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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2009
In gender mythology woman is nature, the embodiment of life, destruction, and death. Semantically encoded in good and evil, the one conceptual stability woman represents is ambivalence. As a walled garden in which nature works its demonic sorcery, she turns a gob of refuse into a spreading web of sentient being, floating on the snaky umbilical by which she leashes every man. But as an ontological entity, woman is the real First Mover. The pregnant woman is devilishly complete. She needs nothing and no one.2 Confronted with the terrible sense of woman's power, man is forced to wrestle with her nature to gain his identity, never to fall back into her. Man is the essential, the norm, the absolute One without reciprocity. Woman is “the Other, posed by the One to define itself, the inessential who never goes back to being the essential and the absolute Other without reciprocity.
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4. The United Nations Inter Regional Crime and Justice (UNICRI) council reports that the traditional male attitude is to view women as children to be “punished by men and submitted to their wills.” Repression of women is considered by men as a way of “protecting” them. This tendency has led to justification of violent practices based on gender. It is reinforced by the text of the law where it is said that “a woman must obey her husband,” thus, condoning domestic violence.
5. Landsberg, M. Brutality against women is the world's hidden shame. Toronto Star 1995;07 9: A–2Google Scholar. Female genital mutilation, common in about 30 African countries, illustrates the subordinate position of women and their exploitation by men. This inhuman practice ensures woman's virginity and destroys all sexual pleasure. It is the ultimate in men's control over women and gender discrimination. An estimated 85–114 million girls and young women in the world have had their genitals mutilated, hacked off with crude knives, in religionlike ceremonies. “When men are persecuted it is political; when it happens to women, it is cultural. The point is that women's genital mutilation is not cultural, it is religion-inspired hatred of women.”
6. See the lyrics of rap groups such as Public Enemy and Ice T.
7. Smith, R. And an old tune: men look, women display. New York Times 1995;07 9Google Scholar: H-30 The recent international art exhibition on the human body held in Venice was described by Roberta Smith as discriminatory against women: “Even though there were actually no more images of naked women than of men … it almost seemed that in the hands of a male European curator, a show about the body was simply an excuse to cart out a lot of images of naked girls. When naked men were displayed, their depictions tend[ed] to communicate more power and control than those of women.”
8. Statue of Liberty by Frederic August Bartholdi in New York Harbor.
9. Delacroix, E. “Standing on the rubble of a barricade, Delacroix's bare-breasted Marianne of the People, wearing the red hat of the sans-culottes, urges workers and students towards the indeterminate destination of revolutionary arcadia. Notre Dame de la Liberte is framed against the background of Notre Dame de Paris, already conquered for Freedom, the tricolor flying from its tower.” In: Schama, S. Citizens. A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Random House, 1989. But Freedom is only to be exercised by men.Google Scholar
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32. There have been few reported cases of death of women due to cerebral infarction secondary to ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) after in vitro fertilization (IVF). The paucity of fatal outcomes of OHSS complications after “ovulation induction” is due to the “difficulties of collecting and reporting complications.” Inadequate information about risks leads clinicians to present treatment options in an undeservedly positive light and women may agree to treatment that they would reject if given more accurate outcome probabilities. There may indeed be more cases of stroke after OHSS; but if the cause of death is simply given as stroke, the link with OHSS might not be explicit. This situation has not improved despite reports by the US Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1978 that only 10–20% of IVF procedures had been shown to be effective by controlled trials and OTA recommendations that “improvements are critically needed in the information base regarding safety and efficacy and the processes for its generation.” US Congress Office of Technology Assessment. Assessing the Efficacy and Safety of Medical Technologies. Washington, DC; US Government Printing Office, 1978:7.Google ScholarPubMed See, Shanner, L. Informed consent and inadequate medical information. Lancet 1995;346:251.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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42. Several states and Congress are considering proposals to institute mandatory HIV testing of all newborn babies. Testing of newborns is in reality testing of mothers. The House Committee on Commerce just defeated one attempt to impose such testing, the Tom Coburn Amendment to the Ryan White Care Act, which provides funding for AIDS services. The Newborn HIV Testing Amendment to the Ryan White Care Act (Save Babies and Stop the Spread of AIDS) would have “required all states, in order to be eligible for Ryan White Care grants, to enact legislation that every newborn be tested for HIV if the mother did not undergo prenatal testing.” Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, 07 23, 1995.Google Scholar On July 7, 1995, the CDC also issued new guidelines urging “voluntary HIV testing for all pregnant women.” The CDC report stated that “because specific services must be offered to HIV-infected women to prevent perinatal transmission, the Public Health Service (PHS) is recommending routine HIV counseling and voluntary testing of all pregnant women so that interventions to improve the woman's health and the health of her infant can be offered in a timely and effective manner “The guidelines were prompted by studies outcomes (Act g076) that indicated that HIV transmission from mothers to offspring could be significantly reduced if the mothers were treated with AZT during the last two-thirds of pregnancy and treatment was provided in the early weeks of a baby's life. Critics of the measure argued that “there are several other potential treatments that are probably safer and may be more effective. The wide range of possibilities include the anti-HIV drug neviparine, HIVIG (concentrated HIV antibodies extracted from other people), vitamin A, and vaginal cleansing (lavage) just prior to birth. There are also studies suggesting that only women with relatively high HIV levels transmit the virus to their offspring. Pregnant women with high viral loads may be the only ones in need of therapy to prevent HIV transmission. Moreover, excessive use of AZT increases the likelihood of needlessly breeding AZT-resistant virus, making the drug useless to women when they might need it later on to ameliorate their own medical condition.” The focus on women as carriers of babies illustrates concerns for the babies, not for the mothers. Women with HIV could be forced to take AZT, thus, could be subject to coercive medical care without any protection against abuse of power by medical practitioners. Gilden, D. CDC recommends HIV testing for all pregnant women. Treatment Issues 1995;9(7/8):22–3.Google ScholarPubMed
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