A corner of the Internet went up in flames yesterday. John Byrne at Raw Story had a disturbing headline: “Doctor testing drug to ‘prevent’ lesbianism, interest in ‘male careers.’” Dan Savage wrote on the same topic: “Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism.” Both stories express outrage that doctors and expectant parents are attempting to interfere with sexual orientation in utero. But this treatment, prenatal dexamethasone, isn’t being given to anyone at all in order to prevent lesbianism.

It’s being given to prevent the most extreme effects of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, notably the formation of ambiguous genitalia (photo NSFW) in potential victims of CAH, a rare genetic disorder that floods the developing fetus with androgens. Prenatal dex is not being given to just any pregnant women, only to those who are carriers of CAH-and certainly not because they fear having lesbian daughters.

What does “ambiguous genitalia” mean, exactly? A pregnant woman who is a carrier of CAH has a chance of her female baby being born with the following:

* An enlarged clitoris that has the appearance of a small penis.

* The urethral opening (where urine comes out) can be anywhere along, above, or below the surface of the clitoris.

* The labia may be fused, resembling a scrotum.

* The infant may be thought to be a male with undescended testicles.

* Sometimes a lump of tissue is felt within the fused labia, further making it look like a scrotum with testicles.

Time also reported on the effects of CAH on genital development:

Because the condition causes overproduction of male hormones in the womb, girls who are affected tend to have genitals that look more male than female, though internal sex organs are normal. (In boys, in contrast, the condition leads to early signs of puberty, such as deep voice, body hair and enlarged penis by age 2 or 3.)

The medical ethics problems (to say nothing of the potential health risks) surrounding the use of prenatal dexamethasone are not trivial, obviously. Dr. Maria New, the endocrinologist and researcher cited as an early champion of prenatal dex in the Time article, appears to be a controversial figure-for starters, she classifies a number of “male” characteristics as “abnormal” in women. This is brought to light at the Bioethics Forum at the Hastings Center, where they concur with pretty much the rest of the world that use of these drugs should take place in supervised clinical trials.

That seems fair. But it’s not fair to suggest that parents who are worried about the possible complications and problems their child might face as the result of being born with ambiguous genitalia, and who are offered a medical intervention that might help, are simply trying to avoid having a lesbian daughter. It’s very misleading of these two writers, both of whom I have a very high regard for, to position the story in this way.

Here’s my question for Messrs. Savage and Byrne. If we believe in the absolute sovereignty of a woman’s body, of her right to choose, then are we also bound to support her right to treat the fetus she is carrying with whatever medications or therapies are agreed on by her and her doctor?

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and

Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

How allegedly bad is M. Night Shyamalan’s adaptation of the popular animated series The Last Airbender? Over at the movie-review clearinghouse Rotten Tomatoes, it currently stands at 7% “fresh,” i.e., good in any way at all! For comparison’s sake, let us note that even Marmaduke and Grown-Ups broke the double-digit mark on what the site refers to as the “Tomatometer.” But what is it that makes this particular movie more unwatchable than the filmed adventures of a CGI’d Great Dane with the voice of Owen Wilson? I tried to find out via the magic of word clouds!

Below, please find the cloud that results when you cut and paste the pull quotes from those critics who Rotten Tomatoes has deemed “more credible than the guy from MovieWienerOrWinner.com.” (A larger version is here.)

Yipes. I even left in the two nice reviews in the rundown to keep things a little less depressing!

“Rolling Stone has a new health columnist: none other than Ozzy Osbourne.”

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

This week in The Poetry Section: two poems by Ana Božičević.

Rise in the Fall

It’s spring in Manhattan, but everyone’s wearing
summer dresses, through that bit of cold
that death. At the table next to mine, the young Brit and the witch

brainstorm about holding
enormous healings. At this point I’d settle for you

just trembling next to me. Don’t you know how to do that anymore?
Do you know how unhappy one is
who wants a ghost for a horse

when told that only the living can marry the living?
This poem’s boring. I dreamed some lesbian wrote a really good poem
called Pinko and

I woke up to a straight straight world.
Let’s sit here in the café for now. We’ll rise up

next fall, when they can no longer deport me.
And at the end of our revolution… It’s real hard to say what I’m seeing

I see, a planet?
the kind of green I can’t even describe
I’m falling asleep. I see

Pinko

They found me sleeping
on the tallest wave
blanket and all. They said my name and
down I wept-
next I stood on the sand and
the love pulled back
I could see the sea floor
all those hinges in the sand-grass
needed tongue-grease to work. I said Come back
and it came back in, like it forgave me

That’s all. Pinko was not even that good but
I can still change everything
about it.

We can change everything.

The Day Lady Gaga Died

What is this day: is it like a rainbow
an abstract I kinda grasp, is it a house with the white streamers on it
how can I get at it.

Once I knew a girl called herself Beauty
and her leather accessories Beasts.
So can things be what I name them, is that the secret.

Once on a time in Osteuropa
a girl lived who went to the Contours Club:
she touched herself on a Slope among the Sunclouds™.

That all sounds vapid. Yeah, I touched myself. Kind of fat,
never thought I was a natural, a star,
I just didn’t “get” the others. But you,
you don’t want to hear that part, you just want me to keep having sex
among the politics.

Fuck you: all I want to write about is
bumblebees, bumblebees.

New York School is because
you have to name things in New York.
Otherwise, too much exists

Ana Božičević was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1977. She emigrated to NYC in 1997. Her first book of poems is Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, November 2009), a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her fifth chapbook, Depth Hoar, will be published by Cinematheque Press in 2010. With Amy King, Ana co-curates The Stain of Poetry reading series in Brooklyn. She works at the Center for the Humanities of The Graduate Center, CUNY.

You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

“The CG has generally required a seven-days-a-week time commitment over the 41 years I’ve written it, and I’m grateful to MSN for paying me what the work was worth over the three-and-a-half years I published it here. But though I always enjoyed the work, work it was, and I’ve long been aware there were other things I could be doing with my ears. So while I have every intention of keeping up with popular music as it evolves, being less encyclopedic about it will come as a relief as well as a loss.” Robert Christgau’s Consumer Guide, in which the critic guided people through the ever-knotty maze of “popular music” on a more or less monthly basis, retires after a 41-year run. (A partial archive is online at his site.)

Three lists can be made of awesome groups of things that appear in this video.

Animals
1) Deer
2) Tiger (stuffed)
3) Dogs

a) Yorkies
b) Pitbull

4) Parakeet
5) Iguana

Things That Go Into The Water
1) Naked bodies
2) Champagne
3) Bottle rocket
4) Beer
5) Feet
6) Golf ball
7) One of two people who had promised each other that they would

Things That Get Burned
1) Flares
2) Cigarette
3) Bottle Rocket
4) Piece of garbage (cardboard?) on stick
5) Crack
6) Human skull
7) All the gas in the tank

What a great video!

You guys all know that the latest episode of A Life Well Wasted, the meticulously crafted podcast about, well, life, has a segment on that dude afflicted with the world’s largest penis, right?

Since every indicator is in the negative (housing, jobs, consumer confidence), we’re confident in our projection for there to be more and more news stories that include the phrase “Economy Is Losing Steam.” Oh, there’s the FT, and they’ve escalated: “fast losing steam”!

Letters From The Gulf, Parts 10 & 11: Waiting Out Tropical Storm Alex

by Dan Horton

Dan Horton, a friend and former colleague, works on tugboats out of the New York Harbor for a living. Two weeks ago, he flew down to Louisiana to take a job on a barge unloading crude oil from the skimmer boats that clean the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Crew are only allowed to send and receive one email a day; his girlfriend, Lori, passes along his daily email to friends and family. With their permission, we’re passing them along to you. -Dave Bry

Subject: Daily Dan: Squalls and Falls

Date: Monday, June 28th


Lori,


Whatever I hear about my schedule I will pass it on immediately, though everything is bound to 
change and change again. The last captain thought that we didn’t need an 
extra man and told the office as much but this captain feels otherwise and 
is going to talk with the HR about it.
 There were some squalls today, pouring rain. It was just a grey wall 
coming at us. For the first time I was glad I’d over-packed and had all my 
rain gear with me. I used the “dry duck” pants that I bought (and never 
used) for checking out the waterfalls in Yosemite. They were pretty good. I 
was surprised, I didn’t expect them to hold up to a full-on downpour. The 
only problem was that the legs were too long and the cuff of my right leg 
was under the heel of my boot. Hit a patch of hydraulic fluid that had 
gotten on deck and I went from walking fast to sitting in a puddle before I 
knew what hit me. The only thing I hurt was my pride. Ripped some holes in 
my dry ducks. Believe it or not, but the chronic pain in my lower right back 
actually has eased up since the bump. Must have landed on a pressure point.


Played a little guitar in the galley tonight with the first mate. The 
cadet listened in but refused to get her penny whistle.
 We have some rocking and rolling going on right now. (It’s more 
pronounced up here in the upper wheelhouse, of course.) The small boats went 
in this afternoon when the squalls hit.
 It’s been good water for the last five days or so. They want us to stay 
about five miles off “the field”-the busy area near the site of the fallen 
rig. (I’ve heard it referred to as “the Source” as well as “Ground Zero.”) 
Anyway, we haven’t been in the nasty stuff as of late, and that’s a plus for 
me. We do our part taking the crude oil/seawater mix from larger skimmer 
boats, they spend their time mucking though the oil patches and bring us 
what they have managed to get into their holding tanks.



Mom: Thanks for writing me. Did you feel like the yards ale was a success? 
Sounded like just post-sale blues from what you were writing, so I couldn’t 
tell. Bummed that I missed the chance to participate, but my schedule is 
now officially haywire. However, I really don’t want to miss that dig in 
Greenhill!
 How are the hooking classes going?
 What made Thomas Hardy tick? I still shudder when I think of reading 
Jude the Obscure in AP English. Wonder if it would be different if I went 
back to it now.
 There’s a good selection of both highbrow and low in the ship’s bookshelves. I just picked up some Theodore Dreiser short stories and am 
thinking of reading Catch-22 again (it’s been 16 years.) Also some James 
Lee Burke as well as the entire Harry Potter collection. We shall see. 
Seems like my fiction gland is acting up again.
 I miss you all. Look forward to my emails every day.

Love,

Dan

Subject: Daily Dan: Up the Mississippi Without a Paddle

Date: Tuesday, June 29th

Lori,


The uncertainty of where I will end up next, and when, would really get 
to me if I let it. It’s so different from being tied up in Greenpoint, with 
my car right outside the terminal and your house just 45 minutes away. I 
just keep reminding myself to be grateful to be working and to take it as it 
comes.
 Maine sounds great but again, I have just about no control over my 
schedule right now and have to take whatever work comes my way. I don’t 
think that it will be this way for more than a couple of months, but until I 
get a regular boat again, I’ll probably be a fill-in where ever they need an 
AB Tankerman.
 From what I can make out on the chart and computer, we are in an 
anchorage on the Mississippi, a ways below New Orleans. Just sitting here on 
the hook. The cleanup boats were ordered off site because of the tropical 
storm (Alex, right? Named for Chilton, you think?). The gulf kicks up quick 
and the waves come at closer intervals than along the east coast, so 8-to-10 
footers can be a really rough ride. I seriously doubt it’s possible to 
get any skimming done with any kind of weather at all going on.
 There was some very nasty black stuff churning up behind the barge as 
we steamed into Southwest Pass. I’m not going to jump to any conclusions (maybe that’s always there, I wouldn’t know), but it looked like bad news 
for local waters, whatever it was. (But of course, I’m in the oil business, 
aren’t I? I guess I’m connected to that bad news somehow.
 Then again, aren’t we all? Last time I checked, my buddy Matt’s organic farm 
was still using diesel tractors.) We were working about five miles off the site. I was able to take 
shots with my point and shoot. But it’s zoom isn’t really that great, so the pix 
I have don’t look very interesting. Some other guys onboard got some shots 
off from closer. I might be able to get a hold of some of those.


Love,

Dan

Do you work at home? Do you blog or write or code or run numbers or something? And then so do you also spend the better part of the hours between 1 and 3:30 p.m. wondering what you are going to put in your mouth next? I sure do. I call it: “Are You Lunch?” I call it that because I usually say it out loud into the refrigerator. It’s sort of like “Are You My Mommy?” but it involves eating things that pretty much generally make you feel like crap by 5 p.m. It’s not a proud life, but it is existence. Here are the things I have eaten or considered eating so far today. (Please keep in mind that I started the feeding cycle with two donuts.)

Oh, nearly-expired cream cheese, are you lunch??

Raisin Bran, rather anally kept in a Ziploc™ bag, perhaps you are my lunch?

I took a break from figuring out lunch to have some cornichon.

Maltesers, you fine candy, you are a likely lunch suspect!

WHY IS THIS STILL IN THE FRIDGE? I BAKED THIS FOR THE CAT A MONTH AGO. (He had some… stomach issues.)

FOUL CAN OF ENGLISH CUSTARD??? WILL YOU BE MY LUNCH?

And so on. Didn’t have any real lunch yet, but I did get a blog post out of it, so there’s that.