Femme Fatale

The thing I found most upsetting about this was not actually the older Amy being erased against her will because of the Doctor and Rory’s selfish desire to replace her with an Amy who never learned to hate them for their failings; it was the screenwriting cowardice of Tom MacRae that he had to depict the older Amy sanctioning that choice, telling Rory not to let her into the Tardis — and not because the younger Amy had convinced her that it is worth believing in magic and miracles even if it breaks your heart (which would have been such an emotionally transcendent moment, and a beautiful callback to “The Eleventh Hour” if it had happened) but because life is meaningless without Rory, because all the things she achieved in those 36 years alone and all the things she could have achieved with the rest of her life meant and mean nothing because Rory wasn’t there to share those moments with her.

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Woman Work

I’ve got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I’ve got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
‘Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You’re all that I can call my own.

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The first tumour, which Pam discovered through routine screening, was so advanced that it required a mastectomy, surgical removal of the whole breast. This is a frightening (though not in itself life-threatening) operation which leaves a long scar where the breast had been. Recovering from the operation, Pam made contact with the support services available to mastectomy patients.It turned out that the main services provided were: supply of an artificial breast, in the appropriate size to replace the one that was lost; visits from women who came to give grooming and dress advice so that the patient could present a normal, attractive feminine appearance to the world; and advice on how to restore family normality, overcome a husband’s (expected) sexual disgust at a mutilated body, and deal with children’s anxiety about their mother’s being taken away from them.
This too, is political. It is about placing women back in the culture of heterosexual femininity. It is about denying that normality has been rent. It is about holding women responsible for other people’s emotional needs. And - not the least - it is about restoring normal service to men.

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In 1997 Pam Benton, whose partner I had been for twenty-nine years, died of breast cancer.
…
Early in the treatment, Pam was referred to a prominent Sydney oncologist. …This gentleman delivered himself of the opinion that if women would use their breasts for what they were intended for, they would not have so much trouble. Pam was furious, and id not consult him again.
There is, as the oncologist well knew, research evidence that rates of breast cancer are lower in women who have had babies early in life and have breast-fed. That is, so to speak, an impersonal fact. (Though even with this impersonal fact one may ask why researchers should have been concerned with that particular question rather that studying, say, cancer-causing chemicals in the environment.) The research finding was made into a gender insult - which the oncologist probably did not even realize was offensive - by his bland presumption that what women were are ‘for’ is bearing babies. To him, if they had a different pattern of life, they were asking for what they got.

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