Containment and Diplomacy
Audrey Mantey
The first inkling I had that we were doing something wrong was when we drove to East Berlin in the 1980’s. We were briefed by the US Military not to acknowledge the existence of the guards as we passed through their checkpoint - to stare straight ahead and not look at them or speak to them because the United States didn’t recognize their authority to be there. We were instructed to hold our passports up against the rolled up car window until they signaled us to move on. The irony of those instructions wasn’t lost on me - hold our passports up so the guards we didn’t acknowledge could check them.
When we went through the checkpoint, my daughter was a few months old and was in the back seat of the car. She smiled and made cute baby faces at the guards. One of them pressed his face against the outside of our car window and made faces back at her, and laughed. She laughed. The husband and I stared straight ahead.
When she was 8 months old, we traveled to the Soviet Union. She started crying in the airport while we were waiting for customs. One of the airport workers asked what was wrong. She was hungry; I wasn’t using bottles, and there wasn’t a good way to nurse her while standing on line with my luggage. We were pulled out of line and the Diplomat’s Gate was opened. We were cheerfully waved through, bypassing the hour long wait, and directed to a bench where I could sit and nurse her. Not a toilet, not a dark room hidden away from the rest of the world, but a bench, located where all the folks coming through regular customs were streaming past me.
In the United States, we kick women off planes for breastfeeding.
Later during that same trip, we were seated in a restaurant where a wedding reception was taking place. People don’t react well here in the states if someone sits down next to them with a baby. Even if the child is well-behaved, they will glare at you as soon as you enter to let you know that responsible people keep their children at home, out of sight.
In the restaurant in Moscow, the groom from the wedding came over and introduced himself. He picked up our daughter and held her up for everyone to see. He gave an impromptu speech to the wedding party about the cold war (ongoing at the time), about politics and human relations, and how this (still holding the baby up) was what was going to repair relations between our two countries. Not politicians, not treaties, but simply taking our children outside their own culture to meet other people. He handed her to another person, and she was passed around the room, from table to table.
Our frame of reference in this country is so narrow that it’s hard to talk about raising children in any meaningful way. When we discuss breastfeeding in airports, the debate focuses on whether other travelers should have to tolerate hungry babies being fed in public, or whether that sort of activity should be done in a bathroom. We cannot even conceive of shifting the debate to whether or not nursing women should be treated as diplomats. Nor can we conceive of a professional guard force that makes faces at babies to make them laugh. I was reading this week about the Sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, and found this on their organization’s website: “Today, most of the challenges faced by the Sentinels are tourists who want to get a better picture or uncontrolled children (which generally is very frightening for the parent when the Soldier challenges the child).”
When we talk about dehumanization, we tend to think about how it relates to the way our troops are trained to view Iraqi citizens or how guards view prisoners, or how riot police view protestors. We think in terms of a subject and object, as if the dehumanization is something done to an object - when it’s actually the human relations and connections between two people which are being destroyed.
From a very young age, we train our children to break bonds with their parents. Children who sleep with their parents are spoiled, parents who allow this to happen have no discipline; we are given advice by professionals on how to train children to fall asleep in cribs in their own rooms, and how important it is not to give in to their “demands” to sleep side by side with their parents. The goal is to create self-reliant independent adults, and we begin this process almost as soon as a child is born. In other cultures, children are wrapped or slung against their parents’ bodies as they go about their daily business. We use baby strollers instead of slings, so that instead of feeling our bodies, children feel the bumps of cement sidewalks through a plastic or metal frame. We put them into plastic baby carriers, holding our children at arm’s length by a handle. I’m not convinced that babies are supposed to come with carrying handles, even if it is more convenient.
The thing about using a sling is that a baby feels the parent breathing, feels their heartbeat, and moves when their body moves. They feel and share the rhythm of our steps as we walk. As parents, we in turn do the same. When a child in a sling shifts their weight, the parent naturally shifts to maintain balance. Instead of fostering independence, it fosters interdependence, or human connections.
I look at photos of people marching in support of Chavez, or of the people in Oaxaca rising up as one entity against oppression, and I wonder why we can’t do that here, why the immigrants marched in our country with a common purpose this year, but we as a nation couldn’t or wouldn’t rise up as one when the government failed the people of the Gulf Coast.
Then I look at photos of us with our children, and I think I get it.
Jon:
Thank you, Audrey. This very moving series of recollections literally made me cry for what our movements have NOT acheived in this country.
4 December 2006, 8:45 amDeAnander:
and don’t forget the car culture — the child strapped into a restraining seat, and then often installed in the back seat like a limousine passenger, isolated like a plague carrier, picked up and delivered like a package.
placing sterile distance between parents and their children is a reliable indicator of status throughout human history. elites have for some reason always (1) delegated the emotional and physical care of their offspring to servants, and (b) forced their offspring to be miniature adults from the earliest possible age. this has consistently produced psychotic elites (though inbreeding probably helps)… and now we have an entire bourgeois class “aping their betters” by enforcing the same cordon sanitaire policy between adults and children. the result is not, as far as I have seen, well-behaved children. most US kids that I have met in public places seem to lack both discipline and affection…
there is a whole literature on the importance of bonding in childhood (attachment) to the creation and maintenance of social skills like empathy, compassion, cooperation, reciprocity, truthfulness, etc. in later life. obviously some fine adults come (somehow) from unloving families, and some bad people seem to come from what look like “good homes” (i.e. affectionate, connected, loving) so I hesitate to draw some simple tabula rasa conclusion about our adult lives being fore-ordained by our parents’ affection or distance in our childhood. but you gotta wonder.
wonderful piece Audrey!
4 December 2006, 6:33 pmMarilyn Farhat:
Breastfeeding is considered inappropriate in many circles in the United States because women’s breasts are viewed as a sexual object. This is partly a result of the Puritanical movement that originated the White culture here.
In most other parts of the world, breast feeding is as natural as eating and you can still see women in the Middle East feeding their babies in the company of men with their breast completely exposed, while completely covering their hair (in the Middle East, hair is viewed as a sexual object).
5 December 2006, 4:51 ampeggy:
Audrey, you have touched upon one matter that is very important to me, and has been for a long time. Like you, I took my children when they were very young to a foreign country (India) where I was working. And I learned that I had been raised all wrong. It was not my parents’ fault - they were loving people, and they did what they believed was right and what all the parents around them did and what the doctors and the books said was not only right but necessary. From the day I was born I slept in a room by myself, as most other American babies did and still do. And in general I was raised just right by American standards. And India, after I had been there for a long time, I said to a good friend, by way of apology for something, “We (meaning us Americans, I guess) live somewhat separated from our bodies.” And my friend said, “Yes, I know.”
I learned from my friends in India, and adopted some of their ways of thinking, although it is really beneath and beyond thinking, it is a way of being. In this way of being, children are loved for what they are. They are needed, for what they are. A house without children in it is unthinkable, unendurable. At no place, at no event, are childen unwelcome. In general, being alone, physically alone or psychologically alone, is the worst possible state a person can be in.
Americans, by contrast, need time alone, time for ourselves, and some of us need a lot of such time. No wonder we find it difficult to act in spontaneous unity with our fellow human beings. We are separated from our own bodies, and we are consequently separated from other embodied human beings. Americans are not the only people like that, and not all Americans are like that. But we are certainly the largest civilization where separation and aloneness, of each from other and each from self, is the norm.
5 December 2006, 7:27 ampeggy:
A recent seminar report published by the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory contains the following observations:
“Not only have U.S. forces faced child soldiers in the past, it is nearly inevitable that they will face them again in the future. If a 14-year-old points a weapon at a U.S. serviceman, what should he do? No Marine, no soldier, sailor or airman wants to kill a 14-year-old. But a 14-year-old with an AK-47 is just as deadly as a 40-year-old with an AK-47. If one hesitates, then he and his buddies might be killed; if he shoots, then he might have to deal with the potential psychological consequences of killing a child. This presents a terrible dilemma … (p. 10)
“[Jo Becker] explained that on the battlefield, children more readily follow orders, are less inhibited, and are more vicious than their grown-up counterparts. They seemingly have no fear, acclimatize quickly, and often do not play by the rules. (p. 14)
“[Child soldiers, compared to mature ones, possess] Increased lethality [boldface in the original]. According to the Brookings Institution’s Dr. Singer, children on the battlefield add confusion, and ultimately drive up the death toll. He emphasized not to underestimate child soldiers; in many cases they have years of combat experience, and are more battle hardened than their adversaries.
“[Major Gray, a Royal British Marine] explained … They don’t in any way conduct a maneuver approach to operations. They fight in a very disjointed way. The egocentric nature of children, the fact that when a child is a child, they don’t have the ability to think about other people. They have a simple one-step requirement that they fulfill. As you get older, you understand about morality. They kind of fight like this. On the playground, they are harsh to each other, they fulfill their own needs all the time. You give them an AK-47 and it’s a whole different story. You combine the fact that they are on drugs, you give them a weapon and they behave as if they were on a playground, and it is terrifying.”
CETO (Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities) 2002. Child Soldiers: Implications for U.S. Forces. Report on the Cultural Intelligence Seminar held on June 11, 2002. Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. http://www.ceto.quantico.usmc.mil/studies/ChildSoldiersFinal.pdf
Accessed 16 June 2006
Characterized as “vicious,†“lethal,†and “terrifying†creatures who “don’t have the ability to think about other people,†child soldiers in this seminar appear as dangerous and irrational as rabid dogs.
From the point of view of Major Gray, even ordinary children are less than fully human. Like robots, “[t]hey have a simple one-step requirement that they fulfill.†“On the playground†they think only of themselves and are “harsh†to each other. In combat, child soldiers act like they are on a playground, and this, according to Major Gray, is worse than inappropriate, apparently because, in his view, children are not nice to each other when they play. Moreover, Major Gray has us take as a “fact†that the child soldiers we meet are “on drugs†which we are allowed to assume will exacerbate their viciousness, their irrationality, their “disjointed†behavior, their lack of empathy and their deficit of humanity.
It is almost as though the speakers in this seminar were trying to find a moral justification to eliminate children from the world under their control – children should either be kept confined and off the orderly adult domain of the battlefield, or, because they are (allegedly) more dangerous than adults, they must be killed. Especially for child soldiers, no mercy should be shown.
5 December 2006, 8:15 amhoward:
I can also testify to peggy’s experience in India, especially your statement that in India, “In general, being alone, physically alone or psychologically alone, is the worst possible state a person can be in” — that is almost exactly the wording I use to describe to friends my experience living in Latin America. For a time while I was there, I lived in an apartment by myself. I remember the sort of puzzled look on people’s faces when I would tell them that I lived alone, almost invariably followed by the incredulous question “so you are all alone? [esta solito entonces]”. Or when traveling to another city for business — those you are traveling to see take it as a matter of course that you should be well accompanied during all waking hours. How many times has anyone in this country traveled to another city for business and found themselves at the birthday party of someone’s cousin that night?
I remember the huge impression I received when I went to a Mexican wedding in this country — the service was barely audible above the happy din of children playing and running among the pews.
Peggy’s second post also puts one in mind of the tendency toward treating public schools as some sort of war zone by some police departments and/or school administrations.
Perhaps another way of stating how things are in this country is that we live so much “in our heads” so much of the time.
5 December 2006, 11:33 amhoward:
Is anyone familiar with child psychologist Alice Miller’s work? I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard she goes very deeply into the oppression of children in our culture and how it ties to authoritarianism, militarism and patriarchy.
5 December 2006, 1:02 pmhoward:
on the other hand, in the spirit of self-examination, there I go (in the previous post) right into the life of the head, immediately asking for a book to read about all this. Good authors and high-powered theoretical discussions as we find all over this site are fine (about the best I’ve found anywhere I think), but maybe the emotional immediacy of for instance what Audrey wrote above has to at least sometimes (and maybe always) trump all this fine intellectuality, and it hints at a completely different way that we could be operating.
5 December 2006, 1:37 pmJosiah:
I hope to see more articles from you in the future, Audrey. Great stuff.
5 December 2006, 2:50 pmAudrey:
I spent some time looking at baby slings and strollers when I was writing this. One of the things I noticed was that if you do an image search on “baby slings†you’ll find lots of photos of babies. If you search “baby strollers†you’ll find lots of photos of equipment. The longer you stare at the strollers, the more absurd they look, with their levers and brakes and shock absorbers and adjustable parts so you can raise and lower sun shields, when all you really need is a plain bit of cloth. Staring at strollers is like repeating words out loud over and over; after a while they start losing their meaning. http://mii.babyuniverse.com//product_images/pic/60/win60-83465.jpg
“We are separated from our own bodies, and we are consequently separated from other embodied human beings.†I’ll probably have a fully coherent thought about Peggy’s post in a month or so, but for now there’s a vague sense in my head that all that commercial formula and stroller gadgetry elevates the status of children by putting a layer of manufactured industrial stuff between them and us, in the same way that we elevate ourselves by buying branded clothing and such.
I keep coming back to De’s dirt, industrial muck versus biological waste and soil, and how the one is revered and the other devalued. Even in rambling about this in an email, I found myself compensating a bit with some macho swaggering. (Sorry, Stan, for threatening to “kick your ass†in an email about holding babies.)
This feels a little like my earthworm.
5 December 2006, 10:23 pmDeAnander:
SUV Strollers aka Superprams
I was thinking the other day, late consumer capitalism is producing a culture of size queens.
6 December 2006, 2:15 ampeggy:
Since people are paying attention, I have a post here
6 December 2006, 2:29 amhttp://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=412
quoting Ashis Nandy, that goes with my post on this thread from the Marine Warfighting Laboratory.
Words are great, but they are not the be-all and end-all. And yes, I feel we should pay more attention to the earthworm, and attempt to emulate it in some ways.
metis seeker:
I can attest to that link to Flak magazine. I live in an “up and coming” i.e. increasingly gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn with a lot of young middle class families and those strollers are EVERYWHERE (they even have ones you can jog with). I once walked by the neighborhood café, which was having some kind of “baby music†thing going on and there was about 30 similar looking high-end strollers lined up out front. It instantly reminded me of a biker bar with all the Harley’s lined up for display… definitely a surreal moment.
6 December 2006, 5:13 amhoward:
The above brings other possible stroller functions to mind: when kids reach the toddler stage and start to get ambulatory, there is that period where the parents still have them in strollers (reason given is usually that they can’t walk for as long as adults or keep up with them), and then keeping them in strollers could be a way of 1) training for the car culture 2) mechanically controlling child mobility.
6 December 2006, 12:03 pmDeAnander:
ever seen kids on leashes? I have.
one of the most pathetic Amurkan Kultur flashes I remember in recent years was walking on the seafront promenade in my central calif town… I saw two affluent young anglo parents with their child between them, each parent holding a hand. the little boy was on rollerblades; presumably they were helping him to skate, but he was wriggling as if he wanted to get loose. but the bizarre thing was that the kid was absolutely armoured in safety equipment — shin guards, elbow guards, and a hard shell helmet with a full face grille behind which his little-kid eyes looked out at the world like a prisoner in a cage. he looked like Hannibal Lector being transported to a new holding facility. and it was summer, and hot, and the parents were comfortably dressed in tropical casual, while this little boy was sweltering in heavy SWAT/riot gear.
this image has haunted me on and off ever since, a picture of Amurkan childhood. it’s beyond merely “overprotective”. it’s treating the kid like a new hobby that can be fully accessorised… trophy kids to go with trophy homes and trophy cars? I dunno, but it gives me a very creepy feeling and makes me glad my own parents let me (pretty much) run loose.
6 December 2006, 2:21 pmHeide:
Thank you, Audrey, for your great article.
Coming from a time and culture where breastfeeding was not only accepted but was held up as the gold standard–non-nursing mothers were the exception–I was shocked when I came to the United States and experienced outright hostility towards nursing mothers and became aware of the unnatural custom of separating infants from their mothers almost right after birth—no nursing animal will tolerate being separated from her babies. According to the tradition of my native culture, I nursed my children well into their second year of life while they shared my room. This was seen as some kind of perversity in this country. To me, the idea that the female breast is primarily a sex object for men rather than the source of nourishment for children and the barbaric practice of abandoning infants physically and emotionally to their ‘own’ rooms seemed perverse, to say the least. It’s little wonder these kids grow up believing that property rights trump human rights.
At least I was free to order my household as I saw fit. However, I had several run-ins in public with intolerant people. I remember one incident very well. I was at a fast food restaurant with my three children, the two older ones enjoying a Happy Meal–a rare treat–and nursing my youngest. I was well-covered with a nursing shawl and sat in a corner booth away from the crowd. A worker came up to me and said that I had to do THAT in the bathroom. I asked her if she usually made customers eat in the bathroom. “Of course not,” she said. “Well,” I replied, “my baby will not eat in the bathroom either.” “But this is different,” she insisted. “The other customers are offended by THIS.” Oh, really? I stood up and announced to the whole restaurant: “I am breastfeeding my child. Is there anyone here who is offended by this?” Not a peep. Everybody looked away. So I sat back down and told the worker: “See, nobody is offended. And why should they be? It’s the most natural and beautiful act on earth.”
I wonder why nursing mothers are seen as such a threat to the ‘American way of life.’ There is the puritanical aspect, to be sure; but I think there is more to it than that. A nursing mother moves beyond her assigned role as a mere consumer and becomes a producer; and not only that, she operates outside the control of the ‘market forces.’ What a dangerous precedent! People might get the idea that it is possible to meet their own needs and enjoy doing so! First they reject scientifically engineered formula for mother’s milk, next thing you know they’ll stop buying processed foodstuff and raise their own chickens and vegetables!
A salute to all the nursing mothers, past, present, and future. Your breasts are people power in action!
7 December 2006, 12:53 pmxenia:
I have very little compassion for stars and starlettes in the US, yet I was appalled when some of the racist comments on Janet Jackson’s “ugly, middle-aged tit” came out…
It made me realize there is an ideal of what “the good breast” is supposed to look like (perky, round, but not elongated, with only one alternative, namely the barely-breasted, hip girl-child who is androgynous and tough, meaning in practice we all have to “choose” to look either like Pam Anderson or like Kate Moss).
Meaning here: even in a moment when a breast is not explicitly sexual, it had better be pleasing to the eye. A feeding breast (or a hanging, or a dried-out old breast) does not confirm to such plasticky, lifeless ideals, and thus it provokes aesthetic horror from those socialized in such a way to always expect standardization. Their solution: cut them all up and make them pay for their ugliness.
7 December 2006, 5:37 pmpeggy:
When my second baby was a baby, I was an impecunious assistant lecturer at a small liberal arts college in rural New York State. I took my baby with me to work and nursed him while I was teaching class. To me it was no big deal, just a matter of practicality, and the students appeared to accept the presence of my baby, and my nursing him as I lectured, in the same spirit. But my doing this caused a bit of a stir, pro and con, among some faculty members. One young female faculty member invited me to lecture at her class, with baby welcome. Evidently it was not what I had to say during the lecture, but the fact that I nursed my baby while lecturing, that interested her and the students. And a friend of mine, an elderly art professor, who had spent his Beatnik days in Greenwich Village, expressed his irritation with me for nursing my baby in class, because he considered it an act of sexual display. I assured him that it was not what he thought, and that neither the male nor the female students took it that way. But he retorted that, while the students might appear calm, behind my back the boys among them would be thinking about me sexually, stripping me naked in their minds, and I was only provoking them by nursing my baby in their presence. In retrospect I think it was only this old art professor who was stripping me in his mind, but at the time his words caused me to wonder if maybe I was doing something wrong.
Also, I nursed my first baby when I was in India, and one of the places I nursed him in was on the bus, because we had to take long bus rides from one place to another, and it was necessary for me to feed my baby, and anyway this was India, for heavens sakes. But a woman friend of mine, an Indian woman, wife of a professor, mother of six, grandmother of two, who came with me on the bus once, said I should not nurse my baby on the bus because the men would be looking at me. And I said, nobody is looking at me. And she said, they will be looking at you through the corners of their eyes.
Does the mere sight of a woman nursing her baby excite men sexually? Maybe, if they are not used to this sight, and/or if they are subject to uncontrollable hormone attacks or something.
Should we nursing women protect ourselves from possible male aggression by nursing our babies in private? Or should we nurse our babies in public, to enable men to get used to this sight, and to free other women to nurse their babies in public if they so choose? You already know what I think, but I am interested in learning what other readers, especially men, might think on this topic. Men: be honest. I just want to know.
8 December 2006, 12:47 amRandy Morris:
Seeing a woman nursing a baby is actually far from a sexual turn-on…for me anyway. I imagine it is downright uncomfortable for most men, and that’s the reason they foist off the “its a sexual thing” to seem like they’re just trying to look out for the woman’s best interest.
My opinion on the right thing to do? Nurse in public.
If you are concerned about potential sexual aggression—nurse in public and carry a gun.
If I’m around, I’ll back you up on your right to do both (at least if you live in the U.S.).
Down with Formula Oppression! Long live the Real Deal!
Whenever, wherever!
Randy
8 December 2006, 2:58 am(A proud daddy of two children whose lips—and livers—never touched formula)
Heide:
I grew up seeing women nurse in public: on the bus or train, in church, in the library, in restaurants, on a park bench. Nobody thought much about it because it was so pervasive. The men did joke about it sometimes, I remember; but the joking was good-natured and it was clear that a woman’s right to nurse her infant wherever and whenever necessary was respected. If there were people who had a problem with a nursing woman, they were the ones expected to leave, not the woman.
8 December 2006, 10:27 amMarilyn Farhat:
I thought I would share this photograph (with the Moderators’ permission, if appropriate) to show what I meant when I said people, including the men, in the Middle East do not find it “immoral” or “offensive,” neither is it “illegal” to breast feed in public. It is all a matter of what is acceptable in that culture. Look at the way the breasts are exposed and contrast with the way she is dressed (contradictory?).
http://breastfeedingart.net/1920/Enlarge/1920%20%20Beyrut%20NUDE%20Lady%20BREAST%20FEEDING%20Child%20Lebanon.html
When I was a child, my relatives an I would go swimming in the south of the country. Women of that part of the country did not own “swim suits.” Their swimming attire consisted of one piece of clothing, baggy cotton pantaloons and a head scarf (let’s not forget the head scarf, the crown of Middle Eastern chaste womanhood). They were completely exposed from the waist up and, if a strange man happened to walk by, he had one choice really, look the other way.
The United States is one of the most prudish of cultures I have come across (despite the blatant sexual imagery). There is a lot of promiscuity and hard core sex, but when it comes to really being comfortable with sexuality and the body, we still have a long way to go. It remains a matter of “quantity” not “quality” to put it generally. But, I am hopeful that we can change, maybe, someday
8 December 2006, 4:16 pmpeggy:
“Nurse in public and carry a gun.”
That would make a great slogan! I think I’ll adopt it for my movement, when I start one.
8 December 2006, 4:45 pmRandy Morris:
It’s yours, Peggy! Sloganeer away!
Randy
8 December 2006, 8:24 pmJonny:
Hi Peggy, good topic.You have me trying to recall my pre-politicization reactions to breast-feeding. Although smalltown pre-pol Jonny was frequently exposed to breast-feeding mothers from early on, I think my mother chose to use a pump in the bathroom to fill bottles for my lil’ sis when we were in out in public places. I have never found public breast-feeding to be a sexual event, and imho it’s generally safe to do(never seen nor heard of danger resulting from any men’s reaction to that.
11 December 2006, 11:45 pmTatiana:
Thank you for the article, it is always good to hear something positive about the country I grew up in and can never, unfortunately, return to. (Remember Sting’s condescending: I hope that Russians love their children too?…)
12 December 2006, 12:58 pmOne can always draw good conclusions from a different culture, especially if its approach to politics is dearer. It is true though that Soviets, just like anybody else in the world, overlooked child abuse and improper and unkind bringing up. The difference is that here in the United States a child is raised, or more appropriate to say, bred for the purpose of becoming a successful soldier for capitalism.
I always have a strange feeling watching a 16 or 18-year-old being kicked out of a house by loving parents for his/her own good, that is quite understandable considering that a child will not be able to learn the harsh reality of a bloody battle for the next career opportunity unless he or she learns to fight their way through on their own. I always found it appalling that a grandmother would take money to baby-sit her grandkids or a real estate agent would brag about profiting on selling a house to his own son. Also there are serious psychological implications of such detachments that can lead even to such extremities as (given of course other factors, such as low quality of education as well as very well developed sex culture), believe it or not, sexual abuse that is happening in this country more than in any other civilized society.
required:
I just uploaded “Neo-prude” with the following definition to UrbanDictionary.com.
“A person who is against displays of human bodies which don’t conform to the ideal set forth by the Pornography industry. Essentially the Neo-prude takes the pre-existing repressive prudish ideology of fundamentalist religion, which condemns displays of human bodies (especially in sexual contexts) as immoral, and alters it slightly to allow only displays which are idealized by the pornography industry. The vast majority of human bodies, which don’t conform to this ideal, are met with the same flood of guilt tripping and disgust that traditional prudes visit upon all of humanity. Neo-prudes are prone to justifying their prudishness by pointing to the tiny minority of people whom they are not prudish towards.”
We need our own language to fight back against the patriachy, God knows they have there’s. UrbanDictionry allows anyone to vote “yes” or “no” to the validity of definitions. A bunch of yes votes would make me happy.
13 December 2006, 7:16 pm