Boobies!

Blue footed or no.

Okay, less about boobies and more about breast cancer prevention and treatment. This NYT article highlights the US Preventative Services Task Force’s decision to raise the age of yearly mammograms to 50 years of age for women without major risk factors (which is up from the previous suggestion of 40 yrs old).

The ten-year difference in recommended testing for women hinges around the group’s claim that new data shows that testing later will actually reduce “potential harm from overscreening.”

While the arguments could be rationalized on both sides, this paragraph was particularly galling:

“While many women do not think a screening test can be harmful, medical experts say the risks are real. A test can trigger unnecessary further tests, like biopsies, that can create extreme anxiety. And mammograms can find cancers that grow so slowly that they never would be noticed in a woman’s lifetime, resulting in unnecessary treatment.”

Okay. Extreme anxiety is a real thing. But m.snowe finds it hard to call that an excuse against testing for one the top killers of women in America. And m.snowe finds it hard to believe that any medical professional would urge any patient to actually know less about what’s going on inside their bodies. Also, the implied perception that women somehow can’t handle the knowledge harkens back to the days when a man would consult their wife’s physician for a report, as if they were children.

Aside from any sociological/gender issues, how exactly does any panel evaluate the threshold for what constitutes the value of a single life saved? This is a large question that really applies to any scientific study of a similar skein. Well, this study decided that one prevented death per 1,904 women between the ages of 40-49 just wasn’t worth the hassle of testing all women of that age group. That’s fine, until you’re that one woman, I suppose. And anyone can be that woman.

m.snowe would probably be more apt to accept the study’s conclusion if other independent organizations working for better cancer treatment were also in line with the findings. Both the American Cancer Society and the American College of Radiology are sticking with 40.

“The guidelines are not expected to have an immediate effect on insurance coverage but should make health plans less likely to aggressively prompt women in their 40s to have mammograms and older women to have the test annually.”

If a government agency is producing guidelines, as an insurance company, you would do your best to use that to your advantage in terms of lowering costs, and restricting “unnecessary” testing. Despite what people think about universal healthcare, government-funded panels like this already dictate much of our healthcare practices.

Nonsensism.

Koan-Head!

Did Kafka meditate on koans? Either way, there are similarities between his work and the zen parables (come on, buddhist “gateless gates” v. Before the Law ’s “gatekeeper”?). Also, “koan” is just a cool noun.

“Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

Commentary

Don't listen to him...

m.snowe just realized she’s surpassed the 100 comment mark (since she started this wordpress version of her blog). Awesome, but it’s about damn time. Comment early and often!

Fiction as Anticipation for the State of Not Reading

"Curiouser and curiouser!"

“Dreams are so rich and have such an authentic feeling that scientists have long assumed they must have a crucial psychological purpose. To Freud, dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, it was a stage where the psyche’s archetypes acted out primal themes. Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though current problems, like divorce and work frustrations.

Yet what if the primary purpose of dreaming isn’t psychological at all?…Drawing on work of his own and others, Dr. Hobson argues that dreaming is a parallel state of consciousness that is continually running but normally suppressed during waking.“

–-Nov. 9, NYTimes

Isn’t fiction, by this loose definition, like a dream, then? Doesn’t fiction (usually, at least the realistic kind) have to be a string of somewhat plausible events that are a “crude test run” for life? Or perhaps, more accurately, a test run with limitless possibilities and artistic flourish that we think on even when we are not reading? Surely, you can’t live out fictional stories, just like you can’t live out dreams during wakefulness. They are random smatterings, but also taken from aspects of real life. They may or may not have psychological applications. But they can be consuming, absorbing. And how many times do we reference novels in real life, as if an invocation of their dream-like hopefulness, or lack thereof?

So, what if fictional characters “woke up” and everything was just blasé? What if fiction was the fun house mirror we look at ourselves through?

 

 

Blind Godlessness?

"They're mine I tell you, all mine!"

So this was an interesting Newsweek article that m.snowe was kindly forwarded the other week. What is not interesting or controversial is the premise of atheists in America, given that many people are atheists (the article claims 12 %), and usually live comfortably even in a nation with such extreme sectors of evangelism.

Regardless of your theology (or lack thereof), the author of this article, Miller, isn’t doing herself, or atheists, any favors with her tepid and, frankly, elementary assault of the three horsemen of the non-religious apocalypse: Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens.

m.snowe will fight on the front line for causes that attempt to widen the audience and the speakers for a given issue, be it political, social, philosophical. But the one thing that should not happen is the use of tactics that she herself would call foul on. You can point out that a conversation of atheism needs to happen between atheists of all shapes, sizes, colors, and sexes. You can point out that right now the authorities and centers of debate on atheism as most people know them are these three men–that is a statement of fact. But you cannot dismiss their arguments due to their sex or skin color, or try and say they are not scholars because of these factors. Sadly, how does one reconcile the need to let other voices in without silencing the other legitimate voices due to stereotype, sight-unseen?

This is a hard point of contention for m.snowe (and she has a feeling, other femiladies) because you want to be purely objective, but you also know that these men who are the leaders in the field did receive advantages that many women growing up beside them did not (in terms of education, social acceptance, etc.). It’s not fair to punish the “three smartest guys in school” because they flourished in the environment given to them that allowed them to become smart, but it is also not fair that that environment or selective exclusion of ladies and minorities existed in the first place. The image of “two white men sparring in a pub” might not be sexy, but if two women sparring in a pub is, then isn’t that just as un-nuanced and unnecessary too (not to mention sexist)? We need to open up the forum for more voices, but they should all be free to approach the podium without assumptions based on factors such as sex. Woolf pleaded for ambiguity, and if an atheist needs help with that, perhaps they should start talking to the agnostics.

To be fair to Miller, religion is an especially thorny area of debate for feminists, given its extensive  tendency to subject them, and the outright inability of most religions to supply women with an equal framework to start from. So it’s understandable that Miller would want to point out that even the current conversation about non-religion is being run by a small panel of well-to-do men. But at least, if she used some sort of historical argument to ask for inclusion of women and people of different racial backgrounds, she’d have published a much more persuasive piece.  There is nothing more wonderful than an eloquent and well-thought-out response, one written with conviction and strength, not name-calling. m.snowe engages in some good old bullying now and then, but would never consider it a 100% effective tool for getting people to support your ideology.

So how does one reconcile? Luckily, there is no divine answer.

Femi-Weekend

m.snowe is chock full o’ lady stuff to share from the past few days…

Ariel Levy writes on this in the New Yorker. (False memory syndrome is scary shit).

m.snowe got to see The Dinner Party, finally.

Thoughts on The Party?:

m.snowe liked the span of this piece. Never having seen pictures, only reading descriptions of the work, the concept was clearly different in practice than as msnowe envisioned. It was offset from all the other exhibits, and the lighting was intentionally low. If lucky enough, you received a small booklet to explain the “famous” lady table settings that you could flip through as you explored each section of  the piece. Admittedly, (shamefully,) msnowe needed the booklet in order to know about many of the ladies, especially those towards the beginning or middle of the walk around the exterior of the triangle. This fact, that msnowe’s own lady-knowledge was lacking, was upsetting, especially given her penchant for knowing these things. But also, how is it that one table could possibly contain most of the influential women in history? Because msnowe thought of all the ladies she’d like to see at this table before viewing it, and the exhibit wasn’t missing any of them. How can it be just one table? Even with a floor that scribbles on many other names as well? And how could msnowe not know all their stories? If there was such a table, and it was filled with 39 of the most important male figures throughout history, would it possible to not know every single, blessed one? Even just having the name ring a bell? The ignorance was at once excusable and completely unreasonable–rational yet enraging. We live in a world that  for most of its history has been unconcerned with female triumph (i.e. history is written by those in power).  What also bothered msnowe  (not as much, but still quite a bit) were the place settings themselves. Why does everything have to be vulvar petals and porcelain lips? I know Georgia O’Keeffe was an influence in this, but if there was a male dinner table of dominance (um, we already have plenty of those in real life anyways, one might add), would they need to have knives shaped like penises? Wouldn’t the men be celebrated by their accomplishments and not necessarily their bait and tackle? Don’t get msnowe wrong here, lady-hood should be celebrated, every bit including the genitalia–but isn’t defining a woman by her parts the antithesis to equality? Difference should be respected and accepted, not defining and segregating. If someone writes an amazing novel, or paints an amazing picture, they should be toasted for their talents, not their genitals (or skin color, or orientation, or age, etc.).  msnowe supposes that any piece of art which tips the scales away from phallic imagery is still doing some good. And msnowe also freely admits this piece belongs to another time, one where the celebration of all things female was a necessary reaction to a hostile world view. This was a revolution after all. Regardless of your artistic bent, it’s important not to forget that. Because as Levy explains in her New Yorker piece, the worst kind of feminism is one void of feminists.

Speaking of a lady-void, did you see this shiznit? Obviously, Publisher’s Weekly didn’t feel it necessary to invite any of the amazing lady writers to dinner.

Also, this is just catchy.

Grocery

That place never has any plain rice. They have jasmine, and yellow, and Basmati, and brown mixes and medleys, but never the plain sticky “I just worked in the paddy all day” white. That’s not the first time I went into that store looking for the basest of base ingredients and came  through the opposite swinging door empty-handed and ticked off.

This time, some jerk with a smile on his face was standing in a Hawaiian shirt at the entrance, and told me I had to go through the exit doors around the corner instead of back out the way I came in.

Well, I hate doing that.

Every time, no matter how small my bag is, I feel like I’m trying to smuggle something out, unpaid. I don’t ever steal except for that one time when I took plastic figurines off my grandma’s mail table, and after my parents found the tiny orange giraffes caravanning on the dresser in my room my chin smarted for a week. I was really foxed by those giraffes.

But I feel like a crook whenever I leave a store through a separate exit and haven’t bought anything, but the store layout makes it so you are definitely exiting and not entering. And you pass the registers, and you say to yourself “I didn’t buy anything, but I have no reason to feel strange or apprehensive.” But then the thought that you have no reason to appear that way makes you wonder how you appear, and that extra layer of consciousness always gets me–soon my eyes are shifting, and I’ve morphed into a hoodlum, complete with baggy pants, a cautious step, and a feeling that my parents never thought I would amount to anything. I’ll show them for slapping me on the chin.  What’s an 85-year old woman doing with tiny giraffes anyways?

That’s the feeling of the tragedy of capitalism, or something. And they make the exits so sinuous and impossible to get out of without banging into something or otherwise drawing undue attention to yourself.  It’s like navigating a sleigh in the Iditarod with rabid raccoons, all the more if you have an empty cart with a busted front wheel.

My dad once told me never to talk politics in polite conversation. But I don’t think it’s politically controversal to ask markets not to fill their register n-caps with small bags of goodies I would like. You’re walking through without a purchase, or you have your ingredients for dinner, and then you see that damn barrel of honey roasted peanuts, calling out like an orange giraffe on a mail table. But you don’t need them, and they are pricey for such a small portion. It should be illegal. It’s like they are aiding and abetting a crime. The crime? Highway robbery, as my father would say.  And if you’re on a public highway, it is now a political/social issue. I’m more than capable of shoving bags of peanuts in my pockets unnoticed before I get to the checkout. But now, when they’re right in my face at the end of my trip, I’m mad if I missed them back in the aisle where the security camera doesn’t have good visibility. The pockets of my coat  can’t afford any unusual bulges. I didn’t think it was possible to say “fuck you” using legumes, but that just goes to show how insidious politics can get.

m.snowe’s Baaaack.

The strength and phallic imagery of the British Empire (and it keeps time!).

 

After a short hiatus to the UK, get ready for some actual blogging.  Soon.

Just in case…

Dear Reader (whoever you might be):

So I just wanted to write this letter in case I am the victim of a horrible accident. I decided to go on a trip to Europe, and while it was fun planning, now an over-arching sense of dread is totally mucking up all my excitement. So I decided that it would be best to write this letter in preparation of my unlikely, yet possible, demise.

So first, let me say that I really love my family. And my friends. I mean, I know a lot of people would say that, and Love Actually already covered that aspect of human relationships and planes crashing right at the beginning of the movie, but I just really want you to know that I actually mean it. Sometimes I yell at you all, and sometimes I don’t talk to you for years on end, but let me assure you, that as I approach my watery grave, you and every other single person I’ve come into contact with will go through my mind, like, um, a Rolodex of emotion. This I promise you–and even you, Ewan, who I promised, while yelling down from my bedroom window, that “I would never even think of your sorry ass again,” well, in this instance of despair and terrific horror, my emotions, like my bowel  movements, will be out of my control–and so I will think of you. I want you to know that, so you can feel especially bad once this letter is made public.

I feel like I should also tell you all how I want to be remembered. This can go one of two ways, and it’s all dependant on how exactly I die, and whether or not my remains are found.

Okay, so if they find me, I want a full funeral. But before that, I would like a group meditation, with the final Leo DiCaprio scene in Titanic playing softly in the background. (I know, I know, that was a ship and this is a plane, but come on, he’s clutching debris and sinking into the ocean–same difference!). Then, I want that song that they played for Liam Neeson’s dead wife in Love Actually played as the pallbearers bear the pall. I forget the name of the song, or who sang it, but god that was beautiful. Also, get Liam to be one of the pall bearers. He doesn’t have to cry, but a single tear would add a nice touch.

If they don’t find my body, I would still like you all to believe I went down loving, in my mind, every one of you–however, and this is key: I am not dead. I was in the tail of the plane. I crashed onto an abandoned tropical island, and a Matthew-Fox-looking guy is tending to my wounds and trying, with more and more success, to seduce me into a tryst of tropical, tropical passion. (Yeah, how do you like that, Ewan? How does that smack you?).  So again, I am totally still alive (even if I’m not). Disregard my early infatuation with Amelia Earhart, and understand that it is a mere coincidence that we both ended up missing (but feel free to bring it up, teary-eyed, when you are interviewed on the Today Show, or Oprah). Come to think of it, my story should be more compelling and have a longer shelf life, seeing as I’m waaaay hotter, and Earhart was kind of a gap-toothed, Eleanor-Roosevelt type, if you understand what I’m saying. And if Dateline has taught us nothing else, it has shown us that hot people who go missing are much more important than the fugly-looking ones.

Alright, I think that’s really all I have to say. So remember, you all are so important in continuing my legacy once I am gone. And also, this letter should be saved for posterity, so please keep it safe. (But just in case you misplaced it, there are about ten copies scattered about my apartment, and at work.)
Love,

Me

Monday Postage for Friday

The fiction Lady-Rating returns (on a Monday).

Do you have what it takes, fictionally?

First, apologies–m.snowe has been neglecting this Friday post  idea. But to remedy that on a Monday morning, here we go with a new book to analyze in terms of its female characters, or the presence/lack of any type of feminist ideas.

Today’s Lady-Rating, for American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

Do ladies ever strike twice?

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Reasoning: First let m.snowe say that she enjoyed this book immensely. It was an easy read, and presented ideas and creative vignettes that were extremely original and thought-provoking. There was an underlying message or preachyness to the book, but it really didn’t distract or take away from m.snowe’s enjoyment of the story. But here’s the problem–most of the lady bits are tangential. The protagonist, Shadow, is actually quite a redeeming character, and it’s clear that he respects and enjoys the company of women (yeah, in that way too). And women do play a crucial role in the movement of the story–Gaiman’s premise of broke-down gods living in America is not neglectful of lady gods–Easter, Mama Ji, the Zorya sisters, etc., and so on. And Shadow’s dead wife is also a key character. But honestly, sometimes m.snowe felt like the ladies were either there to add flourish or intrigue, or merely drive the story–which is fine, but the women don’t get the kind of character development that the men sometimes do. Despite the variety of names these lady-gods are given, it might not be completely unfair to say they are all really Muses. They guide and assist Shadow on his way, and the real players are men–Shadow, Wednesday, Mister World.

But let m.snowe make it clear–she loved this book, and found herself reading passages that were completely unique, and many times wished she could’ve come up with such strange and beautiful stories. The small stories that breakaway from the main action were just out-of-place enough to work, yet intrinsically tied to the plot, even if you couldn’t fully puzzle out why. A scene of a reverse birth was shocking (at least, it was to m.snowe!), and the frank suspension of reality somehow works. In fact, it was mildly disappointing to see that the end was connected to the solving of a “real life” murder mystery, because it hurled the story back into reality, taking the reader out of the world of strange possibilities that Gaiman navigates so fluidly. If only Shadow or Wednesday had a lady counterpart, this story would’ve tipped the lady-rating scales to a seven or eight. But m.snowe recommends you read it anyway.