Whose Flag?

by David Balashinsky

A friend recently posted the following meme on Facebook:

 

I usually avoid taking the bait when I see memes like this but this one seemed so belligerent and so obnoxious that I could not let it go without asking, "Who is telling you to apologize for our flag?"  The implication that Americans are being asked to apologize for the United States flag is only one of several falsities artfully woven into this work of propaganda but, because this notion stood out as being even more goading than the others (which is saying something), this seemed like a logical place to start.  Although my friend never directly answered my question, her response did get me thinking about how this meme epitomizes the right wing's misuse of our nation's flag and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which it cleverly packages animosity toward the values actually represented by the United States flag within an outward show of devotion to it. 

First, some context:  It is no secret that, especially since the Vietnam War, the right wing has sought to appropriate the U.S. flag as a political symbol of its view of America.  The left, itself, bears some responsibility for this.  I am old enough to remember when the U.S. flag was desecrated, burned and otherwise disrespected in protest of the U.S. war against Vietnam and in protest of any number of other evils perpetrated by the government of the United States.  (Its support of repressive, military dictatorships around the world and, especially, in Latin America throughout much of the latter half of the 20th century comes to mind.) 

There is an undeniable logic to this form of protest.  Since the flag symbolically represents the nation and since policies that are carried out by the government are carried out on behalf of the nation (and in the name of the People of the United States), U.S. government policies, the administration that enacts them, the nation itself and the flag that represents it are all links in a chain.  It stands to reason that, if one wants to condemn a policy that has the U.S. flag figuratively stamped all over it, stamping all over the flag, in turn, seems a valid and appropriate way to do it.

The problem, however, is that this form of protest by the left has played disastrously into the hands of the right, not just allowing it to appropriate the nation's flag as a symbol of right-wing values but enabling it to exploit the flag in an ostentatious display of its own professed patriotism.  This has reinforced the fiction that right-wingers and conservatives are more patriotic than left-wingers and liberals and that right-wing values are intrinsically more patriotic than left-wing values.  That is why the U.S. flag is ubiquitous on the lapel pins, the podiums, the buildings, the lawns, the websites, the pick-up trucks and motorcycles, even the clothing of right-wingers.  And, of course, in right-wing memes on social media.  

But despite the success that the right wing has had in appropriating our nation's flag as a symbol of its values, these are not the values that the flag actually represents.  And, generally, when the right wing waves the flag, it does so not as a statement of patriotism but as a form of "virtue signaling" and for the purposes of propaganda, as in the meme above.  To this patriotic American, this is an even more offensive desecration of the flag than burning it.  An even greater desecration of the flag occurs when it is waved alongside the flag of the pro-slavery and seditionist Confederacy.  And a desecration even greater than this occurred when the flag was used, literally, as a weapon by Trump's insurrectionists in their attempted coup on his behalf on January 6th.  That is why I believe it has been a gigantic mistake on the part of the left to let conservatives and other right-wingers get away with their appropriation of our nation's flag.  It is long past time that the nation's flag be reclaimed - not as a symbol of the left (although I do believe that the ideals articulated in the nation's founding documents are fundamentally liberal, rooted, as they are, in the European Enlightenment) - but as a non-partisan symbol of the nation's shared ideals and of the nation broadly, including everyone within it.

Which brings me to why this meme is so offensive and how it succeeds at being so antagonistic.  By claiming the flag as his through the use of the first person  - "this is my flag" (my emphasis) - what the creator of this meme is really saying is that it is not yours nor mine.  This contradicts both the letter and the spirit of our nation's original and traditional if unofficial motto: e pluribus unum - "from many, one."  Making the nation's symbol exclusive of one's political enemies is a favorite tactic of the right wing, but it is not just a rhetorical device.  White nationalists, the Christian Identity movement and Christian nationalists all, to varying degrees, actually envision the United States (or at least much of its geographical territory) as a White, Christian homeland in which non-White, non-Christian residents are less authentically American (and less authentically human, even) and not truly part of the fabric of the nation's polity.  That's what the alt-right movement is all about and it was precisely to this quandom undercurrent (until Trump legitimized it and brought it fully out into the open) of White nationalism, racism, religious bigotry, antisemitism and xenophobia to which Trump very deliberately appealed in 2015 and throughout his occupancy of the office of President of the United States.  Referring to the flag as "my flag" rather than as "our flag" clearly signals that this meme has little or nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with White nationalism.  "My flag," as it is used in this meme, is a repudiation of the sentiments of unity and camaraderie with all other Americans - the shared love-of-country that is the lifeblood of the American spirit - and serves no other purpose than to marginalize those Americans who are not in the same demographic group that overwhelmingly comprises the Republican base.

Is it a stretch to tie Trump and Trumpism to this meme?  Not really.  The person who originally shared it on Facebook (at least the version that I saw when it was re-posted by my friend) is Ina Holiday, a Las Vegas "entertainer and singer," and former candidate for the Nevada State Assembly whose Facebook page includes a goodly amount of anti-vaccine, anti-mask and pro-Trump memes and posts.

More to the point, it is also not a stretch to interpret this meme as a reaction against the Black Lives Matter movement.  Thanks to the efforts of Colin Kaepernick (and those who have joined him), our nation has lately been forced to reckon not just with its history of racism but with the systemic manifestation of that racism which persists to this day.  (This is even more true since the murder of George Floyd.)  Not unlike the flag-desecration of those who protested against U.S. policy and warfare in Vietnam in the 1960s, Kaepernick's symbolic gesture of kneeling during the playing of the national anthem is intended to admonish the United States - albeit in a vastly less confrontational and more respectful way than flag-burning - for its racism by strategically directing that admonition toward the national anthem, a symbol of the United States that is probably second only to the flag itself in terms of significance and veneration.  The meme, of course, makes no mention of the BLM movement or of the increasingly widespread consciousness of racism that we are seeing today but, given the current political and social context, it is hard to imagine that anything else could be intended by the reference to "skin color, race [and] religion." 

Just as denying the existence of racism is a form of racism, attempting to invalidate any criticism of systemic racism on the grounds that such criticism is unpatriotic is also a form of racism.  To the extent that the BLM movement and Critical Race Theory (another favorite bogeyman of conservatives) constitute critiques of our nation's systemic and institutionalized racism, this meme seems intended to invalidate them by treating them as an attack on the nation's flag and, therefore, on the nation itself.  

It achieves this partly through the affectation of grievance but also through the use of innuendo.  Both the second and third statements in the meme ("I will not apologize for [the flag]" and "It does NOT [sic] stand for skin color. . . .") employ the same rhetorical technique: an assertion is phrased negatively and in opposition to what the creator of the meme intends us to believe is a previous assertion to which he is merely - but with justified indignation - responding.  Thus, by declaring that he will not apologize for the flag, the audience is led to believe that someone else has demanded that he should.  And by declaring that the flag does not stand for skin color, the audience is led to believe that someone else has claimed that it does.  

One of the purposes of this meme, then, is to inspire those who view it with this same feeling of righteous indignation against the long-overdue reckoning of our nation's history of systemic racism.  In other words, to get them riled up against the movement for racial justice.  Another is to raise the alarm that the meaning of the flag is being deliberately subverted.  The theme that both the flag and its meaning are under siege is visually represented (and rather artfully, too, to give credit where credit is due) by depicting the flag perseveringly and defiantly waving before a landscape that is clearly intended to be seen as a battleground.  The land in the foreground is barren, the trees stripped of much of their foliage while, in the distance, the sky glows red and orange as though from the fires of a recent or ongoing bombardment.  We are meant to understand from all this that it is not just the flag and its meaning that are under assault but the heart and soul of our very nation. 

The idea that our nation and our way of life are under attack is now the predominant theme of White-nationalist, Republican and Trumpist discourse.  Writing for The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein described the history and the current state of "the ominous tenor of contemporary Republican messaging":

Late in the 2016 presidential campaign . . . Michael Anton, a conservative scholar who later joined the Trump White House, described the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the "Flight 93 Election." . . .  Anton insisted that a Democratic victory would change America so irrevocably that conservatives needed to think of themselves as the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11 - the ones who chose to bring down the plane to save the U.S. Capitol from al-Qaeda hijackers.  Letting the Democrats win, in other words, would doom the country. . . .

For at least the past decade, GOP candidates and conservative-media personalities have routinely deployed rhetoric similar to the Flight 93 argument.  Only about 40 hours before the [January 6] insurrection, at a campaign rally hosting an enthusiastic, virtually all-white audience in rural Georgia, President Trump insisted that if Democrats won the state's two Senate runoff elections . . . "America as you know it will be over, and it will never - I believe - be able to come back again."

And, of course, on January 6th, while inciting his mob before it assaulted the capitol in order to prevent the certification of Biden's electoral victory, Trump declaimed "We fight like hell.   And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

In his speech accepting the Republican Party's nomination for him to run for president again in 2020, Trump declared "this election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life, or whether we will allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it."

As CNN reported last January, the day before leaving office, former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo tweeted, "Wokism, multiculturalism, all the -isms - they're not who America is.  They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. . . ."  In the same story, CNN notes that in remarks he delivered the previous July,

Pompeo fanned the flames of division stoked by Trump, warning that "the very core of what it means to be an American, indeed the American way of life itself, is under attack" amid nationwide protests for racial justice and against police brutality.

Also last January, writing in Vox, Zack Beauchamp drew essentially the same conclusions as Brownstein (in the Atlantic) namely, that "The Capitol Hill mob was the logical culmination of years of mainstream Republican politics."

The animating force of modern Republicanism is this: Democratic Party rule is an existential threat to America and is by definition illegitimate. . . .

Whether elite Republicans genuinely believe what they tell their base is beside the point.  The fact is their delegitimizing rhetoric has been the fuel of the conservative movement for many, many years now.

Beauchamp noted that, on the morning of January 6th, Lauren Boebert, a Republican representative from Colorado, "tweeted that the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results amounted to a new American revolution.  'Today is 1776,' she wrote."  Ten years earlier, Sharon Angle (a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate) had stated in an interview "that she believed that Americans might need to take up arms against the tyranny of Barack Obama and the Democratic congress."

Writing for the New Yorker last spring, Susan B. Glasser pointed out that

In one alarming survey released this week, nearly thirty percent of Republicans endorsed the idea that the country is so far "off track" that "American patriots may have to resort to violence" against their political opponents.

Last month, writing for the Washington Post, Ruth Ben-Ghiat reported that 

In June, an anchor of One America News suggested that execution might be an apt punishment for the "tens of thousands" of "traitors" who, he claimed, stole the election from former president Donald Trump.  A sitting member of congress, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told Americans in May that they "have an obligation to use" the Second Amendment, which is not about recreation but "the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary."

. . . 

This Republican culture of violence and threat builds on histories of racial persecution and on policing used as an instrument of terror against non-Whites.  Habituation to such violence, reinforced by the presentation of non-Whites as an existential threat to the future of America (as in the "great replacement theory" that Tucker Carlson has referenced on Fox News) makes it easier for the public to accept violence around political events, like elections, as necessary to "save the country."  Tellingly, the participants in the January coup attempt, which was billed as just this kind of patriotic act, included 57 local and state GOP officials. . . .

The meme that I have been discussing here is a distillation of the Republican worldview of imagined or affected persecution, that America and "the American way of life" are under assault from within (by Democrats, otherwise known as "radical leftists," and the BLM movement), and that part of the epochal struggle for the heart and soul of America, indeed, its very survival, includes a propaganda war currently underway for the meaning of our nation's national symbol, the U.S. flag.  On this front, the meme's creator steadfastly holds the line against those fifth-columnists who demand that he apologize for the flag and who would see his flag debased as it only could be by the suggestion that its broader meaning might actually have something to do with skin color, race and religion.

So, what does the flag, with its red and white stripes and white stars on a blue background represent?  Of course "it does not stand for skin color, race or religion" but, equally, it does not "stand for" freedom (or "FREEDOM"), as the meme's creator claims.  At face value, the flag symbolizes merely what we all learned in elementary school that it does.  The stars in the upper left-hand corner represent the number of states currently in the Union while the thirteen red and white stripes represent the original thirteen colonies that declared independence from Britain on July 4, 1776.  There are deeper meanings associated with the design of the flag, too, including its colors and the symbolism of its particular design.  Most sources credit  Charles Thompson, the secretary of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1789, who was instrumental in designing the Great Seal of the United States, with the use of red, white and blue (for the Seal) and attribute their symbolic intent, which comes from heraldry and which subsequently became associated with the colors of the flag, itself, to the following quote by Thompson:

White signifies purity and innocence, Red, hardiness & valor, and Blue, the colour of the Chief, signifies vigilance, perseverance & justice.

Ultimately and most importantly, the flag is a national and non-partisan symbol of the nation and of the unity of its states and of its people.

To be clear, no one is being asked to apologize for the flag.  What their fellow Americans are being asked to do by the Black Lives Matter movement and others is to recognize the reality that the enslavement of Black people was the original sin of our nation's founding, written into our very constitution (its liberal ideals, notwithstanding).  Acknowledging our nation's past wrongs, the legacy of those wrongs and the wrongs that persist to this day is not an assault on the flag nor a demand that anyone apologize for the flag.  To suggest otherwise is to denigrate the cause of racial justice by defining it as conflicting with what the flag represents when, in fact, in a very real sense, this is what the flag represents: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . . ."

My own view of the flag, looking beyond its obvious, superficial symbolism, is that it represents the ideals that our nation was founded on.  It represents not only the best that America has been in the past and is now but could be in the future.  It ought to inspire feelings of togetherness and camaraderie, mutual understanding, compassion, reconciliation, resoluteness, justice, courage and, above all unity.  That means having the rectitude, the strength, the wisdom and the will to acknowledge the ways in which our nation has erred and working together to create "a more perfect union," one that truly embodies justice and equality for all.

When I think of our nation's flag, then, and what it means to me, I experience overwhelmingly positive feelings, including pride.  In contrast, when I see the flag used as it is in this meme, I see only an angry, paranoid, scapegoating and militant belligerence.  This meme manages to turn what should be a positive and uplifting symbol into a hate-filled one.  It weaponizes the U.S. flag and, what is worse, weaponizes it against other Americans.  It perverts the transcendent symbolism of the flag - its very spirit - by converting it from unity and love-of-country to hatred of one's political enemies.  And that may be the biggest desecration of all.

An Appeal to Nurses

This is an appeal to nurses everywhere but, especially, here in the United States.  

Like you, I work in healthcare.  I am a licensed physical therapist with over 20 years of experience helping people recover functional mobility following strokes and other debilitating injuries and illnesses.  Although we don't know one another, the fact that you are a nurse tells me that you share the same concern for the well-being of others that motivates most of us who work in healthcare.  It also means that we have a historical connection, since the first physical therapists were nurses.  As a physical therapist,  I'm proud to work in healthcare, I'm proud of my profession, and I'm especially proud to work in a profession that has its roots in nursing because nursing epitomizes what healthcare is all about: helping people get better.

Unfortunately, although healthcare is among the most honorable and rigorously scrutinized of human endeavors, it is not without its share of historical missteps.  Sometimes, these have been well-meaning interventions that simply did not withstand the test of time.  From bloodletting to lobotomy to the use of IV ethanol as a tocolytic agent to the widespread prescription of Thalidomide to routine episiotomies and unnecessary hysterectomies, the history of medicine is replete with treatments and practices that once were considered state of the art but that subsequently have come to be recognized as not only medically unnecessary but, in many cases, even harmful.

Regrettably, the history of medicine also includes episodes that are even less honorable: practices that are impossible to reconcile with contemporary standards of medical ethics and human rights.  The forced sterilizations of thousands of marginalized women (mostly poor women and women of color) is one example.  The notorious "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male"  is another.  Still another is medicine's disgraceful history of labeling homosexuality a "psychiatric disorder" and subjecting gay men and women to electroconvulsive therapy, "aversion therapy," even lobotomies in a misguided attempt to "cure" them of their gayness.

Unfortunately, for as long as medical practice has existed, medical malpractice and human-rights violations committed in medicine's name seem to have existed alongside it.  That is why those of us who are medical professionals have a special obligation to speak out when medical practice fails, as it has so many times in the past, to live up to its own ethical standards, beginning with the cardinal principle, primum non nocere: "first, do no harm."

That is why I am reaching out to you today, as one healthcare professional to another.  The history of discredited medical practices - discredited both ethically and by the failure of evidence to support them - is, even now, not completely behind us.  To this day, and about 3,000 times every day (more than one million times every year), children are subjected to a harmful and medically-unnecessary genital surgery in fully accredited hospitals throughout the United States under the guise of medical care.  I am referring to non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision and these are the facts about this surgery:

• Every professional medical organization, both here in the United States and abroad, that has looked at this surgery has concluded that it is medically unnecessary.
• Despite being medically unnecessary, non-therapeutic penile circumcision remains one of the most commonly performed surgeries in the United States.
• The medical profession acknowledges that neonatal penile circumcision is unnecessary yet permits this lucrative genital surgery to continue and profits from it anyway.
• Between 100 and 200 circumcisions would need to be performed (the number needed to treat, or NNT) to prevent a single UTI; to make that concrete, up to 200 infants would have to be subjected to a medically unnecessary genital surgery in order to prevent the occurrence of a single UTI (in one infant).
• From 4,000 to just over 7,000 circumcisions would need to be performed to prevent a single case of penile cancer.
• There is not a single claimed "health benefit" of penile circumcision that cannot be achieved through less invasive, less harmful, less costly and less painful methods, such as
• the use of antibiotics to treat UTIs, as is routinely done in the case of females (who develop UTIs ten times as often as males do)
  
• the use of condoms and other safe-sex practices to prevent the transmission of STIs.
• Non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision is always performed without the consent of the person subjected to it.
• Any intact, adult male can undergo circumcision if he wants to and, although very few men actually make this choice (which is not surprising), those who do are not harmed in any way by having waited until they are adults and capable of exercising informed consent.
  
• When performed on infants, circumcision is excruciatingly painful yet often is performed without any anesthetic and always performed without adequate anesthetic.
• Penile circumcision removes a natural, essential, sensitive and functional body part.
• The penile prepuce (or foreskin) is the primary sensory organ of the penis with a greater concentration of specialized light-touch receptors than is found in the glans or in any other part of the penis or, for that matter, in any other part of the body except the fingertips and lips.  All of that sensory function is permanently lost to circumcision.
• Non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision is irreversible.
  
• The overwhelming majority of men who remain intact value their foreskins and do not want to have them surgically removed.
• Consistent with this, many men who were subjected to non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision report that, had they been allowed to make this choice for themselves, they would not have chosen to have this part of their genitals removed.  Beyond objecting to the irreparably diminished capacity for erotic experience that necessarily results from this surgery, they resent having been deprived of their fundamental right to bodily autonomy: the right to make their own decisions about their bodies, including which healthy parts they get to keep and which healthy parts get cut off.
  

 

Perhaps you haven't really thought much about non-therapeutic circumcision before.  The fact is, this genital surgery is performed so routinely that even many healthcare providers seldom think about the reality of what this genital surgery is and what it entails.  That needs to change.  My hope is that, when you consider the facts about non-therapeutic circumcision, you will come to view it differently from the way you may have been accustomed to viewing it up until now - just as we now view other discredited medical practices differently from the way they were viewed by previous generations. 

My own perspective, which I also hope you will come to share if you don't already, is that of a healthcare provider who believes that it is unethical to subject a healthy child - whether female, male or intersex - to a medically-unnecessary and irreversible genital surgery.  At the same time, my perspective - which I hope you do not share - is that of someone who was subjected to this surgery.  Although I don't expect you to comprehend what it's like to have had part of your genitals cut off without your consent if it hasn't happened to you, I do trust that your capacity for empathy - that same human quality that prompted you to become a nurse in the first place - will enable you to respect the perspective of the millions of men like me who object to what was done to our bodies without our consent.  Ultimately, my hope is that you will come to share our outrage, as well.

If you do already, the good news is that we are not alone.  Non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision has been condemned by many of the world's leading human-rights advocates, psychologists, attorneys, bio-ethicists, physicians and professional medical organizations.  Here, in the United States, one of the organizations that is leading the way is Doctors Opposing Circumcision.  Doctors Opposing Circumcision is an organization that was founded more than 25 years ago by George Denniston, MD, MPH in order to help bring about an end to the unconscionable practice of subjecting unconsenting children to medically-unnecessary genital surgery.  DOC is comprised of like-minded physicians and others who share the principles, the ethics and the core values that all of us, as healthcare providers, are obligated to uphold.  These ethical principles include:

• beneficence: the principle that the care and services we provide must benefit the patient
• nonmaleficence: the principle that we must not harm or injure our patients 
• justice: the principle that all patients should be treated equally and fairly
  
• respect for autonomy: the principle that every human being, regardless of age, sex, religion, race, ethnicity or anything else, has a fundamental and absolute right of bodily self-ownership

Non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision violates every one of these ethical principles.  

It also violates both the spirit and the letter of most of the specific provisions of the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics for Nurses, especially Provision 3: "The nurse promotes, advocates for, and protects the rights, health, and safety of the patient [my emphasis]."

For all of these reasons, Doctors Opposing Circumcision is working to end what, for too long, has been a cure in search of a disease - a deeply entrenched cultural practice masquerading as medical care. 

I hope you will take a few minutes to listen to Dr. Denniston explain, in his own words, why DOC exists and why this cause is so important.

After listening to Dr. Denniston, I hope you will listen to the firsthand accounts of a group of nurses - medical professionals like yourselves - who decided that they could no longer in good conscience participate in the harmful practice of non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision.  In 1995, these conscientious objectors went on to found the organization, Nurses for the Rights of the Child.  As explained on its website, 

Nurses for the Rights of the Child is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the rights of infants and children to bodily integrity.  As health professionals, we specifically seek to protect non-consenting infants and children from surgical alteration of their healthy genitals. 

I encourage you to visit the NRC website in order to learn what your fellow nurses are doing to protect children from medically-unnecessary genital surgery.

I also encourage you to read this short column by Adrienne Carmack, MD, a board-certified urologist and one of the board members of Doctors Opposing Circumcision.  For a comprehensive, evidence-based review of non-therapeutic penile circumcision, see Evidence and Ethics on: Circumcision by Rebecca Dekker, PhD, RN and Anna Bertone, MPH.

Finally, I urge you to visit the website of Doctors Opposing Circumcision.  Here you can find useful information and resources, including information on conscientious objection if you are currently involved in obstetrics and neonatal care.  Nurses for the Rights of the Child also provides information on conscientious objection in a brochure that can be downloaded from its website.  Once you have come to the unavoidable conclusion, as many of us in healthcare already have, that to participate in medically-unnecessary and non-consensual genital surgeries is incompatible with the ethical duties of healthcare providers, you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to do so.  Both the DOC and NRC websites have guidance for medical professionals that can help.

And if you have any other questions or would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at my email address: balashinsky@yahoo.com.

Thank you,

David Balashinsky, P.T.

 

 

About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York. I have been a physical therapist for over twenty years and began my career at NYU Medical Center in New York.  I now do inpatient rehabilitation in a major central NY hospital system.  I currently serve on the board of directors of the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and I also serve on the leadership team for Bruchim, an organization that fosters welcoming spaces for Jews opting out of circumcision.
 

 

OMV!, OB/GYNs, FACOGs & MGC: A Call for Consistency

by David Balashinsky

There are few things more offensive to one's sense of right and wrong than a double standard by which a harm is condemned in one case but a blind eye turned to a comparable (or worse) harm in another.  And there are few instances of such a double standard more flagrant than the outrage currently being directed at Vagisil for its new OMV! product line by several prominent OB/GYNs.

For those unacquainted with OMV! and the controversy surrounding it, OMV! is a "personal care" product manufactured by Vagisil.  The New York Times, The Washington Post and HuffPost have all reported on this within the past few weeks.  The criticism of products that are marketed to women as palliatives for the pathological condition of having a vulva is not new.  What is new is that Vagisil has recently launched a "feminine hygiene" product line - and an advertising campaign to promote it - that specifically targets teenagers.  This is also the cause of the particular outrage about this product.  As Dr. Jen Gunter (as quoted in WAPO) puts it,

Society's always looking for ways to make people with vaginas feel ashamed.  I hate that industry with a passion because it capitalizes on vaginal and vulvar shame.  But to see it marketed to teens?  Not on my watch.

The objections to OMV! all sound similar themes and I agree with every one of them.  "Feminine deodorant" wipes or sprays are unnecessary.  The vagina, as Dr. Gunter is fond of saying, is "like a self-cleaning oven."  (I love that simile, although I also think that anything that reinforces the link in people's minds between women, housework and especially kitchens is probably best avoided.)  They are potentially and likely harmful. They do not so much address a problem as invent one by pathologizing the vagina and the vulva.  In this respect, such products are the quintessential "solution in search of a problem" or (to put it more precisely) "cure in search of a disease."  Worse, by pathologizing female genitalia, these products contribute to a culture of body-shaming that undoubtedly adversely affects women's and young women's self-esteem.  There is even an argument to be made that such products represent an updated version of ancient, patriarchal notions of women as being essentially malignant and corrupting influences upon their male counterparts (think Eve and the apple).  This peculiar, bipartite and contradictory concept regards women as temptresses with bodies ideally suited to that purpose yet, at the same time, regards that part of women's bodies that is most female and most tempting as the mephitic wellspring of so much pollution and evil that have been unleashed upon mankind.  I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that products that exploit the concept of the vulva and the vagina as being inherently foul and malodorous are a contemporary manifestation of a very ancient, patriarchal view of women and of women's bodies, although this argument becomes a little harder (though not impossible) to make when the founders of two prominent companies that traffic in such garbage (Vagisil and Goop) are women.

So, whence my particular ire?  It is this.  In promoting an unnecessary product that shames female bodies and that has the potential to cause and in some cases does cause physical harm to female genitals, Vagisil is not doing anything worse than what the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has done and continues to do in endorsing an unnecessary genital surgery that shames male bodies and that causes physical harm to male genitals.  Yet four of the most vociferous critics of Vagisil's OMV!, including Jen Gunter, MD, Heather Irobunda, MD, Jennifer Lincoln, MD and Staci L. Tanouye, MD, are all Fellows of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.  My question for these FACOGs (which I posed, in vain, to several of them on Twitter and Instagram) is this: Why the double standard?  I agree that vulvas don't need "fixing" in any way at all.  Why won't ACOG agree that neither do penises?

For context, here is some background.  Most neonatal circumcisions are performed by obstetricians (section 4.2, p. 22 in the linked United Nations report).  As for ACOG, it is a professional organization consisting of obstetricians and gynecologists (obstetricians are generally trained in gynecology and gynecologists are generally trained in obstetrics, hence the acronym OB/GYN).  ACOG has officially endorsed the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2012 Technical Report on neonatal male circumcision.  The AAP concedes that "existing scientific evidence is not sufficient to recommend routine circumcision" and that "the procedure is not essential to the child's current well-being. . . . "  Nevertheless (and possibly because neonatal circumcision generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually) the authors of the AAP's 2012 Technical Report argued that "it is legitimate for . . . parents to take into account their own cultural, religious and ethnic traditions, in addition to medical factors" when opting to subject their sons to circumcision (note that "medical factors" is listed last) and it concluded, therefore, that "the benefits of newborn male circumcision justify access to this procedure for those families who choose it." The Technical Report acknowledged, incidentally (or not so incidentally), that among the reasons often cited by parents in the U.S.A. for making this "choice" are "hygiene and cleanliness of the penis" and "[s]ocial concerns."  Hence, when they referred to the "benefits" of neonatal circumcision, the authors of the AAP Technical Report were not referring to medical benefits so much as to what they believed were benefits as broadly construed to include social benefits.  This distinction was further clarified in a commentary written by Andrew Freedman, MD (one of the members of the Task Force that prepared the AAP's Technical report) that was subsequently published in Pediatrics.  As Dr. Freedman explained,

To understand the recommendations, one has to acknowledge that when parents decide on circumcision, the health issues are only one small piece of the puzzle.  In much of the world, newborn circumcision is not primarily a medical decision.  Most circumcisions are done due to religious and cultural tradition.  In the West, although parents may use the conflicting medical literature to buttress their own beliefs and desires, for the most part parents choose what they want for a wide variety of nonmedical reasons.  There can be no doubt that religion, culture, aesthetic preference, familial identity, and personal experience all factor into their decision.  Few parents when really questioned are doing it solely to lower the risk of urinary tract infections or ulcerative sexually transmitted infections.  Given the role of the phallus in our culture, it is not illegitimate to consider these realms of a person's life in making this nontherapeutic, only partially medical decision.

The upshot of all this is that ACOG has formally adopted a position supporting a parent's right to subject her or his child to circumcision for cultural reasons, for aesthetic reasons, for religious reasons, for reasons of "hygiene" and "cleanliness," for any reason or for no reason.  In the United States, "just because" is a sufficient justification for performing an irreversible and medically-unnecessary genital surgery on an infant male.  ACOG Fellows are, of course, physicians who presumably have taken an oath to abide by a code of ethics.  Among other things, that code prohibits the use of surgery when less invasive, more conservative treatment options are available.  The Code of Professional Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also enshrines the principle of autonomy: the right of the individual to make informed choices about her or his own body.  Yet, with its endorsement of the 2012 AAP Technical Report on infant male circumcision, ACOG invites its Fellows to violate these same ethical guidelines.  That is why I have singled out the four FACOGs mentioned above.  While none of them performs non-therapeutic infant circumcisions as far as I am aware (Dr. Lincoln explicitly informed me on Twitter - before she blocked me - that she doesn't), all of them are dues-paying members of ACOG who proudly include FACOG among their post-nominal letters.  That (along with their failure to publicly and energetically repudiate ACOG's endorsement of unnecessary genital surgery) not only makes their implicit support for ACOG's position a reasonable inference but makes criticism of them for it valid.  More to the point, it makes their inconsistency - the double standard of criticizing OMV! while implicitly endorsing forced non-therapeutic circumcision - fair game.

The parallels between "feminine hygiene" products and non-therapeutic circumcision are several and striking, starting from the simple fact that both target genitals: female and male, respectively.  (It goes without saying that, throughout this essay, when I refer to "feminine hygiene" products, I am not referring to menstrual products but only to unnecessary "cleansing" and deodorant products such as OMV!.)  

Beyond this, one of the chief criticisms of OMV! and similar products is that they pathologize the vulva and the vagina.  In order to sell a cure or a treatment, after all, one must first identify a problem that needs to be cured or treated.  That is exactly what the medical profession (and others) did during the 19th century with the male prepuce (or foreskin).  It is well known that male circumcision was introduced and popularized as a "cure" for masturbation (and its inevitable sequela, "masturbatory insanity") as well as for numerous other ailments that were attributed at the time to the presence of the male prepuce.  The process by which the male foreskin became pathologized within the realms of medical practice and the culture at large (in England and in the United States) has been thoroughly documented.  A concise summary was written by Jessica Wapner and published in 2015 in Mosaic.  In The Troubled History of the Foreskin, Wapner writes, 

One day in 1870, a New York orthopaedic surgeon named Lewis Sayre was asked to examine a five-year-old boy suffering from parallysis of both legs. . . .  

After the boy's sore genitals were pointed out by his nanny, Sayre removed the foreskin.  The boy recovered.  Believing he was on to something big, Sayre conducted more procedures.  His reputation was such that when he praised the benefits of circumcision . . . surgeons elsewhere followed suit.  Among other ailments, Sayre discussed patients whose foreskins were tightened and could not retract, a condition known as phimosis.  Sayre declared that the condition caused a general state of nervous irritation, and that circumcision was the cure.

His ideas found a receptive audience.  To Victorian minds, many health issues originated with the sexual organs and masturbation. . . .

The circumcised penis came be seen as more hygienic, and cleanliness was a sign of moral standards.  An 1890 journal identified smegma as "infectious material."  A few years later, a book for mothers . . . described the foreskin as a "mark of Satan."  Another author described parents who did not circumcise their sons at an early age as "almost criminally negligent."

By now, the circumcision torch had passed from Sayre to Peter Charles Remondino, a popular San Diego physician. . . .  Remondino described the foreskin as a "malign influence" that could weaken a man "physically, mentally and morally; to land him, perchance, in jail or even in a lunatic asylum."  Insurance companies, he advised, should classify uncircumcised men as "hazardous risks."

By the turn of the 20th century the Victorian fear of masturbation had waned, but by then circumcision had become a prudent precaution, and one increasingly implemented soon after birth. . . .  By 1940, around 70% of male babies in the United States were circumcised.

. . . By the 1970s . . . more than 90% of U.S. men were circumcised. . . .  The American foreskin had become a thing of the past.

Throughout its modern history, as one rationale after the other for neonatal circumcision has been discredited, one rationale after the other has arisen to take its place.  Thus has neonatal circumcision - like vaginal douches and "feminine hygiene products" - become the quintessential "cure in search of a disease."

What makes the "feminine-hygiene-products" industry so particularly objectionable is that it not only reflects a culture of body-shaming of people with vulvas and vaginas (recall Gunter's comments, above) but that it contributes to and perpetuates that culture.  But, here again, we see an identical phenomenon at work (except by proxy, because the social pressure is exerted on parents) with respect to non-therapeutic circumcision and penile anatomy.  Non-therapeutic circumcision is performed primarily for cultural and "aesthetic" reasons.  Social conformity - "so he will look like his father" and "so he won't be made fun of in the locker room" are among the most common rationalizations offered by parents for having their sons circumcised.  "So his future sex partners [who, of course, are always assumed to be women] won't be turned off,'" is another.  More broadly, because we live in a culture in which male genital cutting has been normalized, many if not a majority of Americans conceptualize a surgically-reduced penis as "normal."  Thus, they tend to regard a healthy, intact penis as abnormal, ergo, deformed.  It remains common, therefore, for intact boys and men to be mocked for the natural anatomical structure of their genitals (hence the concern about locker rooms).  No one should pretend that this body-shaming doesn't adversely affect the body-image and self-esteem of intact boys and men.  The problem, however, for such boys and men is not that their penises are intact but that their prepuces have been stigmatized by our society.  It is the very act of routine circumcision - the normalization of circumcised penises - that contributes to and perpetuates this culture in which intact penises are stigmatized.  As a result, every boy - whether circumcised or intact - grows up with the perception that he was born with a congenital deformity of his penis that either was "corrected" by circumcision or, if it wasn't, ought to have been.  And every time an OB/GYN performs a medically-unnecessary circumcision, she or he perpetuates this body-shaming culture, just as ACOG perpetuates it with its endorsement of non-therapeutic circumcision.

The similarities do not end there.  It goes without saying that special "cleansers" for the vulva (and the vagina) are unnecessary.  And when washing the vulva is appropriate, water and maybe a mild soap are more than sufficient.   But it turns out that soap and water work just as well on intact penises as they do on vulvas.  Yet "improved hygiene" - "cleanliness of the penis"-  is not only frequently offered by parents as a reason to have their child circumcised, this reason is cited specifically in the AAP Technical Report.  To be sure, the AAP and ACOG do not themselves explicitly cite "hygiene" as a justification for circumcision.  But both organizations do endorse the right of parents to impose circumcision on their children even when their reasons for doing so have no basis in rational thought or medical science.  As noted, the AAP's Technical Report - endorsed by ACOG - asserts that it is perfectly "legitimate" for parents to take social, cultural and religious factors into consideration when deciding on whether to subject their male child to circumcision.  But what is the concept of the vulva as something that is intrinsically unclean if not a social and cultural (and, to some extent, a religious) construct?  What is the concept of the male foreskin as intrinsically unclean if not the same sort of social and cultural construct?  By the same token, if a special "feminine wash" is unnecessary as a method for keeping the vulva clean, isn't surgery even more unnecessary, by orders of magnitude, as a method for keeping the penis clean?

Still another criticism of OMV! and similar products is that they are not just potentially but positively harmful to the vulva and the vagina.  As the Times (which interviewed Dr. Tanouye and others for its coverage of this story) reports,

Any product that is scented can potentially damage the skin, Dr. Tanouye said.  And while not everyone may experience a reaction, or react immediately, experts said that certain health issues can emerge after prolonged use.  "Fragrance is the No. 1 cause of allergic contact dermatitis," Dr. Tanouye said, which is a condition in which the skin gets inflamed and becomes itchy, red and rashy after contact with an irritating substance.

HuffPost reports that "people who used these ["feminine hygiene"] products were up to three times more likely to get a vaginal infection."  Of course introducing an irritant to the vulva, let alone into the vagina, is likely to be harmful.  But what amount of willful blindness is required not to recognize that cutting off part of someone's genitals is even more harmful?  There is a cure, after all, for contact dermatitis.  In contrast, there is no cure for circumcision.  It's irreversible.

Lastly, OMV!'s critics cite the "predatory" nature of this and similar products.  They exist and are promoted for one reason: to make money.  And that, I submit, is precisely the motivation behind ACOG's endorsement of the 2012 AAP Technical Report on infant circumcision.  That hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually on totally unnecessary "feminine hygiene" products is disgraceful.  That companies like Vagisil and Goop profit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually by selling these products is unconscionable.  How is it any less disgraceful that hundreds of millions of healthcare dollars are misdirected annually into a medically-unnecessary genital surgery?  (This is money that could be spent on early childhood nutrition programs or providing access to the full range of reproductive healthcare services for uninsured or under-insured women, to offer just two examples.)  And how is it any less unconscionable that ACOG's members directly profit from the performance of this medically-unnecessary genital surgery?

Vagisil exists only to make money.  Its shareholders and most of its officers do not swear an oath of beneficence, nor are they obligated (even if we think they should be) to be guided by the precept primum non nocere.  Every member of ACOG, in contrast, does swear such an oath and is under such an obligation.  Subjecting unconsenting children (and the adults that they become) to a medically-unnecessary and irreversible genital surgery violates that oath and that obligation.  Thus, while I salute Doctors Gunter, Irobunda, Lincoln and Tanouye for their criticism of OMV!, I respectfully suggest that they should also put their own house in order.  Even though they, themselves, may not perform non-therapeutic circumcisions, they belong to an organization of OB/GYNs who do.  Vagisal will probably never abandon its business model in order to do the right thing.  Of ACOG, on the other hand, the public has a right to expect much, much more. 

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

About me:  I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture and politics.  I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.
 

The Horseshoe

by David Balashinsky

Although the title of this story is The Horseshoe, it's really a story about cats.  It's also a story about loss and consolation and about bad luck and good luck, which is why I call it The Horseshoe.

The horseshoe of the title is a rusty and corroded relic that I happened to dig up while preparing to lay some stones for a patio.  It is so deeply pitted that it has to date from the nineteenth- or even the eighteenth century.  Undoubtedly, it was once worn by a horse whose bones lay buried not far from the spot behind the barn where I found it.

I live in a rural part of Central New York, just beyond the city limits of Binghamton.  Until a few decades ago, this property was a working farm, complete with a red wooden barn that stands just a few hundred feet up the hill from the main house.  Although still impressive, with three stories, a hayloft on top and a porch in back, the barn is now decrepit.  Its foundation walls are caving in and it is ready to collapse at any moment.  The wood siding, consisting of vertically hung planks, is so weathered that the original red has turned several shades darker, in some sections blending imperceptibly into long black streaks of arrowhead-shaped drip patterns.  All the knots in the siding have come out, providing easy access for squirrels, and the planks are all warped from long exposure to the constant dampness of this climate.  

The barn can no longer be used for storage since it can't support any weight.  It serves only two purposes now.  One is as a monument to the agricultural history of this region and the other is as a shelter for wayfaring cats.  Some of these cats stay for just a day or two but others have moved in with the obvious intention of staying permanently.  When my wife and I bought the property, the deed included, at least informally, not just the house, the land and the barn but a reclusive black cat whom the previous owner had named Zorro and who made the barn his home.  (I believe that adverse possession, or squatter's rights, would be the appropriate legal term to describe Zorro's status).  It was partly our promise to provide Zorro with food and water every day that convinced the seller that we were worthy of becoming the new owners.  Although we were true to our word, eventually Zorro got tired of living in the barn and decided to move into the main house with us.  Still, since Zorro occupied it, the barn has seldom been without an occupant.   During the ten years or so that we have lived here (after moving up from Brooklyn with several New York City cats), one cat after the other has taken Zorro's place.  And, like Zorro, each cat in its turn, with one exception, has ended up living in the main house with us.

Our house, as I mentioned, is a few hundred feet down the hill from the barn.  The main entrance is through a veranda.  It is not a large veranda but it is large enough to accommodate a small round table for outdoor dining on those relatively rare occasions when the weather up here is pleasant.  On one side of the veranda is the railing and opposite that is the exterior wall of the house.  It was on this wall, just by the doorway through which one passes from the veranda into the kitchen, that I hung the horseshoe.  Unfortunately, I made the mistake of hanging the horseshoe upside down.  My error was pointed out to me by my now-late father-in-law, Joe.  We were sitting at the table on the veranda drinking beers when Joe glanced up at the horseshoe.  With a combination of disapproval and pity in his voice, and shaking his head from side to side, Joe made the following pronouncement: "All the good luck from that horseshoe is just running right into the ground."  He explained to me that, by hanging the horseshoe with its prongs pointing down, all the good luck that might accrue to this household and its inhabitants was simply pouring out and that the horseshoe needed to be hung with its prongs pointing up.  I had no idea about any of this.  I had originally placed the horseshoe where it was simply because I thought it would be a quaint decoration: one in keeping with the rustic character of the property, not unlike the barn itself.  I regarded both the barn and the horseshoe as belonging to the category of "things that were once functional but are now just ornamental."  As for its orientation, the internal concavity of the horseshoe - the arch of its "U" - had merely suggested itself as the obvious means by which to hang it on a screw that, conveniently, was already sticking out of the wall.  I was completely ignorant of the horseshoe's present-day function as an actual catcher and repository of good luck.  When Joe informed me of my mistake, I did, of course, exactly what I always do: I put his recommendation on my mental to-do list and then forgot all about it.

From this same spot on the veranda, under the horseshoe, I could sit and look up the hill at the old red barn that had housed so many animals over the years and would house so many cats in the years to come.  I was in this spot drinking my coffee early one August morning not long after my in-laws' visit when, looking in the direction of the barn, something caught my eye.  It was hard to make out because it was partly obscured by the goldenrod that blooms here in August - a harbinger of summer's soon coming to an end  - but its movements were unmistakably feline: the characteristic undulation of his head and sweeping of his paw as he cleaned just above his left ear could belong only to a cat.  Sure enough, it was a little black cat sitting on the back porch of the barn, grooming himself.  I went up to investigate but he ran down the hill, stopping so he could turn and watch me.  I got some cat food from the house and brought it up in a small bowl which I placed on the porch where I had seen him sitting and grooming himself.  Although the food did not immediately induce him to return to the spot where he seemed so much at home, I left it where it was in the hope that, eventually - after I was gone - he would return.  Whether feral or stray, he was probably already well on the way toward making himself at home in the barn, just as Zorro had done.  In fact, this cat seemed to me to be a Zorro, Jr., partly because of his coloring, which was so similar - jet black, from nose to tail.

Later that day, when I got home from work, the first thing I did, even before changing my clothes, was go up to the barn in order to see if the food that I left had been eaten.  It had, but the little black cat was nowhere to be found.  The next day, again following work, I changed my clothes and set about attending to the daily household chores that never seem to end.  In addition to dealing with the kitty litter and feeding our Brooklyn cats (at the time, the only cats, besides Zorro, who were living with us), this included bringing our dogs up to a fenced-in dog-run that we created for them not far from the barn.  It also included feeding Zorro, who always refused to eat with our Brooklyn cats.  I should probably mention that Zorro was very standoffish with the others, and I could never decide whether this was because his ancestors came over on the Mayflower, in contrast to our own immigrant, Ellis Island cats - in which case Zorro might have harbored a sort of nativist contempt for them - or, quite the opposite, whether it was because Zorro considered himself "hardy country stock" in contrast to our Brooklyn cats whom he considered effete and pampered, and, thinking that it was they who looked down their noses on him, regarded them with churlish resentment.  Then, again, I'm probably just projecting.  Most likely, Zorro's aloofness was simply due to the fact that he was here first.  I'm sure Zorro regarded our Brooklyn cats as interlopers.

Its being summer, my daily chores also included any of a variety of outdoor projects to which I devoted as much time and energy as remained after working all day.  And so after attending to the dogs and cats, I gathered my tools and got to work.  At the time, I was immersed in the project of creating a drainage system.  This involved digging an extensive channel that ran about a hundred feet from the back of the house (where the water pooled and seeped into the basement) around to the side, which would lead the water away from the house, altogether.  Like most of the projects that I have taken on since buying this house, this proved to be much more involved, much more difficult and much more time-consuming than I anticipated.  Obviously, this was a project for which I ought to have rented a backhoe.  However, by the time I could admit this to myself, my work had progressed so far that I felt that changing strategies would be tantamount to admitting defeat.  By now, the ditch, near its origin at the house, was about six feet deep.  The digging of it was brutal and miserable work, the land here consisting of what is known as hardpan, which is what it sounds like.  Besides this, the area where I was digging that day also consisted of pools of mud and tons of rocks.  That day's labors, therefore, being no exception to the normal torture of this project, I found myself growing more and more exasperated, even cursing aloud with every swing of my pick-axe as it struck either rock, which sent painful shock waves through my body, or mud, which erupted in torrents that unerringly found their way into my hair, eyes and mouth.  

After not too much of this, as fatigue had already begun to set in, I paused to rest.  I stood up to my full height for the first time in perhaps fifteen minutes (ditch-digging is such laborious work because one must spend so much time hunched over).  I was within the trench so, although I was standing upright, my head and shoulders were just above ground level.  Happening at that moment to turn my head slightly to the right, I noticed the little black cat, sitting on his haunches, just twenty feet or so away, with his head cocked to one side, watching me.  I was both startled and touched that he took an interest in my work; he seemed to be wondering why I had been so angry about digging.  I climbed out of the ditch so I could get some more food for him and, when I returned, found him sitting not far from where I had left him moments before.  I tried to approach him with the food but he was not quite willing to take a chance on letting me get close.  So I placed the food down at my feet and backed away, a gesture that was intended to convey to him that I acknowledged his apprehension.  In order to earn his trust, I would have to give him his space while also remaining more or less present.  Bit by bit, a few steps at a time, he cautiously approached the dish of food.  Yet there was always a point beyond which he dared not go, and then I would have to reposition myself, by degrees, farther and farther away from the food as, by the same degrees, the little black cat moved closer and closer to it.  Eventually he reached the food and, once he had, I sat myself down on the ground about ten or fifteen feet away and watched him eat.  Altogether, this whole process -  his inching toward the food as I inched away from it - took a half hour or more.  I realized that I had developed a great affection for this cat and began to hope that we could formally adopt him and welcome him into our home, just as we had done with Zorro.

The little black cat became, if not an obsession, at least a preoccupation of mine.  I found myself looking out of the window from my bedroom up toward the barn at every opportunity, awaiting his return.  He was not only ever-present in my thoughts but became a frequent subject of conversation between my wife and me.  It was during one such conversation that I saw him making his way down the hill above the barn, where he had just emerged from the woods.  I ran downstairs to get him some food and offered it to him in the usual manner.  Once again, I stayed and watched him eat.  Throughout this process, my wife watched from the bedroom window.  When he finished eating, the little black cat began to move in stages closer and closer to the house, stopping to sit for a few minutes at a time.  By now, my wife - who has a way with animals that is positively preternatural (and in comparison to which mine is that of the bumbling amateur) - had decided that it was time for her to get involved.  It was just a matter of minutes, therefore, before the little black cat was cradled in her arms.

We have a side porch - as dilapidated and rundown as the barn - that we seldom use.  Its sole function is as a halfway house where we temporarily quarantine stray cats during their transition from feral cat to house cat.  Although airy and cheerful in its way, the porch is entirely screened in, so that a cat might be confined there without risk of its getting loose.  It was this porch that had served as Zorro's temporary quarters when he began the transition from barn cat to house cat.  Our plan, then, was to shelter the little black cat here for the short period during which we could have him tested for FIV and FeLV and get him vaccinated.  In order to access this porch, one has to walk through the house first, from one end to the other.  Thus, as my wife carried him through the house and through a gauntlet of astonished dogs and cats, I prepared the way by opening doors before them as they approached and closing doors after them as they passed, and otherwise assisted by getting blankets and other necessities.  But this cat was no Zorro, Jr. in one crucial respect.  Unlike Zorro, who welcomed the change in his circumstances when we brought him indoors, the little black cat could not abide confinement, even in a fairly spacious, screened-in porch.  He was truly feral.  His sole preoccupation was to try every possible avenue of escape, including climbing the screens.  He had not been in the porch ten minutes before he found a small opening in one of the segments of wire mesh that had been installed at some point to keep domestic animals in and raccoons out.  He darted through the opening, then turned and paused for a few moments looking back at us, panting.  He let out a long, mournful meow which cut me to the quick, sounding as it did like a reproach.  I imagined that he was saying, "How could you betray my trust like that?"  That was the only time he ever spoke to me - and off he ran.

We were heartbroken.  We were worried, of course, for his safety, but also stung by the frustration of having had him slip through our fingers.   All we could do was hope that he would return. We were afraid that he would no longer trust us enough to allow for any possibility of rescuing him.  I did see him again the next evening, but it was much farther away from the house, toward the far end of our property, an area of woods, shrubs, and tall grass that I refer to as the Eastern Provinces because it is so remote; it is the part of our property that is farthest from our house and we never go there.  It might be an encouraging sign that I spotted him at all, but his new avoidance of us was equally discouraging, for he now seemed to harbor a fear of us born of experience, rather than of an innate cautiousness, and this would be even harder to overcome.

It now became a race against time. We live on a busy road and, in spite of the fact that this area is rural - or because of it - people tend to speed on the two-lane artery that leads from the City of Binghamton to Pennsylvania and that passes right in front of our house.  With every day that passed with this cat living on his own outdoors, the odds of his meeting an untimely and violent end would increase.  We resigned ourselves to hoping for the best and, in the meantime, decided to name him Blackberry.  Curiously, my wife and I had come up with that name independently of one another.  The name did seem to fit him but we also foolishly indulged the notion that our both having thought of it augured well for Blackberry's eventual adoption into our family.

It was not to be.  The very next morning, as my wife was driving to work, she found poor Blackberry dead in the road down by the Eastern Provinces.  He had been run over the night before.  Our grief was immense.  We felt his loss and the tragedy of his death so much more keenly, having had him within our grasp for a few brief moments.  I had been planning on doing some planting that day; I wanted to transplant a large shrub from one location on our property to another.  It occurred to me that I could best honor Blackberry by giving him a proper burial and a decent final resting place on our property, so I dug a deep grave for him and buried him below the spot where I then planted the shrub.  My wife observed that ever after we would refer to that shrub as our Blackberry Bush, and she later placed a single flower on his grave, resting it on the cedar mulch that I had scattered over the ground beneath which Blackberry lay.

We went about our daily routines that day but a pall had settled over our home.  Our grief was not just immense - we staggered under its weight.  And it was just then, when we were newly mourning the loss of that unhappy little black cat and when our grief was at its most acute because of its newness, that a strange thing happened.  It was early the next morning - a Sunday.  I was outside watering some grass that I had planted recently. I don't know why but I turned to look behind me.  From where I was standing, I could see the rear wall of the garage.  This wall has a door in it with windows in its upper half.  The door opens onto a paved walkway which is bordered by a stone wall that is about three feet high.  Above this wall, the land banks so sharply that the wall could not be seen from where I was standing but could be seen reflected in the windows of the garage door that faces it.  Something concentrated my attention on those windows, and I realized then that I was seeing, ghostly and pale, the reflection of a little white cat, sitting on his haunches upon the stone wall, licking one of his paws.  Not daring to approach him myself, I waved to my wife through the kitchen window, and, in pantomime, directed her attention to the little white cat, still sitting on the stone wall.  She was with him in a moment and, as she took him in her arms, he welcomed her with overt signs of affection.  He was, in every respect, Blackberry's opposite; above all, trusting and anxious to be taken in.  It should be unnecessary to add that I patched the hole in the wire mesh on the side porch before we left him alone, but he only stayed there for a short time anyway.  His tests were all negative, we quickly got him his vaccines, and he was so comfortable indoors and in our company that he rapidly made the transition to full-fledged house cat.  We named him Vanilla Bean.  My wife and I are not spiritual people, but it really did seem to us that Vanilla Bean had been sent to console us in our grief.  A great void had opened in our hearts when we lost Blackberry, and Vanilla Bean came along almost exactly twenty-four hours later to fill it.  I shudder to think what might have happened had we not rescued him but, of course, it was not we who rescued him but the other way around.

I mentioned just now that my wife and I are not spiritual people.  Neither are we particularly superstitious.  And yet there is a curious epilogue to this story, something that made me wonder whether Joe had been right, after all, about that horseshoe.  It was just after I had finished burying poor Blackberry and honoring his short sojourn in our lives with the planting of the Blackberry Bush.  As I trudged back toward the house, dejected and oppressed by grief, my gaze chanced to fall upon the horseshoe, pointing down.  Now, instead of rustic charm, it bore a look of stern reproach.  Instead of a quaint decoration, it seemed to be the gnarled hand of Death pointing triumphantly down to the ground where both good luck and Blackberry lay buried.  My grief then melded with regret and guilt as I wondered whether, in failing to heed Joe's advice, I had inadvertently courted the misfortune that had befallen Blackberry.  Though it was now too late to do Blackberry any good, I made a penance of correcting my mistake and immediately strung a wire from one prong of the horseshoe to the other and remounted it on the wall, correctly this time, with its prongs pointing up, so that our luck might not continue to run out into the ground.  Within a few hours, Vanilla Bean had arrived.

The End