Solidarity Gone Awry

File it under yet another "Unbearable Lightness of Being Center-Left." Or perhaps just "The Unbearable Lightness of Analysis at Slate."

Whatever the case, Emily Bazelon's recent article disappoints. Me, at least.

Charitably, I can see how hard it is to watch a woman flub on the national stage and worry that we've all been set back some (well, all us feminists, but more importantly I suppose, women and specifically women feminists especially -- Wom Fems?). It is, similarly, hard for me to watch black people make a fool of themselves (See: All Wayans family members post-1995ish -- and no, it doesn't matter to me that they're suppposedly funny or just pretending, minstreling is minstreling, aiight? Though yes, it would be worse if it were a national politician.*) So I guess, just in this instant thinking about that, I can sympathize with her position.

But the thing is, Slate is not (nominally) a confessional -- it's a news outlet for analysis and debate and reporting. And while reporting the embarrassment wim-fems and their supporters might feel about Palin, she does seem to fail to engage much beyond that. Just as I don't believe Hillary Clinton did all that much to advance feminism or women's issues -- just being a woman close to the presidency was an important symbol, but one without substance, she being hardly a Shirley Chisholm or Ruth Bader-Ginsberg or Joan Williams, i.e., feminists I respect for their actual ACTIVISM and not just womanness -- I don't know how much Palin is taking away from it. It is, after all, institutional sexism as much as anything else at this point maintaining male dominance, and institutionalized discrimination relies much less on the outward symbols and prejudices that make up much of the substance of historical discrimination (which in turn allowed present discrimination to occur more discretely, once the institutions to maintain it were set up on discriminatory foundations).

Perhaps I'm wrong -- perhaps I'm underestimating symbolism. I sometimes/often do. But it shouldn't require me to ask Bazelon to do her job -- which is not just to sound agonized, indecisive and inactive (which I SWEAR, must be the Slate house style these days, except when they're being decisively smarmy) but to ANALYZE things. Get to the MEAT of it. Bazelon's lack of engagement in the deeper structures of sexism is nigh-unforgivable -- similar to the media's coverage of Iraq. Because I ask you, what would be more valuable to the American people -- coverage of the play-by-plays of politics in the Iraq war, and the body count, or actual substantive coverage of the HISTORY of Iraq, a major undertaking in educating the public about the culture and people of Iraq, such that we could responsibly interpret what's going on there? Or, to the point, a responsible history and analysis of sexism and progress in the US and, hey I know, it's crazy to even ask for it -- other countries (many of whom have already had female heads of state and so maybe could shed some light on... oh, never mind).

I'm not saying such an undertaking was ever likely to be in the offing in the US MSM; I'm just saying, people like Bazelon are smart enough to know it should be, yet so rarely use their pulpits to even CALL for such an undertaking; and if they do call for it, they would certainly do it in the best spirit of the Slate political gabfest and call for someone ELSE to do it...

Uggghhh, I'm spent.

(*I'm not sure if I'd count, say, Alan Keyes. He's horrible, but he's obviously intelligent -- just IN-SANE. So I guess I don't have a ready straight parallel to Palin in mind... though is that because I can't think of any, because there are more black "embarassments" in entertainment than politics, and/or because there aren't ENOUGH blacks in US politics to have much of a diversity of them...? Oh, actually, there was William Jefferson...)

If She Can See Farther Than Others... Daktari on Palin

If Daktari can see farther than others, it's because she's sharp like woah.

Go read Daktari's blog. There've been a series of sharp and probing posts recently that I really haven't had the time to fully process and react to. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go read her excellent summary post of VP Nominee and Republican Wackaloon Sarah Palin. Daktari's rounded up a good number of links and primary/secondary sources about Palin's abject horribleness by any progressive feminist standard.

Apparently Daktari will not be part of Samantha Bee's Love Pitas for Palin, the gynecologically-inclined issue* voters, those women voting not with The Big Head, but The Little Hood.
----

*Apparently that issue is: "Does someone on the ticket have a vagina?", not "Does the Party/Ticket/Nominee represent anything I believe in?" Substantive issues, it seems, are NOT for pussies.

Hah! I slay me.

But seriously: even J-Fave Slate's Today's Papers jumps on the pre-determined narrative bandwagon, saying that

"Choosing Palin undercuts the argument that Barack Obama is too inexperienced, raising questions about John McCain's age and judgment. But it could pay off: Palin—an NRA member and staunch pro-lifer—is energizing evangelicals and tempting Hillary Clinton voters to defect."

If one bothers to read the linked WaPo article, a paragraph worthy of note (more than halfway through the article, natch) reads

"Interviews with women who supported Clinton suggested that the fact that McCain picked someone as conservative as Palin will be reluctant to vote for McCain, even for those who have been flirting for months with the idea of defecting to the GOP ticket"

only then followed by a quote from one Clinton supporter who has decided to defect. It could be a real phenomenon, but they don't know -- Slate, and to a lesser extent, the WaPo here are making up the narrative before the facts. Not new for The News, but nonetheless, egregious. Objective media my left ass cheek.

I tend to agree with those that charge McCain with thinking Women Candidates Are Interchangeable, though of course as with any modern "identity politics" argument, somehow those who see sexism in the events of the day are themselves charged with misunderstanding feminism.

US' falls further behind in Gender Equality

Hello, faithful readers, and people who googled this page by mistake.

So, there are numerous ways one could imagine in which the US falls further behind in gender equality. In this case, it's in our running series, "Countries that already have had elected female heads of state." This includes places from Ireland to Liberia to Pakistan to the UK to Jamaica. It does not, sadly, include us, the US.

Today, India has joined the august body of people with female heads of state before the so-called leaders of the free world. (That's us again.)

That still doesn't mean I'm for Hillary Clinton. J-Friend APVS recently pointed out that, despite not having terribly strong identification with Hillary politically, she thought that having a woman as prez of the US (or a black man, an equality concern for a different day) behind the podium every day for 4 or 8 years, standing, sitting, signing there as the so-called leader of the blahdyblah blah would be an extremely potent visual. (I took some liberties with APVS's exact phrasing).

We here at the Continuum agree, but strongly disagreeing with Hillary on matters of policy (or, more precisely, not trusting her to do the few liberal things she's mentioned and trusting the loopholes she's left herself in the rest will get well-used) we're not ready to vote for her. On Iraq, we find her very disappointing, and on everything else, mediocre at best. We -- er, I, sorry for the affectation -- don't trust Obama, for his part, because his resolve hasn't been significantly tested, and I'm still very very disappointed/frightened by his noises during his Senate campaign about rethinking the wisdom of legalizing gay marriage and the possibility of attacking Iran. It's not just that he said these things that I disagree with, but that he said them in a race he almost couldn't possibly lose. NO ONE likes Alan Keyes. Illinois voters seemed more likely to ask Dick "Dick" Cheney out for a drink than Alan "I hate Carpetbaggers like Hillary Clinton" Keyes "Carpetbagger for Senate '04." The man was not popular, and not just because his voice sounds like Jon Stewart doing an impersonation of the doctor guy from the Simpsons after having had his nose broken. If you can't stand up for liberal positions when your insane-oh "my gay child is going to hell, ha ha" conservative opponent is so thoroughly disliked by everyone and has no chance of winning ("Hmm, we can choose a black man or a black man brought in by the Republicans for the sole reason that he's a black man to compete with the other black man"), then I have nooooo faith that you'll make the hard, correct progressive calls I'm looking for when your gonads are really on the line.

So. Yes. India: Woman President. First one. Beat us, by at least a year and a half if not more. (They did already have precisely one woman prime minister -- they're one of those countries with both a PM and a prez -- which is good and all, though Indira Gandhi was not, from all accounts, a nice person -- in the forced sterilization, authoritarian head of state meaning of the phrase "not a nice person".)

Every Freakish Ovum Is Sacred

Today's Human Nature in Slate talks more about "Interspecies embryos", where apparently human's & (other) animal's genetic material are mixed. I'm not sure what exactly the scientific upshot of this is, but I'm willing to believe it could lead to all sorts of potential exciting discoveries.

But it's still creepy. At least petri-dish bestiality isn't likely to be any good for a disturbing new porn site.

But creepy as it is to me, that PALES in comparison to what Saletan says the Catholic Church in England and Wales has announced:

Bishops' testimony: 1) "Interspecies embryos" should be treated like human embryos. 2) "At very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings." 3) "It should not be a crime to transfer them … to the body of the woman providing the ovum, in cases where a human ovum has been used to create them. Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so."

gah Gah GAH!!!! That is an amazing ascending order of craziness. Ok, sure, treat a chimera embryo as human, that's just extending the Catholic pro-life absolutism a little farther... ok, if it has a "preponderance" of human genes, we're now going to go ahead and, I don't know, assume God has ensouled it so it's an embryonic human being which in the pro-life stance has the same rights as a post-embryonic human -- i.e. developed, birthed, breathing, differentiated, extremely multicellular human being, ok, gettin' crazy now... So, are you done? what What WHAT? It shouldn't be a crime to try to gestate the damn thing? I guess the only consolation is what I expect would be the extremely low chances of bringing an interspecies ovum to term. Species that can't interbreed often end up having problems way before birth -- though many of those involve blocking fertilization of the ovum in the first place, so I don't know. ANY CASE, here're my questions: Has any woman actually said, "Please, can you put my cow baby back in my womb now? We're naming her Marilyn Mooooonroe." And, if not, is the Catholic Church really pressing them to do so? ("Really, in this case, think of your cloven-hooved baby as a blessing from God!")

(It does appear that scientists don't expect to use human eggs, but rather animal eggs with human genetic material, but the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales seem to have said "preponderance of human genes" or something of that sort. I think the Cadbury Cow Egg filled with Creamy Human DNA would be even less likely to successfully implant in a human womb, but whatever -- we have, or at least I have, NO IDEA what this would do to the woman in question or what the embryo's development would be like. If, by some extremely small chance, implantation and gestation were to actually get under way, my guess: bad. It really would be horrific if the Bishops of England and Wales were encouraging some of their flock to go through a possibly dangerous and patently ludicrous attempt to bear an experimental chimera just to save one of God's microscopic children. Do we really need some more extra-special complicated ethical questions? Did the Bishops of England and Wales just get bored? I have a movie to suggest, if so.)

A Warning to the Future Mrs. J-Continuum-Hyphen-Her-Name-Here

I find this article on diamonds/diamond engagement rings pretty convincing (and in line with what I already thought, more or less).

Not that this is a concern of the highest priority for the presently-single J Continuum, but it's an article that resonates personally, and represents an interesting challenge to the present gender status quo. What I've called 3rd Wave Feminism (and I have no idea if it's the academically correct use of the phrase) is the "Right to Be a Sex Object" feminism that seems to have reached its zenith a couple years ago. You know, the Girls Gone Wild version, where (it seems) my generation (or actually, the one a couple years younger than me) have reacted to the perceived anti-male anti-sex anti-sexy bent of feminism/radical feminism and the more real attempt of Baby Boom feminism to achieve equality by becoming like an "Ideal Male Worker" (see again Joan Williams' Unbending Gender) and the concomitant attempts to achieve in the work world through androgyny (see: shoulder pads). Reacting against this, "anything goes" sexuality seems to be the watchword, to be "liberated" by trying to emulate and best media portrayals of sexiness and promiscuity. This is based on the real point of the double standard -- guys sleeping around and flashing are just "boys being boys" and women doing so are sluts -- and, apparently, a serious marketing opportunity -- so there's a logic to it, for sure. But it isn't a very wholistic view of feminism, I'd say, neh?

So anyway, the question of a diamond engagement ring plays into this; is equality worth "giving up" the princess ideal (not in the general sense, but on an individual level)? Can you modify the princess ideal, where a woman partner is made to feel special, to generate equality and still have that specialness? (Short answer: yes. Longer answer: yes, as long as making both people feel special and both getting gifts, taking care of each other, and taking turns pampering each other doesn't ruin the specialness). Of course, this all goes sideways when talking about non-hetero relationships, but I'd not know to speak on that.

Of course, besides the equality considerations of the diamond ring, there's all those blood diamond, not to mention that, in the long term, digging up gems and being buried with them can't be sustainable (unless we start digging up gems that have been buried with people and putting them back on the market). And the whole conspicuous consumption angle. And the shady origins of engagement diamonds in the first place:

Even then, the real blingfest didn't get going until the 1930s, when—dim the lights, strike up the violins, and cue entrance—the De Beers diamond company decided it was time to take action against the American public.

In 1919, De Beers experienced a drop in diamond sales that lasted for two decades. So in the 1930s it turned to the firm N.W. Ayer to devise a national advertising campaign—still relatively rare at the time—to promote its diamonds...

[Legal scholar] Margaret Brinig [notes] crucially, that ring sales began to rise a few years before the De Beers campaign. To be marriageable at the time you needed to be a virgin, but, Brinig points out, a large percentage of women lost their virginity while engaged. So some structure of commitment was necessary to assure betrothed women that men weren't just trying to get them into bed. The "Breach of Promise" action had helped prevent what society feared would be rampant seduce-and-abandon scenarios; in its lieu, the pricey engagement ring would do the same. (Implicitly, it would seem, a woman's virginity was worth the price of a ring, and varied according to the status of her groom-to-be.)

--Meghan O'Rourke, Diamonds are a girl's worst friend, in today's Slate.

(*just for general reference, the J Continuum envisions taking the future Mrs. J Continuum's last name, too, though preferably with both partners' names done in a Latin America, non-hyphenated double last name type of way)

Pakistan beats us at the democracy game

What? No, not now, silly people. Before.

That is, they "beat" us in a very specific category of democracy, though particularly in this case, it was admittedly a somewhat symbolic blow for democracy. The specific, powerful but seemingly more symbolic than substantial event was the 1988 election of Benazir Bhutto.

This is not a recent event, true, but Ms. Bhutto has been on NPR frequently in recent days, speaking of Pakistani politics and Our Favorite US-Backed Military Dictator, Pervez Musharraf. (Ok, I'm lying, he's not our favorite dictator -- we have so many favorites, who can choose?)

The pertinence of this to the J Continuum is its commentary on our ongoing series, countries that already have had elected female heads of state. Sure, the usual suspects have already done it -- Ireland, the UK, Canada with their knees-bent-running-about-enlightenment, but so have, too, some less usual suspects -- for example, Jamaica, Liberia, and Chile. (I'm no doubt missing bunches, so feel free to enlighten me.) It also plays into the J Continuum's semi-ongoing series, Reasons Portraying Islam as a Backwards Religion and Culture is Annoying Bullshit (so called for the first time here). One entry linked to Muslims condemning the violence of their co-religionists*, as is so often asked of them, then ignored, though I think the responsibility of Muslims to deal with their most radical elements worldwide is often somewhat rather overplayed. (In large part because it seems far from clear that the shared belief in Islam is the most important factor in understanding Islamic extremists. Brief argument: Any variable where 99% of the sample -- all other of the billion or so Muslims in the world -- is an exception is a stupid explanatory variable. That is, since 99%+ Muslims are not violent radicals, Islam is a poor variable to explain extremism, which is what is done when people allege Islam is inherently backwards or violent. That's not to say it's irrelevant -- it's just waaaaay overplayed imho.)

BE THAT AS IT MAY (boy did I go on a rip there), here we have a Muslim country, Pakistan, that elected a female head of state, in 1988. There are some caveats -- it was parliamentary elections, so she wasn't elected directly (though it doesn't seem like the country came to a stop with protests against her or anything); her record as PM implies (at least from Wikipedia it does) that she didn't do much to advance women's causes, she may have run a corrupt government, and that she aided the rising Taliban in Afghanistan, despite the fact that they did believe she should, as a woman, most certainly NOT be head of state. So this is somewhat like what Brazilians seem to have found to be my astounding ambivalence about prominent African-American officials like Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, and Colin Powell. Yay that there's enough equality achieved that they're there (in high appointed offices in those last cases), but it's not as if those three represented the political interests or ideas of the vast majority of other African-Americans. And in any event, for now, the US still has never had a female head of state, and that's just goddamned shameful.

Anyway, I digress, and we may have either our first black or first woman president along here shortly, which would be a breath of fresh air -- though I still have my doubts on Obama, and Hillary... yeah, my vote is not so much. A story for another day, though.




*Sadly, both the links in this post are broken... =[

It Never Rains But it Pours

First, go to J-Friend Heidi's blog and read about the Atheist in the Hizz-owwwwse! By which, achem, I mean, and Atheist in the (US) House (of Representatives). Achem.

Rep. Pete Stark has "come out" as an atheist, which struck me as weird the first time I heard this, when I "came out" as an agnostic during my days at Procter & Gamble. Ol' P & G, despite being the object of much bitching and moaning on my part when I was working there, had an EXCELLENT, excellent diversity training program, really challenging and useful; as my ex-girlfriends can attest (hopefully positively), I use the things I learned from it about communication to this day. (Bottom line: Golden Rule is bullshit. Treat people as THEY want to be treated, not the way YOU would want to be treated -- and to do this, you have to communicate with them and LEARN how they want to be treated. Tougher to pull off, but better in the end, thinks I.) We had different sessions, one of which we went around and identified different things about ourselves (including an interesting one where you walked across the room with every social advantage you possessed, i.e. take one step forward if you're a male, if you're over 5'10", if you're white, etc.). I had never before realized how incredibly unique it was that my first childhood "best friend" was Vietnamese (I wonder what Ninh is up to these days?... hmm, Google-stalking makes it appear he might be a lawyer.) The other thing was that I was agnostic.

Now, not only is P&G predominately Christian, it is predominately Catholic. (It wasn't until I moved to Canton and then to Cincinatti that I realized how much variation there is in number of Catholics in different areas of the US; they're 25% of the US population more generally, but Canton and Cinti seem to have much larger "enclaves." Seems reminiscent to, but not nearly as dramatic as, the influence of Jewish US citizens, who I think actually only make up like 2-4% of the US population. On the other hand, though Catholics are a minority as compared to "Protestants", if you look sect-wise, they're 4 times larger than the next singularly organized Christian institution, the Baptists. That would seem to explain in part the disproportionate political power of a group composing 25% of the population -- that, and influence as a voting bloc extending throughout parties, but I seriously digress.) There were, I think, nigh-audible gasps at the fact that I was (am) an agnostic (or now that Heidi has made me hip to it, agnostic atheist). There was definitely a cricket-chirping pause, and then conversation resumed normally and I got sounds of acceptance. Afterwards, SEVERAL people, including a Section Manager (a solid middle-manager 6-figure position) who thanked me for my bravery in "coming out" and said that they had never had the bravery to do so before. (I kept thinking to myself "Am I gay? Did I say I am?") And incidentally, as I explained to my parents once, this was also when I realized my chances of settling down with a black woman some day are relatively small -- a very hot fellow African American P&G engineer, I forget her name, and I were chatting -- chatting up, perhaps, and somehow it got to religion (this was the same diversity session after all, though she'd been in a different group during my coming out). Feeling freshly confident in my atheist pride ("I´m here! I'm queer! I'm... the only one here..."), I admitted (mentioned) my agnosticism. Literally, I saw a wall come down behind her eyes, and it was the most acute sensation I've ever had from someone's affect going from "flirting/potentially interested" to "being simply very friendly." I was a possible fellow-traveler at P&G after that, a possible friend, but WOAH did I feel the lukewarm shoulder on the romantic interest front there.

So. Yes. Atheists in the House. Yay. Maybe, some day, in my life time, we can dare to dream that an Atheist can be president!!!

Ha ha ha. Okay, okay, I'll stick to being realistic and just wait for our gay (though god-fearing) president to come into office.

The other thing I had wanted to get into is Joan Williams BRILLIANT book, "Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It." It is FANTASTIC. Her points are, from my view, logically immaculate, and her prose is easy and enjoyable. It is simply one of the most enjoyable intellectual-politico-legal books I've ever read. That is to say, it's no "Song of Ice & Fire," I'm not staying up nights reading it, but it is very very enjoyable to read and I'm learning a lot.

Her basic point, one I've struggled a little with, is that the "choice" to stay home for today's women, to take the lead in raising the kids and home-making, is not anti-feminist, a step backwards, or simply a tactical error (as Linda Hirshman, for example, would have us believe), but rather an expression of a still male-dominated society together with a particular failure of feminism. That is, she doesn't critique feminism as an endeavor, as many are wont to do these days, or say that getting women into the workforce was simply wrong, tactically in error, or untimely, but just that we must now go beyond this. Working women are having a very tough time as mothers these days (and stay-at-home mothers are becoming more common) BECAUSE what allows and has allowed men to work as they do today in the market is a constant supply of "free" female labor. That is, we all know home-making is tough and is real work and all, but the part that hasn't been appreciated is that men couldn't perform as (what Williams calls) "ideal workers" without women's undervalued labor, meaning specifically that the wage a family man may earn is actually joint property created by a husband and caregiver wife (or any working spouse and caregiving spouse) together. That is, he could not earn what he does, staying at work all the time without a stay-at-home (or part-time working) partner, or hiring home labor and child-rearing services. Especially, she points out, in the cases of very wealthy husbands and/or the "you get your degree and I'll support you while you do it", the home-managing caregiver most often is sacrificing not only her time and immediate career goals, but decreases her own wage-earning power (by being out of the workforce; each year out of the workforce exacts a future penalty on career prospects) AND is essentially providing the services that allows the other partner to make whatever wage and get whatever degree. In a very real way, the degree and/or wage belongs to both of them, as they both made it.

I love her arguments and their rational basis, and of course can't go through the whole book here. But it's revelatory for me (and makes me realize how utterly AWE-SOME my own Mom & Dad are and were) and though I've always been in a weird middle on the "choice to stay home/choice to pursue a career" part of feminism, her critique and suggestions for Reconstructive Feminism make so much sense, and point out that the present regime also penalizes men who actually DO do their fair share of home work and child-rearing, or who would wish to, which is still sadly an exceedingly small minority of men. (Men do something much less than half the housework still in this day and age.)

I can't say enough good things about this book, but I probably will say some more at some future date. Until then, enjoy the update glut.

"Even women can have tiny dicks."

What the hell? you ask.

This the hell. In an unusually light-hearted J-post, I point to this article by Slate Ad Report Carder Seth Stevenson. Apparently, Hummer is trying to sell to the tofu set. Seth reports that new TV spots from Hummer for its H3 are aiming specifically to say, "Feel wimpy because you're the dude at the supermarket buying tofu and tempeh instead of the Fred Flintstone Brontosaurus Prime Rib? Buy a big fucking car! Now, less fucking big than before!" (It's now-shrinkaged size is I guess a selling point to tofuers: destroy the world somewhat slower than otherwise! Buy a Hummer, you Dirty Hippy! It's GOOD for the environment cuz it's SMALLER!) Seth reasonably points out that calling attention to the "I have a small penis" aspect of Hummer pop psychology may not be the best of ideas. The "women with tiny dicks" (now there's a rock band name if there ever was one) line comes from one of Seth's readers who suggests that this is the (unifying?) message of the she-version of the commercial, where a mom doesn't stand up for herself and her kid when they're pushed out of line by another kid and obnoxious mom on the playground. What does she do? Goes to buy an H3! As Seth implies, this confusing vein of you-go-girlness has apparently failed to run afoul of feminist takes as of yet. This in comparison to the rather quick backlash, apparently, to the male version that originally ended with the tagline "Restore your manhood." (Now it's "Restore the balance" -- apparently tofu shrinks your penis, but the Hummer will pump it up again like SPAM-email Cialis. Balance restored. Without the direct implication that you're a short dicked man -- or woman.)

I don't have any idea what to think about this other than "Um... ok," but I think the reader's line "Even women can have tiny dicks, and the Hummer is the cure" deserves to be repeated.

Virginity Fraud???

File under Useless Things You Probably Wish I Hadn't Told You. William Saletan of Slate.com in his Human Nature column today highlights the growing Re-hymenation industry:

Business is booming in "revirgination," i.e., hymen reattachment. Cost: $2,000 to $5,000. Unmarried immigrant women are getting it to avoid family disgrace by hiding the fact that they've lost their virginity. Married women are getting it (along with vagina-tightening surgery) to thrill husbands on their anniversaries. Objection from the left: It's female genital mutilation. Objection from the right: It's virginity fraud.

I think this calls for a Patented J-AHHHHHH.

AHHHHHHH.

As far as I can tell, there's no free way to get to the Wall Street Journal article on-line without subscribing (i.e. in this case, paying). Using the magical power of being a grad student I got to the article.

Take it from me and J-Friend Lindsay, under no account should you get to the article.

Here's a preview that the sane among you should take as warning enough:

It's the ultimate gift for the man who has everything," says Ms. Yarborough, 40 years old, a medical assistant from San Antonio.

Gynecologists are marketing hymenoplasty in magazines, local newspapers and online. They report business is booming.

Religious groups that value abstinence until marriage say hymen repair is a deception. (Their frickin' problem with hymenoplasty is HONESTY? Not, i.e., the fact that "Some feminists liken hymenoplasty to female genital mutilation." Gee, who knew religious groups weren't tapped into deconstructionist post-modern feminism? --ed.)

"Revirgination" costs as little as $1,800 at Ridgewood Health and Beauty Center, a spa and cosmetic-surgery center in the New York City borough of Queens. To promote the procedure, the center's owner, Cuban-born Esmeralda Vanegas, has given away hymenoplasties on a Spanish-language radio station.

"Losing your virginity is like losing a member of your family," Ms. Vanegas says. "We can make it seem like nothing ever happened."

"I thought it would add that extra sparkle to our marriage," says the woman.

Ok, so maybe those don't appear so bad. But I warn you: we didn't get to the part about how "midwives used to disguise a broken hymen with a needle and thread, sometimes using membrane material from goats and other animals."

Need I say more? GOAT HYMEN.

This sounds almost like a cautionary tale against pre-marital sex by itself. "'Don't give yourself to your man until you are married, or else the GOAT HYMEN will get you,' my old Aunt Baruska warned me before we came to the New World, fire in her eyes, as animals whickered and whinnied and stirred in the night."

So, my readers, go forth and sin no more, else this Old World Terror come claim you late in the night.






P.S. Is anyone else reminded of the Sneetches?

“My friends”, he announced in a voice clear and clean, “My name is Sylvester McMonkey McBean. And I’ve heard of Your troubles. I’ve heard you’re unhappy. But I can fix that I’m the Fix-It-Up Chappie. I’ve come here to help you. I have what you need. And my prices are low. And I work with great speed. And my work is one hundred per cent guaranteed!”

Perhaps that's Dr. Sylvester McMonkey McBean?

On reflection, probably not a name that would inspire hymenoplastic-trust.



Ok.

I'm done now.



P.P.S. Someday real blogging will resume. Really. Honestly.

Some day.