Stop Making Carrie Fisher's Heart Attack about your Sexist Agenda -- and stop Coopting Veganism to do It

I just read Neal Barnard's blog where he takes Carrie Fisher to task for having a heart attack and then schools all women (white women?) about how we should all be taking better care of ourselves by eating a more plant-based diet.

“I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.” Yeah, she said that.  Also: FU, because she would say FU.

First of all, I love me some plant-based diet; I've been on one since 1988 or so. Hey!  I wrote a book about veganism in American culture and am married to a super successful vegan chef.

Second of all, we have no actual intel on what happened to Fisher.  Third, this is the most sexist shit I can imagine.  Did he do this when George Michael died of confirmed heart failure?  Or when Ricky Harris died of a heart attack? No?  Right.  Because Neal Barnard sees Carrie Fisher's death as an "in" to target women who should be vegan to avoid heart attack.  Nothing is more patronizing or infuriating for yours truly than this noise.

When I checked out of the hospital after nearly a week stay post massive heart attack caused by SCAD, a genetic variable that no one thought to research until -- gasp! -- the last 20 years, I was one of the lucky ones who survived what is normally called a widow maker  Most cases of SCAD, prior to Sharonne Hayes's EXTREMELY important study of it, had been discovered post-mortem, because most of us died before being diagnosed. 

Here's my heart attack.  Those really weird things at the bottom of the page?  That ECG pattern is called "tombstoning."  Because you don't come back from those.

Yup: this is me, 10 minutes from "nite, nite."

Can I get a "hell, yeah?"

Where is the research on women's heart attacks?  When I left the hospital, I got a brochure -- illustrated! -- about how to play golf post-heart attack and how to get the wife to clean the house.  

Hey, beeatach: I need for you to vacuum the living room.  Cool?

If Neal Barnard would like to talk to me about my experience with SCAD, as a VEGAN woman with NO risk factors who nearly died, then he should email me (lwright@email.wcu.edu).  I would love for him and every other cardiologist in the country to examine and understand the ways in which women die from their fucked up hearts.  And many of us die regardless of the care we take.

But shaming a dead woman and trying to get the rest of your readership to go vegan because of an undiagnosed medial issue?  For that, my friend, you should be ashamed.

And, here's my letter to you.  Peace, from a person who survived a heart attack that very likely would have killed you.

Hi Neal,
I'm a vegan woman who nearly died from SCAD in 2013. I find the medical profession's treatment of women's heart isses to be unbelievably sexist -- and I think that your article is contributing to that sexism, even as it's simultaneously unbelievably inconsiderate of Fisher's death. We have no idea what caused her to die; many of my fellow SCAD survivors feel that it might well be SCAD, and if you have SCAD, it's not your fault. Not that she should be made to be a fault regardless.

I have been vegetarian since 1988 and vegan since 2000. I am a long distance runner with no history of tobacco use or subtance abuse, and I nearly died on October 25, 2015 due to a spontaneous coronary artery dissection (which was diagnosed finally after I sought a 3rd opinion from Dr. Sharonne Hayes at the Mayo Clinic a year later).

I'm in a FB group for SCAD survivors -- along with 1000+ other people, mostly really, really heath-conscious women who have had at least one and sometimes multiple heart attacks, many of them massive (mine was a widow maker) despite our best efforts. If you'd like to read my about my heart or my veganism, you can do so here: http://veganbodyproject.blogspot.com/.../hillarys-health.... And here's a link to my most recent book: http://www.ugapress.org/.../books/the_vegan_studies_project

If you'd like to get more information about SCAD, about the ways that it's almost entirely unique to otherwise healthy (even vegan) women, please feel free to contact me. Your readers are welcome as well: lwright@email.wcu.edu
Thanks,
Dr. Laura Wright, Ph.D.
Professor of English

Pat McCrory is holding North Carolina Hostage

If you want to email the entire NC legislature, you can do that here.  Here's why you should email the legislature.

Here's NC's governor, Pat McCrory, falling off of a chair

Dear NC Legislature,

As you already know, while it is apparently constitutionally legal, what our governor is doing is unethical, disgusting, and reprehensible. If you enable this power grab by passing legislation that disempowers Roy Cooper, you will be doing so against the explicit directive of the majority of citizens in this state.

My family has been in North Carolina since the 1700s. I grew up here; I work for the University of North Carolina system, and I have been so proud of the historically progressive nature of my home state. 

What has happened under McCrory’s time in office is representative not of the care of North Carolina’s citizens but of abject greed (enabled by Art Pope and the Koch brothers), intolerance, and blatant discrimination. This administration fired Tom Ross. It passed racist legislation to keep African Americans from voting. It placed limitations on women’s access to health care. It passed HB2, a bill that is not only discriminatory but has made our state a laughing stock and pariah — and has caused businesses to look for homes elsewhere. 

And now that we have shown this body that we do not support these injustices, the governor attempts to override the will of the voters in order to continue his unconscionable treatment of the people who live in North Carolina. The voters handed this legislature a mandate. I ask that you respect it and stop allowing this racist, sexist, intolerant administration from doing further damage to us.  

Sincerely,
Laura Wright

Hillary's Health and my Heart Attack

When a friend called and told me that Hillary Clinton nearly collapsed after having to leave a September 11 memorial service early, I braced myself for the wave of misogyny that would follow.  And then it came crashing down, just as expected.  The media pounced; Hillary's health was now a major issue.  Tom Brokaw announced that she should see a neurologist.  My first thought?  She got overheated.  And: leave her alone.

When she revealed that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia a few days prior, the narrative shifted again, this time to how her refusal to reveal that diagnosis was further evidence of the fact that she's not honest.  There was immediate speculation that maybe she has pneumonia, or maybe she's hiding something worse since, you know, she lies about everything.

You know the reason why Hillary didn't tell the world that she had pneumonia?  She says that she really didn't think that pneumonia was that big of a deal.  And you know why?  Because women are really good at convincing themselves and everyone around them that they are totally fine when they totally aren't.  And you know why that's the case?  Strap in and I'll tell you.

Exactly.

Women work when they are sick because they have to.  They have to take care of their families, they have to provide for their children, and if they value their jobs, they can never -- under any circumstances -- appear weak.  Illness in a woman who works is an indication that she can't handle her job, that she's too frail, too constitutionally incapable.  The speculation and scrutiny to which working women are subjected when they are sick, when they do actually have to miss work, is disproportionate to what men have to endure when they succumb to illness.  And women know this.  

Remember when Regan had colon cancer? How about when Bush the first threw up on Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi?  

Here you go.

Presidential hopefuls Bob Dole, John Kerry, and John McCain all had cancer prior to their bids for office. And let's not ever forget that Dick Cheney had a letter of resignation ready to give to W. because he thought his heart was a goner and that he could die at pretty much any moment.  Bill Clinton?  Good lord, already.  The man was effectively trying to eat himself to death while he was in office. Donald Trump has produced an absurd supposed doctor's letter attesting to his fitness for office. 

And Hillary has pneumonia, a ailment that can be treated with antibiotics, and it's a national crisis, a clear testament to why a woman can't serve as commander and chief.  And it hits way too close to home for me.

In October of 2013, when I was 43-years-old, I had a massive heart attack that nearly killed me.  Before I go further with the details, let me tell you a few things about myself.  I have been a vegan for 15 years and a vegetarian for 20 years prior; I don't smoke, and I am a long distance runner.  My cholesterol is great, and I have no risk factors.  I am an English professor, and at the time of the heart attack, I was working in a administrative capacity as the Department Head of the largest academic department at the university where I work.  It was a stressful gig to say the least, and it was a job that I had wanted to do for a single three-year term.  I was in my second semester of that term at the time of the attack.

I was at work when I had the symptoms, the classic ones, the crushing chest pain, pain in my arms and jaw, nausea, sweating.  Of course I tried to talk myself out of what was happening because I was totally convinced that there was no way that I was having a heart attack.  I. Tried. To. Walk. It. Off.  No biggie.  Probably just a pulled muscle or something.

And then I ended up on a helicopter ride to the nearest cardiac hospital, which was 50 miles away.

Here's MAMA, the Mountain Area Medical Airlift.

The next day, my cardiologist told me just how bad it had been, how very close I came to dying, how difficult the surgery had been. How touch and go.  And he also told me that the only reason that I survived that widow maker -- so named because it lays men to waste -- was because I was so strong  and so healthy.  He told me not to return to work that semester.  

I was back in my office a week later.  I didn't even have to cancel a single class because I was only teaching a graduate course that met once per week.

No big deal.  Just par for the course.  It's what women do -- and I was super conscious of that.  I was back because not to go back would have meant the end of my ability to do any further administrative work at my university.  I would have been deemed too weak, too frail, and too unfit for such work.  Should I have gone back? Absolutely not.  But I went back anyway, and I finished out my term, and, as I had always planned, I returned to being faculty. 

But despite the sheer fortitude that should have been made evident by that action, I was still told by a no doubt well-meaning male colleague that I shouldn't plan to pursue further administrative positions because another term in the one I'd just completed would probably kill me. Woah, I thought, and then I explained that (as he already knew) that my heart attack turned out to be the result of a genetic predisposition that lead to a spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD), a condition that affects otherwise super healthy women, that causes a SPONTANEOUS -- as in not-related-to-my-job -- tear in the lining of an artery, which leads to blood not being able to pass through, which leads to a clot, which leads, very often, to death. Not for me, though, I reminded him: I was back to work in a week. 

Bow down to the badass that is me, already.

Men's health issues are battle scars, evidence of developed character, of strength and survival.  Women's are evidence of frailty, even when we survive them.  Even when most men wouldn't be able to survive them.

I should be clear and note -- and I'm stealing this from a friend on Facebook -- that if Hillary's aids Weekend at Bernie-ed her body around for the rest of the election cycle, I'd happily vote for her corpse over the vileness that is Donald Trump.  But my bet is that she'll be fine, actually better than fine (did you notice that she had pneumonia and was still out there working 16 hour days?  That's not weak; that actually superhuman), no matter what the press might have us believe.

Oh my god...this actually exists.

I survived a heart attack because I am strong and, probably, because I'm a woman.  Hillary continues to survive hit after hit after hit for the same reasons.  I hope she gets better soon, and that at some point, we might see fit to let women actually be sick without also deciding that they aren't fit to lead. 

My Short Unhappy Life as a Sorority Girl; or, Fraternities, Alcohol Enemas, and Dehumanization

CNN is running a story about a fraternity hazing incident at nearby University of Tennessee during which a student was taken to the university medical center in critical condition with a blood alcohol level of .40, the result of an “alcohol enema.”  According to a Knoxville Police spokesman, "Upon extensive questioning, it is believed that members of the fraternity were using rubber tubing inserted into their rectums as a conduit for alcohol as the abundance of capillaries and blood vessels present greatly heightens the level and speed of the alcohol entering the bloodstream as it bypasses the filtering by the liver.”  

The other members of the Pi Kappa Alpha frat are denying that this is the case because, well, I imagine that the fear of being charged with ass-raping one of one’s brothers with rubber tubing and booze is probably more terrifying than just about anything that these guys can imagine.  I mean, people might think they’re gay, never mind the fact that people might also think that they’re sadists.  And the student in question is denying it as well, despite the overwhelming physical evidence that supports the alcohol enema theory.

Yep.

I’m not surprised by this incident, any more that I wasn’t surprised by a letter written by one Kappa Sigma frat boy to his brothers at USC in which he indicated the rules for being a “cocksman” and recording one’s female conquests in a tally that constitutes a competition between brothers.  At one point he says, “Note: I will refer to females as ‘targets.’ They aren't actual people like us men. Consequently, giving them a certain name or distinction is pointless.”  I'm not surprised that the body of a University of Texas fraternity brother, found dead after a night of partying, was covered in homophobic slurs, the word "fag" inked on his torso by his brothers.  And I haven't been surprised by the numerous incidents of fraternities hosting parties where whites show up in blackface or by “a fraternity at Johns Hopkins University invit[ing] partygoers to wear ‘bling bling’ grills, or shiny metal caps on their teeth.” 

This image is as close as I'm going to get to making some sort of vegan commentary in this post, but you've read enough at this point, I'm assuming, to make those connections, eh?

Caitlyn Flanagan notes, “The Greek system is dedicated to quelling young men’s anxiety about submitting themselves to four years of sissy-pants book learning by providing them with a variety of he-man activities: drinking, drugging, ESPN watching and the sexual mistreatment of women.” And these incidents, diverse as they might seem, point to the ways that fraternities consistently dehumanize, ridicule, and brutalize (both literally and in effigy) groups of people that they feel pose some symbolic threat to their hegemonic masculinity: homosexuals, women, and people of color.  

In university sanctioned organizations based upon a principle of exclusion, young men are allowed free reign to enact behavior that is racist, sexist, and homophobic, and only when that behavior endangers the life of one of their own are sanctions enacted, and those sanctions, public and embarrassing as they are, are temporary slaps on the wrist for men who graduate and become upstanding members of society.  So what of the misogyny, homophobia, and racism of their past?  Surely that’s just college behavior, right?

Right?

A caveat:  I don’t think that the individual people who join Greek organizations are bad people, so please avoid telling me about all the good people involved in the Greek system.  I know, love, am related to, care about, and educate plenty of amazing people who participate and thrive in this system and who exemplify all that's good about humanity.  Nonetheless, I like the author of IceCreamHEADACHE, “won’t challenge the broad claim that many fraternities (particularly the ones portrayed in gross-out-comedy films) are part of an institution that supports and reinforces misogynistic beliefs and tendencies. They do, probably as much as the typical sorority reinforces markedly fatuous, intellectually-vacant Cosmo ideas about femininity that revolve around bad TV, an obsession with one’s weight, the assumption that men are simplistic and interchangeable, and mani-pedis.” But it's not the individual members that are the problem.  

It's the operating principle of Greek organizations that if you're in, then you're better than all those smucks who weren't given a bid; if you're a woman in a sorority, that means that you're prettier and more charming than all those other poor women out there.  If you're a man in a fraternity, then you are an alpha male, the epitome of all that is lionized in your culture.  You're on top, and, as Matthew B. Ruby and Steven J. Heine note, "in North America, manhood is still considered a precarious state, easily lost and requiring constant validation" (450).  To stay on top requires adherence to and enactment of the narrative that other people are beneath you -- and they need to be kept there.  It's the nature of group-think that is fostered and thrives by virtue of this exclusivity that enables behavior that, when it slips past the carefully guarded and secretive perimeter of the Greek system, makes the rest of us cry out for sanctions.  Or get up in arms about alcohol abuse on college campuses.  Or whatever other right minded but completely misguided solution we think might keep this kind of nonsense from happening again.

OK, so before you call me out as some feminazi out to demonize the Greek system, know that I was one its members, a sister in a sorority for one full year before I de-sistered. I had the highest GPA of any sister in my sorority the year that I belonged, and I have the plaque to prove it, so: Back. Right. Off.

Somewhat true.

I joined a sorority because my high school friends, with whom I went to college, wanted me to.  It was weird to feel popular and wanted, because I had never been either before.  But even when I was rushing, and later when I pledged, I knew that this deal was not for me; I didn’t want to exclude the friends that I had made during my first year of college, and I most certainly didn’t want to have to live, as was requisite for members of all sororities, in Greek housing.  But I thought that I would get used to things, to being a member of something that felt bigger, that felt like, maybe, real life.  I was wrong.  

I de-sistered after two events: first, I sat on the other side of rush, in the back of a classroom doing my homework (and getting told to stop doing my homework and pay attention to the photos of the rushees that were being projected on the screen in front of me), and listened as these women with whom I’d linked my fate rated potential pledges based upon their appearance, their past boyfriends, and their connections with current sisters.  I got yelled at for refusing to take part, and I gathered my notebooks and walked right the fuck out of the room.  I got in trouble for that, too; I was reprimanded by my sorority's president for my unsisterly behavior.

Meanness.

And then I was nearly raped by a frat boy, some guy whose name I don’t even remember now, but who I took to a dance out in the middle of nowhere because my sisters let me know, unequivocally, that the guy I wanted to take – a guy who wasn’t in a frat – would not be an acceptable date.  I was able to fight the frat boy off, only because he was falling down drunk and I was sober; I was, therefore, able to push him off of me, to get his fingers out of my hair, and to run away.  The next day, he trashed talked me; it was like something out of a movie.  And I got reprimanded – and I am totally serious about this – BY MY SISTERS for not putting out.  At that point, I was done.  

Joining a sorority may very well be the sole thing in my life that I unequivocally regret, the singular act that I know I should have known better than to undertake, and I hate myself for not paying better attention to that consistent and resounding voice – the part of me that I now know is my self – that told me it was bullshit, a way to buy into to my status as something less than human, a “target,” a trophy for some guy's mantle, a nameless cunt.  But I can also be thankful for the lessons that the experience taught me, particularly that I'm never going to be willing to be anybody's bitch.

When I told my sorority's president that I wanted out, she told me that I was making a mistake, but I didn't believe her, and I didn’t care at all about what any of my so-called sisters thought about me.  All I wanted was to be as far from any entity that would

1.  Expect me to have sex with a stranger and punish me when I didn’t, and

2. Judge my fellow women based on their appearances.

When I de-sistered (don’t you love that non-word, “de-sister”?  Cease and de-sister!), I was treated like a leper by women who had once vowed undying love to me; I was suddenly like a person whose physical deformity made me at once pitiable and grotesque.  The problem, clearly, was mine, and every time I saw one of my former sisters, I received a pitying glance and a heartfelt, “how are you?”  But I never once regretted leaving; I’m too smart to be treated like a piece of meat – and I’m way, way too smart to objectify other women and turn them into pieces of meat as well. 

- ER

Universities seem disinclined to ever abandon the embarrassing anachronism that is the Greek system, no matter how much evidence that system continually provides us as to why universities should stop perpetuating the kind of sexism, racism, and homophobia that underscore much of that institution.  But the good news is that we can all be individuals and walk away; we don’t have to buy in to the allure of exclusivity and denial, and we can treat each other like equals, not like subordinates.

Work Cited

Ruby, Matthew B., and Steven J. Heine.  “Meat, Morals, and Masculinity.”  Appetite 56.2 (2011): 447-450.  Print.