Thinking about Vaccines? Thinking of Googling? Found AVN? VISA? Think Twice? Well think again.

I’m supposed to be reading up on levels of consciousness but I just had to get this out of my system. That is what this blog is for after all. I apologise for the sometimes acrimonious tone of this blog post. There were times when I got very angry, and when I get angry I get scathing.

I blame Twitter.

And facebook.

This all started when I connected my Twitter feed to my facebook account so that all my fb friends could see my every tweet. As a result a few of my friends saw me have a grumble at people who did not vaccinate their children when there was a confirmed case of whooping cough at my son’s school.

This provoked an unexpected, but interesting response from two facebook friends for whom I have a fair quota of respect, “Why don’t you have any patience for them? It’s their choice, they do the reasearch and choose what is best for their children…” I paraphrase, but you get the gist.

This provoked a long discussion, and some soul searching, not to mention internet searching on the issue.

I was told by my dissenting friends that far from being ignorant, non-vaccinators have read a great deal on the individual vaccines and their side effects. They constantly have to justify their choices on forms to medicos, schools and childcare. Their position has to be well thought out in order to navigate the hurdles a conscientious objector must leap in order for their child to participate in many areas of society the vaccinated take for granted. I would not, under any cirumstances, call them stupid. However, having taken a look at the kind of information out there for people trying to find information on vaccines, I would hazard a guess that they, and others, may have been misinformed at best, criminally misled at worst.

If you google the fairly inncouous “vaccine information australia”. There are a two organisations that crop up immediately. Vaccination Information Servicing Australia (VISA) and Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) were the two top hits. With catchy slogans like “Investigate before you vaccinate.” and “Love them. Protect them. Never inject them.” These websites proport to give you the truth on vaccines that the government won’t.

Sadly, I don’t have the time to nit-pick the websites in their entirety though I would dearly love to! However, I can, I hope, give enough reason to cast a serious shadow of doubt over their reliablility and legitimacy.

Both websites give “10 Reasons Why Parents Question Vaccination” or “10 Reasons to Investigate Before You Vaccinate.” The AVN’s is more detailed so I’ll look at theirs. They contain, if I’m kind, many errors of reasoning bolstered by sound ignorance and an appalling unawareness of the theory and history of vaccination. If I were unkind I would say that most of their “facts” are unsubstantiated in the extreme and that a lot of the more dramatic “facts” are made up.

If there are parents reading this post who are currently investigating the pros and cons of vaccination for their children I would implore them not to rely on the information these websites provide. It is often conveniently out of date, contains glaring misinformation and inaccuracies and in the case of at least one of them occurs within a broader agenda of a “natural life style philosophy” that generally shuns western medicine and endorses living harmoniously with mother nature.

If this is your view point I would still implore you not to take their “facts” at face value. They claim to be critical of scientists and doctors yet they are ill equipped to do any criticising. Judging by their commentary they are neither scientists nor stastisticians, and so in many cases they have their facts and interpretations of facts completely wrong.

A good place to get up to date information is Medline. But even then, if you only read the abstracts you can fall prey to tricks the pharmacutical companies use to make their products look better than rival company products. So in order to really know what’s going on with the latest research you have to be aware of who’s funding it, have a sound knowledge of what makes a good clinical trial or study (how cohort selection can bias results, for example, and the political leanings of the researcher running the trial) and a good grasp of the theory. To give an indication of how tricky I think this is, I have a science degree that included immunology and statistics and I wouldn’t feel capable of getting thoroughly on top of the research without at least a year of doing that and nothing else.

Here is a small example of the kind of misinterpretation that can be made by laymen when reading medical or scientific articles:

This article in Nature (Vaccine safety–vaccine benefits:science and the public's perception by Edgar K. Marcuse, Christopher B. Wilson in Nature Reviews Immunology 1, 160-165 (31 October 2001), that I highly recommend for a balanced and honest view on vaccines (though it is dated 2001 - always check the publication date!) contains the snippett: “relatively few infections are prevented by immunisation”. This can be interpretted in two ways. To those that know there are over 400 viruses and bugs out there that the newborn has to come to terms with, this means that immunisation is used to prevent a few of the more horrible kinds of infection. Therefore, relatively few infections are prevented by immunisation and the rest the children deal with on their own. To the lay-person, however, the same snippet may read as “relatively few infections are prevented by immunisation so immunisation obviously doesn’t work. Look, it’s in Nature!” That this interpretation is at odds with the rest of the paper does not matter to the zealous. They can cite that portion to their hearts content and look credible to all but the most astute observers.

There's this kind of misrepresentation and the fact that most of the population isn't capable of accurately assessing risk. Take the person who doesn't like swimming in the ocean for fear of sharks, but crosses roads every day. The risk that they will end up road kill is much higher than the risk that they will be shark food but the human brain is crap at making that assessment even when presented with the numbers. If most of the population can't make that kind of assessment, how can they be expected to make an assessment about immunisation where the theory is more complex and the numbers harder? Most people don't have access to the latest articles (or would rather google than go to a library), and end up being swayed by the scare-mongers who had a bit of bad luck in life and decided to blame their child's autism, cerebral palsy or whatever on an injection they had once.

I worry that 99% of those who say they evaluate the pros and cons are doing less evaluating and more looking for evidence to support their paranoia. And they will find this "evidence" in abundance on the internet.

I've been checking out some of the pro and anti vaccine debate on the internets. Sorry to say that mostly, and I mean to emphasise MOSTLY, the anti proponents don't do themselves any favours at all. They tend to display a glaring ignorance of immunology, epidemiology and medical history - I'd have thought they would be essential reading for anyone claiming to have researched the issue. They also, again MOSTLY, provide no evidence for fairly outlandish claims ("There was a pertussis outbreak in Idaho and 100% of the victims were immunised!!!"). When the pro-vaccine people join the conversation they are flamed down as being in the pocket of big pharma. This was a little unfortunate as the pro-people were more likely to ask for evidence and provide evidence in return.

There was a lot of scary anecdotes from both sides, none of which amounted to a shred of proof about anything but which made for interesting reading. Anyone researching off the beaten track, and I imagine that includes most parents must remember that: THE PLURAL OF ANECDOTE IS NOT PROOF.

Speaking of anecdotes though, the most interesting were the number of parents of autistic children who chimed in to say that they had done an awful lot of reading on the link between MMR and autism themselves, they were not satisfied there was a link, and could everyone please just shut up about it and use their energy for improving conditions and treatment for autistic children? Anecdotal I know, but still, surprising given the forum.

Sorry to say that the few reasonable anti-vaccinators armed with evidence and argument were still very conspiracy theory oriented, but even if they weren't they were drowned out by the complete idiots anyway.

I have no qualifications other than being a fan of medical history, managing to stay awake in immunology and epidemiology and I worked in an industry that creates antibodies for research. Compared to the average Joe I know my stuff. To me, vaccination isn't just about protecting my kids (well, ok, tetanus is) it's about helping to protect the vulnerable in our community, namely tiny babies and people who cannot vaccinate for whatever reason. I don't want to go back to the days where hospitals had to have dedicated measles and pertussis wards. I don't want to live in a world where everyone knows someone affected by polio or congenital rubella.

And this is why I get grumbly when people don't vaccinate. I feel that they're taking their healthy society for granted, even taking advantage of it. I might feel the same way about people who refused to fight if our country was being invaded. I might feel that they weren't earning their safety or protection, that they were letting other people take the risks for them. I'm community minded about vaccination so that's just how I feel. I also think I've done the hours of homework and have earned the right to feel that way.

My next post calls out some of the misinformation on the Australian Vaccination Network website. It's lengthy, but if you're serious about researching vaccines and you don't have a scientific background I recommend you read it all.

Yey! Because babies are ALWAYS a blessing, and ALWAYS wanted...

I feel so sad every time I read one of these. I think of teenage girls giving birth alone and terrified. I think of abused women giving birth in secret and abandoning their baby to what they hope will be a better life. I think of a mother with too many children already, wrapping her newborn lovingly, leaving it where it will be found and running away before she can change her mind. I think of young women forced to give birth in secret at home by ashamed parents who take the baby away and make it someone else's problem. It's totally heartbreaking I tell you. And every time I can't help wondering if this particular abandoned baby is the result of a problem accessing sexual health services, whether that be information about sex, contraception or termination.

Try googling "baby found" and check out the roughly 70 million hits. Or maybe don't, actually.

Response to SMH "Are home births safe?" Your Say.

Response to Your Say question on SMH.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of regulation and safety standards not all home births are safe. Preston was prepared, some are not and I'll bet it's the unprepared that skew the figures for home birth. For example, I'd call having a water birth at the top of a spiral staircase attended by a "birth attendant" with meagre medical qualifications ridiculously unsafe.

I would call a home birth with a suitably qualified midwife in attendance plus easy access to medical facilities if required very safe indeed. Safer, in fact, than most hospital environments where my need for a quiet, dimly lit, safe place to give birth is dismissed and often mocked by the white coats.

For most of us "crazy hippy home birth types" the position is a logical one: That the high rate of medical intervention we are seeing now is the result of the high rate of unnecessary meddling with what is a natural process. We believe that if the doctors interfered less, there would be less for them to do.

You can see how this position might mean a significant loss of cash for a certain powerful white coat lobby? You can see it from space.

Sadly, there is a bit of knee-jerk reacting going on with some women choosing to birth without any kind of attendance whatsoever. I believe this practice is a direct result of a public system that is letting women down. This is a difficult belief to prove.

However, the logical position I hold, that less unnecessary medical intervention (drugs to hurry labours, episiotomies, monitoring that restricts the movement of the labouring woman) would lead to less necessary medical intervention is not as difficult to prove. There are new studies appearing all the time: episiotomies, once routine are now known to heal more slowly and increase the risk of anal tears; caesarian sections are not as safe for the baby as once thought - it turns out that squeezing the baby's lungs on the way out is an important factor in the prevention of chest infections in the newborn. There are others of course.

The medical community has been misguided, ethically suspect and downright wrong before, take leeches and no hand washing between postmortems and surgery on live patients for example, not to mention the horrific error that curare was an anaesthetic. It's perfectly possible that they are wrong about home births now, the error would not be without historic precedent.

Letter to Ministers re Maternity Services Review

As usual, please feel free to use any of it as a template for your own letters. All care no responsibility etc.

Your MP's email addresses can be found here: http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch/

and remember to CC the Minister for Health: Nicola.Roxon.MP@aph.gov.au

Dear Minister,

I’m hearing all over the media that only 1% of women “choose” homebirth in Australia. I’m sure that if homebirth were not prohibitively expensive the figure would be very different. I only “chose” to give birth in a hospital because the choice of homebirth was not available in our public health system, I could not afford a private midwife and I was not so stupid as to attempt to give birth unattended.

Though I had perfectly satisfactory birth experiences both times, (partially because I was lucky enough to experience continuity of care in family birth centres), I would have preferred to have had them at home. Had I, and others like me, had the option of homebirth readily available you would definitely find that a greater number of women would choose homebirth.

It is incorrect to say that only 1% of women “choose” homebirth. It would be more accurate to say that 1% of women were “able to have” a home birth. I am deeply saddened to read that the maternity review does not recommend that home births should be made more readily accessible to healthy women. In fact, it seems to be suggesting that homebirth would be effectively outlawed by 2010. It seems to me that this will endanger women who are not as willing as I to resign themselves to their hospital fate. These women need a safe solution, and women such as myself would deeply appreciate the choice.

Homebirth needs more monitoring, not outlawing or ignoring. Homebirth needs to be interfered with so we don’t see more tragic scenarios where women die doing it. Two examples spring immediately to mind: A woman who decided to have a waterbirth at the top of a spiral staircase with an inexperienced birth attendant who was “uncomfortable” inserting an IV that might have saved her life (Victoria), or the ignorant and unattended woman who decide to labour in filthy mud after her waters broke (Queensland). Had safety standards for homebirths been in place and enforced neither of the above women would have had to die. Though I think both women chose to give birth in ill conceived scenarios, I view their deaths as direct consequences of a health system which is letting them down with regard to birth choices.

In my opinion, midwifery attendance at homebirths ought to be compulsory and midwives who attend homebirths need to be registered as qualified to do so (homebirths require a distinct skill set and a greater depth of experience from the attending midwife). Midwives also need rigorous safety protocols with which they are bound to comply, they need idemnity insurance, and they need to be confident that they will be well received at hospitals should their clients require hospital care.

The maternity review is the perfect opportunity to explore solutions such as those outlined above. If the argument that women ought to be able to exercise more autonomy in the birth arena does not persuade you, then perhaps this notion will: These solutions, once in place, would be cheaper than maintaining a hospital environment for healthy women who do not want to attend one. Our community would also reap the rewards postnatally with less women feeling traumatised and invaded by a hospital experience they would have preferred to avoid - postnatal depression is costly to the federal government and the community.

Please consider campaigning for safe, commonwealth funded home birth in Australia. It is too late for me, but not too late for women who come after me.

Yours faithfully,


BSc/BA Hons (Philosophy)
Mother of two.

Some common sense from Holden.

I was please to read in The Age today that Holden is considering cutting down workers' hours across the board and freezing executive salaries rather than resorting to mass sackings. It's such an obvious solution and a morally responsible example I'm hoping other big companies will follow.

Take THAT eBay...

Readers may remember that I was very cross with eBay a while ago.

From the Reserve Bank today:

... the Board has been assured that eBay and PayPal’s current ‘no discouragement’ rules do not prevent sellers from expressing a preference for an alternative payment system. It will re-examine this issue if it becomes apparent that the ‘no discouragement’ policies are being implemented in such a way as to prevent sellers from exercising choice.

Read the full media release here, the relevant bits for PayPal and eBay users are at the bottom. It's not as good as a proper smack down but it'll do for now.

Father Sells Daughter for Cash, Beer and Meat

Father Sells Daughter for Cash, Beer and Meat

What I want to know is, what the hell are they thinking sending this girl back to her abusive family????

The breast feeding pics that Facebook banned.

Can't remember how I found this collection of breast feeding photos that were removed from Facebook, but it's enlightening. A couple of the more pertinent (not to mention old) points that were made were:

Men's nipples can be photographed and those photos published without comment but a woman's areola is obscene. One of many examples of double standards within our nice western patriarchy and...Facebook.

Photos of topless women holding babies are pornographic according to Facebook - you can bet they haven't removed any photos of topless men holding their tots.

The funniest photo is captioned: "If breast feeding on facebook disturbs you, please feel free to put a blanket over your head." Any woman who has fed a baby under a blanket so as not to frighten the general public with the sight of a baby having lunch will know precisely why this is hilarious.

In my opinion, if photos of breasts doing what they are supposed to do appears to be pornographic to the viewer, then the viewer might want to ask themselves some pertinent questions with regard to what turns them on. Breast worshipping, (or viewing bare breasts as obscene which equates to a hatred of breasts), is a cultural phenomenon. For some reason our culture seems to be afraid of breasts, as though the sight of a nipple might drive men mad and contaminate the minds of little children. Fear of exposed body parts is one of the more ridiculous social norms I grew up with, and one of the hardest for me to overcome (if you think I exaggerate consider that I feel naked just showing my ankles), yet I can still see past my inhibitions to the logic of the situation.

The logic is this: Breasts are milk making machines, it's a biologically hardwired thing humans have going on. Even men's breasts, usually considered redundant, can be made to produce milk. What breasts cannot do is possess magical power over the minds of others. Breasts cannot make a man have an erection or desire sexual intercourse, nor can they make little children into sexual deviants. Amazing though they are, breasts simply do not have those powers. Despite all appearances to the contrary, those extraordinary powers lie elsewhere, in the context. Our poor beleaguered breasts exist within a society that indoctrinates us with a sexual view of our milk making machines. And SEX, oh my goodness, SEX is BAD. Soaked in our deeply Christian culture is a morbid fear of SEX. We do not talk about the SEX, we hint at it, we suggest that there may be the merest possibility that it may be going on. We protect our children from the SEX while allowing them to see footage of people shooting each other. I fear I may have digressed...

The upshot is this: breasts have no special powers other than making milk and providing a soft place for children to rest their heads. All the other powers attributed to them are actually sourced in our craniums. It is the mind that makes the breast a sexual object. It is definitely the mind that makes a picture of a breast feeding baby pornographic. Facebook needs its head read.

Some Reactionary Commentary on the film Orgasmic Birth by someone who read the pamphlet and checked out the website.

I must be feeling a bit better because these (very similar) articles in The Age by an Avril Moore made me a tiny bit angry. Just a little bit. A twinge.

Maybe, because I've seen the film and helped host the Melbourne screening I'm taking the whole thing a little personally.

Or maybe I'm just cross because she spouted her drivel having not seen the film.

Nope, it's neither of those things, it's this: This Avril chic is using her painful births to trump all the women who report a painless or ecstatic birth. She has blithely silenced the voices of women who report beautiful birthing experiences, dismissing their accounts and replacing them with her own. Isn't that one of the things the patriarchy is supposed to be good at? Disregarding the reported experiences of women? Telling us what it is we are supposed to be experiencing? particularly when it comes to childbirth? Tisk tisk Avril, BAD feminist, naughty!

Avril called the "natural birth community" backward when she accuses them of deferring to men. Avril complains that, "this 'woman-centred' approach to birth, all dressed up to empower labouring mothers, remains unapologetic in its deference to men" simply because one woman reported a reduction in pain when she smiled at her husband.

Wow.

Some readers may remember that I happen to know quite a bit about pain, and I'm pretty sure that what Avril knows could be stamped on a paracetamol capsule: Times New Roman, size 10 font - "Birth, it hurt when I did it!". It is not unreasonable to suppose that smiling at someone you love during labour could reduce pain. Distraction is an age-old technique for reducing pain, meditation forms part of the armoury against chronic pain and there is plenty of other evidence much of it published in reputable journals, that focussing on pleasurable things works wonders for pain. In infants, physical pain response is reduced when they are given sucrose to suck on, distraction with something nice is a time tested pain reliever for young children. If smiling at your husband distracts you and gets some happy chemicals pumping in your brain then wonderful! It's hardly what I would call deference.

She cites other examples of deference too. Ina May Gaskin dares to dedicate her first book to her husband and apparently two homebirth doctors in the 1970s were OMG! blokes! Avril, in the 1970s most doctors were blokes, you played the odds and won there, and my honours thesis would have been dedicated to my husband (if it had been dedicated to anyone) that doesn't mean he told me what to put in it.

Avril's contempt for Ina May Gaskin beggars belief given her credentials. Avril has experienced three births, Ina May has been present at over 1200 and pioneered an extremely effective low intervention solution for shoulder dystocia. Avril, 3, Ina May, 1200. I think Ms Gaskin is winning in the experience stakes. Also, as a writer, Avril should know that a book like Spiritual Midwifery doesn't run to four editions if it's full of hippie clap-trap.

If Avril had seen the film, she would have known that the women in it are a far cry from shutting up and smiling submissively at their husbands. They are not only very much in charge they are very noisy indeed, it's just not the kind of noise that we expect to hear having been fed hysterically screaming women by mainstream media. It's animal, it's beautiful, and if you heard only the sound track you might think you were listening to quality porn - for real.

I gather, Avril, you were more of a screamer? REALLY focussed in on that pain, did you? Good on you! Whatever works dear.

Target women - Birth Control

I'm a bit of a latecomer to Sarah Haskins, but just in case there are other ignoramuses like me out there I'm sharing the love. Those using readers might need to visit the blog to watch the videos.

I like:


and:



...and there's so much more for those who Google.

Dear diary, What's Wrong With Me?

I've written three hundred blog posts in my head I'm sure. If not three hundred, at least 30 and none of them are making it to the ether. This could be because I'm time poor and trying to get to sleep early. But I think it's rather a depressing lack of motivation caused by the roller coaster I've been on for the past couple of months. I think if I have to do one more extreme high (e.g. relief of Mum dying, 11yo with his A average) followed by an extreme low (e.g. Mum dying, missing out on scholarship) I might just risk life and limb and jump off the ride.

I do have time to write. I'm going to bed at 2200 and finding that I'm still wide awake at 0100 and wondering why didn't do something useful rather than stew fretfully in bed listening to the walrus choking on a fish next to me.

Activities that normally entertain me have lost their appeal. The thought of trolling pro-life websites and picking holes in their logic, usually fun, just fills me with a tiredness bordering on despair. Because study next year is still up in the air I can't pick up any philosophy or psycho-neurology without feeling depressed and pointless. Much of my feminist rants were anger driven and the anger just isn't there at the moment.

I can't get pissed off, I can't get motivated, and with the aid of Travis I seem to have cried myself out over my mother. All the cleaning an tidying has left me with a still overflowing in-tray and a house that is only half orderly so the thought of doing more to no avail makes me miserable.

Coffee with friends always helps, as do lists that I can tick so I can see that I've accomplished something for the day. Charming, cheeky 11yo boys always bring sunshine into the house. But right now... right now I just might break out the new toy...

Apparently I'm a high level nerd, which is totally cool.

My husband is a nerd GOD though. It's like I'm a nurse and I married a doctor!




...and yet...

Carolina Chocolate Drops - how awesome is she?

Thanks to Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony for this one. For some reason Google Reader won't subscribe to it so I never visit as often as I'd like...

Wohoo! There's hope for energy from hot rocks...

...and Australia has absolutely loads of them.

Although this article is a bit presumptuous in saying that they'll have their power plant operational by March when they haven't got their proof of concept plant working, it's still very exiting. If all goes well it'll be good for the planet and the riskier portion of my share portfolio.

Prostitution - some things to disagree with the radical feminists about.

I read with interest the article on the global sex industry in The Age today, mainly because of the title "The Vagina Dialogues" which I mistook for "The Vagina Monologues" and I was kind of hoping they'd come to Melbourne so that I could see them (finally). Anyway, not monologues, not even dialogues really, just a catchy headline - The Age has outdone itself today in that respect, but I might post about that later...

British feminist Sheila Jeffreys claims that us "neo-liberalists" view prostitution as simply a form of work (that'll be me), and that we should be more outraged at the buying and selling of women's bodies. I'm not sure that I'm happy with that as a blanket statement. Sure, when I hear about sex slavery I get as angry and unhappy as the next person. But I think it is a grave error to confuse sex slavery with prostitution. Also, to be blindly outraged at the buying and selling of women's bodies is dismissive of all the work done by sex workers campaigning to be recognised as a legitimate profession. Of course, in my ideal world, prostitutes are all doing the work by choice, they are well educated regarding their sexual health and how to maintain it and they work in nice places with lots of security guards and the means to summon them if they get a dud client. I know this is the reality for the minority of sex workers, but I also know that the other realities have other complications, drug addiction being a classic. If you're so drug fucked you can't hold down a job, you're desperate for more, and someone will pay you for the use of the one possession you can't lose... well....

I agree with Jeffreys that more of the money being made by the sex trade could go to the women themselves, but I feel that way about factory workers too. Big business is bad in itself, to label prostitution bad because of an association with big business is another error.

Perhaps I should reveal why I'm such a big fan of prostitution in my idealised form:

1 - Prostitution allows all kinds of people to have access to sex who otherwise couldn't or wouldn't get it.

It's obvious really, but some people need you to point out the obvious. I'm talking about people who are shunned by their partners, the disabled, the super busy or the just plain ugly. Who am I to say that these people should never have sexual intercourse simply because they cannot find a bedmate? If a person cannot walk, we find ways to help them get around, if they can't talk we find ways to get them communicating, we don't turn our backs on them reasoning that it's their tough luck and they'll just have to suffer without things the able bodied among us take for granted. Why should access to sex be any different? Are we so prudish that we cannot suffer the thought that the unfortunate might have sexual needs? In my opinion it is better that they safely pay to have those need fulfilled as the alternatives to not bear thinking about. Of course, this solution makes sex the privilege of the wealthier portion of the sexually frustrated population but that is a whole other can of worms I do not have time to address here!

2 - Prostitution keeps families intact.

Oh yes indeedy. Bear with me on this one. In this scenario, the frustrated marriage partner is not only paying a prostitute for sex, they are paying their sexual partner to go away afterward. I argue that prostitution, as long as it does not become an addiction, is a far more family friendly way of fulfilling frustrated sexual needs than cheating on your partner with someone else. This is because of the drain the cheatee can have on the family. There is the time drain where the cheater is off with the cheatee, there has to be courting and bonding before the actual sex and all of this takes time. Prostitutes take far less time by comparison. There is the emotional drain on the family where the cheater becomes emotionally distracted and distant, if one assumes there is no emotional attachment to the prostitute there is nothing to distract the cheater from the family. There is also the financial drain caused by maintaining a cheatee. Prostitutes cost money, for sure, but do they cost as much as the gifts and food, and places to sleep often entailed by an affair? Unless the cheater is a complete miser or having an affair with a rich single person the answer is probably not. And finally, lets not forget the emotional trauma often suffered by the cheatee at the hands of a cheater who refuses to leave the family. The pain of being the "secret other" is not to be underestimated. Going to a professional third party for sex may not solve the initial problem that lead the cheater to seek out extra sex in the first place, but at least it's less likely to cause any further problems.

I'm more than happy to hear from people who disagree with me. However, I will maintain that prostitution is actually a vital part of a healthy society. Particularly if that society is going to glorify unnatural modes of existence, I'm thinking here of the ideal that one partner can satisfy your every sexual need for your entire monogamous life. Sex is one of the few arenas where seeking out satisfaction outside the partnership is frowned upon in our culture. If you need other things such as books, company for exercise, conversations about antique cars or the occasional back massage it is considered ok to get them outside the relationship, but sex? Oh no, if you're not getting what you want in that area tough luck buddy, you chose your sex life when you chose your partner. This seems to me to be ridiculously exclusive and based on an ancient tradition whereby women were only allowed to have sex with their husbands so that the husbands could be sure of the paternity of their children.

Logically, if we can satisfy needs for anything other than sex outside of marriage, then we should all be signing up for life with the partner who was best in the sack. However, hardly anyone does. I didn't, and for a plethora of excellent reasons, one of which is that I'm just not that sexually driven. But if extra sex ever became a priority, you can guarantee I'll be seeking out that extra sex from a paid professional rather than going through the ugly emotional messiness of an affair. Radical feminists are wrong to tar all forms of prostitution with the same brush. Lets hope they see the light.

Bill Bailey for... something good...

I pinched this pic from Hoyden About Town. Awesome. I want one of those T-shirts.

Wow, someone has really done their homework on the Tell The Truth Coalition!

For those of you still interested in the Tell The Truth Coalition, this makes extremely interesting reading. Someone called Brian from unbelief.org has done some homework on the members including our favourite ol' Ron van Wegen.

When it comes to birth, men can be fragile creatures.

This piece in The New York Times spoke volumes to me. It's an ordinary bloke's account of his failure to cope with his daughter's early arrival on the bathroom floor.

I don't like a great deal of the sentiment, such as his expectation of how the birth would proceed:

I had been expecting the birth to occur in an orderly fashion at the hospital: the midwife and nurses in scrubs, regular reports on how many centimeters her cervix had dilated, an opportunity to hold Leslie’s hand and wipe her brow. I had wanted to be the useful partner — and the witness. When the baby arrived, I would accept her from the nurse before placing her on Leslie’s chest, basking in the tableau of mother with newborn child.

Could his vision be any more polluted by the patriarchal myth that women need to be flat on their backs surrounded by a team of experts in order to do what most of them have been doing either alone or in the company of family members ever since we became bipedal? Does he have any idea of the history behind his desire to be the first to hold the baby? (In ancient Rome the father would be given the baby in order to see if it met his approval, if it did not it was exposed or sold into slavery.) Does he have any idea how useless (and annoying) brow mopping is? (If I had a dollar for the number of times I've seen women giggle over their husband's earnest brow mopping on Mummy Bulletin Boards... If my husband had tried that he'd have been flung across the room and possibly banished.) My guess is that our author is oblivious to both the implications behind his desire to be passed the baby and his misguided utility. I can't really blame him. He's a product of western culture, particularly American culture. So, when his wife yelled that she was having the baby in the bathroom, he did what he'd been taught to do - panic and call an ambulance. The birth of his daughter without him brought home a stark reality: he wasn't needed at all, it was quite possible he'd made things worse.

I think that unless we are careful, instead of being a participant in something wonderful, men like this one can be made to feel like irrelevant spectators. For the raw truth is, they are not needed at the birth. Natural and water birth pioneer Michael Odent goes so far as to say that male partners should not be allowed at births, that they only get in the way. I half agree.

I definitely wanted my husband there for the birth of my second, but I didn't take it for granted that my partner would be there the way I did with my first. He was very deliberately included in a team of half a dozen people and prepared appropriately for the event. The poor man, who comes from a very patriarchal home, was lectured to, shown videos, read to from books, made to be my advocate when I needed one, and given very strict instructions as to the boundaries of his role. Just like most other Australian blokes, his experience of birth was limited to movie portrayals and anecdotes from older relatives so he needed an entire re-education: history, medicine, male power and the myth of control. The man stepped up to the plate like an absolute hero and ended up catching his daughter (I was on my hands and knees for that one). He'll never forget it and neither will I.

My husband was the antithesis of the helpless, panic stricken ambulance caller. He knew what he could do, what I only I could do and exactly how he could facilitate it without getting in the way. He was amazing.

However, had he displayed a reluctance to be swayed from the patriarchal medical model he'd have been excluded. It would have been horrible and heart-breaking but I would have done it. The birth was both something I had to do, yet was also something that was happening to me - it was a tug-of-war between me, my body and a baby clamouring to get out into the world. I would never risk having someone present who might disrupt the delicate relationship I needed to establish with my body to achieve a good outcome. Husbands who panic, or who encourage their wives to accept interventions to satisfy their need to feel like "something is being done", are not capable of acting in the best interest of their wives. They'd be better off in the waiting room nursing their cigars.

To summarise, any man who believes that birth should be orderly and furthermore, CONTROLLED should definitely be banned from attending births. Most of them love their wives and want to be supportve, but their panic in the face of their helplessness is not, well, helpful.

India: Abortion without the husband's knowledge is mental cruelty and grounds for divorce *sigh*

According to India's national newspaper The Hindu, having an abortion without your husband's knowledge is an act of mental cruelty toward the husband and grounds for divorce. The logic employed here is so alarming my neocortex was clamoring for a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down.

How could he be affected by abortions of which he had no knowledge????

I'm trying to think of other acts that could be performed without the spouse's knowledge that could also be construed as mental cruelty. This in itself is tricky as I've always thought of mental cruelty as something that is DONE to another person. It is an act that requires two parties, a perpetrator and a victim.

Perhaps my confusion stems from their use of the word cruelty? Good philosophers always check for a terminalogical dispute, so, from my Apple Dictionary:

"cruelty |ˈkroōəltē|
noun ( pl. -ties)
callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering : he has treated her with extreme cruelty.
• behavior that causes pain or suffering to a person or animal : we can't stand cruelty to animals | the cruelties of forced assimilation and genocide.
• Law behavior that causes physical or mental harm to another, esp. a spouse, whether intentionally or not.
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French crualte, based on Latin crudelitas, from crudelis (see cruel)."

OK, if they are using the legal term (and I assume by the nature of the article that they are) then the act must only harm the spouse, and does not necessarily have to be directed at the spouse. For example, gambling away the couple's life savings and house might be considered an act of cruelty though the act is not directed at the spouse at all. My gambling example could also serve as an instance of the act occurring without the knowledge of the spouse - at least initially.

So in this case, the husband obviously wanted children and upon learning that his wife had terminated three pregnancies suffered mental anguish (or more likely anger at being gipped) and sued for divorce. Fair enough? Maybe, until we check out the flip side of this scenario.

The players are the same, we have a husband who wants children and a wife who does not. The wife becomes pregnant and due to a slight alteration in her situation cannot secretly terminate the pregnancy but must carry, bear and rear a child or children she does not want. Will she be able to sue for divorce due to mental cruelty? NO. Colour me surprised at the inequity.

Oh no! Don't be friends wiv da boyz!

This is primary school-yard logic from a journalist who I assume is at least old enough to vote.

Articles like this are only going to be taken seriously by the most vacant of women, and will barely blip on the radar of men who think of women as people rather than potential bedmates. Crushes can be dealt with and most of them pass, leaving rock solid friendships. The kind of emotional immaturity that results in a person only having close friendships with their own sex is unfortunate and curable. Articles like this do not help.