Not The Post I Was Going To Make, or Further Tales of Insomnia

[soubie]

So I'd had Ask Hadley down as generally ridiculous, until I found she'd written sensible things elsewhere about the Angelina Jolie No-Boobs revelation (not answering my question about whether anyone old enough to be making that choice should be basing their decisions on What Angelina Would Do, but hey, it's the 'who who is old enough to even have a

Comments

[just_ann_now]

I'm still just too agape with horror at the whole, "Get Britain Fertile" thing. What the holy hell.

I have no icon that's even vaguely apropos. Have some James Bond.

[soubie]

I know, right? And the sick thing is, the birth rate is already as high as it's been for 20 years- but this campaign is consciously, avowedly pitched at young graduates and middle class people, who the campaigners are terribly worried about 'putting it off', because they don't know about fertility, apparently. Unless it's a concerted effort to get women out of the workplace, the only other interpretation is: "yes, there are lots of babies but with the wrong sort of parents!" And if that's not eugenics by any other name, what is? It's exactly the message of that Nazi poster of 'the rise of the subhumans' showing how criminals and disabled people are 'outbreading' 'proper German families'!

[just_ann_now]

there are lots of babies but with the wrong sort of parents!

Yes, that was my first thought. My second thought was, "Bad selfish feminists! Taking away jobs from men with families to support!" What's the point of being in the 21st century if you've still got to fight attitudes from the 19th?

[soubie]

Actually I think they're broadly in favour of women their own age in the workplace- just so long as they don't start til they've raised 2 or 3 kids to school age, ie applying for entry-level jobs in their early to mid 30s, against blokes in their early 20s. Yeah, that'd get you taken seriously

[anonymous]

Having worked for several breast surgeons, and having witnessed women postponing mastectomies until it killed them,, if it takes a movie-star's assurance that you can still be a woman without breasts made of fat-tissue, I'm all in favor of it

[soubie]

Having worked for several breast surgeons, and having witnessed women postponing mastectomies until it killed them,, if it takes a movie-star's assurance that you can still be a woman without breasts made of fat-tissue, I'm all in favor of it!Yeah, I knew I was, well, looking at it a bit too cynically (sometimes cynicism doesn't actually apply to how people actually are!) As one who has no particular reason to worry about the B-whateveritis gene, but being on the tipping point of having breasts with more fat-tissue than my spine can handle, but not in a position to do anything about it (to be honest, as a woman a little less than thirty with no cause to believe firmly that I'll have children but not yet quite ready to give up hope completely, I'm also rather tired of everyone and his dog offering opinions about what I should and shouldn't be doing to/with/about my breasts- I'm not actually facing death from them, unless you believe that the wired bra I need to get downstairs without folding my arms around my chest will give me cancer

[soubie]

I think there was some question on QI once that claimed that, logically, all humans alive must be descendants of Genghis Khan- the reasoning being that for all of us to have the requisite number of ancestors fanning out to only a thousand years ago, that would take more human beings than would have been alive at the time. Of course it was to point out that actually most of those people would have been the same few people and most people in, say, England, don't actually have genes that can be traced to Mongolia. I'm not sure what this means except that human breeding isn't what one would think it is (and honestly, given the tribal lifestyle and summer sun in Scandinavia and Scotland, that any lineage should survive being red-headed speaks more about humans being attracted to the exotic than the practical.) (On the other hand, I have heard of an A.I. bank in London that allegedly- and it's only allegedly- has a policy of not accepting sperm of redheaded men because allegedly people often specify that they don't want a 'ginger' baby,

[ext_1852075]

Oh, I love essay replies! I come from a family of storytellers It drives my husband crazy sometimes. He says our idea of conversation is taking turns making speeches

Oops!

[ext_1852075]

Oops! I forgot to log in with that last entry, and it went in as "anonymous". This is Dreamdeer.