The joke's on moo

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Interrupting cow.

Interrupting cow..

Moooo!!!!!

Except this joke's not a knock-knock joke, and it's not nearly as funny.

The joke's butt is us - human consumers, who have been the victims of a long con. We've been bought by the milk industry, we've sold our animal instinct, and become absolutely convinced that it is not only normal, but crucial to our very existence, as bone-based creatures, to drink three tall glasses a day of another species' breast milk. Well, drinking milk doesn't help with back-bone development; it may even be a symptom of a lack thereof.

"The dairy folks, ever since the 1920s, have been enormously successful in cultivating an environment within virtually all segments of our society—from research and education to public relations and politics—to have us believing that cow's milk and its products are manna from heaven. ... Make no mistake about it; the dairy industry has been virtually in total control of any and all public health information that ever rises to the level of public scrutiny."
Dr. T. Colin Campbell

Nevermind the fact that that milk is not nature's perfect food to anyone but the milk-producing cow's own offspring.

Nevermind the fact that there are no convincing studies that link osteoporosis to milk as an effective source of calcium.

Nevermind the fact that milk products - and the hormones, pesticides, and antibiotics that are contained in them - have been linked to heart disease, diabetes, allergies, obesity, cancer, and a host of other diseases that plague us dairy-dining North Americans the most.

Nevermind that it's all based on a lie.

Nevermind all those things, for a moment, and if you haven't considered quitting milk yet, then consider it now, if only for a moment, because of the simple fact that to glass and guzzle a cow's bodily fluid is just plain weird.

What if, in our scramble to be authentic and to minimize our food's travel time, it became popular to get our milk organic, free-range, and straight from the source? Udderly delicious! Would you do it? Would you regress to your infant years, and suckle for milk? We love to bob for apples, pick our own berries, grow our own herbs, draw our own water, collect our own eggs, fish our own fish, but can you really imagine yourself suckling your own cow?

Today I'm here to tell you that I think that suckling is for babies, and that cow's milk sucks.

It sucks for the environment, for your health, and definitely, for the cow. If you can't find a reason in there to holler hoax, then be my guest, bottoms up. But remember to ask yourself, the next time you reach for a delicious glass of creamy colostrum: What's that subtle flavour, an undertone, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it could be... it couldn't be.. can it be? Can I taste the nipple?

Sometimes, I like to pretend that aliens have swooped in from outer space and decided to harvest humans' white gold. I've been genetically modified. I've been hooked up to a machine by my nipples and am surrounded by thousands of my closest acquaintances, in a warehouse, all in the same situation. Whatever milk I would produce for my child, I will now be producing ten times that amount - dozens of pounds of milk. My nipples are down to my knees but as long as there's milk coming, these aliens are in business. Oh, and what of my child, you ask? Well, his worth would not be unharnessed by these most parsimonious of aliens and, as a bi-product of their milk-sucking endeavour, my child would not go to waste. An entire sub-industry would be carefully crafted around the deliciousness of his tender ... and then I decide to stop pretending, because this is all pretty sick and a little too familiar.

And then there's the environmental impact of mass milk production. Like most things we do, it is vastly inefficient. A single dairy cow converts tons of grain and an enormous amount of water to a small amount of milk. In the process, it produces as much waste as two dozen people do, every day. Since the cows aren't provided with the luxuries of proper waste management, such as toilet paper, sewers and treatment plants, their waste is cycled back into the system.

With a looming water crisis and global warming being a firmly established fact, do we really need this added pressure on our resources?

Why, when we can eat the same leafy greens that cows eat for calcium, eliminate the blood and pus from our diets, and combat the obesity epidemic, all in one fell swoop?

Dump Dairy because medical studies have proven that it won't help you maintain good bone health. Despite what ours and our parents' generations have been told, excessive calcium in fact causes osteoporosis. It looks like you may have to start acting younger than your age on this one, and debunk the old-school myth that milk is a miracle food. It's not. They'll start teaching this in kindergarden soon. Cow's breast milk is for cows, and humans' breast milk is for humans; it's not speciesist, it's common sense. You wouldn't want someone to mess with the breast-born baby bond between you and your child, so why inflict that pain of longing upon somebody else?

Once you expose the dairy fallacy for yourself, you can start making positive lifestyle changes. Don't dwell on the negatives; take action. At the very least, focus in on healthy alternatives, like molasses, dark leafy greens, cabbage, broccoli, green beans, cucumber, peas, soybeans, squash, most types of beans (including cocoa!), kiwi, real maple syrup, brown sugar, and tomatoes. Now that calcium-fortified soy products are allowed in Canada (wonder why it took so long?) it is easier than ever.

Eating well isn't just about our own health, it's about the health of our planet - and that of Daisy the dairy cow who would thrive just fine outside the confines of a dairy factory.

Who's catching your baby?

My husband's friend, Daniel, strung these words together and I find it so so interesting. If you're into DIY, birthing politics, or self-empowerment, then you will too.

Childbirth and Social War

"In the early 1920's, capitalism realized that it could no longer maintain it's exploitation of human labor if it didn't also colonize everything that exists beyond the strict sphere of production. Faced with the socialist challenge, it had to socialize too. So it needed to create its culture, its entertainment, its medicine, its urbanism, its sentimental education and its own moores, and be prepared to perpetually renovate these."

-Tiqqun "Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Jeune-Fille"



When anarchists speak of "Social War" we aren't just renaming the "Class War" of years past, wherein the struggles against capitalism were carried out by the proletariat seeking to overthrow the bourgeoisie and destroy class society, what we are speaking about is the colonization of capital into all forms of modern life and the need to seek out and attack it in every sphere within which it exists. Social war means constant conflict (in varying degrees of intensity) with all aspects of life inside our post-industrial desert. It means both the destruction of all commodified forms of life and the creation and dissemination of new, non-recuperable life-ways.

Our analysis must encompass the totality of our oppression, that is to say that we should never consciously overlook any part of life that capital has integrated itself into. An anarchist strategy needs to avoid stagnancy by constantly redefining and remapping the social terrain and locating the spaces where power has recuperated dissent. We can't expect to remain relevant or be effective if we keep trying to reintroduce the practices and theories of old dead anarchists into a context that is entirely different. Life has changed and we, if we do not wish to wither away into oblivion, must change with it.

One aspect of life that we should not overlook is childbirth. Reproductive freedom has a long and rich history of resistance to capitalist and state control.

Work that had for centuries been done by women (i.e. gathering, farming) was gradually taken over by men and their beasts of burden. This more sedentary life caused many women to give birth to more children which increased the population and helped to give rise to Feudalism. But when the plague hit, Europe lost 60% of it's population, and people with specialized skills and knowledge could charge extraordinarily large sums of money for their work. Burgeoning nation-states, scrambling to pull together enough people to continue business as usual after the catastrophic population decrease, gave rise to the new networks of power, a primitive state apparatus, and, of course, a clamp down on peasant communalism. Some heretical sects resisted the attack on their communal life-ways by refusing to obey their laws, setting churches on fire, hanging bishops for betraying the real teachings of christ and some, as in the case of the Bogomils, downright refused to bear children so that they would not bring new slaves in this "land of tribulations".

The onset of primitive accumulation necessitated a new restructuring of power in Europe and an increase in potential laborers. This was at a time when a nation-state's power and wealth was partially defined by the amount of its citizens it had at its disposal. When empires needed these bodies they implemented new state regulations over childbirth. In 16th century Nuremburg, the penalty for maternal infanticide was drowning, and all over Germany the Pro-Natalist crusades went as far as punishing women who didn't show enough of an effort during childbirth. In France, a royal edict of 1556 required women to register every pregnancy, and sentenced to death those whose infants died before baptism after a concealed delivery, whether or not they were proven guilty of any wrong doing. The suspicion under which the midwives - leading to the entrance of the male doctor in the delivery room - stemmed more from the authorities fear of infanticide (the potential of losing their labor power and cannon fodder) than from any concern of the midwives' alleged medical incompetence. With the marginalization of the midwife, women lost the control they had exercised over procreation and were reduced to a passive role in child delivery, while male doctors began to be seen as the real "givers of life". Some midwives in Germany turned spies for the state in order to continue their practice. Most midwives rebelled, instead of adhering to the new guidelines imposed on them, they continued guiding women through the birthing experience the way they always had. Some of these unruly women were called witches, some were murdered, but most continued practicing, only less vocal this time.

Midwives, as demeaned as they were, regularly continued to attend most mothers up until the 1920's when there was a move to hospitalize the birthing experience in the United States. White and mostly upper and middle class women started attending hospitals due to the doctors promises of a smooth and hygienic birth. Propaganda campaigns, financed by the medical industry, at the time portrayed midwives as 'unsanitary', poor immigrants. An important thing to note here is that with all of the turn of the century arguments against midwives: that they were unclean, old-fashioned, ill-equipped, and dangerous; it was in fact in the hospitals where a rise in disease was occurring - puerperal fever (aka childbed fever - a fatal infection that was usually introduced by unhygienic obstetricians), complications (due to the hospitals rigid control of the movements of women's bodies), and fatalities (due to unnecessary interventions).

Somewhat quickly the hospitalization of childbirth began to rise. Within a few decades most deliveries happened in a hospital environment. This provided an immense amount of capital to the industry (as everyone now must pay to come into the world). Also accomplished in this is medicalization of childbirth, and this is crucial to an anarchist analysis of childbirth, is the intense regulated control of the process of bringing life into the world. The state decides how (and in some cases when) you are allowed to enter the world. After a few generations women had given up almost all power over procreation to licensed professionals and state bureaucracy. Some midwives spoke against the medical apparatus, but were drowned out by more "competent" doctors and studies financed by the medical industry.

In the late 1960's and early 70's there was a revamp in the field of midwifery, which was closely tied to the hippy and back-to-the-land movements. Childbirth was seen, once again, as a spiritual ceremony and many hippies came to older midwives, eager to learn the trade. This new generation of midwives set up birthing centers on communal farms, collectives in cities and organized free midwifery trainings. This marginal subculture of "spiritual midwives" existed mostly on the fringes of society and did not (for the most part) break out of its groovy ghetto to attack the medical industry and the state apparatus for controlling the welcoming of life. Not to be overlooked though, are the important ways these births empowered women and helped them feel more in control of their bodies. Their refusal to obey state regulations over childbirth, refusal to accept money for delivering children and the expropriation and dissemination of specialized skills shows a move into a revolutionary consciousness. Content as they were to set up birthing communes and midwifery collectives these midwives failed to take direct action against the business of being born.



But the 60's counter-culture came and went and what was left were scattered birth collectives charging clientele ludicrously large fees, upper-middle class midwife authors collecting royalty checks from book sales, and a general acceptance of state licensing and certification. Although there was a slight resistance in the 80's to the legalization of midwifery by some radical midwives, most midwives were just glad they were allowed to practice openly. What started out as a radical subculture reclaiming an almost lost skill, that carried with it a potentially revolutionary paradigm, had become a commodified and regulated component of the industrial medical apparatus. It continues to exist today as another life-choice colonized by capital and overseen by the state.

In recent years midwifery, homebirths and unassisted childbirths have grown in popularity. But midwifery as a practice has yet to reject the commodification of its own existence; it has in fact become more of a commodity than ever before. With the movement toward a green capitalist market, midwifery, along with veganism, organic local food co-ops, hybrid cars, Barrack Obama, and bicycles has become just another eco-niche. Certified Midwives have fairly large incomes, prenatal yoga birthing classes cost a fortune and birthing tubs for homebirths are not communized but are instead rented out for hundreds of dollars.

Within this commercialization of natural childbirth there exists a kernel of subversion and rebellion, the anarchist midwife. The anarchist midwife is new to the scene but brings with her all of the tools to make childbirth a threat to the ruling order. She carries with her a disdain for all things regulated and surveilled, a readiness to work outside of the law, a sharpened critique of the medical industry, the skills to deliver a new life and a deep trust and love for the mother and child's intuition.

The anarchist midwife has within herself the capacity to be truly subversive. She can provide free or low-cost births for illegal immigrants who would otherwise be turned away or into the police by the hospital staff. She can learn Spanish to offer her skills, and knowledge, to immigrant communities, outlaws and fugitives. She and her peers can communize birthing equipment. She can use illegalism to fund birthing centers, conferences and skillshares. She can expose and disrupt obstetricians that speak out against midwifery when they give lectures. She can despecialize her knowledge by sharing it with others. She can write pamphlets and journals critiquing the capitalist medical industry. She can give whatever procedures she and the mother deem safe during child-delivery without regard for the state and its arbitrary restrictions.

She is a free agent, a rebel, a subversive, one part of the social war. She is the anarchist midwife.

Something I know to be true for me

Aren't people's actions the best interpreters of their thoughts?

If we cultivate the ability to think happy thoughts, then that is what we will be. Where is your happy place?

There is nothing wrong with visualizing yourself there. Call it escapism, call it daydreaming, call it what you will. Let it interfere with your ability to be productive. Go there when you're not supposed to, and sometimes, if you can, take your physical body with you.

Maybe that place is but a state of mind, grounded on thoughtlessness, but we do have to choose to go there.

No matter what you've been through, or how much you're still working on, sometimes it is just that simple. It's something that nobody can take away from you, no matter your degree of privilege or freedom.

"Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age."

~Christopher Morley.

"There are only two kinds of freedom in the world; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk who renounces possessions."

~Anais Nin.

"What's money? A person is success if they get up in the morning and go to bed at night and in between does what they want to do."

~ Bob Dylan