Not The Post I Was Going To Make, or Further Tales of Insomnia

[soubie]

So I'd had Ask Hadley down as generally ridiculous, until I found she'd written sensible things elsewhere about the Angelina Jolie No-Boobs revelation (not answering my question about whether anyone old enough to be making that choice should be basing their decisions on What Angelina Would Do, but hey, it's the 'who who is old enough to even have a

Comments

[anonymous]

Having worked for several breast surgeons, and having witnessed women postponing mastectomies until it killed them,, if it takes a movie-star's assurance that you can still be a woman without breasts made of fat-tissue, I'm all in favor of it!

Regarding the British fertility thing, that sounds about as off-center as the regular priestly diatribes in White parishes, urging more boys to join the priesthood--which I never once heard in seven years going to an American Indian mission church. They will actually lament that great waves of vocations from Africa, Asia, and Latin America are now vastly outnumbering the vocations of "us"--by which, implicitly, they mean pale boys of European descent. As an American Indian, I'm not buying it. If vocations come from God, as the priests say, maybe, just maybe, God's trying to even things out?

And if the fertility rate of the northern hemisphere tips more and more towards a darker middle ground, who's to say it's not a similar balancing, maybe even evolution in action? With so many White people dying of skin cancer from trying to get tans unnatural for their kind, maybe having an inborn bronzey look without the health risk has become a survival trait. Mind you, porcelain skin has its own sort of beauty, and I won't deny folks who have it their fair share of appreciation, but it's only one crayon in the box.

As for great quantities of Muslim children, doesn't it logically follow that the larger numbers would make any minority, religious or otherwise, feel less marginalized, and therefore less vulnerable to temptations to strike out against a community in which they increasingly have a stake?

And yeah, I get the New Scapegoat mentality, now that people properly blush over discriminating against Blacks. Brown people are getting hit pretty hard with this one in the States, too. I finally had to move out of Arizona and away from my tribe because the political climate was getting downright murderous.

[soubie]

Having worked for several breast surgeons, and having witnessed women postponing mastectomies until it killed them,, if it takes a movie-star's assurance that you can still be a woman without breasts made of fat-tissue, I'm all in favor of it!

Yeah, I knew I was, well, looking at it a bit too cynically (sometimes cynicism doesn't actually apply to how people actually are!) As one who has no particular reason to worry about the B-whateveritis gene, but being on the tipping point of having breasts with more fat-tissue than my spine can handle, but not in a position to do anything about it (to be honest, as a woman a little less than thirty with no cause to believe firmly that I'll have children but not yet quite ready to give up hope completely, I'm also rather tired of everyone and his dog offering opinions about what I should and shouldn't be doing to/with/about my breasts- I'm not actually facing death from them, unless you believe that the wired bra I need to get downstairs without folding my arms around my chest will give me cancer- yes, I have heard that one- but I do get a little tired of being told either that I'm crippling myself for no good reason, or that I'm to suffer gladly because they already effectively belong to someone else who doesn't yet exist and possibly never will). I wasn't particularly set alight by the story itself either way, rather more by Freeman's style of writing about it.

I've never been on the end of a priestly recruiting drive- probably because my exposure to the clergy since adulthood has mostly been Protestant, and Low Anglican at that, where, as it's almost expected for the clergy to be family men (and not necessarily men) most people come round to it later in life. I can see how the preisthood is something most people need to commit to before they commit to anything else (really, most of the priests I have met have been Irish anyway, so may not be regarding their English flocks as 'us'. Whether the supply of youths over there is liable to dry up any time soon, I couldn't say.) And, yes, to the outside world, I'm sure these priests would be keen to point out that Catholic is Catholic, whatever the member looks like, and white Catholics don't have a special perspective that Latin or African Catholics can't speak for. Certainly the Vatican seems to think so.

I think I was rather over-emphasising the idea that the Get Britain Fertile campaign is overly-concerned about a paucity of white mothers- I'm sure they'd be just as willing to harangue a high-flying British Asian graduate who was too concerned about scaling the heights of the City of London (there's enough of those in English business colleges, of both sexes). And the idea that Saxon/Nordic genes are going extinct in England- when they're the general appearance of 85% of the population, and of the 15% of others the biggest group are Irish- exists only in the minds of those who, frankly, love to seek persecuted status wherever they find it. (Actually, there's more persuasive evidence that the British Jamaican population are a generation from no longer meaningfully being a distinct group, as children with two parents of Caribbean origin have become increasingly scarce.)

[soubie]

I think there was some question on QI once that claimed that, logically, all humans alive must be descendants of Genghis Khan- the reasoning being that for all of us to have the requisite number of ancestors fanning out to only a thousand years ago, that would take more human beings than would have been alive at the time. Of course it was to point out that actually most of those people would have been the same few people and most people in, say, England, don't actually have genes that can be traced to Mongolia. I'm not sure what this means except that human breeding isn't what one would think it is (and honestly, given the tribal lifestyle and summer sun in Scandinavia and Scotland, that any lineage should survive being red-headed speaks more about humans being attracted to the exotic than the practical.) (On the other hand, I have heard of an A.I. bank in London that allegedly- and it's only allegedly- has a policy of not accepting sperm of redheaded men because allegedly people often specify that they don't want a 'ginger' baby, which I think is a little sad.)

I finally had to move out of Arizona and away from my tribe because the political climate was getting downright murderous.

You really? I'm so sorry. I hope you're speaking in terms of attitude rather than anything... well, direct. I never heard about that, although I suppose if- and I assume this is the case- a group has the association of chronic poverty, it seems to be coming in for it a great deal these days. (Since the Irish shed that image here and people who are obviously Roma have dwindled, the stereotype at the moment isn't of a particular race, other than the all-purpose 'immigrant' and not always then, but yeah, people seem to be horribly scared of people they don't want to be recently.)

Dreamy, why can I never speak to you without writing an essay? ;)

[ext_1852075]

Oh, I love essay replies! I come from a family of storytellers It drives my husband crazy sometimes. He says our idea of conversation is taking turns making speeches.

Murder has happened. Hate crimes have soared. And it really got to bug me to send in absentee ballots at every election, to avoid the patrols of thugs out to check whether any brown people who show up have proof of citizenship. (Considering the young mother who spent six months in jail awaiting trial as an illegal alien, because the court couldn't be bothered to see her lawyer waving around her U.S. birth certificate, one hardly expects an unbiased appraisal from vigilantes.)

Moreover, in some counties court documents have shown a decided pattern of police not responding to come to the aid of people of Hispanic or Indian descent--yet showing up all to readily to disrupt funerals and such as violating curfews. Since, by Yaqui custom, you don't serve the food at a wake till midnight, this has been rather awkward. And no, our wakes don't include alcohol or loud music, just cantoras singing in little squeaky voices, and maybe an acoustic violin or harp, and nobody not attending the funeral living for miles around, so the police don't really have a foot to stand on vis a vis disturbing the peace, but they harass anyway. Part of it might be some lingering rankling that the Yaquis are the only tribe never actually defeated in the long-term.

But I digress. I'm out of there, now.

Anyway, Soubie, I won't tell you to go out there and fecundate. (Although I do admit to thinking that a shot of Soubie-genes might certainly liven things up for the next generation!) Be the kind of gorgeously disreputable Aunt that makes parents squirm and kids squeal for joy when you show up!