fattypatties

What if you are wrong?
An Open Letter to All the Obesity Reformers of the World

Dear "Well-Meaning People":

You quote many scientific studies in your desire to save fat people from the disease called "obesity." But do you really read these studies with a critical mind? Do you really think about how the study is designed, what assumptions are being made, other ways to interpret the results? Numbers are quoted and requoted with little understanding of what they mean. When one thinks critically about such studies, they are laughed out the door and told that it is dangerous to contemplate fat without understanding obesity. They are told that people could die if the research indicates that fat is not a disease. You are probably dismissing what I am saying right now because you know that I am a fat person. But I ask you to keep an open mind. Examine the fear you are feeling right now. Why does it scare you to listen to a fat woman talk about bodies and health? If you really believe you know what is healthy, there is nothing to fear from questioning and critiquing the science. That is how science works. So be a skeptic and read on.

No one really knows much about the human body and fat. Not really. How a study is set up often determines the results. Obesity is a medical term and it was invented before anyone really studied fat. The assumption in medical research has almost always been to treat body fat as a disease and then to research for the effects of the disease and for the cure. Go ahead, I dare you. Find a scientific study of fat as fat without assuming that fat is a medical condition. A study that asks the question what is a fat body like. I don't think you will find much at all.

I'd like for you to consider for one minute that you might be wrong. Maybe obesity isn't a disease at all. Maybe you are trying to cure something that is just natural, just a part of human experience. What if obesity is a myth? People are taking drugs that damage their bodies. People are opting for radical surgeries that at best ruin their social lives and at worst kill them. People are starving themselves because they fear fatness. What if you are wrong? What if you are quoting junk science and espousing life-threatening cures in the name of a prejudice?

This is science, you say? It could never happen that way? Women's health and African American's health have long been damaged by mythical diseases and their very real cures. Medicine and science live in culture. Lots of things have been taken for granted in one generation only to be regarded as junk in a later generation.

Doesn't it seem like an important thing to do before we come up with yet another cure? Where is the money to study fat bodies as something other than a medical object? A whole bunch of people are experiencing life differently than these so-called medical studies suggest they should. They live long, full lives with little of the illnesses and problems that obesity is supposed to cause. A whole bunch of other people would be healthy if they hadn't tried all the damaging diets, pills and surgeries that were supposed to give them better health. Science is supposed to be neutral. It is supposed to change as the empirical observations support or undermine the model. If you are right and obesity is some medical condition that needs a cure, then what are you afraid of? A study that begins with fat bodies as an object instead of the medicalized obesity would yield confirmation of your beliefs. But you cling to a model that was developed by people with something to sell and then you rebuff the empirical data because it just doesn't fit the data.

So the next time you want to be well-meaning and help a fat friend by laying claim to cures in one form or another, I ask you to consider what you are doing. What is the source of your information? How do you know what you know? How much science have you read thoroughly, critiqued rigourously and assessed in light of other data? You could be just repeating junk and junk can kill. I beg you to be sure before you decide to pass along such unexamined information. If you don't have the time to study it in depth, then shut up and don't repeat advice you hear on television or read in an ad. Otherwise you could be remembered as part of a generation that decided that fat people were unworthy of membership in the human race.

Be grateful for your fat friends this Thanksgiving and leave them alone about their health. We know you mean well, but it really does a lot of damage.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Fatty Pattie

It's been a week since I wrote anything. How did that happen? I swear time is flying and I am not having fun.

Actually I had a little bit of fun last week. It was Carl's birthday on Thursday and I celebrated by doing a radio show about him and by buying him the most self-serving gift I've ever bought someone else.

The dilemma described by Kell in the comments is indicative of the problem with all activism. If you are "anti-" anything, you are stuck with the discourse game created by the oppressor. Luce Irigary writes about the dilemma of sexism when she laments that women cannot be discussed without raising their opposition to men. She calls for an examination of women without men (something impossible to do in western culture), suggesting that rather than looking for the "other of a man" (that is, a woman) that we should be looking for "the other of the other of a man." The "anti" position becomes part of the problem. To speak out against sexism leaves one vulnerable to either attack or to obscurity. To not speak out, leaves something very hurtful unchallenged. It is all too real a double-bind.

I have to admit, however, that I run out of gas when I talk about sexism. I've been trying to figure out why it doesn't make me madder. Then last night it occurred to me. I think it is because in my life I've had more grief from women. It isn't that there aren't some phenomenal women in my life. There are plenty of wonderful women. But when I am treated poorly because I am fat it almost always is from a woman. Women call me names. Women make rude comments to me. Women are well-meaning about my health as they tear me to shreds. Women go on and on about their diet and exercise regimens and how much weight they've lost as if I were not in the room or as if they wanted to inspire me to be just like them in a fit of passive-aggressive fervour. It has been women, not men, who have bullied me. I grew up a tomboy, playing like a boy and fighting like a boy. Maybe that's why I handle boys better than girls.

Fat-hatred is a way for women to be divided and conquered. Fat-hatred is a self-hatred that turns into devisive measurement. Roddick's article about her experience in a fat suit for a documentary (blogged over at Big Fat Blog) is a perfect example of a woman who hates herself and wants to use fat women as a way to feel better about herself:

On the one hand, she tries to be sympathetic: "It was a constant catalogue of embarrassment. People walked past me and muttered: 'Fat cow' in that cowardly, timid way bullies have. Not saying it to your face, but waiting until they were almost past. Young girls were the worst. There is a terrible competitiveness about women that often goes unsaid. I encountered a great deal of hostility but also curiosity. People stared, trying to work me out, how my body worked. It seemed as if they were repelled and attracted at the same time - as if I were some sort of freak or curiosity." In the next breath, she puts fat women and old women in their place: "I wasn't at all bothered about looking conventionally unattractive - at my age I'm past caring. But the reaction made me uncomfortable all the same." Later in the article she does the flip-flop again: "I discovered that obese women certainly don't need thin women's pity. You don't need to be thin to be attractive and sexy and vibrant. I was glad to say goodbye to the suit. If I had the choice whether to be my normal weight or 20 stone, nothing in the world would make me carry around that amount of weight." (emphasis mine)

This is her great conclusion after meeting "vibrant" and "sexy" women who are comfortable in their own bodies. The thought never occurs to this chick that fat women don't wear their fat. Fat is a part of their body. But this chick is so caught up in the experience of the fat suit that she can't see how the attitudes of others, the one-size-fits-all mentality of public spaces and the hatred she obviously feels towards fat might contribute to some of the experiences she was having. To her fat is something that is worn. To her fat is bad, ugly, unhealthy. She talks about obesity with the same lack of examination that the diet and fitness industry and medical establishment have come to talk about obesity. A few days wrapped up like a baby in a snow suit and she believes she understands it all. Did the thought ever occur to Discovery UK that maybe it would be more interesting and more realistic to have a fat woman share her experiences?

Tish mentioned John Howard Griffen's classic book, Black Like Me. Griffen took a special medical treatment that changed his body -- he didn't put on blackface and he couldn't just take off his blackness when it became too much for him. Roddick writes: "DURING the filming I could only wear the suit for a few hours a day because I found it so frustrating and physically grueling." This tells me that she wasn't interested in the fat experience at all. She was interested in finding out how people would react to the fat suit so she could make herself look sympathetic while she confirmed all her worst fears and prejudices about what it means to be fat. And she has the added bonus of rewarding herself with being skinny whenever she wants. It is not surprising then that she gained no sympathy whatsoever to the experience of being fat.

So that brings me back to Irigary and the other of the other of a woman. In the prologue for Fatty Pattie's I write about a radical appeciation for the beauty of a fat woman. I wrote this originally in a paper in which I asserted that fat women are politically charged because we are indeed the other of the other of a woman. We do not fit the profile of what a woman is supposed to be in a sexist society. Those of us who practice fat acceptance and do not apologize for our size are especially radical in our otherness because we have the audacity to not aspire to an idealized body. Of course, Roddick should know this. But then, I've come to expect feminists and lefties to abandon fat people. We don't fit the expectation from their point-of-view either.

No wonder I often feel like a bastard child.

Yes, Tish, the herbs have helped. Though when I went back and reread the week of blogging I did, I realized it must seem that the herbs were miracle drugs responsible for me writing five times as much as I had in the last month. Actually, I think I've just been storing up so much in my brain that when I finally got a little energy, it all came pouring out.

Kell said

"Even if people say they aren't sexist, they frequently are, because even the lefty progressives have their own definitions of what is or isn't allowable hatred. I have to worry about who is or isn't sexist, because my ability to survive these sorts of sucker punches is getting weaker all the time. "

This is the point I'm trying to make when I said that debating whether someone is sexist or not misses the point. People often say and do things without realizing that they are repeating ideas and memes that hurt other people. Sexist language speaks through them. Deciding whether that makes them sexist or not gets bogged down in arguements over intentions and characters. I puts the burden of proof on the person who was hurt to demonstrate that the person doing the hurting meant to hurt. It is a top-down approach that further hurts the less powerful in the situation. Rather than argue cases, I have come not to care what the motivation is for the words. I don't give a damn if some nice lefty says something stupid or some hard-ass righty meant what he said. The words hurt either way and the confrontation of culture is needed in order to create other resources upon which people can draw.

Here's a case in point. In an unrelated discussion yesterday (unrelated to sexism), a friend and I were discussing someone she knew who was in a bad marriage, but wasn't leaving because the person felt it was better to be married than to be single. 50 years ago, a conversation between two women about a third woman who was staying in a bad relationship for the sake of marriage would have automatically been admired. Most of the cultural resources available would have supported admiration of the position. However, it would have still been possible to question culture and the decision. In fact, in the 1960s and 70s some people successfully questioned the assumptions of marriage for marriage sake. Now, in the contemporary conversation, we would have felt awkward if we had supported the decision. Instead, we discussed how sad it was that she felt stuck and how obvious it was that she should leave. Now I know that there are backlashes to these new positions and cultural resources supporting the old position are being created as well. But the point is that things changed, culture changed. And the changing of culture made it easier for us to see leaving a bad marriage as a viable option instead of a radical one.

So yes, it is important to be vigilant to sexist language and to find ways to confront that sexism where possible. The ideal would be for men to do this as much, if not more, than women. I would think they would. As Carl said last week on our radio show: "Some men ruin it for the rest of us." If I were a heterosexual man, I would hate sexist remarks because I would be interested in sexual relationships that are honest with people who don't go a little nuts trying to work things out. It seems to be in the best interest of anyone who is interested in having sex to ensure that sexual relationships take place in a free and honest space. I have a growing suspicion, however, that most people, including men, are not interested in real sex. But that will be a discussion for another time.

...continued from Friday, more sociology.

English reflects the history of patriarchy as well. Much has been done in the past 50 years to critique the ways in which English supports the idea of men being "normal" and women being "other." But much of the patriarchal roots remain. English itself is sexist. (So are many other languages, BTW, but I'll limit myself to English-speaking cultures because it is the language I speak and the language in which the blogs in question were written.) Enlgish also privileges European history and philosophy over other cultures, even when those cultures now use English. For example, many commonwealth countries in Africa and Asia have traditional cultures that cannot be spoke of easily in the imperial language of English because their philosophy is holistic and their concept of time is circular while English is dualistic and its concept of time is linear.

One last concept and then I will get to my point. When we speak or write English we are acting. By that I mean that the usual dichotomy of speech and action is a false dichotomy. Speech (and by implication writing) is an activity. This is important because it means that speaking or writing sexist language is an act of sexism.

[[THUS ENDETH THE SOCIOLOGY LESSON]]

If English reflects a sexist history and culture, and speaking English is an act, then it becomes difficult to talk without acting sexist. This is not an excuse for those who say sexist things or present sexist images. The implication of this statement is quite the opposite. Language is evolutionary. It reflects changes in culture as well as preserves the history of a culture. For sexism (or any other "ism" in our cultural history) to change will require a mindfulness about speech. Thus, it becomes extremely important to challenge sexist language whenever and wherever it occurs. It can change.

One of the culture shocks I've had since moving to Canada (where not all but most of the people speak English) is that people in airports and banks automatically call me "Mrs." instead of "Ms." It drives me crazy because I kept my maiden name and Mrs. Thomas is my mother, not me. It also drives me crazy because its the 21st century and I'm not alone in my desire to assert my own name and my own personhood. But I am reminded that "Ms." was a change in American culture that has only happened in my lifetime. It wasn't even a word when I was born. It is a small change to be sure, but even in the deep south, it was never assumed that I would want to be called "Mrs." and it was considered polite since the 70s to use "Ms." as the default until otherwise told.

But that was language about gender identify. Language about sex is much more difficult to address. In fact, engaging in sexual relations between men and women is difficult to negotiate in a sexist world for men and women alike. I've been in a monagamous relationship for almost 12 years now and sex is still difficult to negotiate at times without sexist contexts creeping in even with someone I consider one of the most enlightened men I know.

This mindfulness about language leads to two important strategies in addressing sexism.

1. Concentrating on who is sexist or which representation is sexist misses the point. A picture isn't sexist because of what is in the picture. In one context the form of a naked woman can be a beautiful representation of the female body, celebrating her personhood as well as her physicality. In another context, the exact same picture can be meant to degrade women and their place in the world. Images of the goddess Venus is a perfect example of this. Venus has come to represent sexual freedom to many women, the ability to chose one's lovers and to express one's sexuality. However, (and I searched but was not able to find the image and I can't remember the artist's name) a reproduction of a nude painting of a reclining venus used to hang over the bar of an Irish pub that I used to frequent. It was not there for its art value, but for the enjoyment of drunk men and I suffered through a couple of pick-up lines that involved that painting. Sexism occurs in the interaction, not merely in the intention of the speaker or writer (or poster of an image). This means that feedback to a speaker is a legitimate part of the process. Both speaker and listener can confront and negotiate the meaning of words and images. Agreeing to disagree is, of course, an option, but if sexism in English is to change, one would hope that new ways of speaking might emerge from the negotiation. Certainly, though, accusations and censorship will not result in those changes. If the conversation proceeds on the level of "You're a sexist pig" "That's not what I meant and you know it." Then nothing really changes. But men and women discussing sexist contexts and alternatives to sexist language has a great deal of potential. (see the comments at Tish's and follow her links to some great discussions along this line)

2. We must mindfully create other language for sexual expression. That might involve creating new words. It might involve reclaiming old expressions. This mindful creation will need the cooperation of others. I think poetry is probably the best way this can happen. Poems use old words in new ways.

I guess my point is that it is pointless to worry about who is sexist and who isn't because even the best of intentions are filtered through English. There are people who will not negotiate meaning with their readers. They will argue and defend their positions without consideration for what their words do to reproduce hardship on others. I walk away from those people. They are not ready to work it out and their rigidity just plain hurts me. But there are others where the effort of negotiation leads to new and wonderful things. That's where the fun begins.

I guess this is an odd conclusion to come to after all this writing. I think there was something else I was going to say, but I can't remember what it was now. It is hard when words speak through us and does and says things we don't intend. Tish said just a few minutes ago:

"It seems I wrote something a while back that someone took a certain way. In a way that I did not intend. But I can see how it was taken that way. I guess. At first I thought about writing to the person to try and clear things up. Then I thought about taking a break from blogging. Then I thought about leaving my writing program and finding a convent, or ashram, or something, where I could take a vow of silence and give up on trying to use language at all. Ever. Then I thought ... aw.....what the fuck. Sometimes you write something and it hits the mark. Sometimes people just slide past each other. "

I think that sums up the problems with language well.

I've got something on my mind this morning and not a lot of time to tell it, so this may be a two-parter:

Tish is my window to the BLOG world. (Someday, I'm going to give up T.V. and spend my evenings reading Blogs, but until that day, I read Tish and get a sense of it.) Apparently several people have been debating whether specific bloggers and/or blogs on the Internet were sexist. While specific question is interesting and important (people should express their feelings about this), as a sociologist I'd like to address the general case: How does one determine who is sexist and who is not?

Having just posed the question, I'd like to say it is the wrong the question to ask. In order to show why it is the wrong question and then pose the better question, I must first offer a lesson in constructionist sociology. My apologies to readers who already know this, but it is an important point to make. I will bracket the lesson, so you can skip this part if you'd like, though you might disagree with what I think is constructionist and I'd cherish feedback.

[[THE LESSON BEGINETH]]

Much of Western society is geared toward the individual as an entity that exists before anything else. That is, ultimately we ask questions about who a person is, we expect that a person's character, psychological make-up and moral standing determine how s/he acts, thinks and decides. Thus, the question being posed right now among the blogs is whether a particular person is sexist. Some may pose the question slightly different: are particular acts sexist, such as putting pictures of naked women on the web or talking about who is sexy? Shifting the question from designating the person as sexist to designating what the person does as sexist still concentrates the analysis upon the individual. It assumes one cause -- the person's character in the first case, the person's choice in the second case -- leads to one effect -- being sexist or acting sexist. In either case, the assumption makes the individual the focus of a linear analysis.

What if we began at a different point? What if we started with the language available to anyone who wants to talk about sex, sexuality or sexiness? All of us are limited by the words we are taught. If we assume that language came before the individual, we cannot stick to a linear-cause-leads-to-effect approach because language limits us, but then we invent new words (as a group and as individuals) and thus the resources we have in language are always changing. It is dynamic.

So we want to speak of something such as sex, but we are limited to the pool of words that we know. This pool of words reflects all of the attitudes, characteristics, actions and moral decisions made before we speak. That is, language reflects culture and history. The very second we speak, we are stuck with that culture and that history.

In addition, we are currently interacting with the listener or the reader. Thus, language not only draws upon the past, but it draws upon the present and future because it assumes that those who hear or read what the speaker or writer expresses will understand it. That dependency upon understanding means that we have to have a common experience, some common ground upon which to build this joint meaning. So the construction isn't complete until the meaning is shared. We cannot build our meanings alone even when we are talking to ourselves, because what we understand ourselves to be saying was taught to us by other people and is based upon how we view other people.

These language resources can be thought about as having various histories and cultures even within the same language. English spoken or written in England looks different than in the United States. English spoken or written in the Southeastern United States looks different than in New England. English spoken or written in the Queens looks different than in Manhatten. But dialect isn't the only variation. Mathematics has a vocabulary very different from Fine Arts. Even within a discipline, there are variations. Sociologist who study deviance has special terms not easily recognised by Medical Sociologists and vice versa. The particular histories of a group of people can also create variations in language.

And I hate this, but I have to go to work, so the sociology lesson and its implications are continued later...

well i jinxed myself by bragging on the three days thing and missed a day.

I'm writing tonight even though I don't have much to say. I'm dead tired. I've been working a lot lately and am glad to have enough energy to do so, but now I'm tired.

I've been interviewing octogenarians this week. I find it fascinating to talk with really old people. I wish that I could spend more than a half an hour and ask them a lot more questions. They are great fun. I know they have a lot of stories to tell, but alas, my job is just to find out how they like where they are living. The house they live in is a great place to hang out. It's been fun going there and talking with the staff and the residents. One of the nicer things I get to do as a reseacher.

I guess I just wanted to recognise and record that for today. Some days my job is kinda kewl.

Three entries in three days. I think this might be a record for me. This is going to be much shorter though because I have to go back to work today. Not that I don't do some sort of work everyday, but today is full.

I don't know if many Americans know what is happening on the Canadian/US border these days, but it ain't pretty. It seems that the U.S. government has decided that it is going to fingerprint everyone who enters the country who was born (emphasize born, not based on citizenship or passport, but on where a person was born) in specific Muslim countries (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Sudan). The idea behind this dragnet is that the U.S. government can keep an eye on muslims travelling in the US and therefore know if there are terrorists among them. I guess if your fingerprints show up at a bomb site, they can come get you. Perhaps there is a "terrorist" database of fingerprints available for comparison. However, that begs a few questions.

On top of this, a Canadian man is under arrest and another is being detained in Maine for crossing the border in order to buy gasoline, something that has been allowed since there was gasoline in Maine.

Needless to say, the Canadians are livid. Or at least they were at first. It seems that a member of parliment was given the choice of being fingerprinted or not travelling to the US and then a Canadian citizen who held dual citizenship with Syria was sent back to Syria instead of Canada and has been detained there for some time. His family wasn't even notified and neither was the Canadian government. The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs have backed down from a travel warning they were issuing last week. But Ashcroft has announced today something a little different than what The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bill Graham was told last week by the State Department and, well, the Canadians are leery again. I've heard several Canadian citizens on talk shows calling for a boycotting of travel to the US no matter where you were born. Tensions are rising. Now the Muslim Congress in Canada is advising Muslims in Canada not to travel to the US.

Now there are a bunch of arguements against this policy that I could make. The legal arguement: racial profiling is just plain wrong and anti-American, anti-Constitution. The economic argument: isolationism is bad for the US, especially pissing off their major supplier of electricity as well as the largest group of tourists. The law enforcement argument: the whole idea is impractical as it wastes a bunch of time on people who are no threat at all while not reserving resources for the really dangerous people--need I remind you that Oklahoma City was bombed by a lily-white boy who was trained by the US military machine (Okay, so was Bin Laden and Sadam Hussein, but who's counting). Those are all good arguments and I've heard them all discussed at least briefly.

But here is my major argument and one that I haven't heard anywhere yet. RACIAL PROFILING AT THE BORDER MAKES THE WORLD MORE DANGEROUS!!!! When is the US government going to learn that targeting Muslims without discernment is one more way of uniting forces that really don't get along well into a solid force fighting a common enemy. I know it is really hard for these people to figure out that the colour of one's skin and place of one's birth doesn't set one's political beliefs in stone for life. I know that trying to figure out who the enemy really is when the enemy may look like a friend or even like the boy next door. But isn't that what law officials make the big bucks to do? Are we really at the point where it doesn't matter who the bad guys are as long as we pick someone as the bad guy and then hurt them?

I don't buy the administration's assertion without proof that there are connections between Sadam Hussein and Al-Qaida because I basically don't trust W's motives. BUT if I am wrong and there are Al-Qaida terrorists being sheltered by Iraq then something really bad is happening, something no one in the public discourse in America is talking about. Iraq is a secular, fairly westernized country. Al-Qaida is a religiously based, religiously motivated group. If they are in cohoots with each other it means that they have set aside some huge differences. It means that they are coming together to fight a common enemy--the United States. It means that the world is more dangerous than it was.

There are one billion Muslims in the world. America has around 300,000,000 people, including quite a few Muslims. A holy war is not in America's best interest and it isn't necessary or optimal. I have mixed feelings about the "war on terrorism" because I see it as a means to enact social control and fascist policies domestically. But if there is really a need for a war on terrorism, shouldn't it be fought with America's best interest at heart and shouldn't it concentrate on the terrorists instead of the tourists? Maybe the border guards have just misunderstood W's strange Tex-Conn dialect. After all every time he's said "War on Terrorism," I've heard "War on Tourism" -- yikes, maybe that's it! Omigoddess, world war three started because of the lack of diction on the part of our leader. Now that's a scarry thought. (of course, one might argue that a war on tourism will be fought, but that's another story for another day.)

Okay, one last note. I was disappointed (and not alone among Canadians calling into talk shows) that the Canadian government reified the racial profiling by warning only their Muslim citizens. It seems to me than an appropriate response to the treatment of any of Canadian citizens with such disdain would be to warn all Canadian citizens about travelling at the border. Ashcroft's speech didn't make the distinction. He said that those north of the border would not be given special treatment. Bill Graham should follow suit and issue a travel warning to all Canadians. As one talk show caller put it, "such an insult to any Canadian citizen is an insult to all Canadian citizens."

(so much for being short and sweet today)

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail this morning regarding Jane Fonda's visit to Viet Nam and the kinds of torture that were meted out during her visit when the POWs refused to pretend that they were being treated well. I've always had mixed feelings about her visit. On the one hand, it seemed like an important thing to do at a time when this country needed to talk about ending the war. What better use of celebrity than to stand up for what you think is right. On the other hand, I never quite understood the purpose of the visit. It seemed to me that the better approach would have been to visit the villages and innocents who were being slaughtered and to show that both sides were killing indiscrimately and with no real purpose than to frantinize with the other side's military. She may not have meant this, and I think she was used in her naivity by both sides, but she came across as not so much anti-war, but pro-North Viet Nam. I can understand the bitter taste that must have left in the mouths of military personnel and their families. Especially POWs. My friend noted in the e-mail she forwarded that her brother suffered tortures duriing Fonda's visit. It hurts her still today.

I bring this up because two things struck me about the e-mail. First, it was sent to me from a particular point-of-view, one born of real pain. I would never debate my friend. I respect her point-of-view on this and can see no purpose in telling her that her feelings were not justified. It just doesn't seem right for me to engage in intellectual debate with her about this. She obviously loves her brother and hates that he was tortured and that someone from her country may have contributed to that torture.

The second thing that struck me however was the way the article she forwarded rewrote history and, especially, rewrote it in light of the current climate in the States. In 1968, a number of people were upset with the U.S. government's involvement in Viet Nam. The torture the POWs received was matched by the slaughtering of women and children in villages by American soldiers. Hanoi Jane did not come to Viet Nam in a social vacuum with no history or context to her visit. But the forward suggests otherwise. It suggests that at the time of her visit she did not represent a significant part of the American mind-set regarding Viet Nam. She is presented as a single traitor, not as a representative of protesters who regarded their government's policies as not only wrong but illegal. Don't forget, this was not a declared war. This was a "police action" that expanded the powers of the presidency in ways that had never been done before in U.S. history.

The word "patriot" was used a half dozen times in the forward. I am old enough to remember when that word incited a great deal of anger among Americans. Many believe that there was nothing patriotic about going to Viet Nam. Patriotism was regarded as a form of fascism -- my country right or wrong. It was thought of as a kind of blindness. I must admit I'm still uncomfortable with the word. It implies something that I think might hurt more people than help them. A lot of killing has been done in the name of patriotism. Patriotism seems to me to be a way of dividing "us" from "them." It accomplishes very little other than to mesmerize the masses into doing what governments want them to do. Thus patriotism can be good if government is worthy and horrible if government is corrupt.

Let me set some things straight here. I am not a pacifist in the general case. I believe that there are extreme situations in which people have to fight, physically fight. There are people in the world who do not give you much choice but to engage in violence. To pretend otherwise is to have never experience oppression. Anger is a useful defence. Fighting back is a necessary part of dealing with the enemy. There have been people in my life who wanted to see me suffer and die young. I have fought back to not indulge them in this desire. Sometimes that fight has turned violent. But in most specific cases, I have been a pacifist.

War has been used by governments to control their own people ever since war and government was invented, I'm sure. War is a form of oppression.

The current tension with Iraq (read the text -- note that the word "invasion" or "war" have not been mentioned directly) and the nebulous war on terrorism are great examples of this. I believe there are/were peaceful alternatives to responding to what happened on September 11, 2001 and what has been going on in Iraq ad naseum. But these alternatives require a kind of maturity I just have seen demonstrated in United States government in recent years. In fact, thinking back over the governments of my lifetime, the only president that I believe could have responded with thoughtfulness and reason was Jimmy Carter. But he was scorned for his intelligence and peacemaking.

Fractals come to mind at this point. Fractals are a kind of geometry that relies upon patterns that repeat themselves at different magnifications. If you take a picture of a shoreline from 10,000 feet above the ground and a picture of a shoreline from 1 foot above the ground and show nothing but the shoreline (no objects to help you gain perspective of distance), they look the same: water and sand draw a similar line between them. In order to know what you are looking at, you need context. You need something that frames the picture in order to understand it fully.

That's why I can't make a general statement about hawks and doves. My friend's perspective is framed by her brother's suffering. That suffering was real and while I think the reaction lacks a certain context, I understand it and respect it. But consider how the U.S. government's involvement in a war that was none of their business contributed to that suffering. Consider how the government was not listening or responding to concerns that people had about that war. Consider the war crimes committed by the Nixon administration and Kissinger during that war. Consider the corruption in that government. All these things contributed to the suffering of soldiers, POWs, their families and the people in Viet Nam. This is not to say that the other side didn't contribute to the suffering as well. There is plenty of blame to go around. But each layer of context changes the perspective and meanings of the suffering. History is incomplete without this context. To simply point to the pattern is to mark the fractal without context. You don't know if you look at one inch or one mile.

It has been over a month since I last posted. I have been in hibernation. I've felt like I had no energy at all and that has affected all my work. One reading of how I've been is that I've had a flare-up. Another is that I'm depressed. I through trying to figure out why. I just know that I've not had the energy to do things that I wanted to do and I've felt overwhelmed by life.

About two weeks ago, I went to an acupuncturist and started taking some herbs that he gave me. It has viola (silly me, I thought that was a musical instrument), astragalus, ganoderma, eleuthera (this is the herb, not the Bahama Island by the same name), codonopsis, ligustrum, laminaria, atractylodes, rehmannia, millettia, schizandra, and licorice.

I have had more energy since using the herbs, but it makes me feel funny to have to have them. I wish I knew more about bodies and health than I do. That sounds rather silly coming from a medical sociologist, but I really hate how much capitalism has hurt our knowledge of our bodies and our health. I don't know who to trust. So many more motives than my well-being.

My sitting around the house doing nothing but veging, however, has given me a lot of time to think. I've made a new resolution. I've decided to stop editing myself when I talk and when I write. By that I mean, I want to be more authentic when I write, say what I'm really feeling and thinking. Damn the consequences.

This is, of course, harder to do than it sounds. I've internalized so many messages and I still have a great fear of not being liked. It is hard to NOT worry about reactions to what I have to say. But I think the time has come to go balls out and say what's on my mind, period.

A lot of things piss me off these days. Little things and big things.

I went to see Bowling for Columbine a couple of weeks ago. I hate going to movies in theatres because the seats are too small. It was a big deal getting a seat, though I have to say that this theatre was more accommodating than most. But I thought it ironic that the seats were so small that the film's director and producer, Michael Moore, would not have been able to actually sit in the theatre comfortably to watch his own movie.

The movie was great and while I thought he could have been a little more critical of the states than he was, I thought he had some poignant moments. The Canadians gasped when they saw the over 11,000 deaths per year figure. I was also amazed at where they laughed. The Terry McMichaels interview was a little crazy, but the part about not trusting cops hit very close to home to me. My run-ins with southern cops have never been easy and certainly I felt in danger every time, though I've never been arrested, I have been harrassed by the police. The Canadians laughed at that point in the movie and I thought to myself, "they don't know how good they have it up here." To them it was just another gun nut justifying his love of guns. To me it was a scarry moment when I realized I had similar fears and angers to those of militia groups. I didn't feel like laughing.

I have felt funny about complaining about media treatment of fatness until I saw the stupid Jenny Craig ad with the elementary school teacher again last week. E-gads, the elementary students were going to be hurt by terrorists because their fat teacher wouldn't be able to protect them. Excuse me, lose weight to fight terrorism. Damn. I am speechless. I can't even put into words how pissed off the ad makes me. The only gratifying thing about it is that it confirms the connections I am making in my mind between the whole racial profiling, pro-American homeland security, war-on-terrorism crap and the whole obesity phenotype profiling, pro-American bullying of fat kids, war-on-fat crap. The major connection is social control. The war-on-terrorism and the war-on-fat is a way of keeping people in their place. What disturbs me most, of course, is that recent elections indicate that most Americans either don't give a damn that they are being controlled (those who didn't vote) or they like it (those who voted republican). Of course, I should probably not speak too loudly about the vote. I didn't bother to get an absentee ballot and vote. I'm registered in North Carolina, so you can blame Elizabeth Dole on me.

The problem with voting is that I see little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans these days. Jim Hightower once said that America has a two-party system, those rich guys who run for office and those of us who can't afford to run for office. The fact that the rich guys divide themselves up between the kinder pro-corporate party (Demos) and the meaner pro-corporate party (Reps) doesn't really change much. It might even suggest that the Republicans are just more honest. Mostly the whole thing just blows. I feel frustrated and angry just thinking about the whole mess.

Here's my theory on how everything will change in the United States. It isn't a pretty picture, so stop reading if you are squeamish.

The U.S. is going to piss off the rest of the world and use up so much of their own natural resources that someday, maybe in my lifetime, probably not, they will have a major disaster that just can't be handled. The annual summer forrest fires, floods and mudslides are just the beginning. I've seen this in Florida. Developers took down all the natural barriers to beach erosion and all the foliage, including trees, in swamp land. Now everytime a hurricane hits or it gets a little rainy in the summer time, the beaches wash away and sink holes form. In addition, natural fires that used to be contained by wetlands, now rage out of control every summer, creeping closer to populated areas. Do you think a state that can't figure out how to vote and is running out all it's educators is going to have anyone left to fix these problems? Better yet, do you think trees and foliage can grow back as quickly as they have been cut down? I don't think so. I think the next big thing is going to be malaria or cholera or some other disease and then the people are going to wish that they had done something to educate their children and take care of their land. Florida is not an extreme example. Half of the west was in flames last summer. Maybe, if the U.S. had allies who cared about them, they could depend upon others to help them out in their time of need. But the U.S. is pissing off a great deal of the world. One big plague or one big natural disaster away from losing everything. This is what denial and power-mongering will produce.

I'm not spouting a conspiracy theory or lamenting about how the gods are going to get the U.S. I'm just saying that no matter how much people think they can live in isolation and outside the fish bowl of ecology, it will catch up with them. Diseases and natural disasters have brought down powerful empires before and they will again. You might say, "so what, nothing can be done about these acts of god." Not true. Think about the resources we are wasting on making war. Could these not be used to make peace with the earth? Could these minds who strategize 250,000 ground troups going after Iraqis, not be used to find ecologically sound ways for humans to live in their environments? The war machine and the capitalist machine are moving forward with efficiency of a huge industrial-military infrastructure. Meanwhile, infrastructures for clean water, clean air, and clean energy are deteriorating. Brown people lived for thousands of years in the Americas by staying in harmony with their surroundings. White people are going to self-destruct in less than 600 years at this pace.

It doesn't have to be this way. It could be different. But to be different, Americans would have to give up their toys and they don't want to. I don't want to either, to be truthful. I like living in an urban neighborhood and sucking up electricity while I watch my digital television or type in my electronic blog. But I can't help but see that it is the beginning of the end for North American dominance, especially the dominance of the United States.

I am angry about this, but I'm also sad. I feel a great deal of grief over what I see being played out. I grew up thinking that the 21st century was going to be a time of wonder and joy. Technological advances were going to take us to the stars. Instead, we are going to be done in by greed and power-mongering. All I can say is that sometimes people have to hit bottom before they are willing to change. The sad part is that the bottom can be lower than death. That is why I am sad.

Well, pass the prozac, baby. I guess I'm just a downer.

Wait a minute. Maybe I just am having a normal reaction to a lot of crummy stuff. Ah, pathologize this! :P