From A Liberal (?) Feminist

[Evan Thomas]

Eh, welcome, Warmare... it's always nice to have another woman turn up -- and such an articulate one! Yeah...

If I had this to write over again, I would have emphasized how very close the assailants of many women are to their targets.

Yes. I keep meaning to start a thread on this, or hoping someone else would. It makes a huge difference, I think, in the meaning of self-defense for women. Not something I can speak to from personal experience, however.

 

[WarMare]

Wildalaska:

I don't know that "fight" is the right idea, although I'm a big proponent of the shadow war, rather than invading countries. Rather, I would say that an aweful lot of societies need to raise the standards by which human beings treat each other, and while I do not think America should be in the business of nation-building, I do think we should be in the business of directing foreign aid to the people in those countries engaged in that effort.

Vis-a-vis women per se, the real sexual dimorphism is not height and weight, or testosterone (estrogen is also an anabolic steroid, and it produces far more powerful effects than T at far lower blood levels), it is that women die in childbirth at, as it were, the hands of men. And that conditions everything: how we think about our own bodies and those of the other sex; in what context is force and violence acceptable, by whom, with what repurcussions; the meaning, even the nature of sex itself. Until you bring down maternal mortality rates (in Afghanistan, a woman has on average, about a 1 in 7 chance of dying in childbirth or of delayed complications; in remote areas, it'a virtual certainty) from the very common to the very rare, it is economically unwise and emotionally insane for men (and women) to invest in their daughters as they do their sons, or value the full worth and dignity of women. When life is at the direct and literal cost of the life of the one who gives birth, people are conditioned to see everything as zero sum. They learn it at home, as it were, and they take it out into the world.

And it takes several generations for a society to really understand this and begin to move beyond it. We're not there. Afghanistan can't be. Congo can't be. Even without the catastrophic wars they have suffered through.

I don't know if that's the answer you want, but it's the answer I have because it's the only answer I've found that makes sense across cultures and throughout time.

From what I know of the Lautenberg Law and without being a lawyer, it is overbroad, not in its lack of exemption for police and military (because if you misuse the training society has vested in you to protect it by harming another member of that society, you have harmed society itself and it cannot trust you) but in its imposition of lifetime penalties for misbehavior that does not have remotely lifetime consequences. That is simply wrong.

Hogdogs, my husband has a recipe we call steak scorched earth. I'll leave it to your imagination.

 

[MauiDoc]

Welcome!

Glad to see you accepted my invitation, even before it was issued! How'd you do that?

Nice to have your voice added to our forum!

MauiDoc

 

[Al Norris]

Civilization is a collective, joint, social, group (pick your adjective) endeavor, and to borrow from Ortega Y Gasset, who is a conservative icon, the aristocrat knows that civilization must be maintained, not simply enjoyed until it is used up, and picks the contribution she wishes to make.

Welcome to The Firing Line, Erin.

Civilization, as we know it in America, is more than a simple collective group. The same elements that comprise our governments (shared sovereignty), also comprise our actions and responsibilities as individuals, with respect to society as a whole.

Moderates (both left and right) know this, sadly, those on the far side of center seem not to see it. All of one, and not any of the other.

Glad to see you here, and I hope you stick around a bit.

 

[pax]

Yes. I keep meaning to start a thread on this, or hoping someone else would. It makes a huge difference, I think, in the meaning of self-defense for women. Not something I can speak to from personal experience, however.

Start that thread. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it. There's been something related to it that I've been toying with in the back of my mind for awhile, but -- given my congenital tendency to see things in black/white rather than shades of grey with occasional rainbow specklies -- haven't come to any very articulate conclusions.

pax

 

[Fremmer]

women die in childbirth at, as it were, the hands of men. And that conditions everything: how we think about our own bodies and those of the other sex; in what context is force and violence acceptable, by whom, with what repurcussions; the meaning, even the nature of sex itself.

I'm certainly not trying to be rude, but that sounds like an awfully broad over-generalized conclusion without any basis in fact. But welcome to TFL, anyway. Lots of good gun stuff on here.

 

[pax]

Vis-a-vis women per se, the real sexual dimorphism is not height and weight, or testosterone (estrogen is also an anabolic steroid, and it produces far more powerful effects than T at far lower blood levels), it is that women die in childbirth at, as it were, the hands of men.

A man -- or rather a team of men -- quite literally saved my life and the life of my youngest child on the operating table after a kind and compassionate midwife messed up by missing a damnably obvious complete previa.

It tends to color my perceptions a little, I guess.

Women die in childbirth, yes. Fewer of them die in America these days than in years past -- and those numbers began changing when the rude male doctors with no bedside manner shouldered the midwives aside and forced their way into the newfangled hospital delivery rooms, where women labored in all sorts of stupidly contorted positions that do nothing for the progress of labor but only facilitate the comfort of the doctor. And of course those doctors also began injecting all sorts of stupidly powerful drugs that had horrible side-effects such as dystocias, prolonged labors and subsequent medical interventions -- and depressed neonate breathing responses along with poor feeding after birth to top things off. And yet, and yet, and yet ... outcomes improved. Even with all that.

Traditionally, women managed childbirth. And traditionally, women died in childbirth. It wasn't until men got involved in the process of childbirth that maternal and infant mortality rates began dropping.

Of course, as I said, my own experience tends to color my perceptions. Two hospital babies who both landed in NICU within hours of birth for hospital-induced problems but who came home healthy, two completely healthy homebirth babies, and then my youngest who was supposed to be midwife-delivered and ended up with a true emergency c-section that barely saved our lives -- all left me with a fairly strong belief that science-based medicine (read that as, "childbirth at the hands of men") is much less comfortable, much less patient-friendly, much too prone to intervene when intervention is not only uncalled for but actively dangerous ... and also that those mistakes are much more likely to be ultimately survivable for both moms and babies than the traditional female norms for childbirth.

So while I'll agree with your meta-point, which is that as long as maternal mortality remains low, there's not much sense in trying to talk people into valuing the full worth and dignity of women.

But I won't join you in blaming men for women's deaths in childbirth. It's considerably more complex than that.

pax

 

[WarMare]

Fremmer:

In 1920, the average American woman's risk of dying in childbirth was 2.44%. In 1940, it was 0.9%, by 1945, it was 0.54% and 0.18% in 1955. To put it in a numeric context, between 1900 and 1960 alone, I estimate over 840,000 American women died in childbirth, a number that does not include deaths due to delayed complications. By comparison, only about 603,000 Americans, virtually all male, died in combat in major American wars from the Revolution to Korea; include all non-battle deaths and the war total rises to about 1.08 million. (This is my original research drawn from CDC and Pentagon figures.)

These dreadful numbers (and these are good per capita rates in comparison to many developing countries today), from an era when they were falling very, very steeply, and the numbers from the years before them, could not help but shape how men and women alike thought of the comparative human and civic value of each other, and inform the meaning of sex. Just as the nature of fire, or ice, informs our understanding of them.

Pax:

I strongly believe all childbirths should take place in hospitals. I am amazed that anyone would willingly give birth outside a hospital. (ETA: I do not mean this as commentary on you or anyone else doing otherwise. I just know how much can go wrong, how fast.)

When I write about maternal mortality, I am writing about the tragedy of human reproductive biology, and how it has shaped us as men and women both. This is a real, ineleuctable (?) vulnerability of women to men, while men had no such comparable vulnerability to women, although it has been vastly reduced by modern medicine. I don't blame people for that over which they have no control, and I have to say that as often as I have presented this theory, usually to military audiences, this is the first time anyone has ever accused me of blaming men for maternal mortality. Not even the men whose faces went white when I said those words, because they knew women who'd died that way.

I do not find that blaming people for responses to such sustained tragedies, even when their responses intensify and prolong the suffering, does much good in reducing that suffering - and that is one of the things I would like to help accomplish. But it does help to know how the species got itself into this mess. The more so since it's at the root of this odd war we are fighting with what my husband and I call jihadistan.


Maui Doc:

Thanks for the invitation. (Someone else issued an invitation to me back channel a little earlier.)

Antipitas, Vanya, many thanks for the kind words. I am very much a lurker.

Also trying hard to avoid my work - doing the writerly thing of writing on a tangential subject.


Best to all,
Erin Solaro

 

[WarMare]

Pax:

I am wondering if there is a misunderstanding here. When I wrote, "Vis-a-vis women per se, the real sexual dimorphism is not height and weight, or testosterone (estrogen is also an anabolic steroid, and it produces far more powerful effects than T at far lower blood levels), it is that women die in childbirth at, as it were, the hands of men," I was deliberately avoiding being anatomically correct.

If there is a misunderstanding, I regret it.

 

[pax]

As do I. *wry face*

No harm, no foul.

thanks.

pax

 

[Fremmer]

LOL. You made me smile first thing in the morning.

These dreadful numbers (and these are good per capita rates in comparison to many developing countries today), from an era when they were falling very, very steeply, and the numbers from the years before them, could not help but shape how men and women alike thought of the comparative human and civic value of each other, and inform the meaning of sex. Just as the nature of fire, or ice, informs our understanding of them.

Actually, your conclusion based on a correlation is misplaced. In fact, it is Klondike bars that have shaped our views of men and women. Seriously, if you look at the numbers, the amount of Klondike bars consumed by Americans since 1920 has drastically increased, which is the real cause of how humans value each other. The cold Klondike bars counter the hot nature of fire (and global warming), and affects our very understanding of each other. And as Biggy used to say, if you don't know, well now you know.

I'm just kidding ya. What's your favorite round to shoot?

 

[raimius]

As a history major, I have to ask, where did this number come from?

By comparison, only about 603,000 Americans, virtually all male, died in combat in major American wars from the Revolution to Korea

WWII alone was approximately 400,000...

 

[Phoebe]

This is a bit peripheral to the OP and the article, but...I don't much understand why people presume so much about political tendencies and gun beliefs.

There is a faction of the left that seems to want a nanny state where dependent people rely on the government to make rules, protect them, and take care of them. But in reality, this describes more of a far left contingent and isn't what I see in most of my liberal friends.

There is a libertarian left who wants individual autonomy and freedom, and respect for civil liberties without autocratic intervention into people's morality or religion. But this group tends to want a bit more law than the libertarian right.

There is an autocratic right who utilizes religion to try to legislate morality. Where the autocratic left want laws in order to "protect the children", the autocratic right want to legislate "god's law."

The libertarian right and left do not seem to be well represented in the GOP or the Dems. Both parties seem to be autocratic and the choices we get left with are where we want our autocracy.

This is all leading up to the fact that I tend to reluctantly pick "the children" over "god", meaning I find the autocracy of the left, less repugnant the religion laden autocracy of the right.

Mostly, I want government to stay out of my business. So, I end up a left-leaning, feminist with libertarian tendencies. In reality, I'm a middle-of-the-road swing voter who votes candidates so perhaps it's unfair for me to carry a "liberal" flag, but if I had to pick, that's where I'd go.

In sum, I don't see the left at odds with guns on any fundamental level. If you believe in the freedom of this country, you may identify as left or right, may vote Dem or Rep, and you may be a fierce proponent of our Bill of Rights.

I hate seeing the assumption or the surprise, that left = gun control proponent. Though there may be overlap there, (from the nanny state left), it's sure not a done deal.

Anyway, you can put me in the feminist, left category of gun toters if you want to.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Kayla - good for you. If one reads the rules of the L and CR forum - you can see how we tried to avoid the drive for one political characterization as a loyalty test to support the RKBA. Some forums are just rant-fests if you don't swear loyalty to an entire political package.

There is a large literature of feminist progun folks and it is growing. The expansion of supporting gun rights must not be tied to one political niche or it is a losing cause.

 

[Fremmer]

I don't much understand why people presume so much about political tendencies and gun beliefs.

There is a faction of the left that seems to want a nanny state where dependent people rely on the government to make rules, protect them, and take care of them.

It's not just a mere "faction" that wants a nanny state and more gun control. It's a desire held and espoused by virtually all of the liberals in congress and the White House. Boxer, Clinton, Obama, Feinstein, Kennedy, Pelosi....they all want more gun control and more government. And those liberal leaders are elected by liberals. It doesn't make much sense for liberals to elect anti-gun liberals, and to then castigate the reasonable presumption that liberals are anti-gun as unreasonable. After all, it is liberals who put anit-gun liberals into power by voting for them in the first place.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

We are wandering into regular politics and away from the initial post.

Thus, I thank most participants but I don't want this to go into a party discussion, liberals vs. conservatives, specific politicians, etc. Not the mission of L and CR.

Thus, I'm going to close it.