NEWS: Pregnant Canaries in the Bar at the Coal Mine

Agreed 100%. But there's a big difference between giving people factual information and lecturing them about how when you have a child, you shouldn't be such a selfish cunt.
Context matters a lot, as does audience.

And your experience pretty much demosntrates that slapping warning labels on beer bottles isn't going to make a damn bit of difference to women who genuinely have drinking problems, who don't read warning labels, and/or who--for some decent reasons, actually--tend to be just a wee bit suspicious of strangers telling them what to do. Which is one way in which the poor and uneducated actually *aren't* that different from the middle and upper classes.

Honestly, Madogany, if you want scholarly analysis and careful feminist theory, you really ought to read something other than the SG newswire.

God bless you, Reprobate.

'overwhelming body of evidence?' eh?

Yeah, here's the thing. I *DO* read things other than SG newswire. But, I thought it might be helpful to try to post some criticism to make the offerings here better.

First, I think the difference of opinion with Shalome might have turned to something substantive had you worked out your argument a little better in its first iteration. Second, the morons that reprobate refers to would have been less confused by a more carefully plotted out argument. Instead, what we got was a not very interesting display of varying degrees of reading comprehension skills and little reflection or rumination since there was nothing to engage with.

I guess I thought that news ANALYSIS would go beyond just repeating poorly-executed news analysis from a different site. Maybe I just have higher hopes for the blogosphere than I should? Or maybe you're copping out. (Y' know you've used this excuse before when someone else called you to task and you didn't have a handy answer.)

No, you didn't. You dropped some heavy hitting names which were utterly meaningless to virtually anyone engaged in the discussion and tantamount to saying "I am scholarly; hear me roar!"

It was pedantic name dropping and no one who has been on this site for two minutes much less two years and can critically associate Agamben and Terry with the given concepts could possibly believe that dragging them in could elevate rather than alienate. You were dick waving because you didn't like the conceit of the original article, don't try to pretend otherwise.

Ummm, yes. Did I stutter?

I really dislike journalists. They are some of the dumbest, over-sensationalist motherfuckers ever made.

I'm not really interested in a war over this matter. In my original post, I certainly abbreviated my arguments by name-dropping. It's true. I considered my note as more of an open letter to Bitch PhD than as a contribution to the over-heated discussion on the boards. As such, I assumed that I could refer to known intellectual arguments (Foucault on bio-power, Agamben on rights and states of exception) with BP without getting into the details. In fact, I assumed that it was the current intellectual engagement with these ideas that drove her interest in this news piece. I could be wrong about that.

In short, I was trying to identify what were the strong points that could have been built on in the article and where the argument got sloppy and ultimately less interesting. I think the discussion on the boards bears that out.

But whatever. I'll always take a good scolding, hot stuff.

I really dislike sweeping generalizations. They are some of the dumbest, overly-histrionic motherfucking statements ever made.

I think the discussion on the boards bears out, for the most part, that people, mostly childless men here, don't bother to avail themselves of the rudimentary facts, or even read the thread before spewing out their ill formed opinions.

As for a good scolding, if I wanted to do that, I would have pointed out that you completely missed the point of the article and its underlying philosophy, substituting instead a handful of flavor of the minute scholars who addressed the absolute reverse of the phenomena at play here.

This has nothing to do with a sovereign jurdically excepting themselves from the law they impose, or the technology of power and control, but rather garden variety propaganda coupled with the exception of otherness. The government assumes no special extra legal power here, and they employ a 600 year old technology whose application to dominate social thought was perfected centuries before Foucault was a dirty thought (or had one).

The critical deconstructive analysis of the mechanism at play here, is, in the philosophical realm, pure existentialism, although in the legal (constructive) arena its tools were well understood and examined two centuries before. But it wouldn't have been any fun to cite Sartre or Beauvoir, because people have actually heard of them, would it? Hell, if you were going to mis-apply a post structuralist, you'd have been better off with Lacan. At least there you could have claimed that this was globalizing the ego and assigning its taxonomy to marginalize.

See, I went to college, too, I just did it before fashion came to dominate over critical thought.

We could go on and on and I'm not interested in filling this board up with even more of this jibber-jabber. I'll respond to your points over on your page in a minute. Those interested in "dick-wagging" (which we're both doing now, it seems?) can watch there.

I don't think I disagreed that the boards are full of people missing the point. That is why I madethe comment about "reading comprehension" in my first post. I was agreeing with what I think was your first post. I do think that the composition of the original argument by BP didn't help. More on that over on your page.

It is in a different colour, therefore it is a sub-title, or summary of what you're about to read. In the HTML it is tagged as "Intro Text".

If you read the whole five paragraphs, you'll note the recommendation can be summed up as:

"Pregnant women: don't drink, but if you have to, please don't drink more than x". It isn't just "Pregnant women, don't drink".

Quoting just the top line would be quoting out of context, and we all knew what that said. In fact, if you go to the website listed on the label, it says:

Which is also what the press release / whatever says on the DoH website.

I agree the recommendation that women should abstain totally is wrong when it is presented without any significant scientific backing. However, personally, if it were me, I might be worried about the health of any child I might be carrying and would be that extra bit careful.

In short, I don't think it is worth arguing over this point.

of course it is as most of the posts on the previous three pages are testament to

I agree that labels aren't a 100% effective solution (they're only one of a number of measures the British government is introducing to combat our binge drinking problem).

But I don't understand why you believe they're harmful? The information is there for people who want it, and for those who'd never considered it before, to learn from if they so choose.

Also - why do you keep using the term 'women'? The correct word in this case is actually 'people' as this label is directed equally at men.

Basically: please tell me one harmful thing you think will result from a sticker saying 'more than 4 units of alcohol a day could be hazardous to your health'.

you see that's the problem the 'man' is trying to tell us what to do, we should be free to drink ourselves in to oblivion if we want to without interference.

This brought to you by the Department of Sarcasm

I am reminded of "Drink beer because it doesn't hurt cows."

Just what is the colour of the sky in your worlds?

And Reprobate, thank you for your fantastic swipe at all the "mostly childless men here" - a wonderful generalisation, putting us into your nice, cute little stereotype.

No, I add to my previous comment, you both are Charlton Heston's love children.

Does that go for reprobate and Bitch_PhD also?

Well, in the states it's not uncommon at all to have bartenders refuse to serve pregnant women a beer. And look at the comments on these pages: the "what kind of selfish mother would drink while pregnant?!?!" attitude is very well established here. In and of itself, it's merely annoying, but as I pointed out in the actual article, it's of a piece with a larger attitude that, when it comes to pregnant women, facts are less important than emotion and mommy-shame. Once you've got people saying, as Mat8drb says just a couple comments above you, "I accept that there's no evidence that drinking harms a fetus, but *I* would want to be extra careful just in case" it's easy enough to say that about all sorts of other shit.

That plus it just pisses me off that people think they have the right to scold other adults for their behavior, just because those adults happen to be pregnant women.

Well put. I'm never going to be in that position (as I'm male) and I would never impose my viewpoint on someone else.

And my backup for my comment is that I, like you, am some kind of scientist and know there's enough doubt in this particular area to stop, wait, and think. Hence the "if it were me". I sure as hell would never give advice on an issue like this without the backing: it isn't just the female aspect that must make you mad, no, that this advice is based on emotion mainly must make you annoyed as a scientist.

But let's not get me started on this particular government's approach to scientific rigour.

I'd never heard of that before, that's not good - since its not illegal to drink while pregnant, they should really do their jobs and serve everyone equally.

But I think warning labels are a different matter. They're not preventing anyone from doing anything - they're simply providing information.
Its generally thought to be not that dangerous to have the occassional glass of wine after the first trimester, but there is a huge weight of evidence that says excessive/binge drinking causes birth defects. Since no-one is really sure what the safe limit is, most warning labels just say to 'avoid' it.

I agree that there is a culture of unfounded 'mommy-shame' in society, but I think you should look to the real source of that mentality - the religious right and their idea that people only exist for the purpose of pro-creation.

Given the murky relationship between alcohol and birth defects, warning labels like this one are neccessary. Also, the label (at least the one that's being introduced in Britain) doesn't scold anyone - it lets people know that there is some medical evidence that the product can be dangerous in some situations. Which I think is fair.

You argue that pregnant women are informed adults that can make their own decisions - and I agree with this 100% completely. But if we remove warning labels, I don't think we can claim anymore that people are neccessarily informed about certain risks.

Basically, negative cultural attitudes towards mothers do need to be tackled - but I don't think removing warnings about birth defects is the way to go about it.

Good on ya having the huevos to reconsider. Thanks.

For the record, I'm not a scientist; my degree's in the humanities. But you're right that sexism annoys me not only as a woman, but as a thinking human being.

Luckilly those two things often overlap.

Would that this were true. But look at the people on this board--I'll wager that few of them belong to the religious right. Whatever the original source of discrimination is, it needs to be addressed where it crops up.

Pretty much agreed. For the record, the labels in the US tell women what they "should" do rather than simply providing information--and the UK labels direct pregnant women (or women trying to conceive?!?) to "avoid alcohol"--which isn't exactly simply providing factual information. In any case, I'm pro-facts: yay facts! I'm not pro prejudice masquerading as facts, and imho labelling beer bottles and the like is evidence of a larger attitude about the responsibility and choices of individual women. In the UK, this isn't as much of an issue, because the state actually *does* provide prenatal care, which they don't here.

Plus mostly I just found the editorial I linked refreshing.

For the record, I didn't reconsider: I only popped in this thread one page ago to post the advice that was stated on the website itself, as someone had asked for it. I then got into an argument about the exact wording. I didn't specify my viewpoint until this page (that I agreed with the article), and that hasn't changed. May have been misinterpreted, but hasn't changed.