The Intelligent Conversationalist
Page 21
SUBJECT SEVEN—BIOLOGY, AKA SEX AND GENDER
BIOLOGY SUMMARY
The key theme to keep in mind when discussing anything related to this subject is that the personal is political. People can possess firmly held “old-fashioned” views about feminism and same-sex marriage, but if they have a daughter who wants to be paid the same as her male coworkers for identical work or a son who comes out of the closet, perspectives can change. Think about dropping in this brilliant fact—it’s uncontroversial, as you can’t even offend the Swiss on it, it’s so disgraceful: In Switzerland, women were only granted the right to vote in 1971. That’s right. 1971. Even Iran had managed to do it in 1963. And if you need to pivot the conversation somewhere else, which is highly likely with any of these topics, pronounce: “As Errol Flynn once said, ‘Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure.’ Let me buy you another drink.”
You may be hoping that with our penultimate subject we will put the fun into that most fundamental of topics—biology. Somewhere between the sensitive topics of abortion and the death penalty, this proves unfeasible.
From this you will deduce that the next Cheat Sheets are not comprised of the biology we were fed at school. There will be no discussion of amoebas or plant cells. There will be a bit about the birds and the bees, but quite frankly there’s more to life than sex. There has to be, bearing in mind how many single people there are out there. To be precise, almost 50 percent of American adults, and they can’t be doing it all the time, as otherwise 1.7 billion swipes a day wouldn’t have occurred on Tinder in February 2015.
At this point, in the manner of a leading economist, I issue a disclaimer. I am a European-born feminist and I work in the Broadway community. Biology’s first Cheat Sheet covers contraception, abortion, pregnancy, and the death penalty. The second takes on feminism, and the third, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) sphere. Impartial perspective? What do you think? I may have attempted it in previous chapters, but I well and truly give up any semblance of it here.
Now, dear reader, I completely understand that you are entitled to be of another persuasion and I don’t want to leave you cross. For those who suspect that the next three Cheat Sheets may rub you up the wrong way, over the rest of this biology introduction I cover various uncontroversial nuggets you can take away. I suggest then skipping straight through to the last subject, culture. If we ever meet, I’ll buy you a drink by way of an apology that you couldn’t read a few thousand words. Here goes on my apolitical points.
• Cellphones carry ten times more bacteria than most toilet seats.
• According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults need seven to nine hours sleep, so it’s no wonder parents of newborns are nuts.
• The oldest dildo was made about 30,000 years ago.
• Orgasms can cure hiccups.
• Lemons ripen after you pick them, while oranges don’t.
• Obesity is an American public health-care catastrophe—it costs so many billions a year to treat that if you sorted out obesity, it is fair to contend that you would seriously help the problem that is American health care. In that vein, Spanx has nothing on our ancestors for quick fixes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whalebone corsets and “anti-corpulency belts” were in vogue, as were laxatives and eating a bar of soap before bed every night. Celebrities have also always been proponents of the diet du jour. We have Kirstie Alley waging a perpetual weight war, while history had Lord Byron. One of his diet regimens included drinking only claret and water—more appealing than the cabbage soup diet of the 1990s, it has to be said. What has been called “the best diet ever invented” was the British diet during World War II. My embattled home isle was forced to become self-sufficient. For my grandmother and her generation, there was no snacking or suspect fats. The Brits’ food was rationed and they strictly adhered to War Office nutritional guidelines. Following the Dig for Victory campaign, they grew as much of their own food as they could. The British population emerged healthier than it had ever been before. Well, but for one area. What they were imbibing.
• Alcohol has been the crux of society for centuries. Without it, the fittest would never have survived. Or at least the free world as we know it—Winston Churchill freely admitted: “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” The limey’s love of alcohol is nothing new. The discovery of late Stone Age beer jugs has established the fact that purposely fermented beverages existed at least as early as c. 10,000 BC. It has even been suggested that beer may have preceded bread as a staple. The Egyptians believed that the important god Osiris invented beer, a beverage that was considered a necessity of life. Pure distilled alcohol was first produced by Muslim chemists in the Islamic world during the eighth and ninth centuries. Yes, you read that right. Muslim chemists. The Puritans brought more beer than water on the Mayflower as they departed for the New World. In colonial America, it was perfectly acceptable for those over the age of fifteen to consume the equivalent of seven shots a day. It took until 2011 for Russia to view beer as an alcoholic beverage. Before then, anything under 10 percent volume of alcohol was categorized as a soft drink. Celebrity teetotalers include: Marie Antoinette (the “let them eat cake” queen of France during the French Revolution) and Donald Trump. Oh, and drink too much? It is thought that the hiccup may be an evolutionary remnant of earlier amphibian respiration.
• Ebola has been around bats and marsupials for more than 10 million years. We get a global viral outbreak every generation or so, ergo we’re due one, but ebola needs intimate contact to transmit and a true pandemic, such as the 1918 Spanish influenza, is spread through the air or by touch.
The next pandemic is likely to come from animals (we’re hanging out in their environs more, as there are seven billion of us), and thanks to air travel we’ll probably all get it.
• The recent rise in measles cases in the West and the immunization “debate” (how can there even be one?) brings out the worst sort of liberals (organic and alternative medicine only) and conservatives (liberty!). If you don’t immunize your child, you are putting them, their friends, and those with compromised immune systems such as cancer patients at risk. That discredited 1998 report by Dr. Andrew Wakefield about the links between MMR and autism has a LOT to answer for.
Right. If you think you might agree with a theatrical European-born feminist, read on. Otherwise best not. I could really do without any more one-star reviews on Amazon.
CHEAT SHEET 24—LIFE AND DEATH
This book has always been nothing other than ambitious. However, the spectrum covered in this Cheat Sheet is perhaps the most dramatic.
Ideology has been kept away as much as possible from this tome. But in this Cheat Sheet I write mini reports on contraception, abortion, pregnancy, and the death penalty. And as I tackle them, it is not the first time and certainly won’t be the last time that a pundit has let the fair and balanced concept fly right out the window.
MINI REPORT 1. CONTRACEPTION
In the beginning there was sex. Which means that contraception methods are as old as time. One of those scientific studies proving what we already know has shown that out of a list of eight reasons for having sex, for the majority having a baby is the least frequent motivator. Other recent studies indicate that 99 percent of American women aged fifteen to forty-four who’ve had sex have used contraception at some point. No, I don’t know how Congress managed to hold a hearing on contraception in 2012 with NO WOMEN WITNESSES either, although Democratic strategists knew precisely what to do with that. Along with various “gaffes” by other old white male Republicans, “war on women” blazed the liberals’ election talking point, as they cemented their hold on America’s biggest voting demographic. Republicans = muppets sometimes. Why give the opposition such potent ammunition?
Sorry. I told you this independent observer thing was going to be a challenge. Actually, no, I’m not sorry. As a UN agency has pointe
d out, birth control is a human right. Why is it so controversial that a woman has control over her own body and life? That a woman has jurisdiction over whether she’s pregnant or not? Back to Hillary Clinton’s 1995 declaration in China: Women’s rights are human rights. Women who use contraception are better educated and healthier. What’s the problem? That they’re empowered? That society benefits as a whole? Oh, FFS.
On the basis that men don’t always want to reproduce either, birth control methods have been used in one form or another for thousands of years. Egyptian men wrapped their penises in linen sheaths. Other approaches varied from crocodile dung and honey before sex, to sea sponges and beeswax, to drinking postcoital hot mercury. Not up your street? Some used alcohol made from stewed beaver’s testicles. In the majority of American states, diaphragms and condoms were illegal from 1873 through World War I, and it could be tricky to get hold of them for decades more.
Myths surrounding the use of contraceptives have also been around forever. It seems we still believe a fair few of them if the conversations I’ve had with highly educated people are anything to go by—and the fact that some male Republicans believe women’s reproductive organs can shut down on a whim and that aspirin prevents pregnancy. Small surprise that half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned.
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NOTEWORTHY NUGGETS: STDs
• STD stands for sexually transmitted disease, formally known as venereal disease (VD).
• Some pedants prefer STIs, sexually transmitted infections, as not all STDs are diseases.
• These have been common for centuries. If you have an STD, you are actually in the highest brow company you will ever keep. We are talking geniuses such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Van Gogh; wits like Oscar Wilde; and mighty men, including Napoleon (allegedly), Winston Churchill, and Al Capone. The late great Robin Williams was sued by an ex for not telling her he had herpes.
• Around 1 in 5 Americans have an STD, and about 80 percent of them do not know it. Symptoms can remain hidden for years. So don’t automatically assume you have been cheated on …
• Don’t sleep around in Mississippi. Last figures I was able to get my hands on, this state has the highest rates in America of both chlamydia and gonorrhea, while the death rate from AIDS is more than twice the national average. If you want to irritate the resident of a red state, you could also make a general statement that those who are flagrantly moral are often more clandestinely libertine …
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Thus, in the interest of avoiding unwanted C-section scars and/or child support payments, here is a swift round of contraceptive clear-ups. Douching, showering, or bathing (even in Coca-Cola) cannot prevent pregnancy, however quickly you leap out of bed. Pregnancy will not be thwarted by jumping up and down. Or by having sex standing up. And you can’t prevent a bun in the oven by either sex’s not having an orgasm (the penis leaks, people). Whoever invented the latter lie was clearly just a lazy lover.
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NOTEWORTHY NUGGET
Sperm can live inside a woman’s body for up to five days, so if you ovulate any time within seven days of having unprotected sex, you could become pregnant.
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Modern medicine has managed to produce contraceptive choice. Marvelous. We’ll be here all day if we go through every type, but interesting to note that 1844 brought the first mass-produced condom, made of vulcanized rubber, which we use in car tires. The latex condom made its first appearance in 1880.
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NOTEWORTHY NUGGETS: THE PILL
• About 100 million women worldwide use the pill. Since women are always right, they cannot all be wrong.
• The pill was approved in the USA on May 9, 1960.
• It is safer to use the pill than to have a baby. Recent statistics have 18.5 moms dying for every 100,000 births in the US (more than triple the rate in the UK, more than double that in Saudi Arabia and Canada—and more than in China. Go figure). I can’t even unearth the statistical likelihood of women dying from the pill. What about probably the most talked about side effect of the pill, DVT (blood clots)? Being pregnant increases the risk of DVT more than any brand of pill.
• Take note, anti-Obamacare types: Studies indicate that around 50 percent of women use the pill for its noncontraceptive advantages (regulating periods, protecting against ectopic pregnancy, treating acne, noncancerous breast growths, and pelvic inflammatory disease).
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It would be remiss of me to not clear something up here. The morning-after pill, taken within seventy-two hours of sex, is a contraceptive. It is not an abortion pill. It BLOCKS ovulation, so THERE IS NO EGG TO BE FERTILIZED. Its only link to abortion is that it PREVENTS it. And yes, those are capital letters and I am shouting. I’ve got friends that call it the “pro-life pill.” But then I would, wouldn’t I?
The morning-after pill’s roots are in the 1920s; vets discovered that a dose of estrogen could prevent pregnancy in horses and dogs. In the 1960s, doctors adopted this technique to help a thirteen-year-old who had been raped. Of course it should be used only for emergencies. But still. Scientists have written in the New England Journal of Medicine that the morning-after pill has proven to be “more dangerous to politicians than to adolescent girls.” See, if they can’t keep sarcasm out of their arguments on the issue, what hope do I have?
There is a pill that causes abortions for pregnancies eight weeks or earlier. But that is not the morning-after pill. So please, for the final time, let’s take Plan B off the table. The next report is the one that makes the blood boil on all sides of the argument.
MINI REPORT 2. ABORTION
The emotional issue of abortion has been one of public and private debate throughout history. From China under Shennong (c. 2700 BC) to ancient Egypt to ancient Rome. It was the main form of birth control for Russian women in the Soviet era, while in America, abortion became legal nationwide with the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade in 1973.
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STUNNING STATISTICS
• 97 percent of unsafe abortions are carried out in developing countries.
• Legal abortion in developed countries is one of the safest procedures in medicine.
• Abortion is banned in Ireland unless a woman’s life is endangered. Since 1980 around 150,000 women are known to have traveled to Britain for the procedure.
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Arguably abortion has gotten more divisive since the 1970s. To be antiabortion became a moral must for Republicans. However, until the 1990s, Republican voters remained more likely to be pro-choice than Democrats. Five conservative appointed justices were on board for the 7 to 2 Roe vote. A 1972 Gallup poll had 68 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Democrats believing the decision to abort should be between doctor and patient ONLY. However, Republican strategists used the issue as a tool to entice evangelicals and Catholics to the GOP from 1979.
So here we are today. Americans remain conflicted, politicians divided, on the issue, ESPECIALLY WITH SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. Polls consistently show three-fifths of Americans are not pro-life or pro-choice—they are somewhere in between. Studies have shown the following:
• Nearly half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned, and of those, more than 40 percent end in abortion.
• Just under a quarter of all American pregnancies end in abortion—and the vast majority of the women have already had a baby.
• Some statistics suggest about a third of American women will have an abortion in their lifetime.
• Thirty percent of those who do have an abortion have at times identified themselves as Catholic.
• A woman who is denied an abortion is three times more likely to end up below the federal poverty line.
• Out-of-wedlock births are soaring—is this the irony of the pro-life movement?
There has been increasingly vitriolic debate on the around 1 percent of abortions performed after twenty weeks. So what makes a woman
delay the decision for that length of time? It should be noted that physicians say this is just after the time when comprehensive fetal testing is performed—and devastating fetal defects discovered.
In 2006 $11.1 billion of America’s public funds were spent on the births of unintended babies.
I will leave you with the below wise words and this thought: No child should be unwanted.
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WISE WORDS
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
—Apparently told to Florynce R. Kennedy and Gloria Steinem in an old Irish lady’s taxicab
Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.
—Bill Clinton
I think life is sacred, whether it’s abortion or the death penalty.
—Tim Kaine
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MINI REPORT 3. PREGNANCY
A normal pregnancy is forty weeks. Ten months. They lie to you about the nine-month thing. Just saying.
A female is born with the total number of eggs she will have throughout her lifetime, normally around 2 million. They age with you and are never replaced. Indeed, you start losing eggs while you are still a fetus. Fertility tails off slowly during your early thirties and then basically goes into free fall the nearer you get to forty, although American mothers are getting older. This is a good thing. It shows society’s progress. So you can tell anyone who criticizes you for not breeding yet to go shove it up their a**.
You were warned that I would spend my time coming over all Jezebel with this.