"Eating and Thinking"

“Thinking and Eating at the Same Time: Reflections of Sistah Vegan” by Michelle R Lloyd-Paige illustrates Lloyd-Paige’s point of view on animal products and her quest to be spiritually sound as a result of the evident correlation, she found, between her academic work and the treatment of animals and humans. In this chapter of Sistah Vegan Lloyd-Paige portrays her identity as a black woman through food knowledge. Lloyd-Paige began her veganism through a spiritual movement at her church, her and many other church goers, predominantly black women, began a fast at the beginning of each year where participants were not permitted to eat meat, sugar or dairy (Lloyd-Paige 3). “The fast was voluntary and supposed to detoxify the mind, body and spirit (Lloyd-Paige3).” Routinely after the fasting, Lloyd-Paige would reintegrate body, meat and sugar back into her diet; however in 2005 she found that her body was reacting poorly to the reintegration and her doctor recommended that she reintroduce soy products (a staple during the fast) into her diet (4). In November of 2005 she recognized “how the food [she] ate contributed to social inequalities, and it “marked [her] transformation to eating like a vegan (4).” Lloyd-Paige states earlier in her realization of the need to eat vegan is that her lifestyle did not match up with what she believed and taught. She recognized that being able to choose what to eat was a privilege by middle to upper class citizens and when she made a choice in her food she was partaking in “patterns of indifference and oppression (2).” Thus, Lloyd-Paige came to the realization that her eating habits were radically different than what she taught and practiced, she states that “the contents of a lecture I had just presented four days prior on the global inequities in food distribution; a vague recollection of a statement from PETA about the cruelties associated with chicken production; the remembrance of how surprisingly good I felt physically while on a forty-day spiritually motivated fast from meant and dairy at the beginning of the year; and my own desire to live an authentic lie—yanked me into an uncomfortable realization that…I was not living according to my beliefs (1-2).” Her awareness of the mistreatment of animals also related to how she felt people of color were treated historically and in the present. She argues that the blatant disregard for how animals are treated is inhumane and we have no valid right to treat them this way. She states that although humans feel they have some sort of “dominion” over animals “we were [not] given the right to be cruel, brutal and heartless (Lloyd-Paige 4).” She compares this treatment and domination over animals to the treatment of Native Americans in the European conquest of Northern America (5). Although she does link her vegan practice to healthy living standards and the remarkably increasing number of obese African Americans and Hispanics (6), she mostly correlates it to her belief in the innate human and animal right that all are worthy to be treated humanely and with respect. Thus, her eating habits are recognition of how animal products are produced and marketed as a direct correlation to the treatment of people of color throughout time and she has continued a spiritual journey of veganism as a means to resist being a contributor for inequality and oppression. Therefore, her eating habits are also a representation of her ideology of social standards.

Adjusting food intake habits as a means to represent a particular ideology is a common practice among not only black female vegans but also in American Christianity (Griffith). In “Don’t Eat That” Griffith explains the Christian discipline of historically fasting, or obtaining thinness as a means to receive “true nourishment” from Christ (Griffith 36). Within the Christian doctrine the body should be perfectly modeled because the body was also seen as “central for pushing the soul along the path to progress (Griffith 38).” Thus, excessive weight from food intake would limit the progression of the soul and Christ’s workings within the Christians body. However, the Christian diet also influenced eating purposely and embracing the food one ate, “the pleasures of eating, like other physical pleasures, were to be savored and taken very seriously…lest one fall into gluttony (Griffith 39).” Thus the Christian dieters believed that they should eat foods that would replenish the bodies and eat with care because too much was a bad thing (Griffith 39). Griffith states, “The advice to eat only such foods as were individually pleasing was followed by a lengthy exposition of the proper and most spiritual diet (Griffith 39).” This concept of food intake is similar to Lloyd-Paige’s refusal of animal products because it is shaped by an ideology or spirituality that makes the individual or group pay particular attention to what they put in their body. In both situations the individual cannot consume what conflicts with their belief systems; for Lloyd-Paige she is a vegan because of the treatment of animals and the Christian dieters, Griffith speaks of, must control their eating and weight to take pleasure in their food experience as well as acquire a closer relationship to Christ.

On the same note Macrobiotics also shapes eating habits through a spiritual ideology of yin and yang, furthermore it allows women to balance gender inequalities, similar to Lloyd-Paige’s lifestyle to stop eating animal products to make an attempt to balance societies social inequalities. Macrobiotics is part of the “diet culture” that always pushes the practitioners to “do the right thing” because there are so many constraints on the individual to follow the right eating habits and attain balance (Crowley 37). Crowley argues here that Macrobiotics “in fact offers practitioners a fluid gender identity, and that this is one sources of its lasting popularity (Crowley 38).” Therefore Macrobiotics offers the individual the opportunity to “manipulate how the spiritual essences of yin and yang manifest themselves in the body (Crowley 38).” Different types of food can either be masculine or feminine and how they are prepared for instance “grilling a (yin) celery stalk changes the structure and quality of the celery’s gender—from female to male, from passive to strong (Crowley 40).” By identifying gender through food women are capable of adjusting sexist gender roles, as woman proclaims, “I could not be teaching or have published books, if it weren’t for the power macrobiotics gave me (Crowley 46)!” The practices of Macrobiotics enables these women to change the roles of gender practices so they are able to have a balanced spirituality, like Lloyd-Paige’s veganism as a means to stand up for social equality and increase the respect between humans as wells as animals.

Unfortunately though Nutritionism has become nationally accepted as a way to view food and in turn has affected consumption patterns in terms of what people think they should eat. Scrinis argues that the “focus on nutrients has come to dominate, to undermine, and to replace other ways of engaging with food and of contextualizing the relationship between food and the body (Scrinis 39).” The problem with this re-contextualization is it limits people to interacting with their food that allows for social identity, spiritual identity and gender identity. Furthermore reducing food into nutrients and numerical symbols limits its functionality and forces it to move on from “food discourses and consumption practices (Scrinis 42).” In the case of Macrobiotics the problem is that food here represents so much of being able to balance an entire gender identity—by limited foods to nutrient based ideology it ignores the cultural constructs that my enable a women to empower herself through use of yin and yang. Furthermore, Scrinis presents the marketing of food as a means to “distract attention from both the overall nutrient profile of a food” but by doing this it also takes food out of a political context, such as the political ties that Lloyd-Paige explains with meat products and the treatment of people of color. Food practices varying but in these situations it seems that food is tied to a spiritual belief or social order that enables the individual.

Ascribed and Achieved Status

Ascribed and achieved status tends to be a critical discussion in social science courses, especially sociology due to Ralph Linton, a sociologist who coined the term when discussing social structures. I’ve incorporated a short you tube video that discusses the basic meanings to supplement the article, "A Clarification of 'Ascribed Status' and 'Achieved Status' " by Irving S. Foladare.

Foladare's article concerns the misrepresentation of these terms to represent "individual variation" rather then the representation of social structure as a whole, which may be culturally variant but not individually subjective. Thus, he states that "the concepts of 'ascribed status' and 'achieved status' are designed to indicate structural properties of social systems" and individuals cannot determined if their status will be shifted (Foladare 54). Therefore, what he is ultimately saying is it is not up to the individual to give themselves a self-ascribed status because it is not socially recognized; the 'ascribed' or 'achieved' status muse be recognized by the given social structure. Foladare brings to light the misuse of Leo F. Schnore's further development of these terms in his use of 'reversible status' and 'irreversible status'. Schnore has deviated from Lipton's terminology because according to Foladare his "conceptualization is both empirically inaccurate and an additional source of departure from the social structural significance of the concepts (Foladare 54)." With this in mind though I have found comparative themes between Foladare's explanation of 'achieved status' and 'ascribed status' and Schnore's concept of 'reversible status' and 'irreversible status' to compliment "Medicalizing Homosexuality" and "Regulated Passions: The invention of inhibited sexual desire and sexual addiction."

The medicalization of homosexuality and experiences such as inhibited sexual desire (ISD) and sexual addiction are applied by medical authority, the historical context and theoretical approach have changed but the similar theme is that the medicalization has often reverted to an explanation of social status as well as self-identity. In the case of "Medicalizing Homosexuality" medical practitioners have been interested in homosexuality because of the 'abnormal desire' man had for another man (41), furthermore the homosexual body has been seen for centuries as "like savage bodies (40-41)." Ulrichs explained homosexuality as a "inborn benign anomaly" or as a third sex. Terry noted that his concept of homosexuality "was an attribute of a particular type of person, marked by the paradoxical presence of characteristics of both sexes (Terry 43). She also noted that the scientific approach he offered would be helpful in decriminalizing homosexuality because it was "inborn." Ulrichs concept represents ascribed status in the sense that he argues homosexuality is assigned prior to living in a given environment. According to Schnore biological sex is ascribed irreversible however he doesn't present sexuality or gender which in Ulrichs understanding of homosexuality would be ascribed reversible (Foladare Figure 1, 55).

Furthermore, the concept of nervous degeneration represents achieved status and how homosexuality can be achieved and reversible with increased maturity. According to Krafft-Ebing "The medical investigator is driven to the conclusion that this manifestation of modern life [homosexuality] stands in relation to the predominating nervous condition of later generations, in that it begets defective individuals (Terry 45)." The homosexual in this case has presented a achieved reversible status because with the struggles of modern life they have supposedly turned to homosexuality but have a means of reversing this sexual orientation. Foladare confirms that " 'Achieved statuses' are those in categories of statuses for which the society accepts change by individuals and, in many cases, expects efforts toward change in given directions (58)."

Krafft-Ebing correlates homosexuality with primitive human beings who are have not evolved as modern human beings (Terry 46). Terry states that to Krafft-Ebing "sexual dimorphism and monogamous procreative heterosexuality were taken to be indicators of evolutionary progress and maturity (46)" Likewise, Foladore states that " 'Achieved statuses' are those in categories of statues for which the society accepts change by individuals and, in many cases, expects efforts toward change in given directions (58)." A key term used in this statement is "expects" because as society expects these changes that are in term accepted by society, it is also expected that homosexuals eventually mature into acceptable human beings, in Krafft-Ebing's concepts.

Foladore's discusses in depth the change and fluidity of status with collective societies approval, he comes to the conclusion that "the essential point is that in their status categories change is not acceptable to the society. People are expected to be heterosexual males or heterosexual females, assigned one or the other on the basis of their biological characteristics (59)." Deviant statuses therefore illustrate a contradiction between societies ascribed status to the individual (Foladore 58-59). Therefore what is acceptable and unacceptable is determined collectively by the society however it is also decided by the popular authority. In the case of "Regulated Passions" it is the medical practitioner that assigns authority and meaning; "...The discursive elaboration of disease is shaped by myriad and complex factors, including the ideological and economic imperatives of the defining professions (Irvine 317)."

In Irvine's article he argues that "Diseases are artifacts with social history and social practice (314)" and they have created "medically legitimated boundaries of acceptable contemporary sexual experience (315)." These statements have forced me to turn to the concept of achieved status and how whole populations can be transformed due to class labeling and/or medicalization of experiences. The disease described in "Regulated Passions" as inhibited sexual desire and sexual addiction are admitted as being subjective to the individual and unable to medically define and apply universally (Irvine 322). With this in mind, subjective diseases correlate more so with the individualized theme behind "irreversible" and "reversable" statues to compliment "ascribed" and "achieved". Foladore argues that the first noted states are dependent on "individual variation" (53) rather then part of social structures.

The main point that I have strived to achieve is that according to Foladore "achieved statuses" and "ascribed statuses" are fundamental to understanding human behavior and therefore this may be the reasoning behind ascribing homosexuality to a type of status (i.e. primitive). These statues also represent the concept behind medicalization, and that is attempting to apply a universal notion to a very diverse population. On the individual level, which is subjective, it should be looked at after considering "reversible" and irreversible" statuses because it does not properly incorporate the social structures in place. In order to understand why these theories were formed and how even passion was medicalized it is essential to look a social structures in place.

Artificial Insemination, Pleasure and Reproduction

Artificial insemination is relatively common today for single women or lesbians. In the dramatic television series “The L Word” the lesbian couple, Bette and Tina, decide to use this procedure to have a baby together. After much consideration they have chosen to use their friend’s sperm in order to have their own biological child, instead of seeking adoption. The most common method of artificial insemination in referred to as intracervical insemination, which mimics male and female sexual intercourse. For instance, the sperm is injected by a syringe into the cervix compare to the sperm is injected in the cervix pathway by a penis. The replication of sex can be done with the assistance of doctor, but also in the home. Bette and Tina decide to do this procedure after a sexual night together; it is referred to as intravaginal insemination when taking place outside of a doctor’s office. In this excerpt from the episode “Let’s Do It!” of “The L Word” Bette and Tina have their own syringe of their friends sperm and insert it after a intimate night together, later you see Tina with her legs together making sure that the sperm has reached the inside of the cervix in order to impregnate her. These scenes illustrate two sides of intravaginal insemination; first a steamy sex scene by Bette and Tina to open up the cervix for sperm followed by a scene where Tina is trying with all her might to make sure that the sperm has reached its destination, the second scene representing the trials and tribulations of not having a penis handy for impregnating Tina.

“New Science, One Flesh” illustrates the theories behind pleasure and reproduction and the necessity for (or lack of) female orgasm. Columbus argues that the clitoris is the site of a women’s pleasure and that this is similar to how pleasure is exerted by the male penis—through sperm (66). He states, “…without these protuberances [the clitoris] which I have faithfully described to you earlier, women would neither experience delight in venereal embraces nor conceive any fetuses (66). However other claims argue that female orgasm is not necessary for conception, “the so-called female seed was essentially irrelevant to conception and that female orgasm was still more irrelevant…women purportedly told him [Giles of Rome] that they had conceived without emission and presumably orgasm (67).” As our studies show today and the author points out it is pretty evident that women do not need to reach orgasm in order to conceive and women who do not orgasm can still conceive (67). For Bette and Tina they emphasis in the this episode that the sexual interaction was crucial to their experience however Tina with her legs in the air trying to make sure the sperm gets to its reproductive home shows that orgasm was not necessary for her to get pregnant it was a matter of biology.

In the section ‘Orgasim and Conception’ from “New Science, One Flesh” Lacquer presents again the idea that the “sperm” of the female serves no purpose except to assist in the please making process. Laquer presents Lemnius’ point of view where “woman’s womb is not simply ‘hired by men’ (99).” In The L Word it is portrayed that the lesbian couple is actually hiring the male sperm to serve their needs. The fact that Bette and Tina share “delight and concussion” does not infer that they will conceive a child because they do not have the sperm inside their bodies however they are able to do so through artificial insemination. However, Bette and Tina also represent “The heat (orgasm) nexus” because they interact sexually in order to open the cervix for the sperm; this was recommended earlier in the episode when they were visiting the doctor.

In the introduction to the episode (I was unable to find a link to this portion) the doctor recommends that Bette pleasure Tina in order to have a better success rate with insemination because they were having problems with getting pregnant. Laquer states that:

“Since the statistical analysis of conception has evolved only very recently, and since doing nothing therapeutically has a remarkable chance of success in curing infertility, it seems probably that almost any advice Renaissance healers happened to give their patients regarding sexual heat and please must have appeared to work often enough to confirm the model on which it was based (Laquer 100).”

After this episode Tina does get pregnant using this method of insemination therefore reiterating the point that although there really is not inherent connection to orgasms and reproduction it happens in correlation often enough that it becomes engrained in reproductive knowledge like it did during the Renaissance. Many of the notions from the history of reproductive theories are actually reiterated in this episode of The L Word and artificial insemination; “To produce sufficient heat in women, talk and teasing were regarded as a good beginning (Laquer 100).” Hence, the episode illustrates the foreplay prior to inserting the semen using a syringe by Bette.

Although medical knowledge has changed drastically pertaining to women’s reproductive ability and the relation with orgasm. I found that this episode reiterates the historical notions of being able to conceive. However, I do believe that these past medical leaders would have scoffed at the idea of lesbians being able to conceive a child and the method of artificial insemination.

Validity behind PRS, PTSD and Brain Scans

United States medical officers who witnessed Puerto Rican soldiers going into states of “anxiety, rage, psychotic symptoms, and unpremeditated suicidal attempts (Gherovici 29)” originally coined the Puerto Rican Syndrome (PRS). The symptoms were applied to Puerto Ricans specifically because the medical officers believed it was a cultural phenomenon that was only exhibited by these soldiers returning from the Korean War. The United States medical officers ultimately placed Puerto Ricans in a zone as exhibiting hysteria from their cultural experiences prior to going into war; it was said to develop from “common folk beliefs,” multiple personality disorder and even “an indication of a higher rate of organic brain disorder among Puerto Ricans (Gherovici 30).” To the medical officials and psychoanalysts the application of this disease was considered a culture-bound syndrome that developed through their social environment, however Gherovici also notes “the syndrome taken globally is often described as a ‘normal’ reaction within Hispanic culture (31).” Thus, it is evident that there have been cases made that construct the symptoms of PRS as strictly Puerto Rican but also evidence that shows these symptoms as seen on a more global scale. Ultimately though, the definition of PSR by the U.S. medical officers “superficially stereotyped an entire national group and transformed a customary experience into a serious mental health problem with an eccentric location. Thus the Puerto Rican Syndrome was coined as a new illness category for an otherwise culturally accepted normal manifestation (Gherovici 35).” The invention of Puerto Rican Syndrome by Western ideology labeled Puerto Ricans exhibiting these symptoms as having a severe mental disorder that needed psychiatric treatment and ignored the same manifestations of symptoms in U.S. veterans and thus made the mental illness a cultural bound syndrome that was most certainly seen in other veterans as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Gherovici 33-34).

The problem with applying this mental disorder to Puerto Ricans is that it redefines these once culturally accepted experiences. In “Picturing the Brain Inside, Revealing the Illness Outside” Cohn argues that for patients who are able to see their symptoms materialized through brain scan pictures “the images might instrumentally redefine patients’ everyday experiences of illness (Cohn 67).” As Cohn explains there are several meanings that can be attributing to these images, for instance the ability to provide “proof” to families and friends that there is a concrete reason for their mental illness. “The image both locates and contains the illness but consequently allows it to move to the external and in so doing can now be a social object (Cohn 77).” As Cohn exhibits applying an image to a mental disorder creates a different experience for the patient; thus applying a westernized mental illness to a culturally different group of people also changes their experience. PRS ultimately, “[accepted] the scientific validity of an ‘imported’ diagnoses for ‘domestic’ manifestation. [Puerto Rican physicians] readily adopted a new diagnosis that rendered pathological an experience that was socially normative and personally normal (Gherovici 36).”

It was evident that the U.S. army psychiatrists and medical officials relied on “the American scientific model that overemphasized the validity of the foreign diagnostic category and underestimated the interpretations of their [Puerto Ricans] own culture (Gherovici 38).” The U.S. army officials were able to medicalize their interpretative and ignored the cultural and political environment and implications (Gherovici 38). Cohn argues that when “patients who are committed to using the scans as way of radically rethinking their illness actually have new difficulties to face (Cohn 80).” In the same sense Puerto Ricans exhibiting hysteria, originally culturally acceptable, are forced to rethink their mental illness in terms of Western science and in turn effects how they perceive their experiences (as stated earlier). In Young’s article, “A Description of How Ideology Shapes Knowledge of a Mental Disorder (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder)” the same concept is evident in how the treatment program reshapes their illness to correspond to the ideology and therapeutic work. Young argues that although most patients say they have had positive behavioral changes this could be simply because of change in environment, “The point I [Young] want to underline is that these changes do not develop over the course of the treatment program, but appear at or soon after admission” and the “therapeutic changes…may be rooted in circumstances, especially abstinence, that are not specific to the treatment program (Young 112-123).” PRS has done the same to Puerto Rican soldiers because it has forced them to change their mentality of what they are experiencing and transforming it to a medical condition, which changes their “treatment program.”

Gherovici states that, “symptoms grouped under the label Puerto Rican syndrome produce antagonistic and inappropriate classification because they do not constitute coherent symptom sets. In fact, the invention of the Puerto Rican Syndrome has been purely ideological (Gherovici 70).” This is also evident in how patients receiving their brain scans view their mental illness afterwards. “The scans inescapably are an entanglement of both the moral and biological dimensions of what is identified as mental illness (Cohn 81).” Cohn argues that science places a meaning on the brain scans that in turn gives the patient a means of interpretation—their illness is more real if they can see it and show it to others, although this also presents many changes on how the validity of their illness is perceived by society. In the Institute for the Treatment of PTSD veterans are subject to a particular ideology that shapes how they enter the program, must acknowledge their issue and how it development and relive traumatic situations in order to cope with their mental illness. In this institute patients are suppose to get better through strict rules, running a program that places mental burdens on staff, uses staff that do not have a whole lot of training in order to produce and restructure the knowledge of the individual suffering from PTSD (Young 117-118). The institute uses their ideology to “medicalize the past” and in turn helps patients use this to take “moral responsibility” for the present. By medicalizing mental illness in these three situations it has ultimately changed the experience for Puerto Rican war veterans, bran scan viewers and male veterans at this specific institute for Vietnam veterans.