Is there any other community that treats women like that and yet is treated as completely American?
It's the imagination which has to be policed
Apparently, "American" is also a project of the imagination to be policed? (I happen to think that is partly true, and interesting)
2ndly, the imagination = (undifferentiated) desire, and is policed by the Symbolic, in the production reading of texts.
I'm sure there must be splinter congregations of conservative Baptists and Pentecostals who treat women not exactly like that but in comparably degrading ways and who are treated as even more American.
Most of the non-standard LDS groups are like that and LDS is the most American of all religions in some sense.
LDS and Scientology are the only sizable religions with local founders I can think of.
I doubt that anyone actually follows this particular ritual, which isn't attributed to any particular interviewee.
Regardless,
To call these splinter groups completely American is something of a stretch. The efforts they take to separate themselves from America are much more intrusive than the sex rules. E.g. Speaking Yiddish (to separate themselves from both U.s. And Israel), living in segregated neighborhoods or separate towns, hair and dress that mark them as separate, observing kosher rules that effectively mean they can't sit down for a meal with other Americans.
My favorite recent recent modern orthodox experience was a colleague's daughter's wedding. For the religious part of the wedding, men and women are separated, so that everyone can worship without distraction. While we're waiting for the show to start, lots of the guys around me are texting. I eavesdrop a bit, and it's clear they are chatting with their girlfriends or wives on the other side of the curtain.
living in segregated neighborhoods or separate towns no-go zones
Timely, since I was just debating something similar with friends: if one had to be a woman in a repressive religious subculture, should one choose the strictest form of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam?
(As for the panties in the baggy, I used to read blogs written by hasidim in Brooklyn--Renegade Rebbetzin, and the like--and my sense is that this kind of examination is done fairly frequently).
Which fundies would you fuck, marry, or kill?
No kidding. This article is an interesting counterpart to that essay on genital mutilation you posted last week. It's like, we'll let you *keep* your clitoris, but no one is ever allowed to touch it.
2: I'm not aware of any Christian communities who have menstruation taboos of that sort. Different degradations, sure.
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Jesus fucking Christ, I am booking my own train tickets next time, rather than letting the office do it and so trying to write Great Thorts in a carriage full of screaming children and chattering teenagers
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Most of the non-standard LDS groups are like that and LDS is the most American of all religions in some sense.
The LDS offshoots have a lot of basic modesty restrictions in dress and such but the Hasidim are a whole other level of old world crazy.
At her synagogue, at the northern tip of the Bronx, the men sit separate from the women, partitioned by a wooden screen. She keeps her legs concealed past the knees, her arms past the elbows. Until menopause, she obeyed the laws that surround menstruation. During the time of her period and for seven days thereafter -- for 12 or more days each month, until she was permitted to visit a mikvah and purge herself in the special waters there -- she slept apart from her husband and didn't touch him in any way at any hour. In her tainted state, she didn't so much as pass a dish of food directly to him, no matter if she took care that their hands made no contact. To touch the same platter at the same moment was forbidden.
The article then points out that she's in a modern orthodox sect, not ultra. Oh, the sexes are divided in the synagogue side to side instead of front to back and the women are allowed to have their voices be audible when they pray. Awesome.
I forgot Seventh-Day Adventists. I think they have enough new content to qualify as "American" and are also very large.
In 6th grade my Hebrew day school spent an overnight Shabbat in Lakewood, NJ. I remember little kids rocking some sick payos and eating Golden Grahams for the first time at my host family's house. I was not consulted on any menstrual questions.
On topic because religion and women. A woman brought her dog (a very small puppy version of some terrier) to church today. Stayed the whole time and nobody said anything. Pope Francis is really changing things quickly.
12.1: Aren't Eastern Orthodox and Coptic women supposed to refrain from taking communion while they're menstruating?
14: I thought that, due to dietary restrictions, they'd be smaller than average.
20: No, my parents were just super strict about sugary cereals. It made an impression.
I guess Golden Grahams don't suppress sexual urges the way proper Graham crackers do.
18: My dad grew-up next to an obese 7th Day Adventist. Which was a real trick in the 1930s. He ate peanuts constantly.
19: Good one. Yes.
17: I really don't know, I can believe it more easily of the Copts. But Russians? Serbs? Bulgarians? I can ask around
I hate to put it quite this way but stories like this cast a new light on the parts of the New Testament where people are super-angry at the Big J about matters that seem quite minor to this 21st-century bourgeois dummy.
Ume is right (curses!) - the taboo persisted for some time, according to Ute Ranke Heinemann:
'He that has intercourse with his wife during her period', warned Archbishop Caesarius of Arles (d. 542), 'will father children that are leprous, epileptic, or possessed by the Devil' (Peter Browe, 'Beiträge zur Sexualethik des Mittelalters', p. 48). Isidore of Seville (d. 636), whose encyclopedic 'Origines' was widely read for centuries, wrote of menstrual blood: 'After contact with it fruits cannot germinate, flowers wilt, grasses wither . . . iron rusts, bronze turns black, and dogs that partake of it develop rabies' (ibid., p. 2). Like Philo, he believed it so 'corrupted' semen that menstruation precluded conception. Abbot Regino of Prüm (d. 915) and Burchard of Worms (d. 1025) laid it down that priests in the confessional should question penitents on the subject of intercourse during menstruation.
Great theologians of the thirteenth century such as Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus condemned intercourse with a menstruating woman as a mortal sin because of its detrimental effect on children. Berthold of Ratisbon (d. 1272), the thirteenth century's most celebrated preacher, made this abundantly clear: As for the children that are conceived at such times, you will delight in none of them, for they will be either possessed by the Devil, or leprous, or epileptic, or hunchbacked, or blind, or malformed, or feeble-minded, or club-headed ... Even if you have been absent for four weeks, nay more, for two years, beware of desiring her . . . Being honest folk, you know full well that the stinking Jew takes great pains to eschew the time in question' (F. Göbel, 'Die Missionspredigten des Franziskaners Berthold von Regensburg', p. 354f.). Berthold mentions the Jews ('stinking' Jews in accordance with Christian anti-Semitism) because the fact that so few of them contracted leprosy was often ascribed during the Middle Ages to their careful observance of the ban on intercourse with menstruating women. The contrary circumstance - that leprosy and other ailments were especially rife among the peasantry - is attributed by Berthold to their habit of copulating with their wives at such times (Browe, op. cit., p. 4). John Hus (d. 1415) held that children born of intercourse with menstruating women were likely to be hunchbacked, one-eyed, epileptic, lame, and possessed by the Devil (ibid., p. 5).
and
As to whether menstruating women should be permitted to receive Communion, this was regularly disputed until well into the Middle Ages, the Eastern Church being even more hidebound than the Western. Patriarch Dionysus of Alexandria (d. 264 or 265), a pupil of Origen, declared that it was unnecessary even to pose the question of permissibility for it would never occur to pious, devout women to touch the sacred Communion table or the Lord's body and blood' (Epistolae can. 2, PG10, 1281A). Cardinal Humbert, the papal legate who formally consummated the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches at Constantinople in 1054, reproached the Greek Church for discriminating against women in this respect. Theodore of Balsamon (d. after 1195), a celebrated Greek Orthodox canonist and patriarch of Antioch, supported the practice of discrimination, as did Cyril III, the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria (d. 1243). The Maronites did not abolish it until 1596.
The West adopted a milder stance. Although Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) did not forbid menstruating women to enter churches and receive Communion, he commended those that refrained from communicating at such times. He regarded menstruation as the consequence of guilt: a woman should not be 'prohibited during these same days from receiving the mystery of holy communion. If, however, out of great reverence, she does not presume to receive, she is to be commended. The menstrous habit in women is no sin, seeing that it occurs naturally; yet that nature itself has been so vitiated as to seem polluted even without human volition' (Letter in reply to Bishop Augustine of England, 10th answer ).
All this makes me believe in progress, as I sit in a hotel outside Clifford's Tower, itself the scene of a horrible massacre of Jews, waiting to see the first woman bishop in England consecrated tomorrow morning.
That the taboo persists in Copts I know first-hand from an Egyptian student couple who attended the same Anglican church in Kyoto, since there wasn't one of their own denomination within several thousand miles. The wife would regularly miss services during their first year there, but I didn't realize why until she later had a baby and wouldn't come back to church until at least 40 days had passed since the birth. At that point her husband asked the rather nonplussed priest to say prayers of purification and blessing over her so she could take communion again. Only then did the penny drop about her earlier monthly absences, which she confirmed when I asked her directly.
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Not a threadjack, just a link
Phase One ...Jacobin has the best coverage of Syriza, and the linked article is like a fooking buck of microanalysis of Greek lefty politics. Long long long.
This is how Marxists do it.
Last night read about a long argument between EP Thompson and Perry Anderson about the subjective and objective circumstances of class consciousness and class struggle. I always try to remember that when Kouvelakis says:
To be more precise, the left part of the majority -- composed mostly of the movementists and a left split away from Tsipras's current in Synaspismos (Left Unity) -- has demarcated itself from the rest. (In typically Greek style, the result of this process is that we now have Left Left Unity (sic) and Right Left Unity (sic) around Tsipras).
We are talking about people, with names and addresses.
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29 - I read about 1/4 of that thing before giving up and it was pretty confusing. Apparently it's a big part of Syriza's identity to be not a social-democratic-left but radical-left party, but what this means in practice is pretty confusing since their actual platform seems like that of a social democratic party, and they also are at war with the old-line communists. But good on them, if there's one place that needs its elites shaken the fuck up it's Europe right now. Seems like a genuinely big deal, at least potentially.
28 -- get a few gay bishops, you laggard losers, and then we can talk.
That last was in jest and supposed to be to 27.
31: Don't worry, I did realize on both counts. In any case, we have quite a few already, even if none of them is prepared to come out just yet.
The only hospital in this town is 7th day Adventist. They pray over the loud-speaker and someone came around asking if we'd like to bless our baby. All in all, the religious parts are a rather small part of the total experience, though.
They don't predict the end of the world anymore either. Total sell outs.
the religious parts are a rather small part of the total experience
I guess that depends how you assign weights to the various factors. My personal coefficient of baby is 0.5, while my coefficient of loudspeaker prayer is 5673.
8.1: Islam, 100%. I've made a number of good friends who are modern Orthodox through online fostering groups, but it holds no appeal to me.
33: avoid Jewish hospitals, especially on Saturdays. Since some folks won't press elevator buttons on the sabbath, they program the elevators to operate continuously, stopping on every floor for the full 25 hour period ( not a typo, sabbath is 25 hours). It makes for a slow ride.
My grandmother lived in a tony, Jewish-affiliated assisted living place with that setup, but IIRC they kindly made only one of the two elevators a Sabbath elevator.
I guess a pater noster would be a bad choice for an assisted living place or a hospital.
When I was a little kid, I used to press all the buttons on the elevator as I exited. I wasn't an asshole. I was a Shabbos goy with a poor memory for what day of the week it was.
37: I once stayed in a Kosher hotel in Jerusalem over the sabbath. It had two sabbath elevators side by side, one of which stopped at all the odd floors, the other, at all the even. The bartender was an elderly Palestinian. He served me coffee and told me with enormous relish that he refused all Jews coffee because it would have required him to operate the expresso machine. That may have been the moment when I stopped believing in a two state solution and started to expect armageddon instead.
When my sister was born (1963), my mother talked seriously about being Churched, and she was a liberal mainstream Anglican. I can't remember whether she actually did it, or if the vicar would have had a clue how to go about it, but I guess it wasn't all that extinct 50 years ago.
I had to google to figure out what you were talking about.
Well, it was directly on topic. That always throws me.
42: It's in the prayer book. My friend the 16th century historian used to say it made sense as a celebration of surviving childbirth and the associated mortality.
Sometimes I think that we imagine the sexual revolution was -- in some ways -- a celebration of the fact that pregnancy was no longer social death. But a much deeper, if earlier, loosening of puritan taboos must have come about in the nineteenth century when pregnancy no longer carried a significant chance of ending in physical death. "With my body I thee worship" -- no shit, when the body might be a sacrifice as a result.
46: I think your timing is off about when pregnancy was less likely to end in death. I think it was the introduction of antibiotics (sulfa) in the 1940s. Its introduction came early in maternity wards, because of the high mortality rates. This paper shows a drop from about 45 deaths per 1,000 births dropping to fewer than 5 in the 1940s in the UK.
wow. Thanks.
Not the same thing, but I do remember for some reason researching infant mortality in Ireland -- oh, yes, it was the nuns-tossing-babies-in-the-cesspit story -- and it was really mindbogglingly awful until the Thirties. Much worse than in England.
Excepting the current U.S. wonder system, there's a pretty clear pattern between national income/wealth and infant mortality.
46.2: I remember seeing the childbirth-as-deadly-sacrifice in a lot of writing from around 1900, though the only exemplar which is coming to mind now is The Souls of Black Folks. So at least as a literary impression, the change must've come later.
On preview, pwned by 47 with actual numbers.
48: You're welcome. I just read a book called Demon Under the Microscope, which has quite a few details if you're interested. Also, the link between handwashing and infection control came from maternity wards in 1846, but was rejected roundly by the medical establishment for decades.
46 &ff:
The 19th c did have marriage survival improvements due to handwashing, carbolic, and birth control, but they were all adopted patchily.
I was also going to comment on the hand-washing in maternity wards, but thankfully for once I previewed after letting the comment sit for a minute or two.
You've never been careless with fire or a stove. Hooray.
55: They're used a lot less these days because better stuff is out there and a small percentage of people are deathly allergic to them. But they're relatively easy to make and a hell of a lot better than nothing.
55: For the same reason, I used to think "sulfa drug" was just an old-fashioned name for antibiotic.
An infected cut often gets prescribed oral Bactrim, aka trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole in addition to topicals. Sulfa drugs don't have broad spectrum activity and work on only some strains of staph.
55, they still use sulfa drugs (sulfonamides) but allergies are common, so they aren't the first choice for anything. The most common one has the trade name "Bactrim".
Semmelweis" by Jens Bjørneboe. Performed in 1977 at Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo, New York with Lewis J. Stadlen, Kathy Bates, and Kim Hunter. Performed in 1978 at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. with Colin Blakeley. Performed in 1981 at Hartman Theater in Stamford, Connecticut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Literature
I researched this and this is almost definitely wrong -- the play performed at the Kennedy Center was by Howard Sackler, best known for the The Great White Hope. How do I go about fixing wikipedia?
I guess to be more specific, they work on some staph, some strep, and cholera. However, there are antibiotics with much broader spectrum, and few doctors bother to run susceptibility testing, which is time-consuming, when they could prescribe something broad spectrum.
61: You just click the "edit" link at the beginning of the section. If you find that too intimidating, click on the "Talk" link at the top of the article, and just post a comment with the correction.
they still use sulfa drugs (sulfonamides) but allergies are common
There are a few antidepressants that will trigger a reaction if you're allergic to sulfa drugs, too. A friend of mine got in a terrible cycle of having her dosage repeatedly increased because she was getting crazier and crazier, like, starting to have hallucinations. And then it turned out she has a sulfa allergy and the drugs were causing most of her symptoms of psychosis.
Regarding Semmelweiss, sulfa, and terrible GPs, great book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Medicine-Doctors-Doing-Hippocrates/dp/0199212791%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduc08-21%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0199212791
46 is what I was thinking. Good for celebrating the woman's survival.
Ooh, I have an antibiotic question.
I got Bactrim once for a UTI, and it worked fine. Nice 3-day treatment. The second time I had it I started puking like crazy. Not clear whether it was causal or just progression of the underlying infection. Nonetheless, they switched my antibiotic (3rd one was the charm. Well, really the 4th, because I had to get an IV infusion one because of all the vomiting)
They are so quick to offer Cipro. I thought that that was the big guns with a risk of causing tendonitis, but the doctors seem to want to hand it out like candy (the words of a neurologist who obviously isn't prescribing it). I'm kind of nervous about this.
Is Cipro way overprescribed? My doctor's office does always perform cultures and won't prescribe over the phone based on symptoms alone. But they really like Cipro.
By the way, in the end it was good old-fashioned Macrobid for the win.
I keep my urinary tract clean with Yuengling.
69: Laughing, but, uhh. Next you'll tell me you drink Rolling Rock.
The beer I have in my fridge is usually either Yuengling or PBR. Sometimes Natty Bo. Partially because I'm cheap (read: poor), but also because I don't want to lose my membership in the Hipster Guild.
Rolling Rock moved to New Jersey, the bastards. I did used to drink it. I tried drinking Iron City but it turns out to be be awful. IC Light is just blah.
PBR doesn't taste good. Better than IC Light but worse than Budweisser.
I sort of want to try a Natty Bo. Have not had one since high school.