centre of the universe - the dreaming

My friend RJ and I went for lunch together yesterday. I love going for lunch with my friend RJ. In fact, I love doing a lot of things with my friend RJ. And what's cool is that if it hadn't been for my friend AJ, I might never have met my friend RJ. So thanks, AJ, for introducing us!

So RJ and I were finished having lunch (actually, I didn't quite finish the pressed fairy cider, but that's because I was trying to untangle a Ball of Uncooperative Yarn what Bad Cat had tangled...and was secretly (not so secretly) enjoying the look of Great Consternation I was getting from RJ who gets so uptight when she knits that she breaks the needles. Or so I've heard), we were walking back to where I work so's she could get her own self to work. And it was miserable and sleet was "falling" sideways and the wind was cold and it wasn't at all a nice day like there ought to have been but weren't very many of in summer, and after half a block, I said, "let's walk indoors".

Because when you live in a wind tunnel (I'm fairly certain the Winterpeg folk will back me up on this one) it's really Rather Nice to have a series of warrens and burrows indoors that you can follow from point A (place what serves pressed fairy cider) to point B (place what pays you money to read books). So kudos to The City, who allowed contractors to build buildings with lovely connecting bits. Anyway, on the way to the connecting bits, which sounds vaguely naughty but really isn't, I saw A Sign.

First, before I get to that Sign, I need to tell you something.

You know when you're walking through a department store and first, there's all the womens' clothing that looks like some poor geriatric cat was fed day-glo kibble before being shoved in a paint mixer inside a cement truck...and then, when you're done with that ocular feast, you usually walk through one of the 'specialty' sections (Fat Broads, Short Chicks, Really Really Old Farts), and then, eventually, you are faced with a full-frontal assault on every single sense at once? You know how that happens? That happens when you walk from the *outside* doors to the *inside* doors. What happens when you walk through the mall and enter the department store from the *inside*?

I'll tell you.

First, it's the visual cortex that dies the little death. There are shiny things, and sparkly things, and colourful things (and often, you can just see past the mall entrance to the geriatric cat/day-glo kibble/paint mixer/cement truck section). Sometimes, there are moving things. Sometimes, they even have Made Up Ladies hovering about talking about Very Important Things with other Made Up Ladies. Your best bet here is to stare very hard at the floor and hope you don't end up in the Hideous Scarves section. I've heard Sir Edmund Hillary actually died in the Hideous Scarves Section in the 80s, and not on Mount Everest as had previously been suspected.

Next, the aural centres shrivel and die. This is because anytime from November to January, the department store is playing the Christmas carol. There really is only one Christmas carol that department stores are allowed to play. It starts out with "O", and it never, ever ends. For THREE MONTHS. If you happen to be in the department store when there is no Christmas carol playing, you will hear the loudspeaker, which is always calling Missus Somebody to Somewhere. I suspect this is where they send the Really Bad Angels to re-train them for the Trump and Call.

While your visual cortex and aural centres are dying, the skin on your hands and face, and any other exposed area, is actually in the process of flaking off *all at once*. In one big, huge, chunk. As you enter the department store, it makes an audible 'thud' as it falls off. Cue the Made-Up Ladies.

And, finally, your sense of smell, and taste, simultaneously, are annihilated by the Horrendous Stench caused by all kinds of tinctures, balms, eaux-des-toilettes (seriously. TOILET WATER? Gross), perfumes, colognes, creams, and cure-alls. It is the depleted uranium of the cosmetic industry, except rather than killing you slowly with radiation, it kind of causes everything you've ever eaten and every breath you've ever taken to immediately vie for top billing somewhere around your larynx. It is most decidedly Not Pleasant, and I dislike it Very Much. In fact, if you know someone with a flame thrower, or some kind of mortar or shells, or even a tank...I'll settle for a tank...please have them immediately eradicate the cosmetics section of the department store.

This brings me to my point.

RJ and I had managed to survive the majority of the Cosmetics section, and I was, to be honest, kind of sprinting through, when I saw this sign. This sign had pictures of tinctures and balms and sparkly things and eaux-des-toilettes, and the Big Lettering on the sign said this:

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

And I thought, What the fuck? I mean, please excuse my language here, but really, what the fuck? I thought, Germaine Greer, and Gloria Steinem, what would you think if you saw this? What would you think if you saw the words we most often associate with equal rights and reproductive freedom emblazoned across an advertisement for face-paint and perfume? When did 'freedom to choose' move from the anti-censorship movement over to the cosmetics department at the department store? When the hell did Roe v. Wade get reduced from the right a woman has to choose what happens to her own body, to a catchy jingle selling cubic bloody zirconias and cheap lipstick? Isn't it bad enough that women are pressured to look younger, thinner, better than they did at 20? At 16? Isn't it bad enough that we, as a society are pressured to buy, to consume, to HAVE? But now this? Now, you take a statement that is so full of meaning, so pregnant with important ideas, and you reduce it to materialistic prattle? 

What does "freedom to choose" mean to you? Does it mean you get to decide which watch to wear with that eyeliner, or does it mean you have the right to read whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want? Does it mean you can mix and match your earrings with your perfume, or does it mean you have the RIGHT to decide to have an abortion - that nobody else gets to make that decision but you? Does it mean you can pick a toner shade from this pile and a nail file from that pile and put them together for an all-in-one beauty care package, or does it mean that you have RIGHTS enshrined in law that make you a *person*?


Rousseau held that freedom is inherent to humanity; it's what you get for being self-aware. The Greeks differentiated between inner freedom (freedom from anger, fear, and lust) and external freedom (conquest over enemies). Philosophers have long discussed the difference between "freedom from" and "freedom to".  And I guess being able to pair stinkfume with skin poison is one of those 'free choices' you have...but what an utter insult to the very idea of freedom.

My friend Smarty Pants will probably say (as he does when I go on tears about things), "so what do you do to change it?"

Well, my opinion is to rip the bloody thing down. Anyone interested in a downtown flash mob to take back our freedom?

Labels: Bad Mojo, equal rights, women

Endometriosis is a condition where the endometrial (uterine) tissue thickens and grows in places it's not supposed to. Generally, this occurs on the outside of the uterus rather than on the inside, but endometrial cells will travel through a woman's entire body. In a woman unaffected by Endometriosis, the cells will thicken, and, provided she is not pregnant, will slough off the lining of the uterine walls and pass these cells out of the body in the process known as menstruation. The process does continue, however, in a woman who has endometriosis; endometrial tissue responds to changes in a woman's hormone levels - when her body tells her to menstruate, she does.

And if that endometrial tissue has lodged in her abdominal cavity or in her lungs, it bleeds. It can form lesions, cysts, and many other complications (including vertigo!).

It is estimated that as many as 1 in 10 women suffer from endometriosis. The World Endometriosis Research Foundation was established only in 2006, which is a little late to the gate, I think. Better late than never, though. But I'm ahead of myself....*ahem*...as many as 1 in 10 women suffer from endometriosis. It can cause a variety of symptoms, from intense cramping and extremely heavy (even constant) blood flow, extreme pain, bloating, painful intercourse, nausea, vomiting (usually related to the pain), painful or frequent urination or bowel movements, lowered fertility, and can even create susceptibility to other diseases, including some kinds of cancer.

In the past five years, I have known more than ten women who have been suffering from endometriosis for five years or more. They sometimes bleed constantly; they often have to miss work, or cannot work. They have left or stalled their educations, their careers, and their families because they bleed so heavily for two weeks a month that they cannot leave their homes, or they are in so much pain they cannot work...and chronic pain is one thing that can lead to, among other things, depression. These women are not only in constant pain, worry, and an ill state of health, but they are coddled, or their conditions are pooh-poohed by the medical profession.

This is what really burns me up. Okay, no, this is the *second* of two things that really burn me up. I'll get back to it. If I don't, remind me.

The first thing that really burns me up is that the first time young women hear about endometriosis is when they've already been through fifteen years of hell. This is something that should be **mandatory instruction** in health class for girls AND boys. ONE IN TEN WOMEN have endometriosis. Ten percent of the female population. That's a hell of a lot of pain and bleeding. Why is Health Class not about health anymore? Why is it all about drug awareness and how to put condoms on bananas and how to wash your hands, but nobody talks about things like the clitoris and circumcision and endometriosis and prostate cancer? Why is it not preventative? Not that it's BAD to talk about drug awareness and how to put condoms on bananas and how to wash your hands. But what health class you were ever in told girls to pee after having sex to reduce the risk of a bladder infection?

What health class talked about yeast infections and what causes them and how to get rid of them and what happens if you have sex when you have one and the fact that boys can get yeast infections too. Or bacterial vaginitis? Or testicular hernias? Sure, we all saw pictures of pubic lice, and we oooohed and aaaaahed and 'oh GROSS'ed, but who mentioned anything about HPV (genital warts, for those of you who don't know it yet) actually being one of the leading causes of cervical cancer? (And, as an aside, can you believe there are people who don't think girls should have the *option* of being vaccinated against it?)

Now, on to the second thing that really burns me up.

I don't know what it's like to be a man, obviously. I've never had to go to the doctor and 'turn my head and cough' while someone gently cups my nutsack. And maybe this is just as bad for men; I don't know. Young women go to the doctor complaining of cramps and bloating and painful bowel movements, and do you know what they're told? "That's normal."

It is NOT normal. If you eat a healthy, balanced diet and get lots of exercise and plenty of fluids, you should really not be having incapacitating cramps, heavy bleeding, and painful bowel movements. If your hormone levels are where they should be, your periods should not last for two or three weeks. They should not be irregular and debilitating.

But this isn't the worst. It really isn't. Once you've been seeing doctors for years, going over and over and over and over these horrible symptoms...once you've been prescribed painkillers and antidepressants and hormone replacements and The Pill and 'just rest'...once you've been through this for five, ten, fifteen, thirty years, and once the doctors figure out you might have endometriosis, do you know what happens?

Usually, dick all. Because the only test that currently completely confirms whether you have endometriosis is a laproscopic surgery, you get put on a waiting list. I knew a woman who was on that waiting list for three years. Just for the *diagnostic* procedure. She'd already had kids, and just asked for a hysterectomy in the beginning. And the doctor refused; said absolutely not because she was too young (mid thirties) and didn't understand the implications of an hysterectomy. So she waited, in excruciating pain, lost two jobs because she could only work two weeks out of every month, just to have the laproscopic surgery, where they told her she had endometriosis and they had to schedule a hysterectomy, for which she had to wait another nine months!

It's effing bloody ridiculous.

It's pretty difficult for me to imagine that if there is technology that lets you see the zits on an unborn baby's backside in utero, it can't somehow be used to help diagnose endometriosis. Or if you can see a mitochondrial fart in an MRI or PET scan, you can't see endometriosis. Or if you can detect West Nile Virus from a hobo's blood sample, some kind of biopsy or blood test can't be figured out to see if there is endometrial tissue where it oughtn't be.

Now, the World Endometriosis Society helps to host the World Congress on Endometriosis every year (there have been ten), and that's good news. And there is some research that indicates that some of the rise in Endometriosis rates could be environmentally linked. That kind of research is difficult, though, because the fact remains that womens' reproductive health is still somewhat taboo. I'll save my rant about how pissed off I get when people get 'grossed out' over menstrual products or how cheesed I am that some putz is making so much money off of douche and 'scented wipes'. The bottom line, if you'll pardon a bit of a pun there, is that since women's reproductive health has not really been taken seriously since the 'riddance' of community midwives, it's difficult to get accurate records. In 1962, a woman with endometriosis probably would just have been prescribed valium and possibly might have been assessed for 'neuroses'.

In the 1970s, she would have been given MASSIVE amounts of estrogen and progesterone to most likely stop her periods altogether (there's another rant about 'birth control' that stops a woman's cycles for three months). It's just really difficult to tell how long women have been suffering from this condition in these numbers.

There are several herbs, by the way, that can be used as uterine tonics. The safest is red raspberry leaves. Make a tea with the loose leaves. Of course, you should check with your doctor or midwife before you begin taking any herbal medicines.

But anyway, this has been making me peevish for the last few days. I want more money, time, and effort devoted to simple things like educating young girls about their bodies and about what conditions are common out there (and I consider 1 in 10 to be pretty bloody common), and to finding better ways of diagnosing reproductive health issues. Okay, GO!

Labels: health, rants, women