Sex and Scoliosis

What does scoliosis have to do with sex?

There are a lot of connections. I guess I'll need to start by explaining scoliosis. It's a common disorder, but one that is often very misunderstood by the general public, as well as many non-orthopedic doctors. Most people vaguely remember a scoliosis check from their school days. Sometimes the kids are lined up in a row, and told to take off their shirts and bend over while a medical professional inspects them from the back. The experience is obviously rather humiliating and tends to cause a lot of nervous laughter.

Scoliosis -- a sideways, left-right asymmetry of the spine -- is the most common form of spinal deformity. It can also be accompanied by other forms of spinal deformity, like kyphosis (AKA hunchback) and extreme lordosis (AKA swayback). It sometimes comes as a package deal along with disorders of connective tissue, or with cerebral palsy and spinal bifida. In those cases, scoliosis is often diagnosed at a very early age.

The other kind of scoliosis, the much more common kind, seems to come out of nowhere. It's known as adolescent idiopathic scoliosis or AIS. "Idiopathic" is from the same Greek root as "idiot" and basically means "we have no idea what causes it." Though recent research has shown that it's actually genetic, and they've even tracked down the genetic location (but only if you're white, which is bizarre, because there isn't any significant racial/ethnic difference in prevalence rate). Someone with this kind of scoliosis (usually a girl, as the incidence of more serious curves among women is 7-10 times that of men) is born with a normal-looking spine. Before puberty, the spine begins to bend and curve. Maybe it stays there... maybe it gets worse through puberty. Then maybe it stays there, or maybe it gets a lot worse close to menopause. Without major surgery, it's essentially a one way road. In scoliosis vocabulary, when curves get worse, it's called "progression". "Progression" is bad. Arresting progression is good.

According to this NIH resource, "Of every 1,000 children, 3 to 5 develop spinal curves that are considered large enough to need treatment." If you adjust for sex, the rate climbs up to almost 1% of all girls. I don't know of any source that says actually how many girls receive treatment of which types. Treatment means to watch, take lots of x-rays, determine progression, and if it looks like progression is, well, progressing, to brace. Or in very serious cases, go directly to spinal fusion.

That's the "Milwaukee" variant of brace. It's the kind I had. It's made from hard plastic and steel. It's expensive, ugly, frightening, and extremely uncomfortable. The family nickname for my brace was "The Iron Maiden". You can climb into it and strap it on and off, and adjustments of the screws will accommodate changing body shape during puberty. I think you're supposed to wear it until a few years past puberty, when your spine growth finally halts. The brace is an old form of treatment and it's shown to be moderately effective at arresting progression.



Many girls experience horror and anger when they find out what bracing is going to mean for their lives, and that it won't even fix them, it will just probably keep them from getting any worse.

It was easier for me to accept my fate. First of all, my mother also has idiopathic scoliosis, and her curve was fairly serious. Hers is comparable to the woman pictured above. She had not been treated as a girl, and her scoliosis had slowly progressed as she went into middle age. She eventually had a spinal fusion -- two long steel rods screwed into her spine -- and was in the hospital for two weeks. So I had a strong motivation to make sure my curve didn't progress as far as my mother's. She was also a positive role model for me. I saw her as an active, glamorous woman who refused to be limited by scoliosis. I tried to adopt the same stoic attitude toward my own scoliosis. Second of all, my orthopedist said it was OK to only wear my brace 12 hours a day, which meant I slept in it, but I didn't have to wear it to school. I think he may have subscribed to the philosophy that although the brace should really be worn 23 hours a day, there's so much social stigma attached to it that many girls rebel, and won't wear it at all, whereas a private bracing regimen has more likelihood of consistent follow-through.

I don't know if it would have made school any worse. I've written before about the extensive racist abuse, and sexualized racist abuse, I got in late elementary and middle school.

I was harassed so much in the locker room my first year of middle school that I refused to change my clothes at all. P.E. was a living nightmare full of verbal attacks and physical threats from larger girls. I spent much of my time desperately thinking of ways I could get a medical excuse. Unfortunately, aside from my scoliosis, I was healthy as a horse. I refused to participate in activities anyway, and sat with the asthma-sidelined section. I'm still bitter about this experience because it taught me to associate healthy athleticism with emotional trauma and racist bullying. Maybe if I'd had my brace on, I could have gotten my coveted medical excuse.

It was something I never, ever thought of at the time, though. The orthopedist's word was the word of law. And the brace was something to be hidden. I think this is a common tendency among brace-wearers. Girls that age don't want to be seen in a brace. For photos, they'll take off the brace. If they're told to wear it to school, they're mocked and stared at. At the time, I considered myself very lucky that I was able to hide my brace from other kids my age.

I don't know much about disability theory and disablism, but I've been reading through blogs about it, and it's very interesting in relation to scoliosis. I don't identify as a disabled person/person with disabilities, and I don't think many other people with idiopathic scoliosis do. But many of us have also gone through an intensely emotional adolescent period where we're viewed as disabled.

One of the hallmarks of disablism is that it strips away sexuality. The prejudice against disabled people includes thinking they are not supposed to exist sexually, have sexual desire or be desired.

Being braced means going through puberty strapped and screwed in to a weird exoskeleton that incarnates the negation and emprisonment of your sexuality. Your breasts and hips are starting to grow. They might start to bump painfully against the brace. So you have to visit the doctor -- often an older man -- who adjusts your screws to accomodate your new growth.

The brace seems anti-sexual, but it also has positive sexual connotations. The light at the end of the dark tunnel is that the brace will "keep you normal". You'll get through puberty and enter into sexually desirable womanhood without too much spinal deformity... the brace will preserve you. The brace probably becomes the most significant physical object in your life, for good and for evil.

I certainly didn't receive any counseling about my scoliosis. I don't know if it's common today to have counseling as part of the bracing process. If it's not, it should be. Girls who have gone through bracing feel like it's them, alone, against the world. Although it's quite a common experience, by medical and social tradition, the disorder is isolated and hidden.

This study showed that bracing doesn't affect self-image much. However, it also takes places in Sweden, where school environment I'm sure is quite different than in the U.S. This other U.S. study tells a somewhat different story: "Scoliosis was an independent risk factor for suicidal thought, worry and concern over body development, and peer interactions after adjustment. CONCLUSION: Scoliosis is a significant risk factor for psychosocial issues and health-compromising behavior. Gender differences exist in male and female adolescents with scoliosis."

After bracing, scoliosis, and deformities of the spine in general, become almost invisible. It's extremely rare to have a spinal deformity so pronounced that anyone can tell by looking at you when you have clothes on. People with idiopathic scoliosis "pass". People have known me for years, even decades, without knowing I had scoliosis. Then one day they'll see me in a bathing suit -- and not even the first time they saw me in a bathing suit, but maybe the first time they really focused on my back -- and they'll burst out with something like, "OH MY GOD DID YOU KNOW SOMETHING IS REALLY WRONG WITH YOUR SPINE!!"

Once it stops being invisible, it's all of a sudden very, very visible. I guess it's sort of like shaking hands with someone and suddenly realizing they have six fingers.

If I'm not experiencing any back pain, I rarely think about my scoliosis, although I sometimes worry about my future. Pregnancy is not a risk factor for progression, but menopause is. Right now, my thoracic curve is 36 degrees. If it gets past 40, I might need spinal fusion surgery. This is a mostly safe procedure, but it's still really scary, and involves weeks in the hospital. Click on the following link if you've seen enough David Cronenberg movies that you think you can handle it (link to nightmarish spinal fusion surgery image). Spinal fusion partially reverses the curve, arrests or slows down further progression and relieves chronic pain. You're still reasonably flexible afterwards, but there are potential complications, and I'm not considering surgery at this stage. If I refused surgery, and my curve happened to progress further, I would start to have more pain and diminished lung capacity. Past 60 degrees, I might start to experience severe and constant pain in my back and/or ribs, and my internal organs would get squeezed together and I might start to have breathing problems. Past 80 degrees I might have lung AND heart problems.

But I don't stay up night worrying about the risks of progression. Many people have more uncertainty about their medical future than I do. For example, if I had diabetes, I might worry about having a foot amputation.

Since I grew up with scoliosis, it's taken me a while to understand how it looks from the outside. Aesthetically speaking: not good. We're conditioned to associate left-right symmetry with health and general wellbeing. People with moderate scoliosis, like me, often look symmetrical from the front, but assymetrical from the back, and I suppose that seems eery and perhaps even deceptive and sneaky. There's a lot of really negative associations in popular culture (e.g. Hunchback of Notre Dame). When mean-spirited people do "retard" imitations they'll often hunch up one shoulder and stagger in order to simulate a deformed spine.

I don't talk about scoliosis casually because a) I don't have any major health problems because of it, so there's not that much to talk about b) I'm afraid of it being used against me. I'll put it on medical history forms when I know I can be assured of privacy. It was used against me recently when I applied for private disability insurance. I thought it would be a good idea to have a separate private policy in case I lost my job for any reason. I did a ton of research, spent a lot of time talking with the salesman, and ended up with a quote that specifically excluded anything going wrong with my reproductive system AND my back. I changed my mind and decided it wasn't worth buying since so much of my body was apparently uninsurable. They excluded my ENTIRE BACK. Hypothetically speaking, if I got in a minor car accident, and as a result developed the exact same kind of back problems that anyone without scoliosis would develop, nothing would be covered. What a terrible deal. No thanks!

The health implications of my scoliosis are not that extreme, and I don't need any accommodations to perform any major life activities, which is why I don't consider myself disabled.

- I have foot pain in my arch if I don't wear comfortable shoes. I can wear platforms, but I can't wear high heels.
- I have to be a bit careful doing things like yoga and pilates.
- I have to stay reasonably active in order to be 100% pain-free. When I get too sedentary, I start having back pain and rib pain. If I ever had an illness that forced me to rest all the time, I'd be in big trouble. Exercise and stretching are highly effective for scoliosis back pain. Other options I would consider to control pain if it ever got worse include drugs, physical therapy and adult braces. There are a gazillion alternative health "cures" for scoliosis back pain suffering, but they strike me as being of very dubious efficacy.
- I have to watch my posture
- I have to watch my weight. Excess weight leads to back pain. Being underweight might be even worse, because being underweight is connected to bone density loss, and people with scoliosis have lower than average bone density anyway.

None of these problems are really unique to scoliosis. Plenty of able-bodied and disabled people have back pain or foot pain.

This link from Eurospine.org sums it up: "Progression of scoliosis can involve an aesthetic problem and lead to functional problems. Respiratory disorders may develop in large curves greater than 80º. Nonetheless, the mortality rates and vital prognosis in individuals with scoliosis are comparable to those of the general population."

It's the "aesthetic problem" of scoliosis that's unique. Like I mentioned before, left-right symmetry is wound up with definitions of health and beauty across many different cultures. People like me are aware of this on a subconscious or barely conscious level. 99.99% of the time I forget that I don't fit that symmetrical standard. Every so often I'm reminded, and it feels a bit painful. There are subtle psychological effects. Vague feelings of being a secret curved impostor in a straight-backed world. Times when I feel like my spine is an enemy working against me... times when it hurts to breathe and the pain makes me feel angry at my spreading rib bones, and I wish I could reach inside of myself and squeeze them back into place. Sometimes I'm bitter about the inches of height I lost to scoliosis.

Back to sex. Even without bracing, there's still a sexual paradox when it comes to scoliosis. Have you ever seen a picture of a woman with scoliosis and/or kyphosis that was not anonymous, depersonalized, clinical, grim and depressing? Like the photos I included above? Scoliosis is profoundly unsexy.

On the other hand, when women pose provocatively, they often throw one hip to the side and put one shoulder forward.Why is that pose sexy? Maybe it makes us look femininely defenseless and vulnerable, as opposed to a masculine, stick straight pose. That's going along with a typical sexist definition of "femininity". There's another less sexist possibility... the pose is also highlighting the flexibility of the spine. So in that sense, the woman is showing off her body's capacity by bending in a certain way.

There's a comic book artist, Rob Liefeld, who was (in)famous starting in the 1980s for drawing unrealistic women. The conventions of drawing women are in comics are easy to criticize, but Liefeld's stuff is... well...I guess you'd have to see the spinal curvature to believe it.

That's supposed to be sexy. For the audience of predominantly young men who made Liefeld very popular, it must have been sexy. This is a funny analysis of the above drawing by a group of women comic book artists:

Take note of Avengelyne’s waist and how it is thinner than her head. Minus the hair. Note how it hangs beneath her ribcage like a suspension bridge, rather than actually supporting the top of her body. (Her torso must be kept afloat by those helium breasts.) Note the scoliosis gone grossly untreated. Note the little leather bags which wouldn’t fit around a normal person’s wrist. Especially note that the artist put her in the most obvious POSE to exaggerate the spine: a profile shot with negative space between her back and arm. That’s correct - our intrepid heroine’s spine would appear yanked. Avengelyne is a SWAYback™.

The humor is partly at my expense. But I can't help laughing. It's a highly sexualized image, but not one that I identify with in any way.

But here's a poster image I ran across that uses stupid sexist humor to make fun of a real woman, and I don't find it funny at all.

It really illuminates the double standard that women are subjected to. You're supposed to be sexy so that you please men. But if it looks like you're trying TOO hard, men (and other women) will make fun of you. If you don't wear makeup, you're a [insert homophobic slur]. Wear too much makeup, you're a [insert transgender-phobic slur]. Curve your back, look sexy. Curve it too much, it looks like you're deformed. Argh!

Thanks to my brief readings of disability theory, I realize that making fun of people with spinal deformities isn't something I should just accept as the natural order of things, especially because this humor is connected to moral judgments of disability. That is, the idea that physical body difference reflects some kind of moral failing. When it comes to scoliosis, I think the general public halfway believes that scoliosis is the fault of the person's family. There's a myth that giving young kids backpacks that are too heavy will make their spines curve (totally not true). When people are adults, "she should have had that corrected" is sometimes an assumption. A lot of people don't realize that the only sure way to even partly reverse a curve is spinal fusion, which also leaves a giant seam-scar running up your back. Another judgment is that a person with scoliosis must be poor. It's true that I'm very lucky I had access to bracing; if I wasn't born into a middle-class family in a rich country, my curve would be a lot worse by now. So there are major class differences in scoliosis, but ultimately, we're all in different positions on the same boat because there is no way to permanently and completely reverse adult scoliosis.

Thanks to flickr, I did actually find some images of scoliosis that I think are beautiful and help affirm positive self-image and sexuality. I wish I'd found a greater variety of body types, but these images are great to start off with. Some are post spinal fusion.

First, here's the typical clinical picture. It shows everything that's wrong with the body.

Now here are the flickr pictures. They show the open possibility and vitality of a body with scoliosis.

It's heartening to see a bunch of pictures like that. There are more at this link.

When I walk, my right hip swivels a bit higher and wider than my left hip. I've had people tell me it looks sexy. I've had people ask if I've hurt my foot. Neither reaction bothers me anymore. The way I walk is just the way I walk. It gets me where I need to go.

Acknowledgements for this post: thanks to Thorn for commenting about this issue, and mentioning how it negatively affected your adoption homestudy due to ignorance on the part of the social worker. Also thanks to Deesha Philyaw on Twitter for mentioning the Judy Blume book about a girl who goes through bracing: Deenie. I wish I'd gotten a chance to read that book when I was a girl, and it sounds really interesting.

Close to Home

It's on the national news. Eleven-year-old Jaheem Herrera killed himself because of severe emotional abuse. This story hits close to home because I happen to know a boy who was in the same school and grade and class as Jaheem Herrera. I'm never going to look at him the same way.

I know from my own experience how isolated Jaheem must have felt. If just one single kid in the class had stood up for him, he probably would have been saved.

I never wanted to kill myself, but I was pretty desperate. For years, I used to lie awake at night hoping that aliens would abduct me in my sleep so I wouldn't have to go to school the next morning. The abuse I went through was primarily racial, but it had other elements as well... I wasn't good at gender-conforming, and got called a lesbian a fair number of times.

It sounds like what Jaheem went through was primarily about gender-conforming but had racial/ethnic elements as well. I know the school in question is not diverse (almost entirely African-American), and although I don't know how Jaheem's family identified, it's obvious he didn't fit in.

From My bullied son's last day on Earth
Bermudez says bullies at school pushed Jaheem over the edge. He complained about being called gay, ugly and "the virgin" because he was from the Virgin Islands, she said.

"He used to say Mom they keep telling me this ... this gay word, this gay, gay, gay. I'm tired of hearing it, they're telling me the same thing over and over," she told CNN, as she wiped away tears from her face.

But while she says her son complained about the bullying, she had no idea how bad it had gotten.

"He told me, but he just got to the point where he didn't want me to get involved anymore because nothing was done," she said.

Bermudez said she complained to the school about bullying seven or eight times, but it wasn't enough to save him.

"It [apparently] just got worse and worse and worse until Thursday," she said. "Just to walk up to that room and see your baby hanging there. My daughter saw this, my baby saw this, my kids are traumatized."

She said Jaheem was a shy boy just trying to get a good education and make friends.

"He was a nice little boy," Bermudez said through her tears. "He loved to dance. He loved to have fun. He loved to make friends. And all he made [at school] were enemies."

Bermudez said she thinks her son felt like nobody wanted to help him, that nobody stood up and stopped the bullies.

"Maybe he said 'You know what -- I'm tired of telling my mom, she's been trying so hard, but nobody wants to help me,' " says Bermudez.

I feel so sorry for him. But at least he was happy once upon a time, before he came here and started the period of misery that ended his life.

I don't know what to do, but I have a few ideas. I'm going to continue writing about my own experiences with abuse in school and giving advice on the topic where I can. I'm not calling it bullying anymore, because "bully" is too light of a word. I can't be an advocate in any more public sense, however. I can be very articulate in person but not on this subject. I can write about it, but it's almost impossible for me to talk about it.

I'm going to talk to Sunny about Jaheem Herrera, and show him his photo, and explain that it happened because other kids called him "gay" and were mean to him. I'll try to find some way of telling him that I don't want Sunny to ever abuse anyone in that way, and more importantly, to stand up for kids who are being abused, because if you don't, you could end up being guilty for the rest of your life. And finally, that if he was ever a victim, I'd pull him out of school and do whatever it takes to protect him.

This story is running together in my head with another story I heard second-hand from my mother, about a discussion she had with a man who had been one of the "Lost Boys" of the Sudan. Our family has connections to refugee families, including some Sudanese, though I don't want to go into any more identifying detail on the connections.

Anyway, the man said he was willing to share his story because he considered himself an advocate. His story involved some very simple math. His group tried to go Ethiopia, but the Ethiopians expelled them back into Sudan. So on their next attempt, they walked 500 miles from Khartoum into Kenya. There were 800 of them when they started walking. There were 300 when they arrived. Wild animals, starvation, disease and soldiers had killed the rest. He was seven years old.

I couldn't even imagine. The same age as my son...

I actually tried reading "What is the What", the story of former "Lost Boy" Valentino Achak Deng, but I gave up less than 100 pages in because it was making me so unbearably sad. It's hard to say what was worse, going through all the nightmare of the civil war, or being so poorly treated in America, just when he thought he was safe.

And then many of the children of the refugees end up in poorly managed public schools where they suffer tremendous abuse for not "fitting in".

In this country that's supposed to be so rich and civilized, we can't even keep children safe in schools.

Octuplet Rage and Foster Care

I'm not interested in attacking or defending the woman who had octuplets. I still don't fully comprehend why she's getting so much attention. I'm beginning to work it out, and the reasons are ugly.

As someone who's going through fertility treatments (albeit pretty mild ones) I know a fair amount about reproductive technology and about what having octuplets involves. It's scary. I would never get into that situation. If I even got CLOSE to that situation, I would hit the big red flashing ABORT button.

I think she made a pretty bad decision. I also think her doctor is unethical and the ART field should be more regulated, much like it is in Europe.

But in a larger context, people make bad decisions all the time... much worse decisions than she's made. There are men who go around creating babies like freaking lawn sprinklers without feeling the slightest sense of responsibility. These men don't end up all over the news. They don't get anonymous death threats because they're "wasting taxpayer money."

The hatred for her is way out of proportion. An article at Racialicious looks at the racial angle, and there definitely is a connection, because some of the vitriol ties into anti-immigrant sentiment. Ultimately, I think it's more like 60% sexism and 30% class and 10% race. She's become the archetypal "bad mother," a scapegoat for societal fear and loathing about women.

I just don't see what she's done to deserve all this rage. One criticism is that she's "stealing from taxpayers". What about all the bailed-out executives who got billions in bonuses? Her media rights will probably be enough cover medical expenses anyway, and even if they're not, any added tax burden is dwarfed by other more successful, less hated thieves.

The most disturbing part is the dehumanizing language toward her children, with so many people calling them a "litter". Whatever you've judged that she's done, they're little babies. Sins of the mother? Come on.

I wasn't going to post anything, but Torina just put up a rant, and I have to chime in and say that I feel much the same way. Apparently some of the commenters on this case are even saying that her babies should be taken away, which is ridiculous.

I CARE. I care about every kid out there. But those octuplet babies are STILL BEING TAKEN CARE OF. Let's worry about the KIDS THAT ARE NOT BEING TAKEN CARE OF. HELLOOOO!!!! They are all around us! There are 650 kids waiting in to be adopted from foster care in Minnesota RIGHT NOW. If you care about children, what about these kids???

Kids are removed because their parents NEGLECTED THEM, BEAT THEM, SEXUALLY ABUSED THEM. Not because their mom had too many eggs implanted by some idiot doctor. Let's start caring about the kids we already KNOW need us. These octuplet kids, as hare-brained as their mom might be, she hasn't hurt them or done anything criminal yet. So let's move on to the kids who really need us.

And to address another type of comment on this case -- as I've said here before, using children in foster care to condemn parenting choices you don't like can be really exploitative. "The octuplets' mother should have adopted from foster care" -- I don't think so. She sounds way too immature to handle that. I'm adopting from foster care, and I don't go around using my choice as some kind of self-righteous bludgeon, because that's not fair to anyone, including my son. Whenever anyone says "X should have adopted a waiting child instead of Y" I always wonder, have they put their money where their mouth is, have they themselves been through foster care, or have they been involved extensively in some other way? And if none of those things are true, they probably need to shut the hell up, because they're just exploiting the existence of waiting children without helping the situation at all.

Short Post on Sexism

This month I read two great, thoughtful posts about sexism, feminism and Asian-Americans.

Both were by Asian-Americans, one by Kai at Zuky (Sexism and Confucianism) and the other by Jenn at Reappropriate (Helen Zia: Be the Change).

If you are interested in the topic, follow the links and read the comments. You will notice a startling difference in the quality of the dialog in the comments section.

This makes me so mad, I can't make this post much longer, but I wanted to get it off my chest and get back to enjoying my vacation.

Comments off.

Exploitation

Please don't read the articles I'm linking to unless you are ready to read about horrific sexual abuse and exploitation. I happened across this article in Charlotte, on the way home to Atlanta from DC, when I was looking for something to read in a restaurant and picked up the free local weekly.

I normally wouldn't write about it in this blog, but I've just been thinking about the story ever since. There are a lot of things I don't like about the original article, especially the way that the new race hierarchy in the new South (black/white/Mexican) is just swept under the table when it should be dragged out into the open and subjected to a harsh floodlight. There's also way too much of a lurid, yellow journalism tone. But I'm also glad the story is out there. These women and children should not be invisible and disposable. I'm glad the pimps in this case got life sentences and their evil mother got a stiff sentence as well.

In fact "pimp" is way too nice of a word nowadays. It's gotten such positive mainstream connotations from shows like "Pimp My Ride". I don't believe in fighting losing linguistic battles, however. The word "pimp" is going to keep on turning into a synonym for "flashy" "smooth" or "promote". I just think there should be a new word to describe people like the Howards, both sons and mother. "Rapist slavemasters" sounds so much appropriate than "pimp".

Maybe I'm getting more sensitive. My husband can't even read stories or watch documentaries about child abuse, but I can usually detach myself enough to consider the cases logically and sociologically. But this story is really bothering me. I'm still thinking about how I can help women and children recover from this kind of abuse. Maybe finding and donating to an effective local survivor organization?

Again, I'm serious about not reading the links below unless you think you're ready.

Tracy's World: Inside the wicked web of a Charlotte pimp (BY TARA SERVATIUS Published 05.10.06)
It's A Family Ho-Down: Warrant charges mom and sons ran prostitution ring (BY TARA SERVATIUS Published 03.30.05)
Pimps Slapped! Men get life for prostituting young girls (BY TARA SERVATIUS Published 01.24.07)

More Geisha Nonsense

I'm superbusy at work, so I don't have time to give this piece the full angry rant it deserves.


Geisha grrrls

The author of a new book about gender in Japan sets aside Western stereotypes and talks about how ordinary women are fueling a feminist revolution that's transforming the country.

I read the above book review article at Salon.com while filled with disgust. There was a short period when I hoped the blurb might be true: that the author really does attack and expose stereotypes. Instead, she just confirms them.

"You can find a woman who works as a vice president at Canon and also really likes playing the shamisen, which is one of the traditional geisha arts..."

Again, Japanese tradition always has to be represented by the geisha. Nevermind that throughout their long history, the vast majority of Japanese women have been peasant farmers.

I left a comment at Salon.com. Given my previous posts on the subject here at my blog - Memoirs of a Ho Ho Ho and Memoirs of a Ho Ho Ho (Revisited) - it should be quite easy to tell which comment is mine. I suspect that my salon.com comment will soon be followed with lots of angry protestations and denials.

The author of the book doesn't get a pass because she's black, either, just as I wouldn't give an Asian woman author a pass for perpetuating stereotypes about black women. She should know better. I guess putting "geisha" in the title of any book about Japan makes it much more marketable.

Memoirs of a Ho Ho Ho (Revisited)

I asked in the previous post, "If geishas are so cool, so respected, if it's such an admirable thing being a geisha and preserving traditional Japanese culture… then why do you feel the need to defend them? If you're not Japanese, why on earth do you think you have a dog in the fight?"

I think I found an answer I wasn't looking for. There's a whole internet subculture of non-Japanese geisha fangirls who identify with geisha. See the forums at this website. They give themselves Japanese names, use geisha pics for their discussion board avatars and commiserate about how their families don't understand or respect their high-minded obsession with Japanese geisha culture. It looks like they descended en masse onto the comments of this webpage that happened to incorrectly identify a geisha and left plenty of scorching remarks decrying ignorance about geishas.

My first reaction is "that's totally insane". I could talk about the probable racial and sexual underpinnings for their obsessions and their defensiveness about those obsessions (especially since I have a hunch that they're very predominantly white women) but it's Christmas and I'm about to go and open presents with my family and I feel pretty generous about the whole world today. So I just reminded myself:

There are people out there who think they are ninjas.

There are people out there who dress up as Confederate and Union soldiers and camp out on old battlefields and recreate battles.

There are people out there who play vampire-based live-action roleplaying games. I've even met a few of them and they're pretty harmless. I asked how they determined the outcome of battles between vampires. Did they roll dice? No, they used rock-paper-scissors.

The human imagination is an often embarassing but overall very wonderful force.

Memoirs of a Ho Ho Ho

We interrupt regularly scheduled adoption-related programming to bring you a very special Christmas Eve anti-geisha post.

"Geishas are hoes! Hoes, hoes, hoes."

It really irritates a lot of people when I say that. The fact that it irritates so many people is, in itself, very irritating to me. They will say, "How could you disrespect geishas that way! You lack anthropological understanding! You impose Western standards of sexuality! Geishas are so much more than common prostitutes!" What I hear in those same statements: "I know more about "your own" culture than you do, and you should be ashamed of not knowing "your own" culture better. Asian women don't need feminism. Those common hookers get what they deserve."

If geishas are so cool, so respected, if it's such an admirable thing being a geisha and preserving traditional Japanese culture… then why do you feel the need to defend them? If you're not Japanese, why on earth do you think you have a dog in the fight? Would you react the same way if I said that the samurai were a bunch of violent social parasites with bad haircuts?

No matter how much people protest that geishas are so gosh-darn wonderful, they're selling sexuality for money and involved in a very ugly worldwide system. The crack ho on the corner, the young woman who marries a man she doesn't even like because he'll support her financially and she can't make it on her own, a high-priced call girl in Las Vegas… they're all involved in that system. Some of them have more power and choice; some of them are more victimized and exploited than others.

I don't feel the need to defend myself from being a prude when I condemn this system, because it should be condemned anywhere in the world. It’s the source of much horrible misery. In practical terms, in this country I support legalizing and regulating transactional sex, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I was once involved very tangentially in the sex industry; I spent part of a year cocktail-waitressing at a strip club in New York. With the generous tips there, I saved up enough money for an important educational goal. I wore a skimpy outfit but didn't have any other duties besides bringing drinks to tables and clearing them away again. I was hassled less at that job than at many other waitressing jobs, because there were two big, burly bouncers who kept the customers strictly in line. The club was clean and upscale. I noticed there were three kinds of strippers there: sad young party-girl cokeheads, sad older cokeheads and sad, solemn women who never spent their money on drink or drugs because they were sending it all to their extended families back in Russia or Brazil. I saw women at their worst at the club, but the dynamic seemed even more degrading to the men customers… towards the end I found myself growing unbearably cynical about men.

I learned from that experience that I don't like sex work, and I don't like indirect sex work (that is, women flirting with men for money). If I had a limited choice between sex work and another job I consider degrading, but in a different way, say gutting chickens for minimum wage, I don't know what I'd choose; it would depend on circumstances and my desperation level. I'm thankful I live in a very wealthy country and have a good education and a lot more choices than that. That's where I'm coming from.

Getting back to geishas -- if you asked a large group in Japan, "Are geishas prostitutes?" you'd get a wide variety of answers. I suspect they would range something like this:

1) Geishas are not prostitutes. They are artisans preserving traditional Japanese music and dance. How dare you call them prostitutes and insult our national honor.
2) Geishas are very high-priced prostitutes.
3) Geishas are only slightly like prostitutes and more like a combination of entertainer, hostess and professional mistress.
4) I don't know, it's very confusing.

If you asked the same group, "Would you like your daughter to grow up to be a geisha?" I think 99.9% of them would say "hell, no."

The topic of sex work and feminism is large and tangled. I don't have a firm position staked out in the debate. I do know, for damn sure, I wouldn't want any daughter of mine having to trade her sexuality for money. I want to raise her with more choices than that. I'd even be uncomfortable if she felt she freely chose to do it, because I think it would ultimately have bad effects on her self-esteem. I wouldn't reject her or cut her off in any way, but I'd let her know I didn't think it was a good choice.

I also believe that exalting women in geisha-like occupations and setting them apart from "the rest" is very disrespectful to women who don't have choices when it comes to transactional sex. I guess those immigrant strippers I worked with did have some choices… They could have supported their families another way. They could have gotten janitorial jobs and made a fraction of their stripper income. Still, I knew this wasn't a choice they wanted to make, at all. One of the women once told me she used to be a professional ballroom dancer back in Russia. Her posture was ramrod straight.

On a more personal and only slightly less political level, I absolutely despise the exaltation of geishas in America. I have a very nice yukata, which is a summery kimono-type robe, but I wouldn't wear it around the house or on the patio anymore, because I don't want ignorant acquaintances to make geisha comments. Nowadays people see any traditional Japanese dress and think "geisha". They dress their little girls up in "geisha costumes" for Halloween. I've made a rule for myself not to use profanity on this blog (I've heard it messes up search results and can bring unwelcome visitors) but if I were using it I would insert a long string of #&%@ and %&#! at this point to describe how I feel about that.

If you're not Japanese, I'm convinced you have no good reason to stick up for the honor of geishas and say they are oh so much better than common prostitutes. You are investing your ego in a fetishised submissive Asian woman stereotype. Stop it. I don't even think Japanese have good reasons to defend geishas, they just have less bad ones than other people do.

The only argument that would convince me otherwise would come from a radical sex-positive feminist perspective; I haven’t heard a good one made yet, but I'm willing to at least consider it.

Merry Christmas!

Pandagon Post on Transracial Adoption and Abortion

I'm too tired to participate more in this Pandagon post from a few days ago -- Feminists for Life's next project is a ban on tampons -- but the post and the 80+ comments afterwards are really fascinating. There are some adoptive parents and adoptees contributing, but the majority of the posters are not really adoption insiders, so it's definitely not your typical adoption-board discussion. A lot of it has to do with foster care adoption.

I have comment #81 awaiting moderation.

Unconscious Bias

Here's a fascinating article about unconscious bias and stereotype threat. It shows how much the primal emotions of pride, shame and fear influence intellectual achievement.

Positions of Power: How female ambition is shaped

"Meanwhile, studies of what psychologists call "stereotype threat" demonstrate that awareness of negative stereotypes about one's group diminishes performance. Toni Schmader, a psychologist at the University of Arizona, conducted a study in which undergraduates were asked to memorize words while doing math; one group was told this was a problem-solving exercise, the other, that this was a test comparing men and women. Women's performance suffered only when they believed they were being compared to men—this prompted the stereotype that men are better in math. Another study examined how stereotype threat affected Asian-American women's performance on math tasks. When subjects were asked questions related to Asian identity before taking the test (prompting the stereotype that Asians are good at math), their performance went up. When asked questions related to gender (prompting the stereotype that women are bad at math), their performance went down."