Women behaving badly

[cathy Livingstone]

I absolutely accept your argument on anorexia and bulimia and I've used
texts such as Kim Chernin's 'Obsession' to argue that in a women's studies
course I taught. And, I would even argue that ALL diseases have a cultural
context (e.g. stress, environment, poverty, gender, class). But in saying
so, why should CFS be singled out as a particularly 'cultural' disease in a
political-economic context where cultural causes are denigrated and where
only medicological models are accepted. This then 'diminishes' us because
we are the exception - THE cultural disease. There is some political
heavy-handedness going on here. Also, unlike anorexia/bulimia which is a
process that builds up over time in a person's life, CFS hits like a
whammy. One day you are well, the next day you are sick. Culture is
powerful but I didn't know it could work in a day. 

Cathy

t 12:03 PM 12/15/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Well, I guess I don't see Showalter as minimizing or disrepecting the very
>real suffering of CFS. I think she treats CFS with much more respect
>and seriousness than she does Satanic Ritual Abuse or alien abductions. 
>But more importantly, I don't see how suggesting
>there are psychosocial roots of CFS does anything to denigrate CFS or the
>women who suffer from it.  I gave the example of anorexia, sonce it's been
>ignored, I'll repeat what I said.  Feminists ague that anorexia has it's
>roots in culture. There is nothing wrong with the girls per se, it is the
>world around them.  I believe that many feminists who do this work
>point to the very prevalence of anorexia in suggesting that is it a
>socio-cultural rather than medical epidemic. To argue that anorexia can
>best be understood under the medical model is to ignore the very real
>socio-cultural pressures that lead to them starving themselves. And I
>don't think anyone suggests that pointing out that anorexia is cultural 
>soehow makes their suffering less serious. I'm not suggesting that CFS is
>"merely" psychological and that a "good dose of psychoanalysis" would cure
>it.  I'm suggesting that at least part of the cause is rooted in culture,l
>which makes it very serious, indeed, and would call for radical societal
>restructuring, as does anorexia.
>
>frances
>