you know, i don't get why once again my argument has been misconstrued. where have i denied biology here?. what has my biological clock got to do with whether i get paid the same as a man or why do i end up in the dean's office accounting for a sociological lesson [using swear words in class as part of a soc lesson] when my students inform me that male profs say fuck all the time and they're not even saying it as part of an ethnomethodological demonstration!? why is it that i acknowledge physical difference and said that i want a world in which those don't matter in terms of the distribution of social goods--broadly understood--and yet i am still accused of something i'm not saying or am called to account for something that is not implied in any way shape or form by what i typed.
biological clock won't likely shut down til i'm 55 which gives me plenty of time to have a kid. way more than five years. so where's the bioloical determinism in that? the sound of the clock ticking away happens a lot later than it used to for women. certainly a lot of social going into that supposedly biologically determined pattern of thinking. indeed, it wasn't much a topic of anyone's conversation til the 60s/70s. why is that? of course, i could simply have a child without being with a man, no? so why am i not imagining that i can't have a child easily enough in the next five years or 15 years for that matter? . that has nothing to do with my clock then and it has everything to do with two things: 1. the money factor and 2. that it's socially unacceptable to bear child without a man
instead of asking about how my biology shapes my destiny we should be asking why i felt so compelled to have a child to begin with. isn't that the real question we should be asking? isn't that feeling one of the very big reasons for women's social condition--the equation of feminity with childbearing and [sliding along the signifying chain] with child rearing and with diaper changing and grocery shopping and toilet scrubbing and with emotionality and sentiment and with the so called autonomous choice to become a member of the 'helping" professions --all these rooted in the myth that childbearing is so determinative of feminitity?
and further, the research shows that het men have a biological clock too. most het men start to get anxious these days if they haven't found someone by the time they're thirty five. and most men will put a limit on what age they would like to have children. there is *nothing* obviously biological about that. the social apparently completely determines that sentiment. in terms of medical evidence, men's sperm producitivity does diminish as does their ability to produce healthy offspring. if rob were right about this selfish gene, then you'd think men's drive to procreate would end right about the time their sperm productivity dropped off. but that isn't the case and it surely didn't shape the cultures we createdover the ages.
i am not now, btw, obsessed about having a child. i said that in five years iw ould probably freak out which was simply my hyperbolic way of saying i'd go through a mild depression about it all. and certainly that would be bound up with a feeling of failure because i didn't land a relationship in that time that would enable me to do so. so it's not *just* about having a children but a host of other things, to be quite honest. i doubt that i would feel that badly about it in any event. firstly i have a child. secondly, i enjoy having the freedom i have to do all kinds of things that i couldn't when danny was little. so i'm actually quite torn about it for the most part. i suspect that i would fully go with the latter feeling if so much of my experiences didn't suggest other things.
kelley
At 05:34 PM 11/25/1999 -0500, you wrote:
>kelley wrote:
>>
>
>> no. but that doesn't mean that gender isn't performed in the doctor's
>> office and every where else for that matter. recognizing that doesn't
>> mean that i or anyone else is saying that we can or should ignore sex based
>> biological differences that *make* a difference in terms of health care.
>> but that's *all* they should make a difference about.
>
> Well, you write that you are obsessed with having another child in the
>next five years. Don't know exactly how old you are, but doesn't the
>deadline -- and the obsession -- relate to your female biological clock?
>If you were a man, you could be a bit more relaxed. Especially since as
>a single person, you as a man could find a young fertile woman and have
>that second child after you got tenure!
> Don't you think it matters that girls sexually mature earlier than
>boys (or, if you prefer, boys mature later than girls?) That a girl can
>be impregnated at eleven or twelve? By any old creep who rapes her?
>These are not mere "health care" matters. They are biological matters
>that structure our political concerns.
>
>katha
>
>