Uproar over new Lego Friends sets

So, I've been hearing (well, mostly reading online.. and making myself) a lot of fussing especially from mostly Adult Fans of Lego (aka AFOL) about the new Lego brand "Friends" line that is targeted specifically at girls (read what you may into the fact that my biggest problem with it is NOT the gender stereotyping of the activities presented - my biggest issue has to do with functionality of the humanoid figurines. I've always been much more of a nerd than a feminist.). Even given that, I was still surprised to get the following email from change.org - and really bothered by the level of inaccuracy in the claims they make about the product. It concerns me because now I will be questioning the veracity of the claims they make about much more important issues than children's toys (though, as a sociologist-in-training specifically interested in child development and symbolic interactionism, toys are a VERY important issue to me - ESPECIALLY those that are targeted specifically to one traditional stereotype subset of gender).

The text of the email was:

Tell LEGO: Stop marketing sexist toys to girls Dear Ahmie, Iconic toy brand LEGO recently launched a new line of toys meant just for girls -- but two young women, Bailey Shoemaker-Richards and Stephanie Cole, think the products are unfairly "dumbed down" for girls. The new line is called LadyFigs, and it's made up ofbusty, pastel-colored figurines that come with interests like shopping, hair-dressing, and lounging at the beach. The uninspired toys even come with pre-assembled environments -- so there is no assembly (or imagination) required. Bailey and Stephanie say they're frustrated that LEGO is pushing outdated gender roles on girls and cheating them of the opportunity to build and discover. So they took to the internet, blogging about what they call the new "Barbielicious" LEGOs andpetitioning the toy company to lose the sexist LadyFigs line and go back to empowering both boys and girls with its original products. Click here to sign Bailey and Stephanie's petition today. LEGO hasn't always thought its toys were only for boys. In the 1980s, the company was actually celebrated for a major advertising campaign that spotlighted a young girl and her LEGO creation with the tagline "What it is is beautiful." But since then, LEGO reversed course and decided to market its products only to boys. The company claims its research shows girls just don't appreciate the original LEGO line. But Bailey and Stephanie argue that with LEGO's renewed emphasis on boys -- featuring only boys in its ads and stocking products in the boys' aisles of toy stores -- it's no wonder young girls wouldn't think LEGOs were meant for them. Bailey and Stephanie's fight to get LEGO to return to its gender-neutral toys is already making waves, with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Time weighing in on the issue. But LEGO is stubbornly holding its ground and told Business Week that the LadyFigs launch is a "strategic" move to "reach the other 50 percent of the world's children," as if girls have never been part of LEGO's focus. Public pressure can prove LEGO wrong. If enough people sign Bailey and Stephanie's petition, it could convince LEGO that the new LadyFigs are bad business and the company should return its focus to empowering boys AND girls with toys that inspire creativity and innovation. Tell LEGO to stop selling out girls -- sign Bailey and Stephanie's petition today. Thanks for being a change-maker, - Shelby and the Change.org team

My reply (which I suspect may have gone to an unmonitored email address - I didn't research who to reach Shelby specifically yet and am unlikely to get a chance to tonight - hopefully I will remember to do so tomorrow) was:

I don't know if this message will ever be read, but I feel the need - as an Adult Female Fan of Legos and mother of three sons ages 7 and under, to clarify some inaccuracies in your email.

First, the sets do NOT come pre-assembled. Basic investigation reveals that they are full of standard bricks in addition to the human-esque figurine. The other parts are standard Lego products, and work fine with any of the other sets they've made in the last 30 years and beyond for the most part. The tools are the same size as standard minifig tools, in fact most of them are actually from the same molds as long-existing parts, just in new colors. The $10 sets have about 80 pieces each, of which only four are the humanoid figurine. Many AFOL (Adult Fans of Lego - gender neutral but mostly males) plan to buy the sets and get rid of the dolls, because the sets themselves are actually quite a nice assortment of parts. The Cafe set will be finding its way into our own expansive Lego village. These sets actually have more complex builds than many of the sets targeted to boys or gender-neutral over the years (many of which are in our own large personal Lego collection). For instance, the Harry Potter series sets often had large prefab wall pieces that offer much less repurposing flexibility than what is in much of these sets (though as a caveat: that's not apples-to-apples entirely, as I have not had chance to examine the most expensive set currently on offer on the Friends line - the house may have the same pre-fab walls like much of the Castle/Kingdom/Harry Potter sets used; I can't tell from pictures). They are comparable in complexity, from all appearances, with the currently offered Superheros line Lego is offering.

Secondly, Lego refers to them as "mini-dolls" not "LadyFigs".

Third, this is just the first few sets to come out. Barbie didn't become a doctor or an astronaut for a LONG time after she hit shelves, I would predict that Lego will be having its Friends in space much sooner (and the new Series 6 Collectible Minifig set features a female surgeon along with the uber-pink blond-bombshell-in-space that I affectionately refer to as "astrobimbo"... baby steps, I guess...). Given that Lego is headquartered in a country that is lightyears ahead of the US in pretty much every indicator of social inequalities (I say this as a sociologist-in-training), I trust them to advance the cause of women pretty rapidly. The "Olivia" character seems a pretty competent budding scientist with a well-stocked personal lab (including microscope) in which she appears to have built her own robot, "Mia" with a little imagination becomes an animal rights activist, and "Emma" has a nice complex design studio that is NOT dumbed-down (yes, she appears to be designing fashions, but swap out the "whiteboard" piece - it is a standard shape available without the printing on it - and she could be a budding architect with the rest of the stuff in the $10 set... this would be the ONE time I am sorry to NOT have had a sticker instead of a pre-printed brick come out of the box).

As for Lego being in the "boys" part of stores, every Target and Toys R Us I have been in in the last decade has a "Lego aisle" (if not several) that has nothing but Lego products, many of which I, as a female, have considered as interesting as my husband and other Lego fans in my social circles have.

I do not hold Lego innocent in this at all - I am actually working on an academic research project that will hopefully be a published academic journal article about what I believe are the REAL roots of the "lack of affection" girls have for the standard minifigs - number one problem being the horrible gender imbalance in the Lego Minifig population (it's less than 20% female, and the female offerings generally are not as interesting and detailed as the average for the male offerings). I do believe Lego made many missteps in this new Friends line. I am severely irritated that they have less articulation in their joints than the minifigures do (their wrists don't turn, their legs don't move independently, and they can't lean backwards - I do not believe that evolution should reduce functionality) and the shape of the feet is problematic with positioning in relation to built components on baseplates, and they can't sit on the studs/pegs of the bricks and be locked into position like the minifigs can - all of these are functional design problems that they should have solved before going to market if they wanted to prevent the severe negative response they've gotten.

My personal opinion is that the company AND consumer base would have been better served by first bringing the standard minifig population into gender-balance via offering all-female minifig packs (similar to how they offer "battle packs" for various lines), making some new female face and torso designs, and releasing those as well as the already-available minifig hair pieces in every color option through their online pick-a-brick store at minimum (as a box set assortment similar to they have done with "community workers" and the "fairytale figures" sets for retail shelf purchase would be a good move too). THEN work on evolving the minifig - taller, rounder, more humanly shaped like the mini-dolls without losing the functionality of the minifigs, ESPECIALLY if it meant they didn't look somewhat anorexic (I do commend them on giving the mini-dolls a more realistic breast size than many other dolls-with-breasts on the market over the years, but those arms are scary-skinny in relation to the hand size, and the skinniness of the arms is why the physics of a functional wrist don't work). It is the lack of functionality that makes these mini-dolls less appealing to my 7 year old son (who, when given free reign to build three minifigs for $10 at our local Lego store generally goes for female minifig parts without prompting since he knows intuitively that he doesn't have as many of those as the male parts on offer). When looking at the Friends sets on the shelves at our local Target, once he realized they were actually Lego products (he was more confused by them not being in the Lego aisle and mini-dolls than by the actual content of the sets or color of the boxes), he was actually quite interested in playing with them. I have video recorded his initial impression at the store as well as his initial reaction to the mini-dolls themselves, and have his permission to share those publicly.

I will be reposting this message on my blog. I believe more discussion is better, all around, and that nothing is furthered by folks going off on a crusade based upon faulty first impressions.

Thank you for reading.

Ahmie

Mom, writer, Sociology graduate student, and AFOL - amongst other things.

I will be uploading the videos of my eldest child Liam (age 7.5 years) and his reaction to the products shortly and will edit this post to include the link when I do. If you have thoughts to share with me about this, please do so here on my Blogger blog (http://dragonmama.blogspot.com) instead of on Facebook or Google+ or wherever this might be reposted, so that the conversation stays in one place visible to all interested participants.

Ahmie

edit: update - after kids fell asleep I did some googling and sent a @ message on Twitter to ShelbyKnox with a link to this blog post, hopefully she sees it and comes to engage here, if time allows. She sounds like a busy woman.

IT'S A LIVE!!! ALIVE!!!

OK, yeah, I've done it again - gone on over a month without an update. It's been a hectic month, to say the least.

On May 5th I became co-chair of the Lakewood City Schools Phase III Construction Project District Configuration Sub-Committee. Yes, this was something I volunteered to do, it was (is - the last meeting of the subcommittee is tomorrow) annoying as hell at times, but I really do feel like it was the most important thing I've done outside of the creation and well-being of my little family. Lakewood City Schools is reducing from 7 elementary schools down to 6 due to lowered enrollment and Ohio not giving us as much funding (Ohio says we only need 6 elementary schools so they'll only contribute toward the cost of 6 elementary schools). 4 of the 7 existing schools have already been remodeled in the last couple years, so that left 3 to look at to figure out which one(s) to close (there was a proposal to close two of them and open a new school geographically between them where there is currently a city park smooshed between the train tracks and a strip mall - I don't think I need to tell the reader exactly how popular THAT idea was with everyone aside from the person proposing it ). If current decision making process that I was being strongly encouraged (almost to the point of arm bending, but not quite) to use is any indicator, the decision making process for the prior remodels/renovations was rather flawed - as evidenced by two of the schools already done having DRASTICALLY lower percentages of households with enrolled children in them than the other two (one has 4.1% of households in its boundary line having enrolled children, the other has 6.9%, the average for the district as a whole is 9.4% and all 5 of the other schools in the current configuration are at or above that average, with those two removed the average for the remaining 5 schools is 10.9%). There are certain powers within this city who would really like to see one of the schools in particular (the one in the highest-child-density district, ironically) closed, bulldozed, and redeveloped as commercial property. This seemed like a rather bad long-term plan to me, so I went in search of data months before becoming co-chair to check my gut reaction to that plan. What I found demonstrated that it wasn't just a bad idea, it also could potentially wreck our happy little you-better-walk-cuz-there-ain't-enough-parking already existing commercial district if it encouraged families to move to the perimeter of the town to be closer to the elementary schools, reducing foot traffic to the shops (and also discouraging them to keep their spending in Lakewood, since if they live in the perimeter in all but one of the other elementary school boundaries, they've got really easy access to Big Box stores just across the town's boarders - and most parents with little ones, if they're going to have to load up the car anyway, they're going to go where they can park ONCE and get the majority of what they need without having to go inside and outside repeatedly in likely inclement weather). So I went in search of hard data, got access to the census data and a lovely person at the county auditor's office who crunched data in highly sophisticated mapping software that I didn't have time to learn to use (tho apparently there's some decent stuff available open-source), I learned Google Earth to a fairly high level of proficency and counted LOTS of expanding dots (dots representing enrolled children, geocoded into Google Earth so if I went over them with a mouse they expanded so I could get an accurate head count). I also found out that Mandell School of Applied Social Sciences aka MSASS (at Case Western Reserve University, aka CWRU, my alma mater) turns out not just social workers of the knock-on-doors or therapy kind, but also of the policy wonk kind. We'll see tomorrow and in August/September what others make of the data I've gathered and crunched, but the MSASS saga continues in the next paragraph in a life of its own.

So, the dean of MSASS, Gover "Cleve" Gilmore, was my undergrad prof for both statistics (a challenging class since I wasn't aware that I have mild dyscalculia - you mean EVERYONE doesn't have to do every equation on the calculator 3 or 4 times to get the same result twice???) and research design (which I totally rocked, thankyouverymuch). He and I had been in occasional contact in the time in between and he very much still remembered me when I asked him if he could put me in touch with someone who could help with the census access stuff I was seeking for the above project. As I think I mentioned earlier in this blog, I'd applied to CWRU's Sociology graduate program (or did most of the application, at least - never took the stinking, time-wasting, back-throwing-out GRE) but was not hearing anything encouraging on the funding for part-time study so kinda let it drop (there's no way with my fatigue, physical disabilities, and family I could manage full-time study, a fellowship, AND not be a danger on the roads and/or zombie mommy, so the being safe on the roads and human with my family won). Cleve encouraged me to apply to MSASS, pointing me toward their Community and Social Development degree (policy wonk heaven I think, if only I could manage to do the dual degree with the law school at the same time *sigh* yeah, that's not gonna happen). Deadline for the Sociology program for fall admission was back in April so it never occured to me that MSASS's deadline would be so late - TOMORROW, JUNE 30TH! Sooo... I've got most of my application completed, just need to spend some time today updating my resume (which I haven't done since sometime around 2001, so, yeah, WAY out of date - nothing I've been doing in the interum has required a resume so I hadn't bothered to keep it up-to-date). I've also gotten 3 spiffy new recommendation forms filled out, and I'm planning to hand-deliver everything non-digital today. It'll be nice to finally meet Churyl, the lovely admissions lady I've been emailing back and forth and apparently sending into bouts of active laughter in the office with my weird sense of humor (which I see no need to hide from anyone, even someone responsible for helping decide if I get into grad school or not). I'm getting everything in on time for consideration for fall admission, though if the funding isn't there for me to go part-time (I *might* try full-time study if there's scholarship/work-from home fellowship promised, just can't deal with communting and family safely on top of ~40hrs outside the house). If funding looks more promising for starting in January (aka "spring" semester), then I'll do that instead.

In addition to all that, we've also celebrated Liam's 5th and Delano's 2nd birthdays and gone to Cedar Point twice and Kalahari Indoor Waterpark-Resort-and-Spa once (the 3 night stay at Kalahari was paid for by Garvin's work's sponsors or something, he was at a conference there while the kids and I were playing in the water). And I got myself a new laptop that I'd been drooling over for over a year (HP TouchSmart tx2) which I'm typing this up on (the keyboard is very nice, the tablet conversion with multi-touch will come in more handy while reading massive amounts of hopefully online journals for grad school, and it's small -but not too-and light and has decent battery life).

I will make another post with links to kids birthday party pictures soon. Haven't had time to organize and upload anything for ages.

OH, and if you're seeing this on Facebook and waiting for a response from me I haven't been ignoring you - I've not logged in to FB since around Easter, everything on my profile there has been posted via conduits (aka my cell phone, cross-posted by Twitter, or from this blog). I'm going to try to make some serious time to work on my novel in the next month (I want to complete it before the end of July) after getting this grad application finished, plus spend time with my family, plus sometimes post on my blog, Facebook priority comes in around this slot. I'll be back eventually.

URG! Misplaced digital things

Well, since I've actually been working on my novel again recently, I went looking to find the files of stuff I'd already written on it a while ago (possibly two years ago now, can't remember if I've written any text of it since D was born... primarily just doing plot planning and research since it takes place in Cleveland). Thank goodness I set up a blog under my pen name and posted the stuff I wasn't horrified by the quality of there, so I can retrieve it. I've been working on a scene with two strong secondary characters (next door neighbors of the principle character with frequent interactions with her) and I can't remember what I had decided to name them, and it's bugging the heck out of me. Getting really tired of calling them "woman/mother" and "girl" and I'm getting to the point in the text when they should really introduce themselves by name to my principle character. Urg. Off to my tumbleblog to see if I can dredge anything up there, and my two favorite name meaning websites (behindthename.com and thinkbabynames.com). If you're curious about what I'm writing, I'm really only willing to share details with people I know in real life. Contact me via my primary email address and I'll give you access to where I'm keeping an online repository of it. If you don't know my primary email address, you don't know me well enough to read it anyway, sorry.

I have a feeling I'm going to be writing on my bberry instead of paying attention to the sermon at church today. Sorry Rev. Kathleen, I'm sure it'll be a lovely service! But since I woke up and wrote a poem as soon as my eyes were able to focus, seems like it's a writing day today not a sit-and-listen day.

WOOHOO! Med. exam mom won her appeal!

Congrats to Sophie Currier on winning her appeal (title is a link to the yahoo news story)! I'm so glad the appeals court judge gets it - accommodation to one issue (dyslexia/ADHD) doesn't preclude the need for accommodation for another (breastfeeding)... and shame on the medical examining board for discriminating against her in the first place, they should have gotten it without the need for a lawsuit. Hell, her pre-existing learning disabilities make her need for the extra break time INCREASE, not decrease - "oh, other breastfeeding mothers have taken the exam without needing extra break time" - yeah, but were they ALSO dyslexic and suffering from ADHD and needing extra testing time for those issues? If they're fast test-takers anyway, they probably made it through the test sections fast enough to go pump/pee/eat/whatever without NEEDING to ask for accommodations.

What if it'd been someone with dyslexia, ADHD, and fecal incontinence issues? Would the extra break time so they could change their undergarments on a regular basis have been questioned?

Go Sophie! Can't wait to see what advances in pathology you bring to the world, I have faith that you're going to go on to great work.

Apparently lawyers don't like to be made to look foolish

I was looking online for information about the case of Sophie Currier, who is suing the National Board of Medical Examiners for not giving her sufficient breaks to pump for her four month old baby during the 9 hour long test and stumbled upon a lawyer's blog shooting off his mouth on the subject. I tried replying to his rant and he basically just got insulting pretty quick, accusing me of ranting (as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I am, in fact, quite proficient at - but I was not doing in this case... I was debating him point-by-point in a somewhat verbose manner, which shouldn't be so unusual to a lawyer.

The link to his blog entry is: http://hacklawyer.net/?p=426#comment-3676

In case he's the type to delete the entry, I'm reposting it here with my reply and his rebuttal, and including my reply that he declined to publish and the two email exchange we've had over that. I don't well tolerate this kind of idiocy from someone in a position of authority ;) So I'm taking my first amendment free speech rights as seriously as he's taken his.

It’s as simple as . . . what?

Sophie Currier holds a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard University. Not only that, she has completed her studies at Harvard to acquire a medical degree. She is poised to acquire a prestigious residency at Massachusetts General Hospital but cannot accept it until she passes her medical exam.

When she took it the first time, she petitioned the National Board of Medical Examiners for “accomodations” (read: more time to take the exam) because of her dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. She was granted this consideration, allowing her to take the nine-hour test, which allows for breaks of 45 minutes) over two days instead of one. Even so, she failed. She blamed this on her pregnancy which she says put extra pressure on her. She’s now poised to take it a second time and she wants an additional 60-minute break on each day. She says she needs this time to pump breast milk for her 4-month old daughter.

Ms. Currier petitioned the Board for this additional break time, arguing that she needed the extra time to pump milk to avoid breast engorgement and mastitis, an infection stemming from blocked milk ducts. The Board turned her request down, explaining that it could only accomodate conditions covered by the Americans With Diabilities Act. The test is scheduled for Saturday, September 15.

This past Thursday, Ms. Currier filed suit in a Massachusetts Superior Court, requesting that the trial court order the Board to grant her this extra time, plus a private room with a power outlet so she can express her milk in private with an electric pump. She also enlisted the help of Dr. Alison Stuebe, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a member of the Acadamy of Breastfeeding Medicine (I had no idea). Dr. Stuebe wrote to the court that “forty-five minutes is insufficient time for a nursing mother of a 4-month old to eat, drink, use the restroom and to fully and properly express breast milk using an electric pump two times over the course of eight hours. If Ms. Currier is forced to delay taking the exam, it will cause her significant hardship by delaying her ability to earn a living and to begin repaying school loans, and possibly leading to the loss of clinical knowledge and skills.”

The case, scheduled to be argued on Wenesday, September 12th, is considered to be a harbinger of things to come because more and more women are studying medicine than ever before. Three exams must be completed before applicants can become doctors. Thus, these rigid requirements are running headfirst into the biological demands of these many female test takers. But think about the precedents set if the Board accedes to Ms. Currier’s additional requests. Who’s to say that the Board must then make accomodations for any applicant who can document a particular medical condition which might require additional time and effort to attend to? How about the man (or woman) with irritable bowel syndrome? What about the person who can document persistent migraine headaches? These unfortunate folks never really know when these things are going to hit. What if I could document a history of chronic depression and the need for additional time to handle complicated tasks given the debilitating effects of depression.

How about if Ms. Currier just takes the time to attend to her four-month old daughter like any other responsible mother would, wean the child off breast milk and then take the test, complete with your “accomodations?” For an individual who obviously has spent her entire adult life in school, a few more months devoted to raising her infant child is not going to ruin her future nor can it seriously be argued that the hiatus will threaten the loss of her intellectual mastery of all this knowledge.

But what’s most troubling about Ms. Currier’s litigation is the suggestion that the Board’s refusal to accomodate her “condition” is some sort of persecution of a protected minority class. And the truth is this: complaints by the traditionally disabled - the deaf, the blind, the paraplegic - have accounted for only a tiny share of these kind of ”accomodation requests.” The overwhelming majority of them comprise those who claim such dubious disabilities as ADD, visual and oral processing diabilities, dysgraphia (really bad handwriting), ”phonological processing,” dyscalculia (math disability). I could go on but I assure you I’m not making this up. So as the ranks of the learning-disabled swell, so too the number of boutique diagnoses. And now this.

Ms. Currier explains that “this is as simple as ducking into the bathroom to pump milk.” If that’s the case, why the need to file a lawsuit?

1. Ahmie Says:
   September 11th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

   Here’s the relevant section of the ADA here:
   Sec. 12189. Examinations and courses
   Any person that offers examinations or courses related to applications, licensing, certification, or credentialing for secondary or postsecondary education, professional, or trade purposes shall offer such examinations or courses in a place and manner accessible to persons with disabilities or offer alternative accessible arrangements for such individuals.

   The ADA does NOT stipulate what disabilities are covered and what are not. This woman has just finished medical school through a pregnancy, where I’m sure that everyone she came in contact with told her how important it is to give her baby ONLY BREASTMILK for at least the first six months (logically, the time limit is when the baby has teeth to eat solid foods, not an arbitrary calendar date based upon the average age babies have two bottom and two top teeth - individual variation should be taken into account). Denying her request for time to pump and keep up the caloric intake required to sustain breastfeeding, as well as deal with the output issues from the increased caloric and fluid intake required to sustain breastfeeding, is discrimination and impacts not just her but her young child who is dependent on her ability to lactate for nutrition.

   I am myself both disabled (mobility issues due to hypermobility, joint problems) and entitled to extended test time to allow me to move around so my joints don’t lock up from extended sitting when I took the GRE. THe same issue has resulted in my not being able to sit for jury duty (I wanted to, actually), and I do have a permanent handicapped parking license plate. I am also a breastfeeding mother, nursing my second child (11 weeks old tomorrow) as I type this. Pumping takes varying amounts of time depending on the mother, the pump, stress levels, etc and is rather unpredictable. She could well require 45 minutes to achieve full emptying of her breasts, especially if she is stressed, hungry and dehydrated.

   As to your supposition that taking time off to care for her child won’t have repercussions on her career - oh really? Do you speak from personal experience? Considering how horribly undervalued mothers are in the United States in general, your claim is invalid at its face. Women who are mothers are the reason that the wage gap between men and women is still so drastic - non-mothers actually earn very close to what men earn. It’s the gaps in our employment that legitimize the discrimination in pay we receive. She has a prestigious residency waiting only for her to pass this test and is prepared to take on that demanding work while also doing the demanding work of mothering an infant. Only this test and the barriers it puts to her HEALTH stand in the way. If she were to develop mastitis from the lack of accomodation in taking the test, or if she wound up having to suppliment with formula due to not having enough milk/supply issues from not being accomodated (and yes, one or two days CAN make that big of a difference - I’ve had supply issues for a few days from taking a single dose of Sudafed with my first, add on that she’d be starting her residency soon after and her risk of ongoing supply issues once started is exponential).

   The way you state your arguments, you really sound like one of those “women should be home, barefoot and pregnant” types. Society has progressed several decades beyond that and women will not accept going back. The only issue that I have with her claim is that it’s not JUST her rights that are being violated, it’s both her AND her child’s rights that are being disregarded.

   Please do a little research on aspects of breastmilk and production before you rant about a topic you clearly have no experience dealing with. A good place to start is llli.org - the website for La Leche League International. There you can also find the text of the laws in this regard. For instance, if she had been in NY when this happened, she would have been covered by NY state’s breastfeeding protection laws, which are written into their civil rights code and have specific penalties for violations. “Pregnancy-related conditions” are covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. No stretch of the imagination required to view lactation as a “pregnancy-related condition” and so it is, by logic if not by name, included in those provisions prohibiting discrimination.

2. warrenclark Says:
   September 11th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

   As a father of a severely hearing-impaired daughter who has never once requested special treatment at anything, relying on her own strengths and acquired talents, I know the difference between a disability not of one’s choosing (blindness, deafness, paralysis) and one which is elective, like getting pregnant and demanding special considerations. I think there is a huge difference. Let’s not forget that Ms. Currier has already been given extra consideration and it did her no good. And what’s wrong with recommending that she simply devote six months out of her life for the benefit of this child rather than subordinating everything for her career? It’s a choice, pretty much what life is like. And just who’s on the rant here?

I can't find the exact text of my reply to him, but I pointed out that 1.) I'm a Signer and have been in and out of the Deaf Community for years, being Hard of Hearing (Central Auditory Processing Dysfunction) myself so the fact he refers to his daughter as "severely hearing-impared" is telling to me. People can be blinded, deafened, and paralyzed due to their own stupidity - does that mean that they are therefore not worthy of accomodations because their behavior was "elective"? And that lifetime wage losses that I'm facing, staying home with my kids while they're small, are well over a million dollars - given that the woman in question already holds a PhD and just finished medical school, if she doesn't get her license and finish her residency she's going to have BIG financial hardships. Also pointed out she was 8.5mo pregnant when she took the test the last time (and she didn't fail by much), only having 45min of break time over the course of a 9hr test with nearly full-term fetus sitting on a rapidly shrinking bladder - BIG distraction that could easily have cost her a few points and maybe she wasn't aware that she was protected by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act at the time, in addition to the ADA (she has learning disabilities including dyslexia that garnered her extra test time, but not extra break time).

His reply to those points via email:

Warren Clark

to me

When you cut through all the BS and see that the real
complaint is about all the millions at risk, I see what
your priorities (and Ms. Currier's) are. I need say no
more. Hard of hearing indeed. No shame at all.

Your response is not worthy or publication.

WLC


And my emailed response to him:
well, I've got my own blog to publicize it on then. And "Hard of hearing indeed" so you're also an audiologist now? Wow are you talented, sir. There are not "millions at risk" here, there is gender equality and fairness at risk here. And I think the real problem you're having is a woman is making you look like an idiot.


a link to a new story about this issue is at
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1030870

History of artificial baby feeding

This topic seems to come up with unnerving frequency among the lactivist community, and there is a lot of misinformation going out about how long artificial baby feeding has been going on - most people think it's a post-WWII societal issue, hand-in-hand with the increase in births occurring in hospitals. Yes, it increased then and breastfeeding rates dropped, but we also have better statistics across social classes in the 20th century. Furthering the misperception that breastfeeding was the way ALL babies were fed prior to the 20th century keeps us from looking at this important factor in infant and maternal mortality rates of our foremothers. Only the wealthy could generally afford a true full-time wet nurse (to the detriment of that woman's own nursling, supposing she hadn't already weaned her baby, since it doesn't seem common to allow the wet nurse to bring her own infant along on the job and tandem nurse the two), though informal cross-nursing (nursing mothers sharing the "duty" of feeding their infants so that one could go do something else for a while) has been going on most likely since before we evolved into humans (it's a common primate practice when there are 2 or more lactating females available to care for the infants).

Lack of breastfeeding, especially in the first few days, is detrimental to the mother in many ways - the act of IMMEDIATELY breastfeeding after birth encourages uterine contractions that help prevent hemorrhage, helps shrink the uterus quickly, encourages the ongoing release of hormones to facilitate bonding, relieve pain and promote rest via continued release of ocytocin, and on and on. There are "traditional" societies even today that discourage women from feeding their newborns their colostrum, believing it to be worthless until the "real milk" comes in, and proscribe waiting 5 days before feeding the infant from the breast, substituting various alternatives (many of which contain honey) to keep the baby hydrated instead. This was (and still is) common practice in parts of India. What effect does this have on infant mortality? Maternal hemorrhage? Successful initiation of breastfeeding, when the baby has been allowed to feed from a non-breast for the first 5 days? Doesn't take much to figure out the effect on all these rates might be, especially now when "modern alternatives" are so widely available and socially acceptable. But when women hand off their babies to be fed other than at their own breasts from birth, they increase both the infant and maternal rates of early postpartum complications. And when new mothers aren't supported in their efforts and struggles to nurse their newborns, they're set up for depression over their supposed "failure" - a failure that is more due to our society than anything to do with the mother. Pushing women to not nurse openly and publicly places further barriers to the natural learning of how to accomplish the task in those first early days, as much as lack of availability of profession lactation consultants (not that both groups don't sometimes give misguided or downright wrong advice - it happens, but I believe it's less likely than misinformation coming from anyone without firsthand experience at nursing, regardless of gender).

Before the 20th century we can just make presumptions based mostly upon bodies in cemeteries/mummies/etc about how many babies died at which ages in which social classes (death records are not nearly as common for anyone below upper middle class prior to the industrial revolution, especially outside of urban centers). Not the best data collection method by any stretch of the imagination. Some of these early deaths do include clues as to infant feeding method (ancients tended to bury feeding containers with the infants that weren't breastfed). There are surviving medical advice documents from ancient times that talk about when infants should be weaned, how often they should be fed, etc. So it's not just modern morons encouraging mothers to put their babies on feeding schedules, to watch the clock instead of the baby. They have a long, sordid history of giving this shoddy advice - surprising that it's mostly from males who were probably not even nearby when their own children were being nursed.

Artificial infant feeding is much MUCH older than 50 years. The Sears catalog from 1897 contained at least 8 different brands of artificial baby milk. There are infant feeding artifacts left over from the ancient Greeks. Wet nursing wasn't the only way a baby would survive, but it definitely gave the kid a better chance of survival (in the Victorian era only 20% of infants made it to their 2nd birthday, one wonders how many of those deaths were due to not being breastfed combined with other factors of Victorian life). These are facts that I've researched in the past when people have tried to tell me how dangerous childbearing is because our ancestors DIED in childbirth. I point out that sanitation has never been as good as it is now and a great many of the "ancestors" who were well off enough to get their statistics recorded (not mine, I'm of peasant stock!) were handing off their babies to be fed elsewhere so they could get pregnant again ASAP (and deplete their bodies' nutrient supplies, not letting their uterus have a rest, etc etc etc - the risks of frequent, rapid-fire childbearing are well known to anyone who has dealt with breeding any species of mammal). Of course, young mothers did die, for various reasons (not all associated directly with childbirth) and other ways of feeding their infant if no other lactating woman was nearby had to be devised. Our ancient ancestors were ingenious, just as we are. The infant found in the group of bodies called the Cherchen Mummies has an artificial infant feeder buried with it, the baby has been dead for 3,000 years. The family is presumed to be nomads (they have Caucasian features though they died in China) and it's postulated that the mother died before the infant did.

Here are some online references:
early infant feeders - http://www.babybottle-museum.co.uk/the%20early%20feeders.htm
Ted Greiner's Breastfeeding History - http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/3156/history.htm (hate using Geocities references but it's the version available online)
An article about Cherchen mummies - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20060828/ai_n1669651


Oops.. I think my sociology degree is showing ;) Darnit I want to go to graduate school already! *sigh* Kids first, academia later.