Phantom Pregnancy

I take a pretty dim view of gynecology, and whatever I think of modern gynecology (and that's unprintable enough) it's nothing to what I think of archaic gynecology. Even still, I have assumed, like archaic gynecologists, that phantom pregnancies are the product of a certain hysteria (though I have assumed that the hysteria was caused, not by being female, but rather by a corset-induced lack of oxygen to the brain and resulting weakening of the cardiovascular system).

But the goat who is 16 (the equivalent of 90 for a human) has just had a phantom pregnancy and there's nothing hysterical about her. She has no mobid fancies and she is not trying desperately to produce an heir to the English throne*.

I don't believe I have ever had a conversation on the topic of phantom pregnancies so no one has ever had to suffer from my ignorance. Nevertheless, I would like to apologise for my misconception which is damaging, oppressive and hurtful.



*I know Mary Tudor had a tumour, now conjectured to be cancerous, and is not strictly an example of a phantom pregnancy. But her case demonstrates the historical attitude to phantom pregnancy, and anyway, as Richie says in Filthy, Rich and Catflap after a line which equals mine in hilarity, 'It was just a joke[sic] we were doing'. BlueJ thinks I'm funny (sometimes), so there.

Foucaultean Hollywood

I have become interested in Lindsey Lohan. Well, I say "interested", by which I mean I don't know who she is or what she does or how to spell her name. I only know of her through the constant bagging she received on Get This. The point is, I've become interested enough to read the headlines about her in the women's mags while waiting at the checkout in the supermarket. This week's headlines include that she has a girlfriend, that she's pregnant and that she claims she's not gay or bisexual. So I'd like to stress first off that I acknowledge the possibility that this may not match the highwater mark of journalism and that there is an outside chance that at least some of it is not true. But I'm intrigued. She has apparently posed for the cameras with her girlfriend and yet denied that she is gay and when asked if she was bi said 'maybe', but has confirmed that she is attracted to women.

So the question is, does she not understand what the words mean? Or is this some kind of radical challenging of the hegemonic discourse of sexuality?

I was having an ideological debate with my boyfriend the other day and in response to me illustrating what I regard as a flaw in his argument he told me that I'd really hurt his feelings. I bring it up because I get that a lot from boys, both friends and boyfriends. Yet not one of my female friends has ever said that to me. The irony is that I'm much more forthright with my female friends. Many of my female friends have strongly disagreed with me over the course of our friendships, many have been cross with me for adopting a view which in their opinion is problematic. But none of them has ever felt that their egos were in any way involved in an ideological discussion. (Personally, I suspect that any girl whose ego was liable to get hurt so easily would get it knocked out of them pretty quickly.) Certainly, none have thought that I either should, or was likely to, change my ideological position based on their feeling personally slighted.