a frustration

Whilst working furiously along today, I chanced to overhear some of my co workers talking. One of them had a baby a few months ago, and they were comparing notes about the difficulties of raising boys vs. raising girls. I didn't participate - I know next to nothing about parenting, and I was busy besides. Still, even though it wasn't my business one of them said something that made me flinch.

The conversation turned towards teenagers and how girls become more difficult at that age because "you have to beat the boys off with a stick". Said "difficulties" arise in limiting the teenage girls movements and activities so she's safe from predatory boys, a good reason, certainly.

So, why does this bother me?

Because I've heard this so many times, and having been a teenage girl I was subject to my own parents' attempts to protect me by limiting my activities. Don't go there, or don't go after dark, or don't go alone. Better, yet, just don't go out. You'll be safe.

All these concerns started when I was around 13 or so and being harrassed at school by boys - what am I supposed to do, not get an education? Even discussions of inevitable marriage seemed to turn on "all boys are potential rapists, so you have to date and find one nice one to protect you from all the others." How is this in any way a sane strategy based on what I'd been told and experienced?

And I can't hammer my parents too hard - they meant well, and in retrospect I am grateful they were looking out for me, no matter how much it pissed me off at the time. But still:

Please, please let's not be raising more girls to rely on either their daddy or a boyfriend/husband as a bodyguard, constantly second guessing their activities out of fear! Teach them to defend themselves - some little boy pinches your ass, you slap him! And why do I never hear talk about teaching boys not to harass girls, and not to put up with their buddies doing it either?

I put forth my humble solution, humble because I know jack about being a teenage boy or raising children of any age: teach girls it's ok to slap and talk back to harassers. Teach boys not to harass in the first place. And teach boys it's ok that if a girl is being harassed to get her back if she's fighting and the boy is twice her size - even if the girl is a stranger and the boy is their best friend.

</rant off>

televisual feasting: Rx For Survival

I've been watching this miniseries/documentary for the past couple of nights. It's 6 hours of tv (PBS so no commercials) and quite serious, but if it's running on your local PBS station I highly recommend it (I'm sure it will repeat).

Those who know me know that I contract to part of the National Institutes of Health, not in any medical or scientific way, but I do read the stuff that crosses my desk and the people I technically support are doing some Very Cool Things. I genuinely find epidemiology and public health interesting, even if I have only a layperson's understanding of the issues.

One of the best (if morbid) things about the series is that it shows what these terrible diseases look like - polio, smallpox, river blindness, West Nile etc. in Technicolor on screen. The reason I say "best" is because living in the developed world we're fairly isolated from disease and death and because many of the Big Bads have been eradicated here it's easy to develop this idea that they weren't really that bad. A description of smallpox (pustules, fever, dizziness) sounds like nothing worse than a bad case of chicken pox until you see pictures of it. Polio - we think of FDR, who had the best medical care of his time, not a baby in Africa who will never walk.

Maybe that's "anti-vaccines" is a trend - people really don't see or remember just how bad things were :(

Anyway - if it's on in your neck of the woods, see it. All of it isn't morbid, I promise - some of it is quite hopeful, especially BRAC, which teaches poor women how to provide health care for their communities.