What is a very experienced diver?

Before I really get stuck into this post and the associated self-reflection, I should start by answering the above question: I don’t consider myself a very experienced diver. For people who don’t dive at all, or often, that will seem like false modesty, but for people who dive regularly or professionally, it will seem a very appropriate self-assessment. I’m not bad. I’m getting there. I’m not “very experienced”.

I got my basic Open Water in 2007, and my Advanced in 2008 without having done much diving in the meantime (both PADI certifications). Stress & Rescue (SSI certification) followed in 2010, and this year I qualified for Marine Research Diver by adding on the SSI Night & Limited Visibility, Navigation, and Search & Recovery certifications. This is all so I meet basic Australian Worksafe standards for institutional diving, meaning that when my supervisor gets a wistful yen for more samples, I can head out with him and we can do a simple shore dive and pick up a bunch of brittle stars.

I have done a few courses. That doesn’t make me a very experienced diver.

I have 97 dives (ah, so close to that century mark!), the vast majority of them in the past four years (with a gap in 2009, where for various reasons I did not dive for a year. I never want to take a break that long again).

Ninety-seven dives over four years – three years, really, with the gap – averages out to about 32 dives per year (slightly less if I could be bothered accounting for the very few dives I did between my Open Water and my Advanced, and I can’t. Be bothered, that is). Not bad, not bad at all.

But let’s really look at my diving experience.

The kind of fieldwork I do involves getting close to the bottom in shallow water (almost always less than nine metres, and usually less than five metres), turning over heavy rocks, picking up wiggly invertebrates that often try to get away (with the exception of the sea-stars which are, I like to say, easy pickins’), and shoving them into a ziploc bag (and I have some fun stories about that process too. It’s why I usually have the fingers cut off one glove).

This fieldwork has taken place primarily on the southern coast of Australia, extending from Busselton in Western Australia (just south of Perth) to Coffs Harbour up in New South Wales (not really the south coast any more). We sample at places that are often not convenient to recreational divers, and often difficult to access. For financial reasons – and also for the preferred habitats of the animals I focus on – we are restricted to shore dives.

This means I have a fair chunk of experience dealing with the following situations:

1) rough water. Obviously we call it off if we’re not comfortable getting in the water, but sometimes we make an assessment and decide that, okay, it looks a bit rough, but it’s a restricted area, and here’s how we can manage that risk; we’re reasonably strong swimmers and we should be okay (note: it helps that, since we have to be close to the bottom, we tend to slightly over-weight ourselves. Being over-weighted makes rough water a lot easier to deal with for obvious reasons, but it also means you go through your air a bit faster)

2) cold water. Diving in Tasmania, for example, is often not a balmy experience. It can be gorgeous, and if you ever go there, it’s well worth the effort (Waterhouse Passage, off Buzzard’s Landing on the north coast was one of my all-time favourite fieldwork dives. It’s a long swim out over sand and seagrass, but once you get there it’s a gorgeous seagrass meadow with bommies rising everywhere, fantastic unspoiled growth all over the rocks, and on the day that we went, shafts of sunlight slanting through the water. Quite shallow, but just beautiful). It’s not super-cold; it has gotten down to perhaps ten degrees Celsius on occasion, though 14 was more common (New South Wales was a wonderful exception). This means I have acquired some experience diving in a dry suit, which leads to…

3) ….buoyancy control issues. I’m the first to admit that my buoyancy control is not great. Ninety-seven dives in and occasionally I still struggle with appropriate weighting. It probably comes from spending so much time sitting on the bottom, but a lot of it has to do with shallow diving. Buoyancy control is much, much easier on deeper dives – I’ve been amazed when I get below about 12 metres how much better I am in the water. Below 12 metres, I feel like my trim (general position and manoeuvrability in the water) is amazing. Still, that’s not where I “live” as they say; I have to deal with the challenges of my chosen environment. I do give myself credit for frequently diving in a neoprene dry suit in rough water in less than five metres. I could be doing a lot worse than I am, and buoyancy control issues, by-and-large, don’t freak me out (with one notable exception, which I now find a kind of hilarious story that I may post on one day. Suffice to say, Blairgowrie pier is cursed for me, pretty as it is).

4) Shallow water. See above.

5) Poor visibility. This is a huge issue on the south coast of Australia. For fieldwork, we often don’t have the luxury of waiting for better conditions. We’re in that spot on that day, and if it’s not stupidly rough (and presuming there are no shark reports), that’s where we’re diving (note: for anyone reading this who specialises in that area, yes, we do lots of risk assessments and hazard listing). So there have been some dives which are just muck, muck, and more muck (Albany Town Jetty, W.A.; Cowes Jetty, Philip Island. Ick. I do remember the really bad ones). I am not made uncomfortable by poor visibility any more, and I have a good relationship with my compass these days.

6) Lost buddy. On low-visibility dives I tend to try to stick to my supervisor/dive buddy like glue (see above), but it’s easy to get separated, so we have to make a few extra assumptions and restrictions (i.e., we’re staying in this restricted area – a pier or jetty, or a well-circumscribed cove, is ideal – and we will probably surface and touch base at least once during the dive, remembering that these are very shallow). The other thing is that with regard to our work, which is basically hunting and exploring, too many cooks really do spoil the brew. It’s very easy to get in each other’s faces (I like to say that there are very few fields of study where it’s accepted that your supervisor is probably going to kick you in the face at some point – and vice versa – but this is one of them). So we don’t stay in arm’s reach – we tend to stay in bubble/fin-view. Every minute or so I glance around to look for fins and bubbles, just to make a mental map of where my buddy is. This isn’t a proof method, so now I don’t panic when I lose my buddy. I don’t assume that they’ll “just turn up” by themselves. I tend to make an educated guess as to where they might be, calmly circle around for a bit looking for them, and then make my safe ascent to meet on the surface. That is obviously not great on deeper dives, because I want to descend again, and “bounce diving” is a great way to end up with decompression issues – so on deeper dives (boat dives, generally), we stick closer and just take the hit as far as sample collection is concerned. An ascent is an ascent, and that’s it.

7) “working” dives, i.e., exercise in dives. Recreational dives for the most part (depending on conditions and goals) tend to be fairly cruisy. I tend to just lazily fin forward, looking at things, glancing at compass and gauges and buddy from time to time. That’s how I do rec dives. Working dives, with a great deal of finning and swimming (the navigation course I did – that really did me in the legs – lots of lines and triangles against a current…); dives with rough water, where a lot of energy is spent holding position; and turning over heavy rocks to find my animals; all these things are tiring, and they make you go through your air much faster. When I’ve been going to gym regularly I revel in this and don’t have too much trouble; occasionally I’ve been called to dive when I am perfectly healthy but a little unfit, and wow, I can feel the difference.

8) Long shore walks. Some of the piers I have dived have been very long; some have had vile ladders at the end of them; and many of the places we’ve dived have been a bit inaccessible to car. When it’s cold, and you’re wearing a dry suit, and the appropriate 12kgs of lead (I actually need a bit more at the moment due to my new fluffy thermals. Mmmm, fluffy thermals), you feel every step on an unstable rocky reef. After a long shore walk, take a break before you get in (unless it’s really hot. Then get in the water and float around on the surface for a bit to get your breath before descending). The last thing you want to do is descend while you’re still in oxygen debt from heavy exercise – and walking a long distance in full kit and dry-suit-appropriate lead is heavy exercise – and start guzzling from your tank.

9) Repetitive dives, multi-day diving, lots of driving.

10) Long dives. You can stay down for a very long time at three or four metres, in terms of both air and decompression limits.

Alright, so reading that, if you’re not a regular diver, it kind of sounds like I know my shit, right? 

Wrong. I know that stuff. I am actually pretty comfortable in a shallow dive in cold, rough, low-vis conditions (I’m not saying I won’t get a bit cranky if, say, my dry suit floods or, as happened recently, underweighting means I get pushed around more than I expected). And given that those conditions are what many divers consider “not fun”, when I get into clearer water, deeper water, calmer water, I have a blast.

But here’s the stuff I’m a bit shaky on:

1) appropriate ascent rate. At nine metres or less, it’s not something you have to worry about. I pretty much think about going up, aim myself at the surface, vent my BC to prevent just bouncing out, and oh! Hello sunlight. For deeper diving, this is not okay. I can ascend at an appropriate rate, don’t get me wrong, but I sure as hell do not have much practice at it and there’s a lot of “Whoops! Slow down, there”.

2) You don’t have to do a safety stop (where you stop at five metres for three to five minutes to off-gas excess nitrogen, recommended for all dives deeper than nine metres), so I don’t have a lot of practice holding level at a particular depth. I’m generally on the bottom, or ascending. Again, this is something I can do, but it requires a great deal of concentration and focus on my part.

3) Air conservation. Generally air is not limiting on a four metre dive; and to be honest, bottom time is not really limiting either. We’ll get down on air before we have to worry about decompression limits, and we’ll get all our animals before we have to worry about air. I can count the number of times I have had an honest-to-God air-limited fieldwork dive on the fingers of one hand (one embarrassing situation early in my diving career still makes me wince when I think of it).

4) Bottom time for reasons of nitrogen absorption. See above. At the depths I dive, it’s just not an issue. You have to keep track of it – you would be very silly not to! – but it’s not a serious concern. The odds of exceeding Doppler limits are ridiculously low.

5) Dive computer use. I’ve got a decent, albeit secondhand, dive computer. It has a manual somewhere. It’s programmable for nitrox use. The thing is, for all the reasons I’ve described, I’ve only ever used it as a bottom timer, and on rare occasions, to monitor my ascent rate. I’m not entirely sure how to get it to do anything else (don’t worry; I’ve got a nitrox and a deep diver course coming up, and I’m going to need that baby working for those, so I’ll be hunting the manual down soonish).

6) Finally, navigation and orientation. I left this one for last because in the last year I’ve found I’m actually much better at this than I thought. I did the nav course, for one, which makes me feel a bit more confident, but even before that I surprised myself by using a combination of my compass and landmarks to find the ascent line on a boat dive without too much trouble. The fact is that on shallow shore dives, navigation isn’t a huge issue. Under piers, well, they’re going one of two ways, and if you know which way the pier projects (i.e. say, from looking at a map when you planned the dive), you know where the shore is. Even without piers, shore sloping and wave marking is pretty obvious, and if that fails, you can always surface and look for it, take a heading, and drop back down. In shallow water, that’s not particularly risky behaviour. Regardless, navigating in deeper water is something I haven’t done much.

These are things that regular boat divers, for example, will be able to do almost without thinking about it. 

Here’s the other thing: the people I do most of my diving with have been doing this all their lives, and they’re mostly in their forties or fifties. Many of them have dives logged into four digits – they don’t even bother any more (I’ve lost track of the number of times one of these people have glanced at me while I’m logging my dive and gone, “Wow, you’re good! I don’t even bother any more.” See, to me, a logged dive is still a victory. Also, I like to write down all the cool things I saw).

So I don’t consider my 97 dives to be very experienced. A couple of hundred, maybe over a couple of years? I’d credit that.

For that reason, whenever I hear about someone having sixty dives and being supposedly very experienced, I just have to blink. Sixty dives? Where was I at sixty dives?! I think it was 2010, and I think it might have been the slightly evil “eastern Victoria” trip, which involved Cowes Jetty (lost buddy, poor visibility), Cape Paterson (rough! Swam in circles! The only place where I decided that it was okay to orient myself by fish as there was a shoal of tiny fry under an overhang, and they hadn’t moved when I next saw them) and the infamous Arch Rock dive in Walkerville near Wilson’s Promontory, where I famously said the words, “Hrm. Bit of a surface swim. Doesn’t look that bad,” and possibly should have been shot for that utterance as we all ended up swimming in excess of three kilometres that day before descending into the kind of rough water where I spend a lot of time pulling myself along the bottom by gripping kelp holdfasts. Got some good samples, though.

Good times, good times.

I have instructed my supervisor to slap me should I ever say the words “bit of a surface swim” and “not too bad” again. He probably won’t, but he will remind me of Arch Rock and how we all had trouble walking the next day.

Having said that, I don’t intend to dismiss the experience of someone who is justifiably proud of their sixty dives. They’re probably quite good at all those things I suck at (ascent rate, levelling off, computer use). It’s just that my standards are skewed along the lines of scientist divers, photography divers, and the Melbourne Uni club divers who go out every weekend. My bell curve in this is, perhaps, a little different from your average PADI-certified tourism diver (not that there’s anything wrong with tourism diving! I think it is an excellent thing to do! Every holiday I go on will involve diving in the future!).

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m going to be very conservative if someone tells me they are a “very experienced” diver. I think I’ll be learning how to do this better for the rest of my diving life, and I can’t imagine at what point I would be comfortable applying that label to myself.

I will say that I’m probably pretty experienced at shallow, cold, poor visibility, rough, uncomfortable dives, and wrestling recalcitrant brittle stars into ziploc bags.

Pain-in-the-arse for hire

Confession time: Yes, I majored in English Lit (among other things). And yes, I enjoy trashy novels.

Paranormal romance? Vampires? Werewolves? Weird demon hunters? I love that shit. Can't get enough of it. There's just one problem.

I'm fucking picky about my trash. If at any point I start shouting at a character, "Oh for GOD'S SAKE, SHUT UP," or starting making motions to bitch-slap my Kindle, that's a clue that not all is well. If at any point I stare with my mouth hanging open, and eventually manage to mutter, "That? That's a plot? That's a plot?", it's another clue that not all is well (this is why I will never read Twilight).

I like complex characters. Given that it's trashy, depending on how desperate I am for "happy ending comfort novel" (note: which is directly related to whatever level of stress I'm under in other areas of my life - because when my life is going very well, I tend to read more challenging material, and just hope that I finish the book before life throws me another one of those curve balls everyone else handles so well), I might pass a little on the complex character issues.

I like metaphors. I like symbolism. I like people who use this paranormal demon-hunting crap as a way of sorting out other social issues. And I really appreciate people who can come into this genre, with a whole bunch of really problematic pre-existing notions of "romance" (more on that some other time), and untangle some of those problems, while still making the whole thing daredevil, gripping, romantic, sexy fun.

I don't like authors who use paranormal justifications for misogyny. I don't like authors where the romantic heroes and heroines justify crappy behaviour to move the plot forward when it would appear to be previously out of character (at the moment I'm reading a book where I do want to smack the characters, but they're lovable anyway. They do stupid, ill-considered things, but the author has quite cleverly set up the fact that this is in character - they are deeply flawed critters who obviously will do stupid things that make you want to hit them. Makes me love them a bit more, honestly). I don't like the "deus ex machina" to fix plot holes (*cough* Laurell K. Hamilton. Yes, I stopped reading those a long time ago, but I spotted my first "I couldn't be bothered setting this up properly so I invented a plot element in this very paragraph" in the second book).

Alright. I've now set this up appropriately. I like my trash, and I'm always on the lookout for new excellent trashy authors (my most beloved idols are Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, Seanan Maguire, that ilk).

When you search for various authors on Amazon, often other authors come up from the same genre, so I'd been seeing this "Vampire for Hire" by J.R. Rain for several months now turning up in my search results. Cleverly, the first book is free.

Of course I downloaded it. Free vampire trash? Hell yes. I found it kind of fun and escapist, although a bit frustrating in ways that probably should have been a warning signal, so I bought the omnibus of the first four books (for $9). Bargain, I thought. I'm feeling crappy. I need escapism.

The fact is that I'm not sure I can say outright that the writing is bad. I don't think it is. The plot moves forward. The characters are... if not exactly complex, then occasionally unexpected.

Here's the backstory: Samantha Moon is a former FBI agent who, six years ago, got attacked and turned into a vampire. Telling the world she developed a rare skin disorder, she withdrew from the FBI and started work as a private investigator. It also happens, however, that she's married with two kids, and it turns out that becoming a blood-sucking creature of the night puts a little strain on a marriage. She’s room temperature, which is apparently a turn-off, and I guess blood breath is a bit distressing. From the start of the book, it’s clear that her relationship with her husband is on the rocks, and it deteriorates quickly.

Alright, I’m interested – I’m curious about a book that tries to handle the vampiric transition in the presence of kidlets. I wanted to write a short story about that myself at one point so this rang a bell with me.

Here’s the problem: I don’t think this author knows how to write a female character. I feel like some of J.R. Rain's characterisation of women says a lot more about his view of women than it says about his characters. Firstly, the "paranormal romance" genre pays occasional lip service to the notions of sex (some are what I outright call "horny books" - others call it girly porn or vampire porn, but whatever. That's not a criticism, by the way. It's a feature, not a bug, depending on the book. Generally, if I want that feature, I specifically turn to books that aim for it deliberately, rather than something with a plot where I will occasionally get distracted by surprise ménage a trois. Yes, Ms Hamilton, I’m looking at you again, although the plots when south a while ago).

Our heroine spends a lot of time looking at “buns”. Now, that’s all well and good. Perve away, my darlings, perve away. On the other hand, I haven’t actually seen a group of heterosexual females pay such close and loud attention to the concept an attractive male arse since high school. That’s because high school is a period where you’re working out what you find sexually attractive, and when you find out that other people share that notion, you can discuss it endlessly. Well-written sexy cis/het romances from the point of view of a female protagonist generally involve an appreciation of multiple features. It feels like Samantha Moon only ever looks at arses (and occasionally, stomachs. She likes a bit of chubby stomach. Apparently “a man should have a belly”. Whut? Erm, yes, a complete digestive tract is important). It feels like a strange sort of add-in that wasn’t part of the original character.

What it feels like is that Mr Rain thought, “I’m writing a sexy female protagonist – women look at butts, right? I saw that on Melrose Place when I was a kid once. Okay, she looks at butts!” And it’s almost all she ever does and it feels as though her sexuality is honestly pasted on.

This clag-covered sexuality? Highly problematic. Sure, she’s in a rocky marriage, and she finds herself looking at another fellow and finding him hot (or at least she likes his butt, and gut. Butt-and-gut. There’s a joke in there somewhere, leave it with me). That happens, and if she were jumping the guy with an eye to tying him down and having her wicked way with him and his apparently awesome buns (I hate that word. I like a decent arse, don’t get me wrong, but I also like buns, as in baked goods, and I don’t think conflating the two is a good idea), then sure, a little guilt is a fair response. Really, though, what she is constantly saying to herself (and to her sister, by the way, who is eyeing off and flirting with a guy she is not married to) is “A married woman shouldn’t be looking at other men, or thinking about them.”

Erm, no. Sure, if you’re falling for the fellow, that’s a problem; you’re in a monogamous relationship, even if it’s not going well, so obviously a conversation is in order. Looking at other men? Fair play. I’m married. I’m monogamous. I have no intention of jumping someone other than Husband. However, exchanging vows at a delightful winery did not switch off my ability to appreciate the attractiveness of others. I feel no conflict. I can glance and think, “Hey, s/he’s a bit of alright,” and not feel any terrible shame.

Also, she is deeply concerned about her sister flirting with a cute bartender (and again, we note the buns. I’m partial to apple turnovers, myself). Apparently “her husband should really be worried.” My god, Mrs Moon (she is terribly offended whenever someone calls her “Ms”, apparently. To each their own, again, I hate being called Mrs. I’d say it’s a personal preference but when she meets a woman who claims “Ms”, she apparently finds it hilarious), who made you the freaking thought police?

Next stop – and this is the one that maybe bothers me most of all – is her attitude to other women. The minute she sees an attractive woman, she wants to hate her. There’s a surprising and distressing amount of this sort of thing: “…perfect alabaster skin. Bitch, I thought.” She has an instinctive jealousy, and there’s no self-consciousness about this. And I can’t help but wonder if this is how Mr Rain thinks women think about other women. It’s a repeated theme that makes me very uncomfortable. Mrs Moon is petty.

Even worse – and it’s part of the same point – is how she deals with revealing clothing. She actually uses the phrase “dress like a slutty whore” when she shows skin in order to distract those foolish male desk clerks (oh, those foolish male desk clerks, they don’t notice anything you do as long as you show them boobs, amirite?). She commonly uses the phrase “like a slut” to describe her outfits. She feels ashamed of showing skin. 

Please tell me you don’t need me to tell you why this is a problem, and why this upsets me enormously. I like my trashy novel protagonists to enjoy their sexuality. I want them to be sex-positive. They don’t have to be actually having sex, but they shouldn’t feel guilty about the fact that they’d like to. They shouldn’t be feeling ashamed of wearing revealing clothing – or if they are, there should be a reason for it (trauma, debilitating scars, something worth actually discussing and dealing with). They shouldn’t be using the word “slutty” as though it’s a perfectly normal and acceptable descriptor for clothing. Remember that people who are reading romantic, sexy novels probably like romance and sex themselves; I would be surprised if many of these readers are able to connect with a character who is ashamed of the very qualities the reader is actively seeking.

Let me put it another way: if I felt the same way about sexual activity and attraction as Mrs Samantha Moon, I wouldn’t be reading trashy vampire novels. I’d be reading Anna fucking Karenina*.

And if a character presents these attitudes, it should be examined. It should be something the author is untangling. Mr Rain does not do this. Mr Rain seems to think this is okay.

Look, as I said above, the romantic genre and the paranormal romance subgenre are already both littered with problematic tropes. It takes a certain class of author to rise above these – or, preferably, confront them – and create strong, interesting, human characters that a feminist reader doesn’t want to immediately turf off the nearest bridge (not to mention healthy fictional relationships). I myself have a reasonable tolerance for some of these problematic issues, as I appreciate the difference between an enjoyable fantasy and what would actually piss me off in real life. Even so, I have a line.

I also have a certain amount of discomfort with, for want of a better phrase, maternal biological essentialism. Samantha has kids. They’re not real characters at this point – just tropes to highlight the traumatic nature of her change and what she has to sacrifice, and in that sense they function admirably. But by the end of the fourth book, I was heartily tired of “I might be a vampire, but I’m a Mom” being bludgeoned into my head like a rolled up catalogue created by the unexpected corporate merger of Target and Victorian Gothic.

I don’t have kidlets. I like kidlets. I have one or two friends with their own adorable offspring and I appreciate the enormous amount of work and love that goes into taking care of mini-humans. I know that having children does cause a shift in priorities (although not a personality change). But Samantha’s intense momminess is portrayed in a bizarre fashion. It seems to be something she switches off or on as the plot demands. When she’s in mom mode, it’s all that matters. We are swept off on a tidal wave of parental motivation – and that’s fine, it drives the plot quite well – until that wave abruptly hits the wall of “arse-kicking paranormal romance”, and Samantha trots off to, essentially, fight crime. It’s a minor quibble. From time to time I did find the parent stuff quite convincing and it was one of the things that made me keep reading, but at times I felt it was handled in a clumsy fashion, one that did feel like biological essentialism. Of course you’re a mom. Of course you react that way! Because all vampire moms would totally react that way! Yes… I think this implied uniformity is at the heart of my discomfort.

It’s just that, for someone who worries about her kids as much as she does, we don’t seem to know very much about them at all, apart from a few token efforts at wedging some childlike personalities sideways into the prose.

The final thing I really hated about this series is the repetition of “Oh Lord, I’m a freak”, which if anything carried a more intense blunt impact with a higher risk of cranial trauma than the mommy trope. Samantha is a vampire. She’s unnaturally strong, and she doesn’t throw a reflection (this plot hole is badly covered up at times by a belated “Of course I was wearing make up at the time and I closed my eyes when the photo was taken” which makes very little sense and shows a poor understanding of how make-up is actually applied. Although I guess vampires don’t have to worry about caking their pores with foundation, so perhaps it’s a moot point).

And every time she does something particularly impressive with this strength – usually something that is useful, and advances the plot – she pauses for a brief moment of self-loathing, a tortured, “Oh Lord, I’m a freak!” directed at her woeful, vampiric situation.

Lady, you’ve got super powers. You’re a vampire. STFU. This is a trashy novel here, not Anne Rice. A little identity confusion and perhaps even a phase of self-loathing is fair enough – but honestly, a reader is going to get sick of this repetitive “I’m such a freak!” and “What a monster I am!” You don’t. Need. To. Belabour. The. Point.

Having said that, I got through four books because I needed to know what happened. I skimmed towards the end, however, because there was only so much I could take of the self-loathing, the shame about “slutty” clothing, the guilt about sexual feelings, and the knee-jerk petty jealousy of all other women.

I really couldn’t get past wondering if this is how J.R. Rain honestly thinks that women think of themselves and other women; and if so, I really hope he’s wrong.

-----

*This is not to imply that people reading Anna Karenina are not sex-positive.

I like big dogs and I cannot lie...**

I actually like all dogs. For a long time I thought I didn’t like little dogs (and occasionally referred to them as “rat dogs” or “football dogs” as per my dad), but I’ve since changed my mind. I like little dogs, as long as they’ve been treated and trained like dogs. It’s distressingly common that people don’t bother to really train little dogs, probably for the understandable reason that little dogs can do less harm – but lack of training means ending up with the uncertain, neurotic, yappy little dog that is unclear on its standing in the local hierarchy, and pushes boundaries (leading to nipping, and potential face-biting).

I’ve met some lovely little dogs, though, and it seems to be that sort of thing is on the decline. Having said that, this isn’t an “anti small dog” post (it would be a disservice to some the awesome titchy dogs I’ve met in recent years: kudos to Toby the whippet, Jasper the Jack Russell, and pretty much every cavalier King Charles spaniel I’ve ever met).

There are a few times when I admit that having a smaller dog would make things easier (I define “smaller” as “any dog that is less than 23.5kgs at 5.5 months old”), so here’s a list of ways in which big dogs are a bit of a pain:

1. You have to teach them “Up!” at a very young age. Amos has reached the point where lifting him onto the examination table at the vet involves a squat lift. I’m fairly strong, but the disparity between his weight and his height means I have to bend lower and take the weight in my back (bad knees – I can only squat so far down). When he’s taller, this will oddly enough be easier, even though he’s heavier.

2. You can’t buy anything at the end size. They grow so fast! There’s no point buying a car harness that won’t fit him yet – he still needs to be protected in the mean time. You have to start with a small collar, and these are all things he will grow out of very, very quickly. If we lived in a snowy country, we’d have to buy titchy coats. Fortunately his crate came with a divider wall so we could make it smaller to start with until he got big enough to take it out (the whole point of crate training is that it’s a cosy den, which doesn’t work if it’s too big).

3. At the moment, my dog has a seriously upset stomach. We’re hoping the problem isn’t an obstruction that will require surgery. This leads to a couple of points. Firstly, a smaller dog would produce far less vomit. And less poop. These are the consequences of an upset stomach (although there’s not a lot of the latter, which is why we’re concerned about an obstruction). [EDIT: Amos is fine. It has all worked through his system and all will be well, although he's still on some tummy meds for a few days. It was all very distressing though - he spent the night in the vet hospital and had X-Rays, the whole shebang].

4. Secondly, a smaller dog would require less anaesthetic. The bill is directly proportional to size. Actually, this applies to all medications.

5. Training: it’s crucial, and that’s fine, that’s as it should be. But we’re talking niggly details here – we need to train Amos to be cool with things like getting his teeth cleaned and his nails clipped. You can wrestle a Jack Russell to the ground and do these things against his will, but try doing that with a 20+kg ball of black, distressed muscle, or God forbid, a fully grown Rottweiler. And nail clipping distresses Amos mightily.

6. Everything costs more. Big collars cost more than little collars. Big crates cost more than little crates. Big toys, big kennels… and so on. Size up, cost up.

7. Dog will eat you out of house and home – especially if, like me, you’re a bit lazy on the cooking front, and you overcompensate by buying premium large breed puppy food at $[you don’t want to know] per 15kg bag, which lasts about a month at the moment (he is five months old).

8. Public perception: some people are scared of large dogs. I actually don’t judge people for this. It’s not an entirely irrational fear. It’s only irrational if you know the dog is well trained and not going to cause you harm, but if you don’t know the dog or the owners, it’s not unreasonable to question this. I tend to know responsible dog owners, and I actually haven’t met many people who have failed to appropriately train large dogs, but that doesn’t mean morons aren’t out there. They demonstrably are out there. Of course, even a badly trained, neurotic dog is still unlikely to attack you, but it does happen. The problem is that this public perception leads to crappy behaviour from people in some cases, and it is upsetting when people trash talk your dog. It also leads to stupid legislation that has been proven to not work (breed specific legislation – at the moment no study has shown it to have any helpful effect on dog attacks). On the up side, I haven’t encountered this behaviour in our town. People have been wonderful and have adored our little fellow.

9. Harsh realities: big dogs can do more damage. They can break through many obstructions. They can climb over tall objects (some small dogs can do this also). If they take off while on lead, they will drag you. At the moment I’m not worried about the latter because leash training is something Amos has excelled at. He’s really, really good at not running off; our secret plan is to not let him ever actually figure out that he’s stronger than us.

10. Smaller dogs tend to live longer, although with advances in veterinary science and pet care larger breeds like Rottweilers and Great Danes are definitely seeing more years than they used to.

11. Finally, the desexing debacle: see my previous post, but as an addendum, if our dog were a smaller dog, we probably would be more likely to desex him, and be willing to do it at an earlier age. The bone density and proper growth issue is a huge factor here. If we didn’t have to worry about it, I’d be much calmer about taking his goolies away.

So, with all these reasons that large dogs are a bit of a pain, why did I* get one? We’ll leave aside why I love Rottweilers in particular (but breed-specific characteristics are a big part of it - Rotties are amazingly clever, which helps), and focus purely on the appeal of size (and attendant characteristics)! (some of these are a bit silly)

1. You can hug them. I mean a proper, chest-thumping hug. You can seriously put your arms around the dog and lean on their shoulder, and they put up with this remarkably well given that they are not primates, and thus that hugging is not really in their canine body language vocabulary. To be honest, dogs are not huge fans of hugging - it means something different in canine body language - but patient, tolerant dogs will put up with it.

2. You can bench press them for weight training. They’ll even grow at a rate that will continue to challenge you! (admittedly, although I can lift him, I would be hard put to bench press Amos at the moment)

3. They are very hard to lose as they cannot fit into small spaces.

4. They can go for looooong walks. Amos is a bit young for this yet, but when he’s a big fellow, we won’t be able to tire him out. This does apply to some small breeds as well, actually.

5. There’s something amazingly charming about the fact that they keep trying to curl themselves up smaller and smaller to fit on your lap as they grow (Amos finally gave up on this a few weeks ago, but he held out for quite a while).

6. When you’re on a chair, they can put their heads on your lap to get your attention, rather than jumping up (no, I'm not encouraging being pushy - putting head on lap is okay. Hassling is not).

7. They do what I call the “Big Dog Affectionate Lean.” When desirous of patting and attention, big dogs seem to have a tendency to wander up and lean against your legs. This does sometimes require adjusting one’s balance. It’s very sweet nonetheless.

8. No-one is going to give you any trouble if you take them for a walk late at night (double for Rottweilers and similar breeds).

9. People are unlikely to ever rob your house if they’re aware of what lives in the yard (double for Rottweilers and similar breeds).

10. Their barks are deeper in tone, and thus less annoying (compare the basso boom of a Great Dane to the yip of a pug to see what I mean).

11. Harsh realities 2: the whole “big dogs do more damage” is undeniably true for what it’s worth – but little dogs also have very sharp teeth and, in an unguarded moment, can do a great deal of damage. You’re not going to underestimate your big dog.

12. They can pull carts (double for Rottweilers!).

13. As a general rule, big dogs tend not to have "little man" syndrome. This is anecdotal, but my experience with large dogs has generally shown them to be more calm and placid overall. I suspect that while this no doubt has something to do with native temperament, it probably has more to do with training. People are more likely to train big dogs, so they tend to be more confident of their place in the world and their home, and thus chill. They're more unpredictable in how they treat little dogs (note: this is an optimistic interpretation. There are irresponsible, awful people who have big dogs and are horrible to them which is the reason we have most of these behavioural problems in the first place).

So there we are. At the moment I'm tempted to add how incongruously cute it is when your enormous Rottweiler puppy is sprawled across your couch, cuddled up to the stuffed dog toy you bought for him which is still miraculously in one piece, but that might be belabouring the point.

 *I say why “I” got one because I was the driving force behind this. Husband loves dogs, but didn’t have a preference, while I was jumping and going “Rotties! Rotties! Rotties!” with puppy-clucky glee.

**title courtesy husband and Sir Mix-A-Lot.

Why I'm looking for a new vet

When consulting with people for medical advice (I emphasise medical because I am a biologist, which affects the story in ways that will become clear), I find myself in a mental state that I'm going to call "scientific entitlement." I could even use the phrase "scientific privilege" without stretching the bounds too much.

My reasoning is this: medical personnel have to simplify things in order to communicate with patients and patient families. That's just how it is. Biology is amazingly complex - I usually describe the study itself as the imposition of order on chaos (although more specifically I'm referring to taxonomy when I use that phrase). You do need background information to understand what's going on.

Really good medical personnel will take the time to use metaphors, draw diagrams and so forth, and make sure that patients have as much relevant information as they can be expected to usefully process. I tend not to tolerate anything less than this effort. I want to be involved in a dialogue for any relevant medical care.

Here's where my entitlement/privilege comes in: while I'm not a medical researcher (or, as will become relevant below, a vet), I do have a higher capacity to usefully process this information than the general layperson. I can process more of it, at a deeper level. In fact, due to the level of my biological knowledge, I can actually parse a limited (very limited) subsection of the primary scientific literature. I may not evaluate the quality of studies to the same standards, as I really am not an expert.

Here's where another valuable cliche enters the scene: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If I only know enough to draw broad conclusions, without a good grasp of subtlety, I'm going to miss the nuance of the situation, and come to the wrong conclusion. A really blunt example is how so many people think that rising levels of CO2 will be good for the environment because "it helps trees breathe." This completely overlooks the vast complexity of climatic systems, ecology, botany and so on and so forth. It comes to an entirely erroneous conclusion and the consequences (should this person be in a position of power) could contribute to catastrophe.

So! Because I know that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I have a strong tendency to trust experts in their field to parse information accurately. Other people have to trust me for information (obviously not medical information, and the stakes are somewhat lower, but I can't explain what I do from first principles every time someone asks me a question). I know how much work and study is involved in becoming useful in a lot of these fields - it's vast. It's not something I can reach with just a little cross-disciplinary reading, and it would be exceptionally arrogant of me to think that I could.

That trust there is important to me. However, we're back to scientific entitlement again: I want a basic mechanistic understanding of what's going on. I am never going to accept "Because I said so." I will accept "A whole whackload of peer-reviewed studies have shown..." and/or a list of pros and cons. I do not mean to disrespect experts in their field. I just have a high level of respect for my own independence and decision-making capacity. If someone else asks me why I have taken a particular course of action, I'm not going to just say, "Because the doctor thought it was a good idea." Unless I am very tired, that is.

Understanding situations - even in the ballpark way that a good medical expert can enable for a person outside that field - makes me feel safe and confident.

That's why I got very angry with the surgeon at the Royal Melbourne who wanted to perform a procedure on me with a local anaesthetic when I knew from fifteen years experience with the condition that the local would not be very effective. He said, "You won't feel a thing." This was a lie. It was an outright freaking lie to get me to cooperate and make their life easier. It also conflicted with what four other medical staff had said to me in the previous 24 hours.

And - finally we get to the point - it's why I am very, very angry with our vet (the older one. The younger one is alright so far).

I take veterinary care very seriously. I am deeply invested in the welfare of my puppy. Yesterday, we took little (22kg) Amos to the vet for what turned out to be gastritis from eating rocks (he's very intelligent. Really. Eating rocks. Hell). While I was there, I took the opportunity to ask various questions (His food is really expensive, we'll keep him on it if you think it's a good idea, but what other options would be acceptable once this critical growth period has passed?, also, Are his teeth coming in okay and when will he finish teething?).

I asked one other question - to be blunt, I asked if his testes were descending okay. He's at the stage where they are starting to form as little lumps, and I know that it's possible for hernias to happen in dogs (actually, in all mammals, thanks to my friend Josie for the tale of her poor little guinea pig who decided to keep his intestines in his scrotum, just for shits and giggles apparently. He's fine by the way). I don't know how that system is supposed to work as male pups grow up, so I asked.

She said he was fine - absolutely normal - and then asked the question, "Are you going to desex him?"

Put on your controversy hats, people.

I do not - at this point - plan to desex my dog.

I do not have a moral objection to it. I don't think it's cruel. I don't feel it somehow makes him less cool or macho. I don't begrudge the money for the operation (although putting him under a general makes me nervous, but I realise that is probably slightly irrational).

In fact, I think that male* desexing is a good tool for population control with the following caveats:

1) in cats
2) in dogs that roam
3) when owners are not able to keep their dogs inside
4) in the case of medical need
5) in smaller dogs where the negatives (aha, we shall see presently) are less apparent
6) when, for whatever reasons, the benefits outweigh the risks

(*just so you know: I refer to male desexing for specific reasons. It is a much less invasive procedure than female desexing, which appears to be good thing to do in some cases for health reasons - I have done much less research on this - and female desexing of dogs that do not roam is less of an issue of population control. The issues are not equivalent for both sexes. There's an interesting aside to this I'll mention later)

Right. So now that we've established I'm not taking this stance for stupid emotional reasons, let's look at why I am.

I was initially planning to snip the boy at six months, which is the standard (in Australia. This is relevant, by the way). The benefits of de-sexing one's male dog are generally supplied to us, the general, non-veterinary public, as a scientific consensus - much in the same way as the benefits of vaccination, the reality of global warming, and the link between smoking and lung cancer are supplied as scientific consensus. As it happens, I know what scientific consensus looks like, and these latter three items qualify.

Desexing your male dog as beneficial? Not so much. Especially not in the last decade, when a number of studies - largely observational and epidemiological, admittedly, but applied with a great deal of statistical rigour - have examined the long-term and short-term risks and benefits of a gonadectomy.

I was particularly concerned by a paper that came to my attention showing a ridiculously strong link between early desexing in Rottweilers and the development of osteosarcoma. In this case, they define early as "less than one year of age." Now, Rottweilers were the target breed for the study because they already have a genetic predisposition to osteosarcoma. The sample size was fairly good, although I am going to have to look into appropriate sample sizes for epidemiological studies (it's not my area, and standards vary - epidemiological studies tend to provide quite noisy data, so you need higher sample sizes. It's just under 700 animals, though, which sounds good to me, particularly with such a strong effect).

It turned out that rotties that were desexed were nearly four times more likely to develop osteosarcoma; this is suggested to be related to the link between sex hormones and bone deposition. Let me repeat: they were four times more likely to develop a condition that they already prone to develop.

For anyone who doesn't know - Amos, the canine apple of my dog-loving eye, is a Rottweiler. He's about five months of age and is at this moment developing beautifully.

I did look for other studies that criticised this one. I have so far found nothing conflicting with this result. In fact, a subsequent epidemiological study included a number of other breeds and found that the risk factor for osteosarcoma was related to (1) size and (2) neuter status. Large dogs are more likely to develop osteosarcoma. Large, desexed dogs are way more likely to develop osteosarcoma.

The potential confounding factor is this: maybe owners that are "responsible enough" to desex their dogs and more likely to follow up and biopsy their sick dogs. I think this could be controlled for by look at well-loved breeding line dogs - obviously not desexed, but still cared for.

So, I raised this point with the vet.

"Rubbish!" she said. "It's absolute rubbish. How many times can I say it? You can't just read websites, you have to go to the actual study."

I explained that I had, and that I was actually a PhD geneticist, so I did go and read the articles.

Her comeback? "I've operated on three dogs with osteosarcoma that were entire [not desexed]."

Alright. So first you assume I haven't done my research - fair enough, it may be not be that common - and then you give me anecdotal evidence.

That's like me saying "I know three old women who chain smoked every day of their adult lives and lived to be ninety-six with no sign of lung cancer." In no way does that mean there is no link between smoking and lung cancer. It's not a predictive model - it's a risk ratio. I know that, and she knows that (and if she doesn't, she shouldn't be a vet).

I said I wanted him to reach his full growth. She replied - and be prepared - that sex hormones were only for sex and reproduction, and had nothing to do with growth (or bone deposition).

Uh-huh. Soooo. Why are women at higher risk of osteoporosis after menopause? Why are women who started their menstruation very late at even greater risk of osteoporosis after menopause? Lower exposure to oestrogen = increased risk. Is the exact mechanism understood? I don't believe so. It's probably far more complex than that; correlation does not equal cause.

Why are desexed male dogs generally smaller and more slender than entire male dogs, regardless of breed? I know Rottweiler breeders who point out that desexed rotties look much more like bitches, which is not unexpected, and is a function of growth.

Either she's lying to me, or she's stupid.

Actually, that's harsh: what I suspect is that she is trying to simplify. The thing is that every hormone in your body probably has multiple functions and cascade effects. It is nowhere as simple as this "this hormone does this"; it has to be explained that way to an extent for understanding, but to present it as convincing truth is insulting (I am admittedly a population geneticist, but I have been to enough talks on gene expression to understand how amazingly complex and multifaceted any single gene product or biochemical pathway can be).

It also does nothing to alleviate my concerns. If she is trying to convince me to do something I am not inclined to do, that relies on trust. She has repeatedly damaged that trust already by using crap tactics to try and convince me.

If she had a problem with the basic hypothesis - that sex hormones are necessary for adequate bone deposition and that in larger dogs with dense bones the absence of those sex hormones can lead to bone problems - she should have explained why. And I don't care if she thinks she's too busy (the clinic was not busy); I don't care if she thinks it's beneath her. I've raised a concern.

Don't dismiss my concerns. Rebut them effectively.

But it gets worse, gentle reader. I stand my ground.

"Well, I just hope it doesn't backfire," she snaps. "Because I'm the one who's going to have to euthanase him when he bites someone from frustration."

Oh, you did not just do that. She's gone from "trusted expert" to "non-trusted expert" to "manipulative tool" in about five minutes of conversation.

Firstly, you've just implied that I can't adequately train my dog to not bite people unless we cut his balls off. Second, you've now said that you're going to have to kill my dog. And third, you've now implied that killing my dog is going to be most terrible for you. Look, I understand that euthanasing animals must be terribly difficult. I would find it heartbreaking. But I think it might be a tad worse for the owner who loves the animal. I think that they are the ones who will be mourning and grieving. I think that it's an unpleasant and upsetting part of your job. It's not comparable.

At this point I am distinctly less friendly. I have now moved on to explain that we have had three non-desexed Rottweilers and none of them bit anyone (this is not strictly true. Baron once bit my cousin Andrew on the backside under extreme stress and weird conditions. Andrew behaved in a way around the dog that he had been repeatedly told not to, and my Dad had a broken leg and was vulnerable which would have put Baron on edge. Baron thought he'd caught the burglar - he'd done Schutzhund training and had been taught that this was how burglars behave - and was very pleased with himself. He did what he was trained to do and I don't consider the example applicable to the discussion, although I disclose it in the interests of honesty).

The vet was visibly shocked by this report (I am shocked that she was shocked. What the hell do people do with their dogs? Don't they train them or socialise them? There is no way she should be expecting to euthanase a non-desexed dog of any breed on spec) and said, "Fine, I'll change my mind." I said, "Don't change your mind because of that. That's three data points."

And here we get to the nub of the matter: vets, like doctors, have an agenda of public health. That is, I've concluded, their primary goal. For that reason, they must assume - politely - that people are irresponsible, absent-minded and potentially a bit useless (unless demonstrated otherwise, please?).

A vet for this reason probably has to assume that the owner of a large, territorial male Rottweiler...

1) will not train their dog properly (so angry. We work so hard on this, and I do so much research, and we put our money where our mouth is twice a week, and I'm paying $120 to go to a seminar to improve my training skills because I think this is so important)

2) will not keep their dog restrained, which will result in aggression, and unplanned puppies (also angry. We plan to spend some extensive time and money reinforcing the fencing around our property because if my Rottie gets out, I'm going to have bigger concerns than whether or not he's located a convenient bitch in heat and produces unplanned puppies).

I'm not saying that, at the core of it, shit doesn't happen. Shit does happen. The bumper sticker would not fare so well otherwise. You can train a dog to near-perfection and they can still crack it in a particular situation. But desexing my dog is not guaranteed to help this.

Believe it or not, the jury is actually still out on whether desexing reliably reduces aggressive behaviour. I have read studies that show that it does, and studies that show it does not affect the behaviour, and studies that show the reverse trend (an increased risk factor for desexed male dogs to be aggressive). I have also noticed a fairly consistent trend that desexed female dogs are more aggressive on the whole than entire female dogs - not to the extent where I'd refuse to desex a bitch if I thought it necessary for other reasons, but it's worthy of consideration in the overall equation.

The fact is that I don't think this vet, who may well be quite busy, is keeping up with the research. I feel that she is lazily toeing a party line. I think that during the consultation I made it pretty clear that I love my dog, that I am a responsible owner, and that I consider research and evidence to be important in making decisions about his welfare. I don't think I deserved the assumptions shown above - initially, fine, because she's never met me, but five minutes into the conversation we should have worked out where I stood on the matter.

Maybe she's just prejudiced against people who like Rottweilers? That would be odd in a vet, but it does happen in the general public.

Since that interview, I've gone back to Web of Science and dug up more papers on gonadectomy, aggression, and associated health risks. Of course there are ways in which gonadectomy is beneficial for health. These are well publicised. The downsides, though, aren't well publicised. An increased risk of incontinence and lower urinary tract diseases (including cancers), an increased risk of osteosarcoma in larger breeds, and a greatly increased tendency towards cognitive impairment in old age (basically doggy dementia in the twilight years).

Multiple papers advise that, while desexing male cats is basically a clear recommendation, desexing female cats, and female and male dogs, should be weighed up for each individual circumstance, as the risks are going to be different in each case, and the benefits are less clear.

This is not brain surgery. One size does not fit all. Do not tell me that it does, regardless of having to deliver a homogenous public health message.

So now, I'm looking for a vet in my area who will not lie to me, fudge the facts, insult me, or imply that I'm going to have to euthanize my dog.

I'm not saying I'll never desex him. At the moment, the evidence does not recommend it.

On homophobia (or is it?) (Spoiler: yes, it is)

Turns out that this blog is where I like to express what I think of as "the bleedingly obvious" or the occasionally bizarre (I still think that living with animals is bizarre. It's been happening for thousands of years, and I love pets, but it still fascinates me). Generally I'd like to say that most posts won't be as sanctimonious at the last one, but let ye who is not ever self-righteous cast the first stone.

I read all the articles on gay marriage when they appear. Then I read the comments. Then I want to slowly turn and bump my head gently against the nearest surface - gently, because I have a thesis to finish, and bruising my cerebral cortex will not serve me well.

The one I wish to address today is a common objection: "Just because someone is against gay marriage does not make them homophobic! I have gay friends." (paraphrase) Oh, you have gay friends! What a marvellous skyscraper of morality you are! I have gay friends, too! We have so much in common! Oh, wait - except I want my gay friends to enjoy the same rights as my straight friends?

These people who are against any alteration of the status quo are horrified and angry that they are deemed homophobic - "fear of/discomfort with homosexuality" - because they don't like the idea of a same-sex couple getting married. They feel pigeonholed. They feel judged. They feel that "the crazy lefties" are labelling and bullying them (cue the World's Smallest Simple Plan Album Playing Just For YOU*). They appear to think that there is no justification for this idea that an opposition to gay marriage is a sign of homophobia.

I think that perhaps they are not well-blessed with self-awareness or an analytical mindset, so on the off chance that anyone ever reads this without me telling them to do so (ha!), I thought I might lay out the logic that we crazy lefties and/or gay lobbyists (one of my favourite lines: "Oh, I love the gay lobby. It's through the gay front doors and right before you get to the gay elevators.") are following in this case.

1. No argument against gay marriage makes any logical or legal sense. In the interests of not re-hashing in detail, I'll list the arguments of which I am aware, debunk them with my mad debating skills, and move on. This has been done many times before, so in the further interests of not claiming undue credit, I am probably stealing the answers that make sense to me. Then again, logic is provided free of charge. Here we go.

1a. "God doesn't like it." This is the easiest argument in the world to debunk. I'm not going to enter into the religious debate - I lack the wherewithal to do so - so here it is: which God? We live in a secular society. Say it with me: secular. Say it slowly, say it fast, it's a beautiful word. Rolls off the tongue, don't it? I don't have to live according to your religion; the law is on my side. I only have to live according to the law of the land. And the law of the land is (ideally, and nominally) made to fit everyone in that society. We don't make atheists get baptised. We don't make Christians face Mecca to pray. And I'm sorry if those comments are based on religious ignorance - my ignorance in this case is a case in point. Nobody made me go to Bible studies (actually, I didn't have a choice about religious instruction in my second primary school, but that's a separate issue).

Example: I'm married. I'm an adult woman, married to adult man, according to the law of the land. I was married in a civil ceremony in a freaking winery, under a tree. My wedding was not religious. In fact, I've often said that God was not invited, and if He turned up, the deity was gatecrashing. I'm not sure, but I don't think I'm actually married in the eyes of God/Church. As it happens, I still consider myself married. Marriage is not a religious institution; it is a legal condition; legally, it must ignore religion.


Summary: legally, we don't care what God thinks about gay marriage. Legally, we can't care.

1b. "Marriage is between a man and a woman. It's always been that way." No, it hasn't. And how is "It's always been that way" ever an argument for anything? Ideas of marriage change from generation to generation. For thousands of years it's been about the ownership of women and the inheritance of property... in some societies. Same-sex marriage is certainly not unheard of in ancient history.

1c. "I support and defend marriage. I love being married. Allowing same-sex couples to marry debases my marriage." I've never heard anything so ridiculous. Is your marriage so weak that someone you don't know getting married affects it? Honestly, I thought your marriage was about the two of you, but clearly, it's about feeling superior to unmarried people.

1d. "Think of the children!" "Selfish gay parents experimenting on their kids!" Alright, slow down, you're right - homosexual parents should definitely not be experimenting on their children to form X-Files style alien-human hybrids.

Oh. Wait. That's not what you meant.

What you meant was that apparently growing up as the children of a same-sex couple is an experiment. Firstly, marriage isn't about children. This has been debunked so many times, but it keeps popping up: apparently, marriage is about the ability to reproduce, and contribute to the next generation via the binding of gametes. This is arrant nonsense; infertile couples get married all the time. People adopt if they want kids. And furthermore, there are plenty of married, heterosexual couples out there who don't want children, and we let them get married.

Sure, it's nice when kids are raised in stable, loving homes - which homosexual parents are able to provide just as well as heterosexual parents and there are numerous studies showing that there is no psychological disadvantage to these situations. Teh science is against you. I know people who would give their right arm to have been raised by even one sane, present parent of either sex rather than the heterosexual drop-kicks who actually raised them. Heterosexuality is no guarantee of stability. And furthermore, another argument has been raised - I quite like this one - that allowing gay marriages is good for children, because marriage overall increases the stability of a family. It also means that these kids don't have to look at their parents and wonder why, even though there is plenty of love going around, society apparently has decided that the relationship is Just Not Good Enough. No matter how supportive, how loving, how thoughtful, how stable.


1e. "I'm in favour of gay marriage, but why do you need the word marriage?" Why not? Separate isn't equal. If you don't think the word is a big deal, go on, do like your parents taught you - share. Words are a huge deal. We think in language. We debate in language. We justify in language. Language shapes thought, language has impact. Words, in short, matter. You don't gain anything by keeping the word marriage exclusive to a penis-vagina coupling. See (1c).

1f. "Churches will have to perform same-sex marriages which oppose their doctrine!" No, they won't. See Canada.

1g. "I just know it's wrong."

Now we get to the nub of the matter, because so far, none of these other arguments make sense in a secular society. Children will not be threatened (and I'd go so far as to say that if we live in a more egalitarian society, all children will benefit enormously - especially children who grow up to be same-sex attracted and would like to not be bullied, discriminated against, or otherwise abused by society). Status quo is a terrible, terrible argument (see: interracial marriages, women voting, etc. etc.). Religion is an appalling reason to oppose same-sex marriage. If marriage is a religious institution only, I'm not married - and guess what, I take extraordinary exception to that idea. There will be pummelling.

2. "I just know it's wrong." Hon, that's not how morality works. That's not how fairness works. That's not how our society works. We have laws. We have reasons. We generally agree that discrimination is bad. If you have no return argument for any of these debunkings, then your response is instinctive, and inadmissible. Your instinctive response is about your discomfort.

You are, for some reason (probably lack of exposure to the idea that those pesky homosexuals are, in fact, people like you), uncomfortable with the idea of two people of the same sex getting married.

Discomfort. Hrm. With homosexuality.

We do call that homophobia.

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*Re: "A Simple Plan" are probably not around any more. Who is the current emo band that would fit in this bracket? I'm getting old, you see.
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On fidelity

Every now and again, you come into contact (directly or indirectly) with someone whose world view differs drastically from your own. That's diversity. It's interesting - usually. Occasionally, that difference leaves you sputtering in confusion: "But who does that? Seriously?"

The issue of fidelity in monogamous relationships seems to be one such minefield.

My own approach (which we shall call "A") is: "I am in a monogamous relationship. I will not seek romantic and/or sexual activity with anyone outside of this relationship." This seems fairly straightforward to me (and to Husband, whose initial response to our proposed relationship was, "Monogamy? Well, I'll give it a try..." and it seems to have worked out quite well, seven years later).

However, I have met, encountered, heard-of-in-the-third-person another approach (which we shall call "B"). It is this: "I am in a monogamous relationship. However, everybody cheats. No-one really means it when they say they're monogamous, and no-one really expects me to keep it in my pants. Therefore, it's okay for me to cheat, because everybody does it."

This seems... convoluted. It means that in a conversation with A, B might be thinking, "What a naive person! How dare they judge me for doing what everybody does!" And I can promise you that A is thinking, "My God, you're a freaking tool, aren't you?" as well as, "You did what? Who does that?" (also, I have it on good authority that B likes to say things like, "But s/he meant nothing to me! Therefore it didn't count!")

This is not about people who do fall in love with someone else, or make a poor decision one drunken night, or anything along those lines. It's also not about polygamous relationships, or open relationships, each of which seems to have its own carefully worked out idiosyncratic approach.

My own theory is this. If you're a person who espouses "B", an exclusive monogamous relationship is not for you. Be honest about it, because maybe your partner is an "A"; if they discover your infidelity, the emotional pain you will deal to them is beyond words, and beyond what you half-arsedly try to rationalise with your "everybody else is doing it" justification.

I like "A", for my money; because I say what I mean, and mean what I say. As far as I'm concerned, life is too short and relationships already too complicated for second-guessing what someone really means when they say something. If you're all speaking the same language, say what you mean.

And mean what you say.

On very odd behaviour from medical professionals

So, yesterday an endocrinologist told me that I had no sign of a glucose disorder and was at very low risk. Goodo! Then he weighed and measured me, told me I needed to lose a couple of kilos and 4cms of waist circumference (80cms is apparently "desirable" in women; thought back; yes, that was the phrase). I looked extremely skeptical.

Then he pulled out a "kilo of fat", which broadly looks a bit like a fat, urine-coloured sausage. And told me to lose "one or two" of those.

My response was probably not what he expected. I wasn't angry yet, I was just a little bit weirded out by the strange man with his strange fat. After I failed to react in any way other than, "Huh. ...yeah?" he wrapped it back up in its Gladwrap, put it away with some sheepishness, and continued the consultation as though it had never happened.

Further investigation has yielded two friends who have experienced this treatment.

My initial confusion was this: "I'm not sure how I'm expected to respond, man. You just pulled out a kilo of freaking fat and dumped it in your desk. I think this is a step in a social dance for which I am really not prepared."

(When I spoke to my Mum later, I said, "It would be like if I had a liver in my fridge, and if I had guests over, and I pulled out this liver and went, hey guys, this came from a duck, what do you think?" It's a poor metaphor, because the answer is obviously, "I think it's pate.")

(I now wish I had said to the man, "I think it's pate," for added surrealism)

Asking around, apparently, my response is supposed to be shame. The kilo of fat is supposed to shame me into losing weight. My problem with this is twofold. Firstly, I'm not sure how the kilo of fat is supposed to incite shame of any kind. It's an inanimate entity on a desk. In my body, it's a biological entity. It's storing nutrients should I need them. In and of itself, there's actually nothing wrong with fat. Perhaps we should not forget a generation whose grandmothers try to insult them (shame them) by saying, "My dear, don't you look healthy." (Translation: you're fat)

I lack grandmothers in the extant sense; that's an anecdote I've heard from several female friends whose living grandmothers happen to be on the catty side. Another one said to a friend, perfectly pleasantly, "You're quite skinny. Are you unwell?" This friend is on the narrow side in terms of build. The fact that we couldn't work out whether it was (a) a genuine inquiry based on concern, (b) a compliment or (c) an insult suggests we live in a world that is seriously fucked up.

But I digress. I don't think I can be shamed with a kilo of fat any more than I could be shamed with duck pate, or any internal organ from any animal, human included. (I now wish I had asked what animal had produced the fat, presuming it isn't actually plastic) I simply don't link those kinds of emotions to bodily stuff. I'm not saying I'm beyond body image issues; I have them, and have had them, and was miserable about my supposed fatness all the way through primary school and high school. I feltugly, yes; I didn't feel ashamed about being ugly, though, because it wasn't my fault. I felt crappy that I was unattractive. That's it. I had bigger things to occupy my overactive guilt/shame centers. I had other things going on at home, at school, and so on, that meant feeling ashamed of my body was way down the list.

Note: I draw a line between being ashamed and being self-conscious. They are not the same thing, and this brings us to the next point: the idea of being shamed for being fat, whether you are actually fat or not (as though there is some arbitrary line rather than an n-dimensional continuum of body shapes).

I felt horribly self-conscious in high school, yes. I didn't want people to look at me too much, because I felt ugly. However, I didn't feel as though I had done anything wrong.

This is key.

At what point, in shaming people about being fat, do you say, "Gosh, you have done the wrong thing. I want you to feel bad. Feel bad yet? Right, now that you feel bad, go and do something good for your health."

I know for a fact I am not the only person who sees a disconnect here. I know why I've put on a small amount of weight while writing a thesis. It's because I'm not going to gym, or swimming, or diving, and I'm stressed. I'm not actually eating more junk food than usual, or anything like that, but I'm not doing exercise, and I should be. I should be, because it makes me feel good and it makes me feel alert and excited; I should be, because it makes me strong.

Feeling ashamed, feeling bad about yourself, feeling bad about your body, from my experience, do not make you want to go out and do exercise. In my experience, anecdotally, this feeling makes you want to curl up in bed in a depressive lump. Feeling crappy makes you feel tired, not energised. Not motivated. If at some point a doctor felt the genuine need to tell me to get more exercise, all s/he would have to do is explain, in simple form, the health risks associated with my not doing so. If a doctor felt the need to tell me to change my diet, again, all he or she would have to do is list what I needed and for what reasons.

Then I would respond, not according to shame, but according to freaking common sense.

Instead, what do I get? Gosh, your fat is bad.

Now, these arguments apply to this sort of treatment regardless of your size. I am also deeply concerned because, with a dietician doing a quick back-of-the-envelope BMI calculation and saying I am perfectly fine (although should I even use BMI to prove a point? Maybe not), a jeans size of 12 (Just Jeans), and with a waist-hip ratio of (I just worked it out, from sheer bloody mindedness) 0.78* (which is apparently also fine from my swift googling), and now an endocrinologist saying that I have no sign or indication and am at very low risk for a glucose disorder, he still felt the need to say, "Gosh, your fat is bad."

Look, I'm normal. There are two problems here: the first is with anyone being treated this way, and it involves the paradigm shift as we come to realise that supposedly "excess" weight is not the terrible health threat that we've all been hearing about our whole lives. It is a red herring and an exaggeration. Everything we hear about what obesity costs taxpayers is complete freaking bollocks.

The second problem is that, even for a doctor who does believe that being above a certain weight counts as a significant health risk, he classed a person of my size as having that risk. Nowhere can I find any evidence to support his claims. Mind you, Googling is obviously not on a par with the ridiculous amount of education required to become a specialist in a medical field, but if he's working from a standard, however arbitrary, shouldn't that standard be available somewhere? Just how small do you have to be?

And my next question is, what do they do to underweight people? I have several friends who have had doctors constantly telling them they need to put on weight, that they are too small, that their low BMI is "undesirable" - what's the tactic for them? Do they get shown the kilo of fat and told that, it's not gross, it's awesome, and you need more of it? That's no better, but it does break the logic of assuming that fat is always bad.

I'm still angry.



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EDIT: realised that being measured around the tummy is not your waist, so I remeasured it myself. WtH ratio is now 0.73...
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