A recent 9th Circuit case legalized the selling of bone marrow, fueling interest, again, in expanding what body parts people can buy and sell.  The sale of human eggs and sperm are already legal – what is next?  Does the creation of a class of persons who generate income by sale (or rental) of their body parts represent advancement for humanity?  ‘We don’t allow people to buy and sell human beings, that’s slavery,’ says Dr. Robert Klitzman, director of the bioethics program at Columbia University. ‘Should we allow people to buy and sell human body parts?'”   

We live in a constantly changing world.  There is little to no social stability left.  People are finding it difficult to have proper relationships with each other.  We are becoming increasingly self-centered.  We are finding ourselves in our own constructed worlds and finding it difficult to interact with the world at large.  More and more, people interact with mechanical devices, shifting hours of focus to remote and often unreal associations, away from a reality that is lost in front of them.  While we are trying to find ways to remain in contact with each other, for the most part, all the artificial connectivity is increasing our sense of loneliness, giving many a sense of detached malaise which they cannot overcome. 

Rapid changes and expansion in technology drive much of this destabilizing and focus on virtual, constructed reality.   While technology delivers much good to humankind, its immediacy blinds us to consider and study the long-term consequences of the tools we use.  Are we giving due consideration to what we are doing, and wisely pondering the dangers of our creations?   As we become increasingly accustomed to the quick, ever-changing environment we find ourselves in, we lose perspective, tossing in a sea of rapid change, with little to no anchoring, and without a center which we can hold onto if the waves throw us under.

Technology has made many of us look at each other in an instrumental sense, through a hermeneutic which makes us consider each other as objects able to be manipulated for our own gain.  We have come to believe that we should find a way – the fastest and easiest way – to get what we want and ignore the longer term consequences of our actions.  At best, we put off the ramifications of our acts to the future, hoping we can create something to deal with the problematic consequences as they arise. 

By failing to anticipate and safeguard ourselves from natural harms, we fall apart, not only as a society, but as persons.  We lose all sense of purpose except the immediate attainment of what we want.  Without future vision and meaning, for ourselves and societal role, we lose sight of the dignity of others and, ultimately our own personal dignity.  We allow ourselves to become another thing to be manipulated, so long as we believe our immediate desire can be satisfied in the process of such manipulation.  Just as we use others as tools to construct the reality we want, we willingly become the tools of others.   

While we are not completely bound to the environment, our social climate influences us – more so when we are focused upon fulfillment of immediate desires with apathy or disregard for the adverse or negative impacts of various technologies.  

Consider today’s prevailing sexual ethic.  In some quarters, we have turned sexuality into pure technique for pleasure, seeking to create sex as a constructed reality for receiving physical pleasure while apathetic or even disdainful toward the meaning inherent in human sexuality.  Was birth control technology simply incidental to an inevitable depersonalization of human sexual relations or did the technology itself drive the shift in perspective and objective?  I would argue that it is the latter.  While society clearly views birth control devices as a positive good, reliance on this technology, as an immediate end in itself, has cultivated and driven the depersonalization of sexual relations.  The elimination of intimacy and creation of new life as inherent in sexuality has broadly reconfigured sex as a pleasure-seeking engagement, where persons can use each other as tools of pleasure – a blatant depersonalization of society impossible without birth control technology.   

Technology requires wisdom to use.  Without caution, even that which can be for good will turn on us and lead to devastating results.  The solution is not an outright rejection of all technology:  we have been given the gift of reason and the capacity for prudence.  Society is changing and changing for the worse due to our foolishness, but this does not mean we are too late. We need to examine where we are today, and to re-establish true human community, to value real interactions with each other.  We can and should continue to seek out the good in technology, but we should understand that all goods are limited and generally have unforeseen consequences which undermine and tarnish the “good” – call it the “dark” lining of a seemingly lovely, white cloud. 

For example, consider what is missed – what does not happen – when we attach ourselves to a computer screen.   Each member of a family is looking at their own individuated screen, creating their own mini-reality.  They are entirely disconnected from each other, save greetings in route to the bathroom or kitchen.  The dark impact of this disconnection is most evident upon human sexuality, as individuals seek to practice and heighten sexual pleasure through virtual experience on a computer.  Human sexuality is cut off from its full and proper good use, not by contraception, but by removal of all real, interactive contact.  Through technology, people spend hours alone, seeking to heighten the pleasures of a sexual feeling and climax, without regard to their own personal dignity being noticed and embraced.  Without such dignity, sex itself is lost.  Baudrillard predicted this outcome in Forget Foucault:

While psychoanalysis seemingly inaugurates the millennium of sex and desire, it is perhaps what orchestrates it in full view before it disappears altogether.

Technology has put sex into full view with pornography, leading to an artificial shell, a construct which is a shell of the real, perverted and rather self-destructive.  How can anyone think this is a good?   Those who promote free sex as the outcome of modern analysis do more than destroy the family: they promote the destruction of sex itself.

What kind of future will be left for humanity if we allow our innate humanity to be lost to our technology?  What kind of persons will we be?  Those who love humanity, those who believe in the dignity of the human person need to be more aware of the consequences of their actions.  The caution suggested by environmentalists, for example, might sometimes be extreme, but need not go unnoticed, however shortsighted the interests of some environmentalists.  There are good reasons to believe we can and are harming our future through negligence.  We see it in the destruction of social mores around us.  It is time to take such concerns seriously and try to embrace our humanity.  We must not let the objects of our creation get out of hand and control us.  We must have hope.  It is not too late.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.  ~Gustave Flaubert 

Note:  this post contains strong and offensive language.  Feminists fuss over misogyny, the more radical camp insisting that man’s disdain for women has steered the course of all human history.  New Feminists and dissident feminists like Camille Paglia view most female-unfriendly behaviors by men as far more complicated than a sweeping hatred of all things female.  Despite these differences, all feminists do agree that, in its rawest, most hate-driven form, misogyny can and does pose a real threat to girls and women.

It’s important to remind ourselves that raw, gender-based hatred exists.  It is a  shameful condition, so frighteningly repugnant that those compelled by hatred of women often opt for denial and blame of others, rarely getting the help they require.   Men obsessed with a hatred toward girls and women often surface only in violent outburst, such as the 2009 shooting of 4 women during an aerobics class.    

Most women have caught glimpses of misogyny.  We often experience it as a suspicion, a suspicion that the man addressing us uses a particular tone or body language because he hates women, not us in particular.   We sometimes hear or read this type of misogyny in rants about Eve’s destruction of men, the suffragettes’ ruination of civilized society, or feminists’ conspiracy to emasculate all men.   Recently, I encountered blatant misogyny head on – how it ended reminded me that women need to talk about misogyny, not just disagree about it.   

 I am a 56 year old, graying mother who wears glasses.  I was alone, seated in my 2006 red, dented Accura throughout this incident.   

After Mass one recent Sunday, I took Lombard Street to the freeway here in San Francisco.  There was a last exit on that route into Crissy Field, a bay front park I can cross to my home on the opposite side.  It was a rather abrupt, tricky exit from the left hand “fast” lane, used almost solely by locals familiar with it.  I often took this exit to avoid the high speed road and enjoy the park and views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

My timing was unfortunate.  The exit was clogged and backed up.   I hit my brakes and broke a sweat:  I was stopped dead on what is supposed to be a moving exit ramp.  Ahead, I could see a full sized tractor trail truck trying, incredulously, to back down the exit ramp.  Fearful of being rear-ended, preparing to call 911, I watched the confused drivers ahead of me crowd against the concrete barrier or edge onto the wet, grassy shoulder, opening narrow passage for the big rig in its effort to reverse down the ramp.  Suddenly, a car shrieked to a stop behind me.  The driver – a neat, 45ish, lean male – jumped out and started jogging along the ramp toward the truck. 

“Good,” I thought, “this guy will sort out the nonsense.” 

I lowered my window and said, “He’s trying to back out onto the highway … I am afraid we are going to get rear ended sitting here.”

He stopped and looked at me oddly.

“We won’t get hit,” he said dismissively. 

“Oh but I got hit just a block from here,” I replied, recalling the day a distracted commuter plowed into me at full speed on this same stretch of highway.

The man turned toward me abruptly.  “Don’t be a drama queen,” he barked nastily, totally … I mean totally … shocking me.  I gave him a quick salute, smiled and said, “Yes, sir,” expecting he would move on. 

He did not. 

Instead, he moved aggressively toward my car.  “What the fuck did you say?  Don’t fuck with me you cunt,” this man shrieked, his face contorted, his hands fisted.

I was in trouble.

“How about if I pull you out of the damn, fucking car you cunt and beat you right here and break your fucking arm?”

This irate, ranting male was now less than 5 feet from my car.  I had no escape.  I felt pretty certain he would break the window if I closed it.  My only hope was to say something that calmed him, but all I could think was “Oh God this is going to hurt.”

I drew in a deep breath and said as calmly as I could, “I am laughing here.  I am trying to use some humor, sir.”

With that, he veered toward his car, but stopped again, turned and came straight back at me like a confused, violated animal. “I’m going to take you the fuck out of that car now, bitch.  I am going to break your arm.” 

By God’s grace only, I made eye contact and gently, very gently, said, “Is this going to make you feel better?”

That stopped him.  He glared at me, snorting with rage, and shouted, “You are a CUNT.”  He turned, got in his vehicle and sped backwards down the short stretch of ramp into oncoming traffic. 

He was gone.

Several days later, when I described the event to an older friend, a psychologist, I was still shaky and mystified.  Nothing in the span of those minutes made any sense to me; I could no more fit this man’s behavior into a cause and effect flow than I could understand why a tractor trailer truck was backing down an exit ramp into oncoming traffic. 

“Why,” I asked my friend, “why didn’t the guy break my arm?  I have no idea why he stopped.”

“Because,” she explained, “you made it about him when you asked if he would feel better.  I’ve heard this many times from women, women who are about to be assaulted or are being assaulted and they ask the attacker how he feels, or something personal about him.  These men are acting from hatred and rage against all women – and when you ask about him, you become a person to him.  And he’s not angry at you individually.  He doesn’t know you at all.”   

Misogynists like this fellow, we must remember, are filled with hatred toward the female, at all of us as a whole, much more so than anyone of us individually.  We live with these men in our midst, each of us potentially the next victim for their rage.  This is what hatred of women looks like, misogyny that can kill. 

Upon this, I think all feminists can agree.

A California candidate for Congress walked back his statements affirming the abortion breast cancer link recently. This created disappointment among some of his supporters.  Although as a breast cancer surgeon who has studied the issue almost 20 years and has no doubt that induced abortion raises the risk of breast cancer, I can’t say I don’t understand this candidate’s predicament.

After all, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) denies it. The NCI even had a well publicized 2003 three day conference with 100 scientists that concluded that there was no link between abortion and breast cancer.

And yet, that wouldn’t be the first time the American people were misinformed by the NCI.   One only has to remember that the Director of the NCI is a political appointee by the U.S. President.  Although the first study linking cigarettes to lung cancer was published in 1928, it was not until 1964 that the U.S. Surgeon General warned the public of the risk.  The NCI was not the first to warn the public.  You see, the tobacco state Senators pressured the NCI not to publicize the link because they feared it would destroy their states economies.

More recently, although the United Nation’s International Agency on Research of Cancer (IARC) published Monograph 91 in 2005 listing oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy as Group 1 carcinogens for breast, cervical and liver cancer, there has been no warning to the 12 million American women on oral contraceptives.  Put another way, over 10 million women are taking a Group 1 carcinogen for a non disease, fertility. Not only that, our Federal government’s policy is to broaden their use by making them free under “Obamacare”.  This policy is inexplicable given the NCI’s own statistics that show a 400% increase in the risk of non-invasive breast cancer among young, premenopausal women since 1975.  Population control for a “green” ecology friendly world trumps women’s health and women’s lives.  That’s the real War on Women.

In 2005, the British journal Nature published a disturbing study in which over 3,000 scientists who had been funded by the National Institutes of Heath (NIH) were asked to anonymously answer 10 ethical questions.  Over 20% of mid-career scientists reported that they had “changed the results, methodology or design of a study based on pressure from a funding source”.  They committed scientific fraud due to governmental pressure of the NIH, the funding source, of which the NCI is a member.

The California candidate also succumbed to political pressure to disavow those that are tarred as junk scientists, members of the flat earth society and right wing extremist ideologues who want to scaremonger women in desperate circumstances to forgo their reproductive health care needs.
The candidate did not know that since 1957 there have been 70 studies that differentiate spontaneous from induced abortion (3 in 2012 alone) and that 33 were statistically significant and 55 showed a positive correlation confirming a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Just think about what we do know about breast cancer risk reduction.  We know that a birth in the 3rd trimester will reduce a woman’s risk of breast cancer.  In fact, we’ve known that since the 1700’s.  We know that the younger a women gives birth, the lower her risk for breast cancer.  In fact, her risk of premenopausal breast cancer increases 5% for each year she delays her pregnancy past 20 years old.  When a woman has an abortion, she is already pregnant.  Abortion not only denies her of the risk reduction from giving birth but also delays her next pregnancy thereby increasing her risk.  And if she remains childless for her entire life, her risk is also increased compared to if she gave birth.  During the first half of pregnancy in preparation for breast feeding, the breast doubles in size by increasing the amount of immature cancer vulnerable breast tissue.  Most of this tissue does not become cancer resistant until the third trimester.  Aborting a pregnancy before the third trimester leaves a woman’s breasts with more tissue or places for cancers to start, thereby increasing her risk for breast cancer.

Thus the scientific studies, what we know and don’t dispute about known risk factors and the biology of breast changes with pregnancy all support the abortion breast cancer link.

What about the 100 scientists that supported the 2003 NCI denial of the link?  I think Einstein said it best when he was asked his thoughts about a book of 100 essays each by a physicist who denied relativity.  He said, if relativity was not true, “it would have only taken one.”

NewFemininsm.co is dedicated to Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, a scholar whose thinking and manner inspired this blog and provides the foundation upon which New Feminism is growing.  With this post, I introduce her background and bio.  I look forward to posting excerpts from her work which help us consider and discuss New Feminism and how New Feminism informs and impacts our daily lives.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was an accomplished historian and professor of women’s studies who “roiled both disciplines with her transition from Marxist-inclined feminist to conservative public intellectual.” New York Times.  Prior to her death in 2007, she resided in Atlanta with her husband Eugene Fox-Genovese and worked at Emory University as the Eléonore Raoul professor of humanities.

Both a feminist herself and a convert to Roman Catholicism, Fox-Genovese clarified and challenged the presumptions and consequences of late 20th century feminism. She consistently sought meaningful dialogue on the stresses and contradictions confronting women in daily living, conflicts which she believed resulted from the “difference between women and men” in a legal, political and social world focused upon “the rights of women as individuals.”

If women, she earnestly asked, pursue their fulfillment as a matter of “individual right or a market transaction,” who will bear the “responsibility for the values that embody our humanity . . . nurture, care, patience, self-sacrifice?”

One online bio of Fox-Genovese describes her life as follows:

“Elizabeth Fox-Genovese began her career as a specialist in French History, developed expertise in women’s history in the antebellum South, and ultimately came to be known as a leading conservative feminist. With degrees from Bryn Mawr College and Harvard University, she began teaching history at Emory University, where she was the founding director of the Institute for Women’s Studies and began the first doctoral program in Women’s Studies in the United States.

Having started her career as a Marxist, Fox-Genovese became increasingly aware of the conflict between Marxism and human rights and dignity. Her conversion to Roman Catholicism in the 1990s coincided with a shift to pro-life advocacy, and her outspoken
expression of her views and critiques of liberal feminism brought her notoriety on the left and admiration on the right.

The author of a number of scholarly works, including Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South and Feminism is Not the Story of My Life: How Today’s Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of Women, as well as The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview with her husband Eugene Genovese, she was the recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the Cardinal Wright Award from the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and the C. Hugh Holman Prize from the Society for Southern Literature.”

While Fox-Genovese developed and contributed substance to New Feminism, she also, importantly, mirrored that substance in a New Feminism manner of discussion and dialogue. Mark Bauerlin captured this aspect of New Feminism:

“As is well known,[Fox-Genovese’s] anti-abortion position put her at odds with her field, and even though she founded the first doctoral program in women’s studies in the United States, she earned little credit for it once she went pro-life.

More than that, Fox-Genovese was the object of widespread animosity at her own university, and before I even knew her I heard and overheard dozens of smears, whispers, and denunciations at faculty gatherings and in lounges and at the next cafeteria table.

Here is the remarkable thing about it. . . . not once in private or public conversation did she ever utter any statement of a personal nature against them. Fox-Genovese was sharp and incisive about intellectual matters, and she played no favorites, arguing in a firm and patient manner with everyone including her husband whenever she found important disagreements. (Rarely did she quibble over the small stuff.)

But gossip and slight weren’t her thing. She stood in the middle of heated and rancorous debates that extended from national legal policy to local politics at Emory, but never did I hear her descend into detraction. Time and again the bait was offered, and she held back. No cheap shots, no easy dismissals, no reliance on like-minded auditors for reassurance. Her example continues for the many students and colleagues she affected over the years, and academe is a lesser place without her.”

Allow me to add:  her example continues for New Feminists determined to engage an often aggressive and combative culture in urgent dialogue about the health, well-being and future of women and their children and families.  May we live up to her standard.

Contributed by Liz Farrell

A three-step process for helping children accept a new sibling

September is commonly a time for new transitions, mostly for our children as they head back to school.  For the past several years, I have written about ways to ease those back-to-school transitions; however, this month I am writing about a different kind of transition, one that is personal and that our family will soon face: a new baby.  This is something we are all eagerly awaiting, but the effect could be greatest felt by our other two children.  Here are some tips that I hope will make this next transition a smooth one for our family and yours:

Before baby: The key to any transition is preparation and setting expectations.  Preparing siblings for a new baby is no different.  As your body begins to change, use the opportunity to talk about what is happening inside you.  There are hundreds of books to help with this. Some of the best have pictures of how the baby is growing each week.  Another way to help children prepare is to get them involved by helping with the nursery or to practice changing or feeding their own baby dolls.  I also recently brought both children to one of my prenatal appointments so they could hear the baby’s heartbeat, which they loved.

After this experience the excitement really escalated, and one morning I found them creating a “countdown chain.”  Each day we take off a link as a visual countdown until the baby comes.  Finally, as the due date approaches, make sure to discuss with them the arrangements while you are in the hospital — who will be with them, when they will see you, and how long you will be gone.

At the hospital: When we went from one child to two, I found there were several key things that helped.  One was not to hold the baby when the other child came into the room.  I would have the baby in the bassinet or have someone else hold him so the first thing I could do for my other child was to welcome her with a hug.  We also had pictures taped to the hospital bed and the baby’s bassinet of the older child so she could see she was always present.  The last thing we did, which was fun and helped especially with younger children, was when they came to visit I had a “surprise” from the new baby, anything from a lollipop to a new book.  Finally, keep the visits short because you are still trying to recover; long visits in a small room can be trying for everyone.

Coming home: Continue to think of ways the older children can be involved, such as helping decorate with balloons and streamers or coloring a welcome home sign.

When you get home, let Dad carry the baby inside so Mom’s arms can be open for the other children.  Depending on how many older siblings there are, get ready to be “chief referee.”  Figure out a system for who will get to help with what (diapers, bath time, feeding) and whose turn it is to hold the baby.  Also, as exhausted as you may feel, make special time for each child. One or both parents should have a planned activity outside the home with each older child.  This should be part of a weekly routine for the sibling and can be a trip to the park, library or music class.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for help from family, friends or neighbors.  For me this is much easier said than done, but a new baby can be a stressful time as everyone in the household tries to adjust, so getting help with a carpool or a having a dinner made can make all the difference.

I suspect that most females, myself included, have uttered one of the following phrases at some point or another:

Oh I just hang out with the guys.
Or,
Pretty much all my friends are guys.
Or,
Guys are just easier.

And we say this with pride.

Now, there are some girls who grew up naturally as tomboys and didn’t ever need to tell anyone about it. They are the girls who, in elementary school, just really got into sports or grew up with brothers, or who may have felt genuinely rejected by girls. They had fun with the boys and they never thought anything of it.  But these are not the girls of which I speak.  For most of us aren’t this type of girl.

Most of us started out at the all-girls lunch table.  “Guys are easier” began when one daring girl decided to forge the great valley between her table and the boys’.  This is the girl who used to play four-square but had been closely watching the football game out on the recess field and decided it might be to her advantage to go out there and play.  She would occasionally come back to the girls and they would build up a combination of admiration and resentment for her.  As time passed, a few would follow in her footsteps. Typically, these were the more popular girls on into middle and high school. They were not the ones who only wore Nike shorts and t-shirts (the tomboys who didn’t need to tell everyone they were tomboys,) but instead, the girls who could change easily between the Nike shorts (rolled up,) and a mini-skirt.  These were the girls who could mitigate and manage crushes while still confidently trusting that if her guy-friend liked another girl or dated another girl, he would still, somehow, in the end, belong to her, and that, deep down, he secretly liked her more.  Because in the end, I’m friends with all the guys meant, for most of us, all the guys wish they could date me.

I know that many women will protest.  They will say that the efforts to bridge this gap and have un-sexual, equal relationships among all genders is completely possible and an important part of progress.  And that the real culprit for any sort of uneasiness or stress about it all is simply because of society’s incorrect reliance on gender distinctions and personal lack of control.

But I pose this question. If it’s no big deal to have guy friends, if it’s no different from having girlfriends, why do women so often take pride in it?

I would suggest that it is because, like it or not, we are no gender-neutral society and we are nowhere close to being such a society.  We are sexual and we are romantic beings.  And when we know that tons of guys are close friends with us, in more cases than not, we take pride in this because it affirms us.  It affirms our womanhood. It affirms our sexuality. And it affirms us emotionally in a way that a female friend cannot affirm us.  It doesn’t matter if we are not attracted to the guy.  It doesn’t matter if we think of him as a brother. He likely does not feel the same way, (See this video for example.)  But even if he does, he is still giving us something that a girlfriend cannot give us.  We know this because we say it ourselves.  Flippantly, and with a laugh, we acknowledge, guys are easier.  And by easier we mean that we get the benefits of a boyfriend and the benefits of a girlfriend altogether in this guy friend for whom we do not have to be a girlfriend.  We get to feel affirmed in a way that usually involves a certain type of commitment without the commitment.  (Again, I am not saying that all women in their friendships with men are like this. Some women really are “tomboys,” and some women may genuinely feel absolutely nothing different between their relationships with men and their relationships with women.  But I am speaking of the women for whom “having lots of guy friends” is something that gives us pride, and gives us pride because it gives us a certain type of affirmation.)

This may seem like not that a big of a deal – like, yeah sure my guy friends make me feel particularly good about myself, what of it?  But too often we get caught up in the idea that the only sort of infidelity or romantic hurt we can cause a person is that of the physical nature.  So we think when we have a guy friend who affirms us in this special, somewhat romantic – but not really – way, that we aren’t hurting anybody.  But with this we can potentially have the same mentality of the guy who sleeps around.  He says, we both enjoy it, and we’re not committed, so we’re not hurting anybody. But deep down, he ought to know that there is more to it than that.  He ought to know that he is taking something precious from the girl.  He ought to know that he is perhaps taking something from another guy.  He ought to know that he is taking something from himself.  Indeed, he is reducing the beauty of sexual commitment to simply an act that makes him feel good. 

Similarly, women can too often take the beauty of emotional commitment and reduce it to the momentary thrill of being desired or sexually approved of – to the momentary thrill of being a man’s sole or primary confidante.  I am not at all claiming that being the sole confidante for a man who is not family/boyfriend/husband is always wrong.  But we must be aware of its potential gravity.  In the same way that a man can be tempted to possess a woman physically for his own self esteem, a woman can fall into possessing a man emotionally for her own self esteem . . . and worse – fall into thinking there is nothing wrong with it.

And why do we do this?  Why do we use each other like this?  I believe it is because we are scared of rejection.  We may not feel approved of, and when we don’t feel approved of where we should feel approved of, we will go elsewhere in search of such approval.  Men sleep around because they cannot trust that they will get the affirmation they need as a man from their one woman.  Women insist on seeking out many close friendships with guys because they cannot trust that they will get the affirmation they need as a woman from their one man.  It is so sad.  Women have been let down so many times.  They have been cheated on.  They have been left.  And women are afraid.  So naturally, they want to ensure a backup plan. They want to ensure that they will still get the affirmation they need when they may not be getting it anymore.

But the only way we can ever stop the cycle of insecurity between men and women is if one side decides to make a change.  One side must admit the truth and admit their own fault in the matter.  For if we admit the truth, we will see how women who use men emotionally have contributed to unfaithful men (and in turn, how unfaithful men have contributed to women who use men emotionally.)  We will see how we have told men to cheat.  We say be our friend even when you have a girlfriend.  Don’t you dare get closer to your girlfriend than you are to me!  Keep hanging out with me.  Keep confiding in me.  Keep building me up.  But do we think about the girlfriend? What it would be like to be the girlfriend?  And do we think about how for a man, this emotional commitment too often inevitably turns physical, if at least in his mind?

We must recognize that as women we have so much power.  And when we use our power incorrectly, we hurt men so deeply and in turn, we hurt ourselves.  So I challenge us, let’s stop lying to men, and most importantly, to ourselves.  It’s not fair.   Our society is not gender neutral.  We are sexual. We are romantic.  And until that turns off, it’s going to be very difficult to accomplish legitimate deep and close platonic friendships between women and men (not impossible per se, but very difficult.)  I don’t have all the answers or the exact formula for all this.  I don’t know exactly where each boundary is.  But I do think that it is a boundary that needs to be talked about more seriously and more honestly.  It does us no good to pretend we are stronger than we are.  Thousands of affairs, physical or emotional, have begun between two friends who believed they were stronger than they were.

And so, if you are in a relationship, I urge you to talk about this with each other, and when you talk about it, listen closely.  Too often, we don’t listen. We don’t listen between the lines.  We don’t listen to the eyes and to the soul.  We shouldn’t be thinking about what we can get away with, but instead, about how well we can love this person.  So I urge you to think about how you would want to be loved and to love in that way.  And if you are single, do the same.  Think of every guy as someone else’s until he is your own.  And treat him the way you want any girl to treat your own guy. Because I promise you.  Guys will respond to us.  They want to.  They want to love us and to make us happy.  But we have to stop sending them so many conflicting messages.  We have to start loving them first.  And sometimes, depending on the situation, we must consider that loving them may mean not being their friend at all.

While apparently not true, gossip had it last week that another celebrity couple had decided to create a family, this one with harvested eggs, unidentified sperm and a gestational surrogate.  The upset appears to be the veracity of Ellen DeGeneres’ and Portia di Rossi’s plans, not the prospect of their piecing together component parts and processes to create a living child.  That industry, the commercial enterprise of removing reproduction from a fertile human female united to a fertile human male through intercourse, creeps steadily into our daily lexicon almost without notice.  “Creating a family” – as in Simms itself – is the new, unmitigated good – an adult objective so presumptively worthy that doubts and objections to the commercialized simulation of natural human reproduction often meet with hostility or stony silence.

This is the emerging reality:  we “create” – not “have” – a family, both euphemisms for acquiring a baby, that little creature who turns a couple into parents.  We use to “have” children, giving God or nature primary role as their “creator;” but our postmodern language elevates the human to creator, the want-to-be parent(s) in charge of literally designing, creating and funding children legally their own into existence, while redefining human concepts of lineage and ancestry.  Children are no longer the prerogative of nature and intimacy, linked biological to an identifiable line of human persons – they are creations of man, an optional accessory available to any adult in need of his/er own family.

 This is a radical shift in paradigm. 

But it is evident everywhere – and often expressed in a context designed to discourage dialogue.  Consider the following quote from an activist during a recent press conference held by “Catholics for Marriage Equality,” a group opposed to reversing that state’s narrowly passed legislation permitting same-sex marriage.   

“I never want our own son or any of our children to be alone—in sickness or in health.  I want each of them to have the security and joy of a family that they create, and for that family to have the legal protections that come with civil marriage. “(Italics added) 

No one – certainly no mother – could possibly take issue with this sentiment.  Who would dare object and say, “But how do gay men and their male partners “create” their own children?” – as if wishing upon them loneliness, illness and despair?  

It is hardly surprising how little awareness – or concern – we seem to have regarding this new class of commercially created child, or “ComKids” – children who, for the first time in human history, will not know their biological origins, are intentionally separated from adults intimate to their conception, gestation and birth and whose very being will have been purchased in whole or in part as a commercial transaction.  In demands that the government legally entitle all adults to the same “security and joy of a family” that living persons have known as biologically conceived and connected children, there is an eerie disregard for the fundamental differences which ComKids will bear and suffer.  

The lack of concern for the fate and future of this experimental class of human being can not be excused by blinkered focus upon the living adult and an expectation that children, like pets, will dutifully love their “parents” and not experience – or, at least, not voice – feelings of loss and longing for biological ties or information denied them.  Nor is it possible to deny that being conceived, gestated and birthed as a commercial transaction can and does matter to human beings.  One need only watch the testimonies in Anonymous Father’s Day or read Robert O. Lopez’s recent “Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View” or review Mark Regnerus’s summary “Queers As Folk” to recognize that this new class of children do and will have a new class of emotional and developmental issues as well as a list of demands for information, rights and protections.

Let us, for the sake of fairness, allow the questions and voices of ComKids – children designed, conceived or acquired through purchase of any component of the reproductive process – into the discussion of family configuration and creation.  And let these voices – and their questions, concerns and demands – be as inextricably associated with “creating a family” as are the prevailing concerns that adults not grow old alone due to infertility; incompatibility; homo-, bi-, trans-, or poly-sexuality; disabilities or any other impediment to child-bearing by sexual intercourse between a fertile man with fertile woman. 

What are the rights of ComKids?  Do they have a right to know their biological origins?  Do they have a right to know the identity of the person whose sperm, egg or womb made possible their life?  Do they have a right to know the terms and conditions of the contracts that lead to their existence?  Do they have legal recourse against fertility clinics, egg brokers, surrogates or any other party under normal contract and tort law? 

These questions beg consideration now – before we further populate a class of children with no more rights or recourse to information about their identity than African-Americans enslaved to suit the needs of their masters.  These are good questions to consider now, as adult humans shift into the role of creator, creating children for themselves so that they will not feel alone or unloved.

~ “there is evidence that use of oral contraceptives alters a woman’s baseline preferences for men such that Pill users prefer men who are relatively genetically similar to them in the loci of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).”

Implicating the Pill, ie. oral contraceptives, in the violent deaths of women by their intimate partners will raise eyebrows and hackles no doubt.  That is why medical references are included in this post.  A large body of scientific literature supports just that: the reality that the Pill by altering a woman’s choice of intimate partners leads to a higher risk that she will die a violent death.  Look it up.  It’s sad but true.

A 1992 article in the Journal of Trauma reported that the most common cause of non fatal injury among women was violence by an intimate partner.  More disturbingly, intimate partner violence accounted for one third of the women murdered in the United States.

We have known since the 1980s that violence and accidents was the second leading cause of death among women who take the Pill.  In 2010, the Hannaford study published in the British Medical Journal that women on the Pill were more likely to die a violent death than those women not taking the Pill.  They also found that the longer a woman took the Pill the higher her risk of a violent death.

Although the authors of the study could not explain these findings, a letter to the editor published March 13, 2010 by S.Craig Roberts of the University at Liverpool  shed light as to the reason for this disturbing result.  He stated, “I suggest that recent evolutionary insights into human partner choice provide a clue.”  He stated that there is evidence that use of oral contraceptives alters a woman’s baseline preferences for men such that Pill users prefer men who are relatively genetically similar to them in the loci of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). In other words, they prefer men who are genetically very similar to them.  These are the same genes tested to see if a person is similar enough to someone who needs them for a transplant.  They choose men who could be a very close relative.

The unions of MHC closely related couples were studied and it was found that the women rejected sexual advances from their partner more frequently than couples who were MHC dissimilar.  Another consequence of being partnered with relatively MHC-similar men is that women expressed lower sexual responsivity toward their partner compared to women in relatively MHC-dissimilar couples and they reported having more “extra-pair partners”. In other words, in their relationships they had fewer sexual encounters, wanted sex less and were more likely to engage in infidelity or adultery.  Less sex, bad sex and infidelity is a recipe for a bad relationship and conflict that could easily lead to even deadly violence.  It is not a surprise that the leading cause of death of pregnant women is homicidal violence.

Another stressor on these MHC similar unions is that they are less fertile and the children they have were found to have more health problems, just as is found in populations that marry close relatives.  Costly prolonged fertility treatments and the care of a sick child can also wreck havoc on relationships.

Conversely, other studies have shown that men find women who do not take the pill more attractive.  When asked to rate a woman’s attractiveness from pictures while experiencing the scent obtained from women on and off the Pill (using arm pads in open glass jars placed near them), men consistently rated the women more attractive if they were off the Pill.  That could explain why young women feel the need to dress more and more provocatively.  An intern remarked that now she had an explanation for a saying:  “I got on the Pill when I became sexually active.  Now I take the Pill and don’t have sex.”

According to the Center for Disease Control, 82% of women in the U.S .are taking or have taken the Pill.   This is a huge problem. Perhaps, the use of the Pill should be reconsidered.

____________________________

Kellermann AL, Mercy JA (1992) Men, women and murder: gender-specific differences in rates of fatal violence and victimization. Journal of Trauma 33: 1-5.

Ramcharan S et al J Reprod Med. 1980 Dec;25(6 Suppl):345-72 The Walnut Creek Contraceptive Drug Study. A prospective study of the side effects of oral contraceptives. Volume III, an interim report: A comparison of disease occurrence leading to hospitalization or death in users and nonusers of oral contraceptives.

Hannaford PC, Iversen L, Macfarlane TV, Elliott AM, AngusV, Lee AJ. 2010. Mortality among contraceptive pill users:cohort evidence from Royal College of General Practitioners’ Oral Contraception Study. British Medical Journal 340: c927

Roberts, S Craig, BMJ March 13, 2010 Rapid Responses available at: www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c927?page=1&tab=responses

Roberts SC, Gosling LM, Carter V & Petrie M (2008) MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oralcontraceptives. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275:2715-2722.

Alvergne A, Lummaa V (2010) Does the contraceptive pill alter mate choice in humans? Trends in Ecology & Evolution25: 171-179.

Garver-Apgar CE, Gangestad SW, Thornhill R, Miller RD & OlpJJ (2006) Major histocompatibility complex alleles, sexual responsivity, and unfaithfulness in romantic couples. Psychological Science 17: 830-835.

Havlicek J, Roberts SC (2009) The MHC and human matechoice: a review. Psychoneuroendocrinology 34: 497-512.

Kyriacou DM, Anglin D, Taliaferro E, Stone S, Tubb T,Linden JA, Muelleman R, Barton E, Kraus JF (1999) Risk factors for injury to women from domestic violence. New
England Journal of Medicine 341: 1892-1898.

One frequent question I am asked as a newlywed is:

What are you going to do now that the wedding is over?

A reasonable question—after all, the wedding planning took a lot of time. And so a bride may wonder what she is going to spend her time on now. But that’s not all we mean when we ask this question.  We don’t want to know simply what the woman will do with her time.  We want to know what she will live for.  Behind such a question is a little bit of fear, concern, and pity that perhaps she doesn’t have as much to live for.  Indeed, this is the perennial fear we have of settling down.  That once in the happily ever after, things get boring.  Things get routine.  Things aren’t so happily ever after anymore.

And yet, even though we fear such an ending, we women aren’t very good at avoiding the fairy tale, and through the bitterest of hearts it continues to pierce.  So we fall in love, we marry, and then we brace ourselves for what we expect to be a downward spiral and a steady loss of the joy we had on our wedding day.  Why do we do this?  How is it that we could be so attracted to something and yet seemingly so disappointed by it?  And why do we keep coming back to it?

Perhaps it is because the whole process is engrained in us.  We need it.  We need the fairy tale.  But perhaps the problem is that we are more in love with the fairy tale itself than we are with the happily ever after.  Perhaps the problem is not that the happily ever after doesn’t come, but rather, that we don’t know how to properly accept it and build it and live it.

The thing is, weddings are all about hope, and women are very good at hoping.  They’re so good at it that they get drunk on it.  You can see women drunk on hope whenever you go into a bridal store, or even when you watch girls shopping for their prom dresses.  You see them drunk on hope when they plan parties.  When they wrap Christmas gifts for their children.  Hope intoxicates us.  Hope is a beautiful wonderful thing.  Hope presupposes happily-ever-after.  Hope presupposes Heaven.  And there is nothing quite as hopeful as a bride turning the corner to walk down the aisle to her groom. This presupposition lifts us to a high like nothing else.  And so naturally, when we come down from it, we may feel empty and confused.

The danger arises, though, when we allow that emptiness to frighten us and when we, in our fear, turn to fill it with something that shouldn’t be going there.  We may fill it by looking only to the past. We may fill it with enough new projects to distract ourselves.  We may fill it with our own self-indulgences.  Whatever we may fill it with, we will end up blocking out that which was supposed to come in its place.  In the process of blocking out, we become embittered and unable to see or recognize or accept the happily ever after that was intended for us.  In getting caught up so much in the joy of hope, we forget hope’s purpose.  We forget the reason we hope.  And so when love stands ready at the gates to flood into our hearts and our home, we stand closed off and turned around so that it cannot enter.  Too many times, we women get caught up in the excitement of hope and so when love is not exciting (as true and deep love usually is not,) we panic.  When the butterflies stop fluttering in our stomachs, we become sad, thinking they have left for good, when really, they lay resting because they have finally found the place to which they were flying.

A few years ago, I decided I needed to learn to love Christmas Day.  For years I had become depressed on that day for the same reason that so many women feel empty after their weddings.  Christmas had come.  The Eve had ended, and along with it, my hope.  But how silly I was!  For when my hope ended, it did so because I had found what I hoped for.  I had to relearn how to bask in the love and joy of Christmas Day.  For so long, I had been so upset about the hope ending that I missed everything else. I had to learn to love what I hoped for more than the hoping.  And it wasn’t until I could learn this that I began to fully love both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

And so it is with the bride.  A bride is full of hope.  But a wife is full of love. And although hope is exciting, love is, well, everything.  Love is the only reason hope is worth anything.  So when hope may not feel as exciting, or when we no longer have to hope, we cannot let that fact embitter us and shield us from love.  That would be a tragedy.  That is the only real way we can ruin our chances at a happily ever after.  For we determine how happy it is according to how much we choose to love.  But we can never choose to love until we learn to let our hopes be fulfilled.  It takes surrender.  It takes the willingness to be content.  It takes a willingness to be empty for a little bit in order to be filled up with something even more precious and joyous and wonderful.  But it is worth it.  After all, it is the whole reason we hoped in the first place.

So then, perhaps the answer to the question, what are you going to do now that the wedding is over, ought not be simply a list of projects or tasks but instead, 

Well, now that the wedding is over, I’m going to be a wife. And I’m going to live happily ever after.

Sometimes we may be afraid to say this.  We worry people won’t believe it. We worry that we don’t believe it.  But it can be as true as you choose to love just like a wedding can be as beautiful as you choose to hope or a home as happy as you choose to make it.  So do not be afraid.  Our hopes are not unfounded.  Love does satisfy.  Love does fulfill.  Love does save.  All we must do is allow it to.