Life as an Extreme Sport

high on my list of annoyances right now

Academics, Bioethics

We’re hiring. I think I’ve mentioned this. We’ve done four of the six interviews, and after every interview, we tend to stand around and chitchat about the applicant. And I swear, if one more non-applied ethics/bioethics person, be they faculty or student, tries to tell me what bio or applied ethics studies, publishes about, or in general thinks, I might scream. Or actually get violent.

Tonight’s conversation went something like this:

Me: So, what’d you think?
Person: Well, I thought it was interesting how he brought in biology, since ethics doesn’t handle that.
Me: …wha?
Person: Yeah, no one doing ethics – you know, applied or bio or whatever, really considers biology, especially evolutionary biology in their writing.
Me: …er…
Person: But like I said the other day, ethics is just all dialogue anyhow.
Faculty: Too many people kvetching. There’s no science or logical thought or process in ethics, especially bioethics.
Me: Are you trying to taunt me?
Faculty: It’s a known fact!
Person: Kvetching is a great word to describe the entire field! No one does serious research.
Me: …I’m leaving now. I need a drink.

Moral of the story: I need to spend some time at AMBI, around people who aren’t going to try to tell me what my field studies, or dismiss the entire thing as pointless and not important.

I mean, I know it sounds silly (and yes, GM, I know – just ignore them), but to listen to a group of graduate students and faculty share this opinion about bioethics just being a bunch of people kvetching and not doing real research just made me want to curl up somewhere and cry. It’s hard not to take this personally, and assume that what they think about the field they also think about me. They’re painting bioethics in a very broad and extremely unflattering brush, and it’s kind of hard to see how they could not think similar about me.

I came here for this?

Giving Voice

...and everything else, Duct Tape and Prayers

I have a friend, suffering from complications of pre-cancerous cysts and other issues with her breasts. She’s going to be considered high risk for the rest of her life; right now, she’s dealing with a lot of side effects from recent surgeries to remove masses and reconstruct (mostly via reduction) her remaining breast tissue.

This friend is in my department. There are basically four active female graduate students in our department, and then a plethora of men (murder of men? congregation? flock?). She’s taken the stand that explaining why she’s holding a pillow against her chest, or why her clothes seem baggy suddenly, or she’s taking medication, late for classes, looking unwell, or simply talking about how she’s feeling (physically or otherwise) is not only fine, it’s necessary to do so to remove the stigma and shame associated with a breast disease. As she points out, if she had toenail surgery a week ago, everyone would be concerned and no one would react with discomfort or awkwardness. But social sexualization of breasts seems to carry over, and people – or at least many men that I’ve watched her deal with lately – are very uncomfortable with her illness, both in that it’s an illness, but also that it is about breasts. Because everything around a breast must be sexual, of course.

So her stand is to talk about it like it’s any other illness that we would talk about. She doesn’t want pity, but she refuses to be quiet because it makes people uncomfortable.

I admire this, and it’s an attitude I’d already begun to embrace with my mother. Like I told my former department director, when people I haven’t talked to in a while see or chat with me, they want to know how much I love graduate school, how my plans of taking over the world are going – they don’t want, and certainly aren’t expecting, the news that my mother has stage four lung cancer. And after you drop the c-bomb on people, it’s hard for them to recover. People don’t know what to say, are afraid to say the wrong thing, and you have changed in their eyes. A ticking time bomb of utoh and pain.

It’s an awkward situation to be in, though, because you don’t want pity or to be treated differently. Yet at the same time, I at least don’t want to feel like I have to hide things. So in many ways, I’ve adopted a strategy that isn’t walking up to someone and saying, as introduction, “hello my mom has cancer how are you”, but one that allows it to be revealed as a normal part of the conversation. If we’re talking about cats, I’m probably going to mention missing mine. If you ask why they’re missing, I’ll explain they’re in Oregon, and I’ll explain why.

I guess, what my ambien-addled fingers are trying to get out (and this will be ever-so-much fun to read in the sober light of morning), is that too many people in my friend’s position, or my own, react to the stigma of illness by hiding it. She and I have both refused to do that, for our own independently reached reasons – reasons that seem to come down to this:

There is no shame in being sick, and the only way we’re going to remove the stigmas around certain areas of the body, or certain kinds of disease, or even death itself, is to talk to one another about it with frankness, honesty, and compassion.

“that’s way out there, even for you”

Bioethics

Everyone knows that the Law and Order franchises are known for their “ripped from the headlines” stories, and tonight’s episode is no exception. The problem is, the plot sounds so far out there, it makes even the most paranoid conspiracy theorist on the team seem like he’s gone way off his rocker. Unfortunately, it’s true. Complete with payments for their role as human guinea pigs – money, video cameras, and so forth.

Do me a favour, ignore the bit with the EPA guy on SVU saying “with ethical guidelines” – or at least don’t associate me with those kind of ethics.

one of THOSE teachers

Academics

For some reason the last week has been a week of talking about teaching; I’ve been telling lots of random stories. About my fabulous Eye + Mind kids and their projects, the hell and heaven of 390s, my own class, and of the personae I step into whenever I teach. It’s so similar to improv, that it’s a very comfortable role for me to step into – and it lets me do things that startle the students. Talking to Laurie reminded me of one of those startling things.

I lost a bet, back when I was teaching. And as a result, I ended up wearing pajamas to school one day. One day while I had to teach. So I wore my blue plaid flannel pants, a blue long-sleeved top with an Eeyore applique, matching Eeyore applique slippers, and socks. I wore my grey bathrobe as coat, and figured I would go the whole nine yards, and did my hair in high pigtails.

To say my students were stunned that I upheld my end of the bargain is an understatement. They literally were shocked speechless. But I did it, taught and went to my own classes, and stayed in those PJs all day (lounging around the office after was a lot of fun). And you know, the rest of the quarter, I didn’t have a single problem with any of my kidsstudentsYes, I refer to my students as my kids, even when they’re older than me. I’m trying to break the habit, and be a little more formal about it, but to be honest, kids is a much more affectionate term of endearment, and even when they drove me up the walls, I held a lot of affection for all of them.

I think there’s a lesson in there, somewhere, about not taking yourself seriously, and about treating your students both with respect and humour. But it might simply be a story about me doing just about anything, if dared. I’ll leave it for you to decide.

In eight words, three that will fail

Politics

Prior to signing books yesterday, Senator Schumer spoke for a bit about the book Positively American and his motivation for writing it. As the primary architect of the 2006 Democratic takeover, he’s already looking ahead to 2008, and what Democrats can do to win the presidency. He said that there were eight words that elected G.W. Bush: war in iraq, lower taxes, no gay marriage. These eight words were political phrases tied to deep moral values that motivated a core constituency to get out and vote. More importantly, they unified people around those core moral values: protecting the country, smaller government, and the sanctity of marriage.

Schumer belives that Democrats need to find their own eight words for the 2008 electionAnd if you have any, definitely go to the website and suggest them – he is presenting it as a chance for the common person to get involved in the political process.; that this is where Gore and Kerry failed. They didn’t have easily compacted political phrases that tied directly to deep moral values. These eight words need to be positive phrases (“no war in Iraq” wouldn’t work), and cannot be vague. The example he gave, one that he felt was positive and tied to a deep moral value, was “universal health care”.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem with this: it presumes a comprehensive moral doctrine that we most assuredly do not have. For many people, health care access is not a right, it is a reward and a privilege of doing well (and not something to reward people who, in their eyes, don’t do the work necessary to receive it). For others, there is not so much a reward principle tied to health care, but the simple and very common belief that individuals are responsible for their own health.

When you hold either of these views, which are closely related although motivated by different reasons, universal health care is not linking down to a shared moral view on health care access. It is instead alienating a large segment of the population by in fact doing exactly what they morally oppose.

While the idea of overhauling our health care system is certainly a growing, vocal concer, until we separate the notion of personal responsibility from access to health care, we will not be able to achieve universal health care. And in fact, this is exactly why universal health care for children is both okay and strongly supported – precisely because we simultaneously believe that children do not have personal responsibility (autonomy) and that children should be cared for to a certain standard. Once these children reach a certain age, however, we presume they achieve autonomy, and with that the personal responsibility to care for themselves.

Until we separate the ideas of responsibility from health care access, we will not have universal health care coverage. A lack of health care must no longer be viewed as a stigma, or seen as a moral judgment highlighting personal failure to succeed and take care of one’s self. When we accomplish this, then we can begin to talk about unifying political phrases grounded in moral doctrine. But until then, the only thing the three words “universal health care” will do is drive away those who see it as a code phrase for turning the country into a welfare state.