Time Immortal

Nicholas writes in again with a follow-up comment to something I said to him in this article. In a rare break from tradition, this response is addressed directly to Nicholas, instead of the the good Reader in general.

You’re mistaken, Ken. Individual patients’ conviction that homeopathic remedies helped them are not evidence. Ben Goldacre explains all that more clearly than I could. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/nov/16/sciencenews.g2

Isn’t it rather presumptuous, Nicholas, to assert, to my face, that the fact that I watched Grace — then my girlfriend, now my wife — survive her illness only because she abandoned what could be termed “Western” (or, if you prefer, pharmaceutical) medicine in favour of “naturalistic” remedies is not sufficient reason to accept that there is validity to homeopathic medicine? As I said before, it’s not even a question of belief for me: I watched all manner of pharmaceutical treatments make Grace steadily worse as she struggled to get her illness under control. And after finally exhausting herself trying to get well by what could be called “Western” methods, she took a friend’s advice and went to see a homeopathic doctor instead.

And she got well based on the treatments he suggested.

This wasn’t a “placebo effect” thing on her part — both of us were highly, highly skeptical about naturalistic medicine; she still occasionally likes to joke about her “witch doctor.” But as Chesterton noted, “There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn’t.” I still have my reservations about some kinds of homeopathy (the sort that’s bizarre enough to get portrayed on CSI, for example), but there are other kinds I have seen work. And not just in my wife. Additionally, Grace is no longer taking the treatments, nor has she been for quite a while now — her good health cannot even be attributed to ongoing consumption of the remedies. The only reason she is healthy again today is because the homeopathic remedies she was told to try worked for her, and then to such an extent that she only needed to use them for a time (not unlike how pharmaceutical remedies are supposed to work).

I’m not dismissing any of Mr. Goldacre’s criticisms out of hand, but equally I am not dismissing what I have seen for myself. I watched a young woman get to such a point that even she will tell you that she was knocking on death’s door — she is now vibrant, healthy, very much alive, and carrying our first child to term with no detrimental effects to herself. Neither Grace nor I need to “believe” that homeopathy works when it is prescribed with due consideration by a competent medical professional, because we have seen it work. For us, it is out of the realm of belief, and into the realm of what is known.

Nicholas, maybe you have never been so ill that you will try, out of desperation, anything you can in order to get better. Maybe none of your loved ones have ever had to endure what Grace had to endure. And maybe nobody you know has ever tried homeopathic remedies before. To be honest, I do not know; I do not know you, nor the history of your life. But if in fact you have never tried homeopathy, how can you presume to preach to me (someone who has seen it work in the life of his wife) about a lack of evidence?

I realize that your atheism hampers your thinking, but I do hope that you are not so wedded to empiricism as your reply suggests.

I’ll grant that homeopathy doesn’t work for everyone. Equally, you must grant that pharmaceutical medicine does not work for everyone. Both things are especially true if the people prescribing the medicine (if anyone is prescribing it) are not fully competent in both the use of the medicine and its effects, and its applicability to the condition being treated. Conversely, in the hands of someone who “knows their stuff,” both homeopathic remedies and pharmaceutical treatments can be highly effective. This I know, having seen it.

If men are commonly more promiscuous than women, it is only because the culture allows it, she said. Fredell was here to turn society around. “It’s extremely countercultural,” she said, for a woman to assert control over her own body. It is, in fact, a feminist notion. Conventional feminism, she explained, teaches that control of your body means the freedom to have sex without consequences — sex like a man. “I am an unconventional feminist,” Fredell said, in the sense that she asserts control by choosing not to have sex — by telling men, no, absolutely not.

The ladies at ProWomanProLife point out that much of modern feminism, as opposed to classic feminism, seems to be infused with a certain…indignation or repulsion where a woman’s reproductive system is concerned. A woman is not, it seems, “liberated” until and unless she has taken measures to deactivate what is, for her body, a natural and expected process — i.e. her fertility cycle, ostensibly as a means to engaging in the same manner of casual sex that men are able to. In other words, feminism has stopped being about the equality of women as persons*, and has mutated, in a certain sense, to being about making women into men without penises.

Of course, at the same time, it has become about suppressing distinctly masculine traits as well, as we can see effected in, for example, many a school around the world, where physical play has been discouraged or all but outlawed in the name of “safety” (and, methinks, for fear of litigation).

I’m reminded of a joke about the clothes of college students which, as the comedian would have it, eventually all become of one colour — some variant of gray — because it is of course more economical to repeatedly wash the coloured clothes with the white clothes. In a certain sense, that is what is happening through the actions of modern feminism; all the little things which make men and women vibrant in their uniqueness from each other is being stripped away and reduced to a dull gray in the name of a false notion of equality.

And yet at the same time as it is seeking to do this, our culture — ever mired in contradictions — has elevated sex (and then an unthinking, random derivation thereof) to the status of Holiest of Holies. This is, in some respects, what could be termed a positive feedback reaction; increased promiscuity underscores the need for more and “better” birth control options, while the range of more and “better” birth control options encourages people to discard traditional sexual morality in favour of increased promiscuity. Some might dispute the latter half of that sentence, but even a casual glance at rates of, say, teenage pregnancy or common-law cohabitation over the last half-century will show that this has been exactly the case, or that there exists — at least — a strong correlation in this regard.

And out of all of this, what has emerged? In some respects, we’ve come to an age where women are now more objectified than ever. Watch an episode of Law and Order from its first few seasons that dealt with a sexual crime, and then watch an episode of the same series that deals with a similar sort of crime from one of the last couple seasons. For a chaser, do the same experiment with an episode of CSI from its first couple seasons that deals with a sexually-driven crime, followed by an episode of CSI: Miami dealing with the same subject matter.

In each example, the latter will feature more explicit material, almost to the point of eroticism in the case of CSI: Miami. And in addition to detracting from the show, what is demonstrated by this observation? Do long, panning, multi-angle cuts of dancing strippers really serve to advance the plot of a police procedural drama? Methinks not, and yet such imagery has become commonplace today, whereas a decade ago it would have seemed out of place.

Funnily, the only weapon that women have against this continued (and accelerating) sexual objectification is the one that modern feminism rejects most fiercely: abstinence. We’re told, ad nauseum, that “no means no,” are we not? And yet, one hardly hears of feminists encouraging women to exert that ability to say “no” on a regular basis, as a lifestyle framework. What better way for a woman to exert control over her own body than by telling any interested sexual partners that they’ll just have to wait. It’s a pretty good way to weed out the losers, I’m told.