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From: betsyp@apollo.HP.COM (Betsy Perry)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: "Scholarly objective evaluations of AA."
Message-ID: <503fa23c.26be0@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 8 Mar 91 22:03:00 GMT
References: <666388813@lear.cs.duke.edu> > <1991Feb15.090335.19134@xanadu.com> <666712518@lear.cs.duke.edu> <1991Feb24.192139.1421@xanadu.com>
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In article <1991Feb24.192139.1421@xanadu.com> nadja@xanadu.COM (Nadja Adolf) writes:
>BTW, Hillel, my brother is an ethnic who benefitted by AA; he is a Critical
>Care Nurse. He is trying to win a battle to permit him to work in Labor and
>Delivery and the Maternity ward. Sexist people won't let men work those units
>in my old state.

Fascinating: this brought me up hard against my own prejudices.
I just gave birth 5 months ago, and I think I'd have tried to walk out
of the delivery room if my attending nurse had been male!  My husband
is male and was present, and my OB was male and present for the birth,
but the OB nurses were women.  I guess the difference in modesty, for
me, comes from the situation:  Obstetricians don't see you naked until
you're actually *giving birth*, by which time you're much too busy
delivering to have any energy left over for modesty; by contrast, the
OB nurses are around for the early part of labor, during which you
still retain some socialization.    (Yes, your OB sees you
naked from-the-waist-down during checkups, but you're under a drape,
and eye contact is carefully avoided.  ;-)  

It was also pleasant to have at least one person present in the room
who'd actually given birth, so the situation wasn't theoretical for
her.  Obviously, not all females have given birth; but no male has, at
least to my knowledge.

So should laboring women be able to refuse, e.g., Black nurses for the
same reasons ("I just don't feel COMFORTABLE with one of them
around")?  This is tough for me.  I don't have any easy answers.  I do
know that labor is a very stressful time, and that it's not the best
time to raise somebody's consciousness; laboring women are apt to have
little energy for dialectic.  

Comments, anybody?

Not as enlightened a feminist as she'd thought,

[Incidentally, my position on the locker-room issue is that NOBODY
should be admitted to the locker-rooms; why should anybody be forced
to be naked in front of strangers, of whatever sex?]
-- 
Betsy Perry   (note P in userid)     betsyp@apollo.hp.com
Apollo Division, Hewlett-Packard, Inc.
This, too, shall pass.