradigm, that doesn't allow for human complexity in women. If we are perfectly innocent, we are angels, and if we are not we are whores—no middle ground. I understand that the emphasis on female purity is degrading when we are treated like chattel, and our male relatives must ensure that we are not "damaged goods" when we are given to our future husband in a deal in which men are the business partners and women are the goods being exchanged.

But.

What if sexual purity is good? Not because women are worthless unless we are perfectly virginal, but because people—male and female—have dignity? And this dignity states that they shouldn't be treated like they are someone's playground equipment, like someone's experiment to be disregarded if it doesn't turn out as expected?...What if you are so valuable, that only the person who has proven his sincere and selfless love and reverence for you should receive such a gift as your whole self, that is, if you choose to give him that gift? What if the person who gave himself totally to you respected you, loved you for who you are and was willing to sacrifice for you?

My body agrees with this thinking. My body tells me that sex isn't casual, that impersonal hook-ups are not okay. In my own journey of healing from my painful past, I know that I not only had to heal from the abuse I suffered as a child, but also from the sex that I experienced as an adult that was completely consensual, but in which, nevertheless, I was still being used. This was as true from the sex which occurred in a relationship, as the sex that occurred in the context of one-night-stands where I did not desire a relationship.

What if purity is something to strive for, not because dignity is something that can be lost, (it can't), but because dignity is something that must be respected?

The sex positivists have it right in that sex should not be treated like it is something bad and shameful, something to be done out of "duty", and then only in the missionary position. Yes, sex is good. Or perhaps, it can be good. It is meant to be good. But casual sex severely limits its "positivity." I mean, if sex is merely physical, then the pleasure one receives is merely physical. But if sex is physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual, then the pleasure one experiences is physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. To me, sex is positive when I can trust the person I am making love to with knowledge of the secret recesses of my body as well as the secret recesses of my mind and heart. Sex is positive when it is free from fear of not measuring up, fear of the relationship ending, fear of not being beautiful enough, not being wanted enough, or fear of not being truly seen. Sex is positive when I know that the man I give myself to would give his life for me, that he honors me, that he loves the totality of who I am inside and out. Sex is positive when the man who gives himself to me is generous, trustworthy, honest, and when he is my best friend and confidant.

Today, sex is very different for me than that which I had experienced before I knew my husband, and before I went on my journey of healing. Now, I never feel used. I feel affirmed, loved, and cherished; I feel like someone so precious and irreplaceable. And sometimes, I am so moved at the respect and love that my husband shows me, and at the amazing and profound person he is, that I am literally moved to tears. I think this is how sex was meant to be experienced, something that is life-giving (again the metaphysical reality mirrored in biology), respectful, uplifting, and joyful. I wonder how many people go through life, perhaps so wounded and scarred, too cautious to believe that love like this is possible for them, or even too cautious to believe that it exists at all. I know that love like this is possible. I also know that you deserve nothing less.

Can Breastfeeding Hurt Marriages?

2010-06-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

I recently came across this article on BeliefNet in which Rabbi Boteach makes the argument that breastfeeding can hurt marriages. He gives as evidence one couple whose romance had faded following the birth of their two children. He writes:

With this particular couple, the situation was even worse. Their sex life had died completely, and one of the main causes was the mother's obsession with breast-feeding well into the child's eleventh month. The baby was attached to his mother like a limb, and he even slept with her every night, consigning her husband to a different bedroom.

I told the mother that in being so devoted to her son, she had committed the cardinal sin of marriage, which is to put someone else before her spouse, even if that someone is your child. Furthermore, I said, her obsession had turned one of her most attractive body parts into a feeding station, an attractive cafeteria rather than a scintillating piece of flesh.

He goes on to advise dads to be supportive to his wife but to not watch the birth, because "That is just too erotic a part of a wife's anatomy for it to become a mere birth canal."

Perhaps the major complaint that I have with Rabbi Boteach's views is that he seems to confuse cultural bias with the voice of God. I might give this view more credence if breastfeeding were something women took it upon ourselves to do--to somehow make our breasts capable of feeding infants perhaps by the use of taking some magic pill or shot, or by the insertion of some kind of implant. But this capability is not woman's doing. Rather, this is how God has created woman--a crucial point that Rabbi Boteach ignores. Although it is cultural for men to view breasts as sexually provocative (for not all cultures view breasts in this way and in fact some view our obsession with breasts as odd and unnatural), it is not a result of cultural conditioning that breasts produce infant nourishment after childbirth, and also that infants need this nourishment for at least a full year (though WHO recommends a full two years).

To fully address the topic of marriage and breastfeeding, however, I must start at the beginning, the very beginning, in fact. Thus I will start with the book of Genesis, the first book of our shared testament. In the second creation story it is written that the man and the woman were naked yet they felt no shame. In their state of innocence and closeness to God they felt no shame because they celebrated and were awed at the other's goodness, as we see when Adam cries out in joy, "This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called 'woman' for out of 'her man' this one has been taken." (Gen 2:23) After they sin they hide their nakedness. Some theologians have suggested that they must protect their dignity because they can no longer be confident in the purity and integrity of each other's gaze. Their relationship to God is now disordered, and thus, their relationships to each other and to creation are disordered as well.

Throughout history, one of man's primary temptations has been to limit God--to compartmentalize God, to think of God as someone or something that can be easily understood, and to be able to say with certainty that we know what God would or would not do, who He will or will not save, and to know precisely what God thinks in any given situation. As our relationship with and our ideas about God necessarily influence how we interact with and view one another, it seems this has been the primary temptation of men in regards to women as well--to limit us, to fit us into something that is understandable and definable. All too often, it seems that definition goes something like this: Woman: useful object for enhancing male sexual pleasure. If possessed exclusively, also useful for preparing one's meals and keeping one's abode tidy.

I feel this compartmentalization of female sexuality is dangerous. As blogger C.L. Dyck points out:

Women’s sexuality is an incomplete study without considering pregnancy and birth. The deliberate negation of the unique child-bearing and birthing capacity — something very different than involuntary infertility — reduces a woman’s sexuality to a function that’s ideologically servile to male sexual mythology.

I feel striving toward a more comprehensive view of female sexuality and the female person would be the healthier attitude.

When it comes to childbirth and breastfeeding, many women, including myself, have found these experiences extremely profound and powerful. In fact, the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) people of North America had their young men on the cusp of adulthood experience a vision quest, but did not require women to undergo this journey as they felt the normal events of a female's life, such as childbirth, were profound enough to render a vision quest unnecessary in most circumstances for females. For myself, growing up in this American culture in which young girls are increasingly sexualized at ever younger ages, and in which the advertising and entertainment industries often portray objectified, sexualized images of women, it was very difficult to come to adulthood with a healthy respect and knowledge of myself as a person.

In this society, and in many societies, often times a woman's worth is measured by her attractiveness to males, rather than the quality of her character. All too often, her very personhood is overlooked and she becomes "a scintilating piece of flesh." The experiences of childbirth and breastfeeding changed all that for me. In these experiences it seemed God was saying to me, "This society may treat you as though you are an object for sexual pleasure; they may act like you have no value apart from this, but this is not how I see you. This is not how I created you. Look at what you are capable of doing! You are capable of performing miracles!" Childbirth and breastfeeding touched me very deeply, and I began to value myself as a person, just because I am, and I began to become more immune to all of society's messages about what I must do and what I must look like in order to have value. If women "insist on clinging to breastfeeding" it may be because others, like myself, have found the experience so liberating.

It has often seemed to me, in fact, that so many of the processes that females go through, such as menstruation, childbirth, and breastfeeding, were designed expressly for teaching this lesson: there is more to woman than one can understand. She is miraculous and deserves respect and reverence. Of course all people--male and female--deserve this awe and respect, but it has primarily been women who have suffered from its lack. As Genesis describes, once sin has entered the picture, one of its consequences is the subjugation of women. To Eve, God says, "Yet your urge shall be for your husband and he shall be your master" (Gen 3:16). I feel it is important to note that this is presented as a result of sin and of man's now disordered desires, and not as part of God's original plan and design for the sexes.

I have often felt that the husbands who were most tempted to objectify their wives were the ones in most need of seeing her breastfeed and give birth. And for the woman who suffers from the indignity of having the person who has pledged to honor, love, and respect her, to instead lust after her and be blind to the immensity of her personhood, is the woman most in need of this lesson that her body, as God has designed it, can teach.

In saying this, it does not mean that a husband can not find his wife sexy, or that their love can not be erotic. It means, that it can't solely be erotic, to the exclusion of all else. Married couples must challenge themselves to make their love complete. It must be erotic, but also filial (the love between friends), affectionate (the love of family), and also agape (the love that would sacrifice one's self for the sake of the beloved). As a woman, if I felt that my husband's love for me was not complete, or at least if he was not striving for this completeness, if he was focused on my sexiness apart from the complete person I am--in other words, if he lusted after me--then I can be very confident that I would not be too enthusiastic about having sex with him, and I would likely be very tempted to feign headache, rather than experience the indignity of being used.

Rabbi Boteach suggests that the lack of sex in marriages is a result of men being unable to find their wives erotic. In this age in which advertising often displays soft-porn to sell their products, and in which the pornography industry is a multi-billion dollar business, I would argue that I do not think the problems with marriage are the cause of men being unable to see their wives as good for having sexual pleasure. I think the problem lies in men realizing that women are good for anything else, or in the fact that she is someONE more than merely a sex toy.

I would further contend that the marital success of couples who practice Natural Family Planning discount Rabbi Boteach's solutions. Although many people of varying beliefs are beginning to practice NFP, it is likely that the majority of its adherents still do so for religious reasons--because they are Catholics who want to stay obedient to the Church's teaching on contraception. One Catholic organization that has been very successful in teaching many couples (primarily in the US) the practice of NFP is the Couple to Couple League. CCL encourages extended ecological breastfeeding and cosleeping, and yet couples who practice NFP have approximately a 1% divorce rate compared to about the 50% divorce rate for the rest of our culture. In The Art of Natural Family Planning, by John Kipply and Sheila Kipply, it states,

One informal survey showed a divorce rate of less than 1% among couples practicing NFP. CCL Central has tracked one small group and found a divorce rate of 1.3%. Since this was a special, dedicated group, we estimate that the rate for the general population of NFP users might be higher, perhaps even two or three times that rate. If so, the rate would still be under 4%. On the basis of the imformation we have, we think a 5% divorce rate among couples practicing NFP is really the outside maximum limit." (245)

Furthermore, NFP couples chart and discuss nightly the characteristics of the woman's cervical mucus. The couple is encouraged to take part in this together, so generally the woman makes her observations and the man records them in her chart. If a person were to somehow overhear these nightly charting conversations, one might hear, "It's slippery and looks like raw egg-white (image)", or perhaps, "It's dry and clumpy, honey", or even (I'm guilty of this one), "Honey, I can't tell, it's kind of in the middle of the more fertile and less fertile type. Can you come look and tell me what you think?" As you can see, these are not exactly the most sexually stimulating conversations. And yet, couples who practice NFP report having more satisfying sex lives. Kate Wicker, senior writer for Faith & Family Magazine, explains,

When sex isn't on-demand, it has the tendency to become more exciting. NFPers approaching the "green light" stage enjoy the anticipation that some couples seem to lose as soon as "I do" leaves their lips. Sexual tension is lousy, but releasing it can be a lot of fun. Husbands may be surprised to discover that abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. Women appreciate their spouse's chivalry, his self-donation, and sacrifice on the part of their marriage, so when they can be "on," they're really on. What NFP couples may lack in quantity (although polls indicate NFP couples actually have more sex on average than contracepting couples), they make up for in quality.

Rabbi Boteach, on the other hand, writes, "The erotic nature of a wife's body is one of the principal elements of attraction in marriage. When a husband ceases to see his wife as a woman, and begins to see her as 'the mother of his children,' a negative trend has begun in his mind that can only subvert his erotic interest." Now, I am not aware of any in-depth studies as to why NFP couples are more satisfied with sex than other couples, but as one who practices NFP I can say that I suspect its success lies primarily in the fact that NFP encourages men and women to develop whole views of each other. It does not take a view of woman's sexuality and disjoint it from her ability to conceive. NFP also does not advocate that men view their wives as beautiful and arousing to the exclusion of her motherliness or any other thing about her person. It doesn't ask women to change any part of our natural functioning, or ask men to ignore or look the other way when we breastfeed or give birth, but rather, it encourages women to honor ourselves as we are, and it invites men to accept and honor women for the complete persons we are as well: Wife. Mother. Friend. Person. And I must say, when I feel so completely and unreservedly loved and accepted by my husband, sex is great.

When it comes to the profound experiences that I have been privileged to have as a woman, and their relation to my marriage, I have found that my husband's attitude has made all the difference. Of course, I loved my husband the day we married, but I know that in many ways my love was immature, as was his love for me. I can honestly say that I love my husband more today than the day I married him, and he confesses the same (and more than that, his behavior convinces me this is true). I feel a big part of this is our commitment to see and love the whole person that each is. I know that my husband's love and acceptance of me--ALL of me, evidenced in part through his support through the birth of our children and my breastfeeding, and our use of NFP, makes me feel extremely loved and cherished, and it has convinced me that I have found the best man on earth.

When it comes to the prevalent views of women in many cultures, and the lessons that the Creator has placed into our bodies, I would invite Rabbi Boteach to heed our Creator's invitation anew, to look again, and seek to understand the full dignity and complexity of women, and to encourage those in his flock to do the same. I'm sure their marriages would benefit.

Added January 12, 2011: Some time ago I came across this page (and I'm finally updating this post to include it!) It seems Rabbi Boteach's article was written several years ago. In the link is his sort-of apology and clarification and one blogger's reaction. http://www.breastfeedingmomsunite.com/2010/06/update-rabbi-shmuleys-retraction-and-my-reaction/

Why I Am Passionate About the Topics of NFP and Contraception

2010-04-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

Many people in this present society accept as a truism that women's liberation necessitates access to contraception. In fact, contraception is almost synonymous with feminism. I disagree with that assessment because I feel that contraception is rooted in the misogynist views of female inferiority, and the idea that women are inherently flawed, and that we need pills, surgeries, and devices to "fix" us. Throughout the ages, throughout many cultures, men have treated women as objects to be manipulated and controlled, rather than as persons to be respected and loved. Men have often believed that women were objects whose purpose was to satisfy men's sexual "needs". Hormonal contraception, by chemically manipulating and controlling women's bodies, stems from and in turn reinforces the notion that women are objects to be controlled and manipulated.

A common complaint of feminist literary critics is that in much of the canon of Western literature, female suffering is not presented as real human suffering and that female suffering is justified as long as it aids the development of male protagonists. Similarly, I believe that in a society in which women are not valued, whatever side effects women suffer from the manipulation of their bodies by hormonal contraception will be justified as long as it ensures our sexual availability to men whenever they desire to have us, as our purpose is to satisfy "men's needs", even though a natural and effective alternative exists in Natural Family Planning. (For a description of NFP, please view a previous post).

Contraception was designed by men for men. In her book, The Bitter Pill, Dr. Ellen Grant informs that when scientists first developed the pill, they designed it to be taken by men. In their first human test group, one male had slight shrinkage of one testicle, and so they called the whole thing off and redesigned the pill to be used by women. In that first test group, three women died from it and all they did was readjust the dosage. Women and girls are still dying from use of the pill.

For these reasons, I believe that no authentic liberation for women can come until people first recognize that women are inherently equal to males--even in our most natural state.

update

2010-01-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to let you know that I am on YouTube now. You can find me at:

www.youtube.com/myfemininemind

I am enjoying the video format for a blog, but I think I shall change my written blog so that it is a supplement to my video blog.

I Am Who I Am

2009-09-25T18:21:00.000-07:00

I thought I might say something about the process I went through to arrive at some of my beliefs regarding women's liberation. I would like to do so because I feel that so often people who have opposing viewpoints (perhaps somewhat naturally) can vilify one another. And I think that if people could stop throwing stones at each other long enough to try to understand one another's history and process of belief, we could gain so much knowledge, and, at the very least, we could recognize our common humanity.

I have often noticed that on the topic of pregnancy, many people align themselves in one of two camps. In one camp, there are those who speak of pregnancy as "slavery" and implicitly or explicitly think of the fetus as a "parasite." In another camp, there are those who speak of pregnancy as a "miracle", and think of the whole process as "exhilarating and amazing." And I have to say, that when I was pregnant with my first child, although intellectually I wished to align my beliefs with the latter group, my actual emotions were more in line with the former.

First off, my husband chose to take my last name when we married, and from the beginning we prided ourselves on having an egalitarian marriage. We knew the statistics that show that even when men and women both work 40 hours, the woman still does the majority of the household tasks. Though men tend to do things like taking care of the car and household maintenance, it does not add up to the daily tasks of cooking, cleaning, and child care that the woman puts in. We were going to have no part of such vestiges of an earlier, less enlightened, period.

But then something happened...I became pregnant. And guess what? There was no splitting it up fairly. I found out I was pregnant a couple weeks before finals week of my senior year of college. I would have liked to sit down with our calendars and say, "Ok...I have my senior synthesis presentation in front of the panel of faculty this day...so if you could take morning sickness then, I could take it over for your computer science final the following day..." But of course that couldn't happen. All the changes taking place in my body, all on its own, felt rather foreign. And my experience of a lot of it was an experience of suffering. It was painful, inconvenient, tiring, and lonely. Lonely because we were supposed to experience all of life together, as partners, but he couldn't REALLY experience this with me. He could only watch.

Of course we women know that the unfairness doesn't end with pregnancy. Then there was breastfeeding. Again, I knew the statistics about how breast is best, so I was going to give that to my child. And although later I came to regard it as something very beautiful, in the beginning it was a great struggle. I felt like I had a leash on; so often it had to be me that met the needs of my child. No one else would do. I remember one night my husband and I planned that I was going to get a full night's sleep and he was going to wake with our daughter that night. I pumped extra milk so I could blissfully sleep and he could take care of midnight and 3 a.m. feedings. First of all, my husband is a much sounder sleeper than I, so while I awoke to the sound of Felicia stirring, he awoke to the sound of her screaming for longer than three minutes. Then there was the problem of engorgement. My body was used to feeding a baby through the night and thus made milk to accommodate. By the second feeding, I was so engorged that I couldn't sleep because I was in so much pain and all I wanted to do was to nurse my daughter so I could experience relief.

So I have to say that I completely understand the desire to make things easier, or different, or "more fair." I understand the feeling of, "This is enough! Why do I have to put up with this?" But the thing is, for me to give in to that temptation would be to admit that I am flawed, that there is some kind of design mistake in me. That the masculine model of being really is the superior model and I should just do my best to emulate that.

And I just can't do that.

Therefore, my other option was to think that there must be meaning in life as I experience it--that there is wisdom to be gained from living an authentically feminine life. So I sought to come to peace with myself.

How can I explain my thinking? Let us say that an ordinary person, who liked to fancy himself an artist, walked into a museum, and, viewing a Picasso painting for the first time, thought to himself, "What nonsense! That is not at all how women look!" So he proceeded to take out some paint and brushes and paint over this original Picasso. I feel that is how society acts in regards to women. We are marvelous creations, masterpieces, but rather than trying to understand what is, society, in ignorance, says, "No, that's not how women should be. That must be a mistake. Let us make them better!" And so, the profound wisdom that can be gained from being receptive to what is, is lost to defacement, and society celebrates progress when it should shudder.

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor, after being rejected from several medical schools on account of her sex, was advised to enter school under the guise of a man. She stated, "I must be accepted as I am, for what I am, otherwise what good will it do for those who are to follow?" And I feel that women today are often given permission to engage in work and in society, but the prerequisite is that we do so on men's terms. But I say that we must be accepted as we are for who we are!

Honor Our Cycle

2009-09-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I came across a description of a woman's cycle which very much impressed me. It was not simply a physiological description of her monthly cycle of which most people are (hopefully) knowledgeable, but rather it was a more comprehensive description that included her subjective emotional experience and ways to honor herself through each phase. It was developed by Jeannie Hannemann, the founder of Elizabeth Ministry. I would like to give a brief summary of her thought:

In Phase I a woman menstruates. Emotionally, she feels more withdrawn and is very interested in reflection. It is a good time to take stock of her life and possibly discard outmoded beliefs or habits. Physically she does not have much energy and often does not feel very sociable. A way to honor this time would be to allow herself more time for rest and solitary reflection.

In Phase II, menstruation ends and her energy returns, as well as her desire to communicate and socialize. A way to honor this time could be to find positive releases for her energy and also to connect with others through heart-to-heart talks.

In Phase III, when a woman is fertile, she is bursting with creative energy. She is very eager to connect with others; she feels generous, selfless, and is most attracted to males. A way to honor this phase is to be creative and nurture her relationships, (and also to conceive a child of course if that is an option).

In Phase IV, her body is preparing to menstruate and she again feels the desire to pull inward. A woman is most blunt and sensitive at this time. This is called pre-menstrual syndrome. A way to honor this time is again for her to give herself some space. For others, instead of thinking of a woman as crabby, they should respectfully acknowledge her sensitivity and also listen to her thoughts and feelings. As Hannemann puts it, this is a good time "to learn secrets to her soul that may be hidden at other times."

I present this summary here because I can't help but imagine how different things might be if all women were encouraged to honor their bodies and their needs in such a way, and if men were taught to honor these needs as well. How great it would be for women and society in general if we would embrace this cycle of reflection--creativity--reevaluation. Unfortunately, for the number of women on hormonal contraception, their bodies and their minds are not allowed to experience this natural and healthy cycle. Instead, for the three weeks the contracepting woman takes the artificial hormones, her body thinks she is pregnant. So, like a pregnant woman, she does not have much energy, she is more irritable, and she is more likely to gain weight. For the days she takes the placebo, she "menstruates", (though it's not a true menstruation) and her body suddenly says, "Oh, I'm not pregnant." A few days later, as she takes the hormones again, "Oh wait a minute--yes I am!" No wonder hormonal contraception is so damaging to women's bodies, and, I would argue, to society as a whole.

As I close, John Lennon's words come to my mind, "You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us and the world will live as one." I believe in the resourcefulness, intelligence, wisdom, and giftedness of women. As such, I'm convinced that the world desperately needs our authentic femininity.

The Solution to Feminine Shame

2009-06-08T22:41:00.000-07:00

Today I would like to expound on the topic I mentioned in the previous blog post, the issue of Feminine Shame. This phenomenon is nothing new, of course. In many eras and cultures, females were seen as having less value than males. And in many places and families, they still are. And so, unfortunately, it has come to pass that myriad women have felt this deep-rooted shame in being who they are, despite the objective truth that they are inherently equal to males.

One problem is that we live in a culture obsessed with what it thinks is beauty. We are told we must go tanning; wear such and such apparel that will minimize our waist, accentuate our bust, lift and round our bum; wear make-up that will plump our lips; take this pill that will sterilize us and alter (i.e. eradicate) our cycle; etc. And so, even though out-rightly our culture proclaims equality and "celebrates diversity," covertly it infers our pathetic inadequacy. It is like a mayor who gives a speech about human dignity and then goes home to view child pornography. It is schizophrenic.

I think all this stuff just gets into our head sometimes. Even though they say we're equal, all their actions seems to say we're defective. And it's hard to believe and absolutely know that you have dignity when no one really acts like it.

Society's message is, "You can have value and worth if you do x, y, and z," which is really the same thing as saying, "You have no value." I don't want to be valuable because of all the things I did to change myself. I want to be valuable because I just am! It's like that maxim: It is better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you're not.

So what is the solution to the problem of Feminine Shame? I propose the practice of Natural Family Planning (NFP) as the means to liberate women from their bondage. Does that sound crazy? If so, please hear me out.

For those unfamiliar with NFP, it is a means by which married couples can space pregnancies or conceive. More specifically, a woman is fertile about one week out of the month. Couples learn to observe signs of her fertility, such as changes in mucus, cervix, mood and behavior, and temperature. If the couple does not wish to conceive, then they abstain from sex that week.

In this culture that has marketed contraception as Woman's Liberator, I understand that my claim may be a tough sell. If one does not take into consideration the health benefits of NFP (it is 100% natural and so does not increase her risk of heart attack, stroke, permanent infertility, miscarriage, etc.), the ecological benefits (it is not dumping huge amounts of female hormones into our drinking water and harming ecosystems)*, the marital benefits (the divorce rate among couples who practice NFP is about 1% compared to about 50% for the rest of our culture), but only looks at its philosophy, I think one can surmise that NFP is the true liberator.

For myself, being the staunch feminist that I am, I love NFP for this reason: NFP begins with the premise that women are good. Intrinsically. And that we must not engage in any practice that would harm us. Contraception, on the other hand, begins with the premise that we are flawed, and that we need pills, surgeries, and devices to fix us. It patronizingly shakes its head at we who have the misfortune of being born female, but mercifully offers us the chance to be more like men.

I am proud to be a woman, and I do not feel as though I need to act like a man to prove it. Contraception is not liberating. It is insulting.

(Added January 12, 2011)

*Note: Since writing this post, new research has come out suggesting that the biggest culprit to estrogen in drinking water is not wide use of the pill but harmful farming practices. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208125813.htm Even with this new research, I don't think it is a stretch to say that using contraception is not eco-friendly. Considering the energy it takes to produce, market, package, and ship contraception, and treat the side of effects of its use, it is clear that NFP is very eco-friendly. Furthermore, hormonal contraceptives are extremely harmful to the ecosystem of a woman's body and are rated as a group one carcinogen. http://breastcancerbydrruddy.com/2009/05/29/who-declares-oral-contraceptives-highly-carcinogenic/

Say It Loud I'm a Woman and I'm Proud

2009-05-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

As I sit down to write my first blog post, a song comes to mind: "I'm Black and I'm Proud" by James Brown. Though the slaves were emancipated about 100 years before this song debuted, this song celebrated another great leap of freedom for our African American brothers and sisters: liberation from black shame. They finally realized that they didn't need to bleach their skin and straighten their hair to be equal to Whites. True equality was not to be gained by making themselves more like Whites, but by insisting that they were equal in and of themselves.

And today, about 90 years after the signing of the 19th Amendment that guaranteed women's right to vote, I await another great leap for all my sisters: the moment when we can be freed from feminine shame. I await the moment when all women will insist that although we are different from men, we, as women, have equal validity and worth. I cannot wait for the day when women everywhere will take off their high heels, throw away their birth control and shout, "I am fine just the way I am!", women who refuse to wear uncomfortable apparel that is damaging to their feet and bad for their posture, and women who refuse to take a pill that increases their risk of heart attack, stroke, and later miscarriage and infertility! I am so eager for the day when true feminists will stand up, not to lament the fact that they are women who are "imprisoned by their wombs", but who embrace and celebrate their femininity as the awesome and amazing gift that it is.

It is my sincerest wish that in my life, I may make some contribution to that moment.