On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Marta Russell wrote:
>
> Showalter seems to be doing the same to women. I have not read her, only the
> posts here. Has she attacked fibro? Given her attitude and know it all
> attitude, I can't understand why she hasn't. Now here's a cure for
> ignorance. If Showalter and few more laypersons who speak about what they
> don't know could develope one of these illnesses, that would cure you too.
No, she doesn't attack, or mention, fibro. If you haven't read her, how do you know she has a "know-it-all attitude" or that she "attacks" anything? I haven't read the entire book, just the part of CFS thus far. First, I don't think she's attacking CFS, she's asking if the medical model is the proper one for researching it. I think that is a different question. She notes some interesting statistics. Three out of four people with CFS are women, over 90% are white, and most reported having "frantic lives with multiple responsibilities." Yet feminists insist that there must be a viral or neurological cause, rather than a psychosocial cause, even though there arent a coherent group of symptoms--diff. people report different things. Apparently alot of the work that has been published which suggests that there is a pscychological aspect to CFS has been met with anger. I wonder what's at stake here.
Now, I want to mention another condition which is also mostly female, mostly white, mostly affluent, mostly from the US, just like CFS. Of course I m thinking of anorexia. I haven't seen any feminist analysis of anorexia which doesn't consider its cultural foundation, and research which doesn't take culture into account is seen as anti-femininist. I I wonder why its ok to see girls and young women as affected by culture, but adult women must have a viral or neurological source for their own ilnesses.
>
> And then I must add, that the reason that many "professionals" resist adding
> these conditions to the laundry list of known illnesses is that they are long
> term illnesses, require long term care and the insurance industry and
> government would rather not have to foot the bills to treat people who have
> them. If they are "illegitimate" conditions then insurance and Medicare and
> Medicaid don't have to do right by people who have them.
I agree with you that it is in the medical establishments interest to deny illnesses exist, I'm just not convinced that there isn't a cultural aspect to CFS.
frances