Why being raped *IS* just as bad for a prostitute. A simple analogy.

To all the people who think that being raped is not so bad for a prostitute, and that offenders should be treated more leniently.  Generally the reason given for this is that prostitutes engage in sexual conduct all the time, so therefore sex within the context of rape is not so traumatic.

I would like to offer an analogy to show that just because you do something all the time, having it done against your will is traumatic no matter what it is.

Most of us can swim.  Most of us don't mind diving under the water, in fact most swimmers enjoy it.  If you're the kind of person who enjoys swimming, or even if you don't enjoy it so much but you can get under the water if you have to (to rescue your phone from the bottom of a pool for example) try to compare the voluntary going under the water and coming up for air at your leisure, to being dunked by an arse-hole who does not know when to stop.

Imagine being pushed under when you weren't ready, and even if you managed to get a breath in, imagine being held under so that even if you wanted to take another breath you couldn't.  Imagine that the person doing this to you didn't think it was a problem, and didn't care about your suffering, hell, even thought it was funny!  Imagine fearing for your life when you realise that you will be be let up for air at the whim of merciless dickhead.

Imagine, after the arse-hole has had his fun, and you're staggering out of the water gasping for air, and cursing obscenities at the fuck-knuckle for abusing you in this way, that someone dismissed your experience with, "Well, it's not as bad for you, you're used to going under water." It wouldn't go down particularly well would it?

A near drowning at the mercy of another person is traumatic no matter who you are.  It may be *more* traumatic if you've never been under water before, I'm not denying that.  The argument is that no matter how many times you've been underwater of your on volition being forced under is traumatic, period.  And no matter how many times you've had sex, whether it be for love or money, being forced to do it is traumatic also.

Some people find this concept very difficult.  It is my profound hope that I have just made it a tiny bit easier. *bows* *crawls back under rock*

"Yes? or No?" When philosophy becomes the courtroom.

In a recent and lovely chat with my supie he was trying to prove a point and asked me to make a decision on a topic that I thought included one or more grey areas. "No, don't explain." he said "Just answer yes or no." In other words, do I believe a) or b)? I believed neither, but humoured him by choosing one of them prefixed with, "Ah, I see, we are in court now?" It was mildly funny at the time, you probably had to be there.

I did not emerge from that chat with my supervisor agreeing that representationalism about pain was a tenable position. I was not sure why at the time because sometimes, with me, things need to percolate before the solutions present themselves. In this case the solution presented itself during the walk from the car park over two weeks later.

It turns out the problem was the courtroom style of limited choices. Just how good is your philosophical position if you must force agreement from your opponent? The forced choice meant that one of the premises, rather than being a sturdy foundation for a conclusion, had become... crumbly... Of course this is not necessarily fatal to the overall argument, it might be an easily rectified dent, the position might hold just as easily without the premise in question. Nevertheless the point is that if I am forced to agree with an argument's premise I am never going to emerge from a discussion convinced of its conclusion and neither should anyone else.

What his request for my 'yes or no' answer should have highlighted was that we have a disagreement in what may be a significant area: he thinks the issue is a black and white one while I think coming down emphatically on either side is extreme and indefensible. If I am forced to choose what I think is the least problematic answer I have not technically agreed to anything other than a little congeniality for the sake of a quiet life.

It's something to watch for in my own arguments too, if I have to say to someone, "Just answer the question, yes or no." I might as well give the ground to my opponent straight away. If the premise is vital to your position it is much better to get a little sidetracked and delve into the grey area in question to convince your opponent of your premise. Your major point might be lost for a while but you'll still be arguing which, as far as I'm concerned, is the ultimate point of it all.

The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy Fail

Today I looked up Intensionality again as I can't seem to get the definition straight in my head. This is what the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy had to say:

"Failure of extensionality."

Helpful already, eh?

Then:

"A linguistic context is extensional if and only if the extension of the expression obtained by placing any subexpression in that context is the same as the extension of the expression obtained by placing in that context any subexpression with the same extension as the first subexpression."

All clear now. Not. I'm too tired to wade through it to determine whether a) it actually makes sense or b) the editor had a brain fart that day.

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The paucity of human ova. Seriously.

I was doing some light reading for my thesis on pain and I came across this charming quote about the evolution of traits and their biological function:

"A proper [biological] function of the swimming mechanism in a human sperm", says Milikan (1986), "is to get the sperm to an ovum. But only a minute proportion of these mechanisms actually perform this function - because of the paucity of human ova."

PARDON?

Paucity of human ova???? Not, "Reproduction as a method is so crazily inefficient that we need millions of swimming critters just to reach one egg." No, rather, there is a paucity of eggs.

If there were truly a paucity of ova, then every single egg rotting in my ovaries would have been utilised by the screaming baby-hungry hoards by now. There would be laws about it.

I can't believe that was written in the 80's.

Brief vent about mental illness and judgmental peeps who don't get it.

I have no idea where this came from. I am non-clinically depressed and anxious at the moment. That is, I have reasons for both!

When you’re depressed every act of will requires an extra push, like a low impact excersie routine done in water because the water provides resistance. With depression everything requires more effort, only you’re not wading through water, your universe has taken on the viscosity of a gel toothpaste. Everything you do is pushed through that medium, taking orders of magnitude more effort than the same actions when you’re not in a depressed state. But how to explain this to the happily unaffected?

It is very hard for those who are unaffected to related to the experience of having a brain that is not under their control. But I’m nothing if not tenacious so here is my attempt to explain…

Almost every one has had a crush on another person, right? It seems that everything they do is perfect, you are besotted, and most importantly, you can’t seem to stop thinking about them. Everything you see or do seems to relate back to them somehow, they are the last thing on your mind before you go to sleep, they may provoke stalking behaviour (especially since it is so easy to do these days!), their presence may equate with dizzying happiness accompanied by bouts of invincibility, they may also cause crushing anxiety and the misery associated with unrequited love. During this experience, you probably could not stop thinking about them even if you wanted to, the thought of the person interferes with your work and play. If you are lucky, this interference is painlessly seamless, if you are unlucky, you are unable to concentrate at all. This person, whoever they are, seems to have hijacked your thoughts, taken some of your mental liberty away.

The same could be said for worries, ever lost sleep because you could not switch of your brain for worry? That is an example of your mind being out of your control, you want to sleep, but you can't for worry. Surely if you had control over your emotional state this would not be a problem?

The main message is: Normal folk do suffer from periods when their mind/brain does things that they cannot control. That is a no brainer really, but I claim that it is these experiences that may help them relate to people with mental illness. So, assuming you believe me that normal people can suffer periods where their mind seems to be out of their control for some reason, try to imagine what that would be like without an object, that is without a crush on someone, without a worry to occupy your mind, without a reason to be sad.

Try to imagine a perpetual state of worry without an object of worry (this can be called anxiety).
Try to imagine a perpetual state of sadness without a reason to be sad (this is called depression).
Try to imagine extraordinary happiness, so happy that you believe nothing could ever hurt you, but without a reason to be happy (this is a symptom of bipolar disorder).
Try to imagine that switching off this worry, sadness or happiness is not an option, try to imagine that these feelings do not shift according to what is happening in your life. This is quite like the times when switching off for you is not an option.

What makes you different from the anxious or depressed person is that you have the comfort of a reason. We think you are so, so lucky. But please try to understand how unlucky we are. We have by accident, injury or design brains that will plunge us into the depths of despair, engage a dire apprehension that will gnaw at our guts or provoke swooping episodes of happiness where we become a danger to ourselves and others. Our brains do this for no reason at all and it can be terrifying.

Please also believe that we do not want to be like this, that we would not wish this state of being upon anyone. But we are tired of the labels of self-absorbed, or lazy, or paranoid, as though we were doing it on purpose. We are tired of the lack of understanding.

So next time you hear about or meet someone with a mental illness, when you read about suicides in the paper or are unfortunate enough to know someone who has attempted it. Try, try, try to remember the last time your mind was out of your control, and try to imagine what kind of hell it might be to be stuck there without a reason. Please.

I'm back. Or at least, I think I am.

Applying for scholarships again after a long break for reasons that I may or may not stick up here. In other words, real life and personal reasons. It has occurred to me that documentation of these events could be illuminating given that I'm semi-articulate and self absorbed enough to enjoy writing about personal drama. However, the fact that I was not even able to do that is an indication that I should think very carefully before going public.

I'm wading through old essays in an attempt to trace my developing interest in consciousness. It's a fascinating ride, and I've decided to put up a few snippets here, but before I do:

Important tip for part-timers - always, always look back over old essays. I have just realised that many of the positions I hold today are held for reasons that I have FORGOTTEN because I came into them years ago. So when I'm asked to justify them now I look like a complete eeejit, frantically grasping for memories I couldn't possibly be expected to retrieve in moments after a break of over ten years. Looking over these documents is like reading the journey of my arrival. It's so enlightening that I can't recommend it highly enough to people who have to complete their degrees at a snail's pace.

It's also an interesting example of extended mind :)

Sermon over.

There are so many references to it that I am vividly recalling my frustration at the word limit and how often I was picked up on a statement I did not have room to justify. Hopefully postgraduate study will allow me to justify to my heart's content, so wish me luck!

My frustration with the often tenebrous use of the terms consciousness and mind are evident in a 2000 tutorial assignment:

"How am I to answer a question about a Problem of Other Minds when I could not say for certain what features just one mind would possess?"

I was thinking about this ten years ago, and the question STILL bugs me today. This is a good, good sign :)

My frustration with the word limits, expressed in an essay:

"Since it is impossible in 2000 words to cover all philosophical theories of perception, I shall cover the central issues by using Fred Dretske's entry in my Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy as a guide..."

Actually this was complete crap. I had left this particular essay until the last minute and had to springboard 2000 words off a ~100 word dictionary entry - I was convinced I'd failed spectacularly. However, it seems that philosophy lecturers like it when you focus on one microscopic point and take it to pieces. Who knew?

My public comment on the draft - National Guidance on Maternity Care

or as I like to call it, Sharing the Maternity Habitat.

It's a bit long, but I've been too unwell to write anything more substantial than a tweet for ages, so I thought I'd put it up. It's terrible, but the best I could do in three hours :-\

To Whom It May Concern:

I’m an over educated mother of two having two degrees and a philosophy honours. I have been interested in reproductive autonomy ever since I had to fight to get it during the births of my two children. I have maintained an active interest ever since. My activities include writing to MPs and supporting and advising friends of their rights during their pregnancies and births. My primary reason for penning this contribution is that I believe that home birth midwives are professionals in their own right and thus should have indemnity insurance etc without the rather draconian necessity for collaboration.

Details are below. I humbly apologise for any errors of expression or formatting. I’m rather busy and vague and I was reminded of this deadline today - I only started at 9.00 pm! Obviously I feel very strongly about it if I’m willing to sweep all other commitments aside to work on it.

Reading through 1.1 Collaboration in health care, I am reminded that the hospital environment has its origins in the military and still has a rigorous ‘chain of command’ environment with doctors at the top and unquestioning nurses at the bottom. I was pleased to see your acknowledgement of the current health care culture in 2.6 Mutual trust and respect:

“For maternity care collaborations to be successful in Australia, the culture in maternity services will need to change. The current lack of trust is proving a major barrier. Trust and respect must be earned, rather than just assumed (Box 2.8; NHMRC consultations 2009).”

Collaborative care challenges that culture and you are to be congratulated on your efforts in this regard.

Summary of my points

We need to be sure that the people determining what is best evidence are capable, discerning and impartial. That is, they know how to read a paper and have some grasp of statistics.

Despite assertive wording in this document to the contrary, a power imbalance will continue between doctors and midwives. That this power imbalance remains illustrates that midwives are still not identified as independent maternity care professionals.

Private midwives must be able to enter metropolitan hospitals as the birthing woman’s chosen maternity care coordinator and be able to act with appropriate authority in this position.


Box 1.2 Point 2

“Collaboration empowers women to choose care that is based on the best evidence and is appropriate for themselves and for their local environment.”

During my experience in science I found that “best evidence” is always open to debate, and often what is best evidence is dictated by those who are perceived as more knowledgeable or experienced. In this case, the perceived voice of experience is the AMA. If the people dictating “best evidence” are doctors (well meaning, but fallible, reluctant to be sued, and an amazing number of them can’t do statistics) then there will be no improvement in maternity care and women will not be empowered because they will not be fully informed. Recently, the head of the AMA used a South Australian study to show that home birth was dangerous. If one reads the research paper it is perfectly clear that he misunderstood it, and if one removes the problematic births (premature, fatal birth defects) home births are just as safe as hospital births for normal pregnancies. We need to be sure that the people determining what is best evidence are capable, discerning and impartial. This needs to be explicitly stated in the guidelines as evidence guides risk assessment policies and it is these policies that will directly affect pregnant women.

Box 1.3

“Collaborating partners are independent maternity care professionals who are actively collaborating (i.e. not in an employee–employer relationship). Collaborating partners refer women to each other as the need arises.”

Despite your emphasis on there not being an employer-employee relationship, the power imbalance between doctors and midwives remains. A doctor will not lose insurance and Medicare access if a midwife refuses to collaborate with him/her, but a midwife stands to lose all of these things if a doctor refuses collaboration. That this power imbalance remains illustrates that midwives are still not identified as independent maternity care professionals. The power relationship is the same as that of an employer/employee in this respect.

I am saddened to see the assertion repeated here in 2.3 Awareness of disciplines and autonomy:

“Importantly, maternity care professionals should fully respect each other's professional autonomy. As regulated health practitioners, each clinician is responsible for working within and to their scope of practice, as defined by their profession, and in line with their professional and organisational codes and guidelines. Maternity care collaboration does not include one profession controlling the practice of another.”

Until midwives can access insurance etc without a collaborative arrangement, these mentions are mere lip service to the idea that one profession does not control the practice of the other.

Back to Box 1.3:

“A collaborative agreement or arrangement is an informal or formal recognition of the terms of a collaboration.”

How are midwives going to qualify for insurance etc if agreements are informal?

3.3.3 Metropolitan public hospitals - Access to Hospitals

You state that “access may be problematic at metropolitan hospitals”. This is something that must be addressed in the legislation to prevent situations where the birthing woman has chosen her maternity care coordinator, but this coordinator cannot attend the patient in any meaningful way if a transfer to hospital becomes necessary.

I note that you address some of the issues in 3.2.6 Credentialing, however, I believe that the emphasis on allowing privately practicing midwives access to hospitals should be stronger. Below I emphasise my concerns regarding outcomes if a midwife is not allowed to practise at the hospital of her client’s choice.

If a privately practicing metropolitan midwife cannot be credentialed at several hospitals then this will restrict choice of hospital for anyone she cares for and 1.2.1 Definition of maternity care collaboration:

“They support the person the woman has nominated as her maternity care coordinator, and recognise clearly defined roles and responsibilities for everyone involved in the woman’s care.”

is not remotely possible. Private midwives must be able to enter metropolitan hospitals as the birthing woman’s chosen maternity care coordinator and be able to act with appropriate authority in this position. In order to act with appropriate authority they must also have clinical privilege. Clinical privilege is something that can be established during the organisation of transfer plans.

I note this also comes up in 2.1 Women centred care and communication:

“Women have the right to decline care or advice if they choose. Therefore, if a woman refuses care or advice based on the information provided, her choice must be respected. Importantly, women should not be ‘abandoned’ because of their choice (NHMRC consultations 2009). Having a coordinator of care to provide a consistent, clear point of contact is integral to this approach (NHMRC consultations 2009).”

Again, if a private midwife has appropriate authority in a hospital setting the issue of abandonment becomes null and void. I know women who have elected not to have a private midwife because the thought of being in a hospital where their primary carer would have to leave their qualifications at the door was too daunting.

3.2.7 Hospital bookings

It is my opinion as a consumer that booking into hospital ought to be compulsory, and that the hospital should be notified of beginning of labour, particularly for a home birth. Making this compulsory would facilitate communication between home birth midwives and doctors and also act as a gesture of goodwill. Even the most belligerent OB can muster some respect for a safety conscious home birth midwife.


Again, I admire your efforts to change the culture of maternity care in Australia. But I reiterate that home birth midwives and models of care need more support than they currently get in these guidelines.

Yours sincerely,