fester@cs.washington.EDU (Lea Fester) (02/21/91)
In article <666712518@lear.cs.duke.edu> gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) writes: > >And I tell you that Jews had broken into the main-stream society long before >there was affirmative action around We could quibble about what you mean by "broken into the main-stream", I suppose, but unless you mean no more than that *some* Jews were able to make it *in spite of* being Jewish, you are wrong. There were anti-Jewish (as well as anti- other minorities) quotas at colleges in the US as late as the late 1960's, for example, and it is my opinion that it was the same social consciousness that generated affirmative action that was responsible for eliminating these quotas. , and that affirmative action is used, >in practice, to set quotas against asians. Categorically, with this precise intent ? Even categorically without intent ? Come off it. Lea
betsyp@apollo.HP.COM (Betsy Perry) (03/09/91)
In article <1991Feb24.192139.1421@xanadu.com> nadja@xanadu.COM (Nadja Adolf) writes: >BTW, Hillel, my brother is an ethnic who benefitted by AA; he is a Critical >Care Nurse. He is trying to win a battle to permit him to work in Labor and >Delivery and the Maternity ward. Sexist people won't let men work those units >in my old state. Fascinating: this brought me up hard against my own prejudices. I just gave birth 5 months ago, and I think I'd have tried to walk out of the delivery room if my attending nurse had been male! My husband is male and was present, and my OB was male and present for the birth, but the OB nurses were women. I guess the difference in modesty, for me, comes from the situation: Obstetricians don't see you naked until you're actually *giving birth*, by which time you're much too busy delivering to have any energy left over for modesty; by contrast, the OB nurses are around for the early part of labor, during which you still retain some socialization. (Yes, your OB sees you naked from-the-waist-down during checkups, but you're under a drape, and eye contact is carefully avoided. ;-) It was also pleasant to have at least one person present in the room who'd actually given birth, so the situation wasn't theoretical for her. Obviously, not all females have given birth; but no male has, at least to my knowledge. So should laboring women be able to refuse, e.g., Black nurses for the same reasons ("I just don't feel COMFORTABLE with one of them around")? This is tough for me. I don't have any easy answers. I do know that labor is a very stressful time, and that it's not the best time to raise somebody's consciousness; laboring women are apt to have little energy for dialectic. Comments, anybody? Not as enlightened a feminist as she'd thought, [Incidentally, my position on the locker-room issue is that NOBODY should be admitted to the locker-rooms; why should anybody be forced to be naked in front of strangers, of whatever sex?] -- Betsy Perry (note P in userid) betsyp@apollo.hp.com Apollo Division, Hewlett-Packard, Inc. This, too, shall pass.
jill%cirrusl@oliveb.atc.olivetti.COM (Jill Wilker) (03/15/91)
> Someone else wrote: [I didn't save the name] >I just gave birth 5 months ago, and I think I'd have tried to walk out >of the delivery room if my attending nurse had been male! My husband >is male and was present, and my OB was male and present for the birth, >but the OB nurses were women. >.... >It was also pleasant to have at least one person present in the room >who'd actually given birth, so the situation wasn't theoretical for >her. Obviously, not all females have given birth; but no male has, at >least to my knowledge. I gave birth last August. My husband was present, as was a wonderful woman friend. My husband was my focus (breathing,etc ) but my friend was my moral support. The OB nurse (during the majority of my labor, I had the same one - this is rare I am told.) was a white woman who had had children. My OB-GYN is also a woman. I was very lucky. I had two very close friends (husband and Barb) who were there to help me and talk to me. Your point about what to do if the OB nurse is not "right" for you... that is a good one. Any patient in a hospital should have the right to refuse treatment in a non-emergency from anyone that they do not get "along with". This works fine if other help is available (in a larger hospital, this should be fine), and the request is not based on preformed ideas about race, sex, etc. Now this sounds fine in theory but I personally don't know if I would have appreciated any OB nurse (male, black, white, female, red, alien) who had not given birth before. Trying to imagine if my OB nurse was male - that is difficult... I really don't know what I would have done in that situation. I most likely would have told him off a couple of times since I knew that he obviously had no way of knowing what I was going through. My husband (a wonderfully empathetic and caring and etc and etc MALE) can only guess - only someone who has given birth can REALLY know. Now, do I think that a male OB nurse can do an adequate job of helping a laboring woman... well... the suggestions that my nurse gave as far as changing position, moving around, checking the baby, etc. - these things take experience on the job and mostly can be "learned"... Knowing that my nurse and my friend had "been" there before proved to be a big psychological boost that just having my husband there could not be. By the way, during my labor, my baby had breathed a lot of meconimum and needed a peditrician there - the baby doctor that we (my husband and I) had picked was not available that evening and the doctor on call was a jerk. Not only was he a jerk but he was trying to interfere with the relationship between my OB and myself. We were discussing episiomety (spelling ??) and if I would rather tear a little versus getting cut a little. He interfered during this and tried to dominate as a male and as a doctor. My woman friend (Barb) almost straggled him (not really)... she eventually told him to "shut up". Basically, he was trying to get me to be this "good little girl" and obey my doctor because my OB should know what's best for me... (I am not that young - 26yrs.) I find it interesting that his tone of voice and speech were really trying to conjure up this "I am the knowing and experienced doctor, you are a meek little girl" stuff. Needless to say, we (my husband, Barb, and myself) did not buy into his theory. My doctor basically ignored him. I wonder how many parents of his patients buy into his crap - "don't question me, I KNOW better" stuff. Also it sounds as if you labored in one room and delivered in another. I was again lucky in that the small hospital that I had access to had LDR (Labor-Delivery-Recovery) rooms. No changing rooms in the middle! Is this option more prevalent on the coasts? Also, I was wondering about a theory that I have heard about childbirth and women. Basically, I have heard that childbirth was mostly in the hands of women (through mother/daughter, midwives, etc) until the American Medical Association came along and started making it illegal and "countrified" not to have a baby in the hospital. Also about that time abortion was made illegal... up until that time, it was considered okay for women to have an abortion until she felt a quickening (movement). This was wrapped up in the theory that men wanted to control the reproductive freedom of women and when and how they gave birth. I read Mary Daley's book "GynEcology" some time again and I think that is where this "idea" was brought up. Is there any more information about this? Have I dreamed this up? Jill
gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) (03/16/91)
In article <9103140151.AA01647@ss130.CIRRUSLOGIC.uucp> jill%cirrusl@oliveb.atc.olivetti.COM (Jill Wilker) writes: >that is a good one. Any patient in a hospital should have the right >to refuse treatment in a non-emergency from anyone that they do not >get "along with". Will you support the right of white patient to refuse treatment from blacks? If a hospital will refuse to hire blacks because "most patient don't want to be treated by them", will you support black people right to *sue* the hospital? >Jill Hillel gazit@cs.duke.edu "When I do it to you it's discrimination, when you do it to me it's affirmative action."