The Damage of Child Beauty Pageants

Riot.Jane

This is the first time I've seen a non-hysterical critique of the phenomenon of child beauty pageants.  Most of the time it seems like it's moon-bat crazy people throwing tantrums either for or against the concept. 

In this blog post Mary Jo Rapini, LPC discusses whether it's the contestant or the parent that is actually benefiting from the pageant experience.  She also suggests better ways to help children learn the lessons they need to be successful people than crawling the beauty pageant circuit.

Beauty Pageants For Toddlers; Who Are They For?

A Postcard from The Single (Mom) Life

Megan DaGata

I am not having a good day; it has been trying to say the least. There is still not much to do at work, so its always quiet. Which is a problem for someone whose mind is always on...I am constantly left to my thoughts. It makes the days long.

The nights are so short though, and I don't get to think. I get home at 7 pm, and I try to get the kids in bed by 9. I am not happy. I only get to spend 2 hours a day with my boys. No sir I'm not happy! A mother's place is raising her kids, and I don't get to do that. Right now I am paying someone more than half my salary to raise them, and get frustrated when things aren't done the way that I would do them. I say something and it's like I haven't said a word, which only pisses me off more.

Sexy Sundays | "The Morning After" the "First Time"

Riot.Jane

A blog post by Mary Jo Rapini, LPC, caught my attention.  How you feel about losing your virginity depends...are you a guy or girl? begins with a discussion about the gender differences in the after-effects of the first sexual encounter as determined by a recent academic study (Body image and first sexual intercourse in late adolescence) and winds up with with the author's own views on the same.

[From How you feel] The morning after can be difficult no matter if you are a guy or a girl, but it seems to be more difficult for girls than guys. A study from researchers at Pennsylvania State University reports male university students' body images improved after having sexual intercourse for the first time, while the opposite pattern was found with females. The study which was published in the Journal of Adolescents and reported on 100 students from the university between the ages of 17 and 19 years of age who had sex for the first time during their time at the university.

Riot.Jane Guest Blogs for "The Business Coach for Moms"

Riot.Jane

Lady T contacted me and asked me to write about workplace dress for her audience.  This is a thorny topic with a wide variety of perspectives.  I thought about the issues again and realized that I hadn't changed my mind since this past August when I blogged about the topic.  She's posted my thoughts, Owning vs. Emphasizing Your Femininity, on her blog today.

Lady T coaches and empowers women to change the world through entrepreneurship. She provides motivational workshops, spiritual retreats and one on one coaching that helps moms grow purposeful, flourishing home businesses. You can click here to learn more about this mompreneur expert and click here to to read my thoughts on one facet of existing as a woman in the workplace.

~Riot.Jane

"The Breast Milk Baby" Controversy

Admin.Jane

If you haven't heard, a new doll (i.e. toy for girls) will be introduced to the US market this spring.  Called "The Breast Milk Baby," it was introduced in Europe in 2009 by Spanish toy company Berjuan Toys under the name "Bebe Gloton" (transliterates to Baby Glutton). The Bebe Gloton version already available at Amazon.

Americans are, to say the least, conflicted about the existence of this doll, much less its marketing to little girls and parents.  Quite a bit of vitriol has been spouted about it, and I really couldn't understand the the spazz-fest that seemed to surround any mention of it.  There doesn't seem to be much middle ground in opinion regarding this doll . . . People seem to either love it ecstatically or hate it violently.

Maintaining a Sex Life While Co-Sleeping

Bess Bedell

Bess Bedell has agreed to share her experiences maintaining a sex life while co-sleeping (children sleeping in the same bed as the parent/s).  She's shared her experience and offers advice to fellow parents interested in the topic. 

-------------------------------------------------

Being a parent is hard. Being a parent and having a gratifying sexual life can sometimes feel impossible. And when you throw a baby in the middle of the bed, smack center between you and your spouse - sex can become a rare commodity. The number one concern of many parents is: If they co-sleep with their baby, how will they ever have sex? As a co-sleeping mom who has had 1-2 children in the bed with her every night for the past 2 ½ years, I can help you with that question.

The Wrong Lessons to Teach Your Child 101

Some Michiganders and Ohioans are on the front lines of living lessons we shouldn’t be teaching our children, namely that physical violence is the proper response to not getting your own way.

Within the last month, a mother-daughter team attacked a discount department store greeter in Ohio, and a mother-father team attacked a school crossing guard in Michigan. Both attacks occurred with children of the attackers present, and both attacks occurred in public places with witnesses present.

Girl Dies by Suicide After Rape-Allegation-Related Terror

A fourteen-year-old Michigan girl died by suicide November 8 after schoolmates bullied her due to a rape allegation involving her and an 18-year-old schoolmate.

The only things that are truly clear at this point are:

1. Samantha Kelly, 14, had sex with Joseph Tarnopolski, 18, at his home on September 26.
2. June Justice, Kelly's mother, filed a criminal complaint with the local police department.
3. Local police interviewed both Kelly and Tarnopolski.
4. Kelly's statements changed over time - at one point she said she was a willing participant, at another she said she was coerced.
5. The police arrested Tarnopolski for third-degree criminal sexual conduct (regardless of Kelly's mindset, she was too young to legally consent), then released him on bail.
6. Tarnopolski then Tweeted to his classmates that "All girls are, are liars and backstabbers! I hate you all. Way to ruin my life. Seriously, now this will be on my record for life!"
7. Neighbors and students divided themselves along pro-Kelly and pro-Tarnopolski lines and the latter faction terrorized Kelly.
8. Justice and Kelly approached the media to protest/publicise Kelly's maltreatment by schoolmates and neighbors. During this interview, Kelly's face was obscured but Justice's was not. 
9. Kelly's maltreatment intensified.
10. Kelly scrawled a note on her bedroom wall, the date of the of the sexual event, then hung herself in her family's mobile home on November 8.

Tarnopolski says that he and Kelly planned the consensual sexual encounter together and that nothing like coercion was involved.  The state of Michigan's age of consent is 16.  Kelly's mother insists her daughter was "forcibly made to have sex with an 18 year old."  The Wayne County Prosecutor's office has dropped the case against Tarnopolski because their only witness, Kelly, is dead, and they have no other evidence. 

Tarnopolski says he feels "a little bit" bad about Kelly's suicide but that her parents are responsible, not him. Justice says that she encouraged her daughter to speak to the police about the incident to prevent emotional suffering caused by bottling up a rape.

Tarnopolski says that he's not the one who disregarded a confidentiality agreement he and Kelly were going to sign that would kept the event quiet, protecting them both.  I can't find a reference to Justice acknowleding a confidentiality agreemnet was arranged. 

Justice does say she and her daughter approached the media because Kelly was being terrorized by neighbors and classmates and they couldn't get help anywhere else.  Tarnopolski said he was unaware of any maltreatment until after the news broadcast, but that even afterwards neither he nor his friends terrorized Kelly. 

Justice's reaction to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office dropping the case against Tarnopolski, from a local news broadcast:

Another report from a local news outlet, this one includes a brief interview with Tarnopolski:

A local news outlet's longer interview with Tarnopolski and his attorney:

Even though I've had a first-hand taste of the battle Kelly was fighting (topic for another post) . . . After reading the articles linked at the end of this post and after watching the videos above -- especially the interview with Tarnopolski and his attorney -- I was almost, almost, just this close to giving Tarnopolski the benefit of the doubt, extremely poor judgement and suicide girl notwithstanding.

Then I found out that another, similar, criminal complaint involving another underaged girl was filed against Tarnopolski two days after Justice and Kelly were interviewed by a local news station about the harrassment.

Think about that for a minute: Two days after a victim publizes the unimaginable level of harrassment that would soon drive her to suicide, another underaged girl comes forward to say something to the effect of "I, too, was raped by Joseph Tarnopolski"?

Local police have referred the second case to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office which isn't releasing any information except they're processing it.  Tarnopolski has since withdrawn from school due to threatening e-mails that have left his family afraid to leave their home.

To think I was ready to give this speaking filth the benefit of the doubt!  This piece of gangrenous humanity is only 18, and it's already clear that he's a victimizer, a predator. 

Here's where I'm reduced to a lesser person than I aspire to be most days, but so be it . . . I am glad that his tormentors have caused him to leave school.  I am fucking overjoyed that his family is afraid to leave their home. Honestly, I hope that, after he is imprisoned, they have to move a thousand miles away and change their family name to escape what he's done.   Justice has a dead daughter, so the Tarnopolski's would still  be better off.   

I desperately hope the other girl can find the strength within herself to stand proud, and to say it loud, that "I, too, was raped by Joseph Tarnopolski!"

A memorial to Kelly, created by a friend:

 Additional sources used as background for this post:

• Rape Case Dropped Following Samantha Kelly's Suicide
• Joe Tarnopolski Talks with FOX 2's Taryn Asher
• Alleged Rape Victim, 14, Taunted, Kills Self
• Rape Charge Against Huron High School Teen Dropped After Classmate's Suicide

~Riot.Jane

More on the Elderly Indian IVF Trend

In a recent post, we discussed the cultural components involved in the developing Indian trend of financially middle- and upper-class elderly women giving birth through IVF.  I ended that post with the statement "I honestly can't imagine living in such a culture. "

I've read a few things since that only intensify my revulsion.

The life expectancy of a child born in India in 2008 is <64 years.  The life expectancy for a child born in the entire world in 2008 is <70 years.  Further manipulation of the page will show that all of the Western European countries life expectancy for a child born in 2008 range from 78 to 82.

In the manipulated chart, as shown below, the bottom line is India, the next line up is the entire world, and the rest are the clustering of the Western European nations.

In a country so overcrowded and slum-filled that large swaths of urbanites don't have clean water or electricity, with such under-developed infrustructure that people sit in traffic for four hours one way, with a birthrate (22.22/1000 vs. the US' 14/1000 in 2008) and infant mortality rate (currently 52/1000 vs the US' 7/1000) so high that poor couples are being paid to delay childbirth and train-rage incidents involve tossing two year olds to their deaths, a dowry expectation that is such a crippling expense that a female child is considered an insufferable burden, and a strict social (but illegal) caste system that, for the most part, prevents social and financial mobility . . .

How have the women in this society not risen up en masse against the pressures to selectively abort female fetuses and to continue bearing children into their dotage, whatever the means, because of the need for male heirs? 

I used to think that India was a civilized democracy.  I'm no so sure about the "civilized" part anymore.

~Riot.Jane

Mummified Babies Could be Linked to "Peter Pan" Author

On August 17, two women cleaning a storage area in a once-grand 1920s-era Los Angeles apartment building made a surprising discovery: two leather satchels that each contained the mumified remains of a human baby.

The remains were wrapped in 1933 and 1935 newspapers and then placed in the the leather satchels (of the type that physicians once carried).  The leather satchels were found in an unclaimed wooden trunk bearing the monogram "JMB" that had been stored in the building for decades.

To the discoverers, one appeared to be premature, and the other appeared to be a normal newborn.  The assistant coroner referred to the remains as fetuses. 

Also in the trunk were personal effects relating to a woman named Jean M. Barrie, including a ticket stub from the 1932 Olympics (held in LA), a copy of "Peter Pan," and a membership certificate for the Peter Pan Woodland Club, an upscale woodland resort destination. 

The "Peter Pan" references are intriguing because a close female relative of Scottish novelist and playwright James M. Barrie, author of "Peter Pan," bore the name Jean M. Barrie. This female Barrie is known to have lived on the East Coast and in the Midwest, but her presence on the West Coast is currently unknown.

Alternately, local LA records indicate that two nurses, Jean M. Barrie and Janet M. Barrie, lived local to the apartment building (where the trunk was discovered) in the 1930s.  Whether or not these two Barries were the same woman is unclear.

Forensic work will determine the age, gender, cause of death, and genetic profile of each baby/fetus, and the LA Police intend to investigate fully. 

Facts pulled and more available from: Newser, NY Daily News, LA Times, and MSNBC

Maybe it's just the part of me that insists upon trying to think the best of people, but I have this picture in my mind of a woman who miscarried but couldn't bring herself to part with the remains.  In such a case, with "Peter Pan" being so popular, of course such a woman would be interested in keeping the place where children live forever close to her mind and close to her babies.  Whether or not she's related to the author isn't actually important to my mental picture.

Unless, of course, a definitive connection to James M. Barrie is made, because that would place a literary classic into a whole new light.

~Riot.Jane

Indian Woman, 70, Gives Birth via IVF

The Washington Post brings us news of a growing trend in India: Elderly women birthing IVF children.  One woman, Rajo Devi Lohan, recently gave birth through IVF in her 70s.

In the past 18 months, the doctors at this [single rural] clinic have helped 100 women older than 50 become pregnant. About 60 were able to carry those pregnancies to full term. Some of the women received eggs donated by younger relatives. Their husbands' sperm was used to fertilize the eggs in a lab, and the embryos were then inserted into the women's wombs.

Rajo Devi Lohan, 72, and Naveen, 18 months
(photo by Emily Wax/the Washington Post)

Not everyone is excited about the IVF trend. 

With 1.2 billion people, India is still growing rapidly, and there are few efforts to control population growth, in sharp contrast to China's one-child policy. Some planning advocates argue that India's population is stalling development, adding to unemployment, and overwhelming roads, schools, water supplies and other basic infrastructure needs.

Cultural components, though, will likely make curbing population growth difficult.

"The women come to us and say, 'Even if I die, at least I won't face the stigma of being barren,' " said Anurag Bishnoi, the center's lead IVF specialist. "These women are like soldiers:, They are on the front lines for their family, their country. They may die, but their family and country will live."

Not only is childbearing itself important, the pressure to have a male heir is crushing.

More than 40 years ago, Rohtash gave birth to five daughters and one son. But seven years ago, her son died in a car accident. Now she wants to try again for a male heir, a powerful cultural preference in India that many population experts say contributes to women having babies until a son is born.  "The risk for a son and a balanced family is my destiny," she said. "I consider this place to be God."

The cultural imperatives are enabled by the relatively low cost of IVF procedures.

One IVF attempt at this clinic costs about $2,500, while in the United States it can run up to $15,000. Although the fees in India are high for middle-class families earning a typical $15,000 to $20,000 a year, they are often able to get money from relatives or a bank loan. Rohtash's family of farmers did both.  

I honestly can't imagine living in such a culture. 

~Riot.Jane

The Story of Tink & Pink

"The Story of Tink & Pink" is the story of a dachsund who adopts a piglet.  The story itself is true, although not mine.  The woman who was lucky enough to have Tink & Pink shared the story and photos online while it unfolded.  Later she published a childrens' book about it.

After stumbling on a piece of it in a forum somewhere, I dug around until I'd read everything I could find.  The story is lovely and inspiring, and I thought that I'd share it as widely as possible.  I've retold it here in the form of a children's story, suitable for reading out loud to a child while watching the presentation..

Be sure your sound is turned on!  To view full-screen (which will make the text easier to read), click the in the lower-right of the media box below.

The Story of Tink and Pink

~Riot.Jane

Cave

I came from the womb.
I was attached by chord to her

Later I found pen and paper, thoughts and spirit within
Is it all for a quest back to her, my mother within?
Can I defeat any foe the world has deemed
Is a threat to me, the paternal it seems…

Maternal body and Paternal body
From these I spawned?

Am I Maternal body, a historical discourse
in an ongoing battle
with Paternal Law- the semiotic as well?

Not needed, was a linkage between womb and me to create my art.
Babies are a creation of actions between two people, sometimes fueled by real thought.

Babies and art, art and babies
Who cares if they have rabies.
Yes, rabies, a disease.
A disease between maternal and paternal and what each means…

I heard a professor once say,
the limits of my language are the limits of my world…
So enough with this debate, get out of my way…

If sex has spawned the meaning of structure and desire,
I take my leave and walk
with Rilke and Shakespeare
as Orpheus guides us like Virgil,
back to Prometheus and his warm fire.

~Olga Cisneros

The Winds of Change Blow

Greetings to the Ladies Jane --

After an extended absence, rejoining you is a pleasure!

I'm a steadfast Third Wave feminist. I've spent my entire life proving to the world (and myself) that I am the equal of any man in anything that I choose to do. Beginning with schoolyard fisticuffs, I fell in love with high school Junior ROTC, refused to marry young, established a career in a (predominately male) technical field, and have vociferously insisted to anyone listening (and those not) that women have value that has nothing to do with creating new life

Adamantly, ferociously, with the crystal clarity that only true passion brings, I have practiced what I've preached. I refuse to cry outside of my own apartment. When I'm frightened, I snarl. When I'm weak, I attack. When I'm paralyzed, I bark orders at others. When I feel stupid, I boast. Full of bravado and vinegar, I dare anyone, everyone, to call my bluff. Intelligent women older than me have told me, "I'm so jealous! You're your own person: You never gave yourself away."

While battling a sleeping disorder that eradicates many useful hours, I've lived my life with what time I have as my own. My responsibilities are with my friends and parents, not with the husband or child/ren that my culture (and well-meaning individuals) say that I am missing.

The only time one of my girlfriends and I are ever catty is when we praise Glory for the fact that we are childless. We revel in the fact that we still have the luxuries of self-absorbtion and non-bowel-movement conversation. We are snotty towards and gossip about parent who don't control their children and parents who have nothing to talk about besides Johnny's ear infection or Janie's latest goo-goo-ga-ga babbling.

We know your little precious is the most amazingly wonderful thing in the multiverse to you, we do, I promise! Really, that's probably the way it should be, but please, dear God, would you just shut up about it?!

"That is just not going to be us, we actually have something to do with our lives," we snark, as if childrearing is relegated to those without the capacity to do anything else. I always felt a bit guilty for snarking about women whose choices have been different than mine, but not enough to actually stop the snarking. I'm positive that there's a portion of the human animal's social need that yearns for validation so much that even self-provided validation will suffice.

I've been proud to use the courtesy title of "Miss," although at the age of 38 people occasionally double-take when I do. My boss says I look 30. I refuse to change my name if I ever *do* marry. I'm not against the idea of marriage per se', but I am still not sure (while having discussed it with my boyfriend) that I am or ever will be ready for such a thing. I'm a fiercly independent, oddly particular, strongly-willed, and reliable overachieving only child who is used to having things her own way.

Let's say that the arts of negotiation and domestic order are not among my stronger points. :-)

I've been an apartment dweller my entire adult life, and I've found myself daydreaming for the last year or so of a permanent home, of putting down roots, of neighborhood block parties in the kind of place where Girl Scouts ring the doorbell to sell their boxes of yummy goodness every year. I've been daydreaming of older neighborhoods, with narrow driveways and old-growth trees, neighborhoods that have 50 years of architectural styles represented in the little houses lining the streets while the larger city sprawled around, creating little enclaves with their own little newletters and residents who know the family name of the house two blocks over who just bought that sweet new Mazda RX8 . . .

This picture never includes a husband or child/ren. I see the garden, I see the porch swing (and the kitty dozing in it), I see the cute white trim around the round accent-lighting windows, I see the kitchen with it's glorious chrome-trimmed appliances, and I see the window-box with custom cushions, begging me to wile away the sunny afternoon with my Kindle . . .

But I never see the other pieces of the house, of that life, and I've assumed that's because I'm not yet ready to see them. I'm not ready to get married, I'm not ready to be a parent, so those pieces are not yet visible to me.

As a result, I've been thinking that I've just been wanting to put down roots, that I'm finally looking for an adult level of security, stability, and serenity. That my kitty and my project house are what I'm yearning for, what I need. I'd come to the conclusion that this was just a larger, albeit more gentle, form of the insistent nesting urge I experience every time that I have PMS.

I realized just last night that I've been wrong. All at once, a thought leapt up from my subconscious brain and burst into my conscious mind with the stopping power of a close thunderclap:

I want a baby.

What the hell happened to me? Who am I to become?

~Riot.Jane

Woman "Not Guilty" should Son Rise from the Dead

Baltimore, MD -- A former religious cult member has agreed to an unheard-of plea deal: She has plead guilty and will testify against four others in the starving death of her 1-year-old son but reserves the right to rescind her plea if her son rises from the dead.

Ria Ramkissoon, 22, a native of Trinidad, is the prime witness in the Maryland's case against Queen Antoinette, 40, who purportedly lead the now-disbanded One Mind Ministries religious cult out of a Baltimore row house. Prosecutors allege that Antoinette instructed cult members, including Ramkissoon, to deny the child, Javon Thompson, food and water as punishment for the child not saying "Amen."

Prosecutors allege that Antoinette, believing that Ramkissoon would be weak and feed the child or give him water, instructed Javon be given to another cult member who followed her food-and-water-denial instructions. After the eventual death of the child, the cult members prayed over the body and the mother danced around it. When that didn't succeed in raising the child from the dead, two cult members purchased a wheeled suitcase in which to carry the child. Ramkissoon's attorney said that the cult believed that the child could be raised from the dead at a later date if they could carry the body with them. The cult moved to Philadelphia and asked a men they'd befriended there to store their luggage, and police found the body in a shed behind the man's house.

Javon's father, Robert Thompson, did not attend the plea agreement hearing due to illness, and is reported to have been incarcerated at the time of Javon's birth. Court documents indicate that Ramkissoon joined One Mind Ministries after Javon's birth. Ramkissoon left her parent's home with her 7-month old son, joined the cult, and moved into their house at the age of 19 because (according to her attorney) she didn't want to work or go to school but wanted to raise her son full-time, in Christianity, and the cult offered her this opportunity. At the time that Ramkissoon joined the cult, it had approximately a dozen members. Reportedly within the cult, cell 'phones and discussion of one's family were banned and marijuana smoking was common.

Prosecutors are charging Antoinette and three other cult members with child abuse resulting in death and first-degree murder. In a March 30 hearing, Ramkissoon plead guilty to the first charge (abuse/death) and agreed that she will testify truthfully against the other four. Should this occur, the prosecutor's office will recommend sentencing comprised of release from jail, a suspended 20-year sentence, five years probation requiring mental health assistance (including "deprogramming" treatment with a specialist in cult behavior). Sentencing is currently sheduled for August 11.

A prosecutor's office spokeswoman said that, regarding the child rising from the dead, the fine print of the plea agreement states, "This would need to be a Jesus-like resurrection. It cannot be a reincarnation in another object or animal."

"She [Ramkissoon] certainly recognizes that her omissions caused the death of her son," Ramkissoon's attorney said. "To this day, she believes it was God's will and he will be resurrected and this will all take care of itself. She realizes if she's wrong, then everyone has to take responsibility ... and if she's wrong, then she's a failure as a mother and the worst thing imaginable has happened. I don't think that, mentally, she's ready to accept that."

Ramkissoon's attorney also said,

"On one level, she certainly is competent to stand trial, because she does recognize that as far as her legal entanglements are concerned, this is a grand-slam resolution for her. On the other hand, she's still brainwashed, she's still delusional as far as the teachings and influence of this cult, and she certainly is going to benefit with professional help and deprogramming."

The current disposition of the four other charged cult members: (Leader) Antoinette, Trevia Williams, and Marcus Cobbs are currently incarcerated without bail. Steven Bynum is, for some reason, free on his own recognizance.

Source documents available for review.

~Riot.Jane

To Cut or Not to Cut?

The decision to circumcise your new baby boy is difficult for many parents. Religious, emotional, naturalistic, societal, hygiene, parental personal motivations, and side-effect concerns are a part of a decision that will affect your child for the rest of his life.

As a single woman with no children (and no upcoming plans for any), I have very little opinion on this topic. I've always been a "to each his own" on the matter -- Circumcision is, oddly, one of the rare parenting (or lack thereof) decisions upon which I've not yet passed judgment. My non-opinion might be changed, though, by a couple recent articles in Science Daily.

The first Science Daily article discusses an intervention review published by Wiley InterScience and available from The Cochrane Library that discusses clinical trials between 2002 and 2006 in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda that included more than 11,000 (presumably adult) men who underwent circumcision. The results of the trials indicate that circumcisions reduced male HIV infection rates by 54% over a two-year period when compared with non-circumcised men. The researchers say that the 54% figure is a best-estimate average, and that the true reduction in male HIV infection among circumcised men would be 38 - 66%. More research must be conducted to determine if male circumcision will reduce HIV infection rates among their female partners.

Because the foreskin contains cells, called Langerhans cells, that have receptors favorable to HIV, current thinking is that the mechanism by which male circumcision reduces male HIV infection rates is that the tissue containing these cells is removed during cirmcucision.

The second Science Daily arrticle gives us more health news on the benefits of circumcision, describing a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine that built upon previous research funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (part of the National Institutes of Health) that found that circumcision reduced the heterosexual transimission of HIV by more than 50%. The New England Journal of Medicine paper describes an experiments showing that circumcision reduces the male infection rates for HSV-2 (which causes genital herpes) and HPV (a group of virii that cause cervical cancer and genital warts). Their experiments with approximately 5,000 circumcised and non-circumcised men showed that circumcision reduced the male infection rate for HSV-2 by 28% and the male HPV infection rate by 35%. The experiment did not show a difference in the infection rate for syphilis between the non/circumcised.

Much like vaccinating your daughter again HPV , if there's the slightest chance that something you do for your child (i.e. circumcision) could prevent a likely terminal illness or a life-long painful/embarrassing one, how could you not do it?

~Riot.Jane

Immigration Group: Hospital/DHS "Stealing Immigrants' Babies"

On November 16, 2008, Ruby Cruz was born to Mexican Cirila Baltazar Cruz in a Pascagoula, MI hospital. Two days later, hospital staff filed a report with the state Department of Human Services regarding the Cruz child's situation.

Included in the hospital report to DHS are allegations of neglect supported by the mother's exchanging sex for housing, the mother's inability to communicate in any laguage besides the indigenous language Chantino, the mother's illegal immigrant status, and mother's plans for giving the child up for adoption.

"After thoroughly investigating Ms. Cruz's situation, we are very confident that our employees acted appropriately in all phases of her care," said a Singing River Hospital spokeman. "We reported her case . . . as we are bound to do by law, and DHS, after its own investigation, made the decision regarding Ms. Cruz and her baby."

Court records indicate that the legal charges of neglect include the tidbits that, due to her only language being Chantino, she "was unable to call for assistance for transportation to the hospital" in order to give birth, that "she has failed to learn the English language," and that this situation has "placed her unborn child in danger and will place the baby in danger in the future."

The Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance alleges that Singing River Hospital and the Mississippi DHS are "stealing immigrants' babies" by the hospital only providing a Spanish translator and then DHS charging the mother with neglect as a result of the hospital's error.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is assisting in the Cruz defense.

Additional reading.

~Riot.Jane

Happy Fathers' Day! / the Mosuo People

In a twisted observance of Fathers' Day, we bring you news of matrilineal society of the Mosuo (sounds like How-Sue-Oh) people of the Chinese Himalaya. The agrarian Mosuo are a people that we know hasn't had conventional/formal marriage in a thousand years.

While you're wrapping your brain around that concept, here's more:

The Mosuo practice what they call "walking marriages," where women pair up with lovers and invite them to their homes in the evening only to ask them to leave in the morning.

What? The booty call as the societal function of procreation? Maybe women aren't so different from men after all, eh? ;-)

The Mosuo bear and raise their children, and live their entire lives within homes comprised of their extended matrilineal families. The role of Father is shared by various matrilinially-related male relatives. A child may or may not know the father, either because the mother is still involved with the father or the father does not want to know the child, but the entire culture considers the matrilineal family of first importance because, well, you always know to whom you are related if such things are judged by who's giving birth to whom. The father may or may not have any interest in or responsibility for his own children, but he will have interest in and responsibility for all of the children born to the women of his household.

The Mosuo aren't particularly promiscuous, in fact, many women will pair off only a few times in a lifetime. Serial monogamy is an apt description. There is no such thing as divorce in their culture, because it's not needed. When all property passes matrilineally and all children are in the sole custody of their mothers and her extended family regardless of her relationship (or lack thereof) with the father, divorce never becomes a concept.

Women often head the extended families, and women make most of the business decisions. The political power of the Mosuo tends to rest with the men, balancing the family and business power of the women.

Women maintain their autonomy, men know for a fact that their genes are being passed on (through female relatives), and families are incredibly stable (no divorces, shared custodies, fostering with relatives in another state, etc.), and divorce is a non-item. What could be better?

A short article and 3-minute National Geographic video interviewing several Mosuo people streams here. Wikipedia has a Mosuo entry, YouTube has a 12-minute video about them (too bad the Mosuo weren't subtitled!), and Amazon has a book by a Mosuo woman (with the help of an anthropologist) about her life as a Mosuo.

~Riot.Jane

Our Broken Healthcare System

As if we needed more evidence that the US healthcare system is fundamentally broken, consider the story of Starla Darling, a pregnant 27-year-old mother who was laid off when Archway & Mother's Cookie Company in Ashland, Ohio filed for Chapter 11. With her job went her health insurance.

Starla began her maternity leave on October 1, 2008. Two days later, on October 3, Archway employees received a letter advising them that their jobs would end and their health insurance would be terminated on October 6. COBRA wsn't an option because the company was self-insured (administrated by Blue Cross Blue Shield), and the plan was being terminated.

So, Starla immediately did what any pregnant woman would do when unexpectedly laid off of an 8-year job who fears the loss of her health insurance: She called her midwife and insisted that her labor be induced and her child born within the three-day window in which she still had medical coverage.

Because her first child's delivery bill was approximately $9,000 three years before, and because she knew she would never be able to pay that amount for her second child's delivery, she decided "that we were getting this baby out, and it was going to be paid for."

On October 5, her delivery was induced, but excessive bleeding mandated an emergency cesarean section. Starla's daughter Kathryn was born three weeks early, and both are doing fine.

Because of the more than $700,000 in medical set-aside arrears that Archway was in when it shuttered, Blue Cross Blue Shield has denied payment for Starla's delivery based upon the plan's termination (i.e. no money, no plan, no coverage). She's now on the hook for more than $17,000 for the emergency cesarean section.

Starla hasn't been able to obtain unemployment benefits because recovering from the emergency cesarean section has left her "unable to work." Her husband Derek and her father Frank Phillips were also recently laid off, the father also from Archway the same day Starla was, after having worked there for 24 years.

Further reading available.

~Riot.Jane

My Mom's Birthday

Today is my mom's birthday. My mom died in 1998 when I was 26, the same age she was when she gave birth to me.

As my mother lay dying, she begged me not to have any children because she couldn't bear the thought of one day my laying somewhere, dying of the rare cancer that has taken several generations of women in her line before the age of 60, looking into my own daughter's face, seeing the pain there. While she was dying, in an inconceivable amount of pain, she was more concerned about my being in the same situation some day than she was about her own quickly-approaching death.

That's a level of love that I cannot conceive of having.

I promised her that I wouldn't bear my own children unless and until we get to choose gender beforehand. I knew what I was promising, and I knew that I would keep it because, well, you don't turn down the dying wish of a family member if it's remotely possible to keep it.

So I've lived through the procreative years of my life not bearing children. I've never married. I've aborted. I've lived with roommates in order to avoid having an empty home and thrown myself into my career with a ferocity that masquerades as workaholism. I have a television on in my home 24x7 to have the sound of human voices around me. I've promised myself that I can always adopt, and I've also promised myself I won't marry a man for whom that's not an option.

I've told every close friend or boyfriend I've had since my mom's death that I won't bear my own children because of my mother's dying wish, my promise to her, and my own fear of the rare (almost undiagnosable) cancer that kills women in my line early. The thing is, that's only half the reason.

The other half of the reason, and the one I've never told anyone before, is that I can't conceive of being the kind of person, the kind of mother, who would or could lay dying, in incomprehensible pain, and be more concerned about my daughter experiencing the same thing than I am about my own impending death.

I can't live up to that. I can't even see the bar my mom set, much less reach it. That's the other half of the reason I never bore my own children and won't unless and until gender selection becomes a viable option.

~Riot.Jane