Not just in poor schools. My area is pretty affluent, but the school was built in the 1940s, and that’s just how it was back then. I went to that high school for a year (I’m 54) and never saw the boys’, but the girls’ was wide open. I assume the boys’ was too.
He did, though. I currently live less than an hour from his museum in Battle Creek, Michigan, and there are lots of things about him that aren’t widely shared on the internet.
Did you know that one of his biggest accomplishments was a foster home for orphans that was destroyed by fire? Running that foster home was what inspired his obsession with a bland diet and with circumcision. He was very strict with their diet, believing certain grains would purify the soul (first oatmeal) – the original, unadulterated grains that were mentioned in the bible. The boys in his home weren’t accepting of his extreme version of Christianity, and he thought that was mostly because they were corrupting themselves bodily. He thought all boys weren’t receptive to Christianity because they were too into their own desires, and he could fix that. First by diet, and when that didn’t work, by cutting off the part of their penis that distracted them by making them feel good, thus tempting them from god’s word. He was a doctor, so people listened.
This is all Wikipedia dedicates to that part of the story:
Kellogg was outspoken about his views on race and his belief in racial segregation, regardless of the fact that he himself raised several black foster children.
So it’s understandable people are downplaying that part of his life. If you live near here, you know the details the internet has mostly forgotten.
We really need to stop chopping up infant boys based on the ideas of a bigoted religious fundamentalist.
It is. You can always cut something off later, but you can’t just put it back once it’s gone.
Based on this conversation, I actually asked him:
Me: Hey man, so feel free not to answer this if it’s too personal, but I was having a debate about circumcision and another parent challenged me saying I’d made the wrong decision. So yes/no/I don’t want to talk about it cuz that’s weird, do you regret my decision?
Son: I don’t, and none of my partners have, either. I only get thumbs up and compliments. I hope that wasn’t too personal.
Me: Not at all. Thank you for giving me your and your partners’ review!
I was born with a genetic condition affecting my collagen (Ehlers Danlos), which meant my bones were overly soft and, since I was breach til moments before birth, my legs were bowed pretty severely. This was in 1971, and the treatment at that time was the doctors literally bent my legs into position manually and then braced them for my first few years. That’s not how they deal with it nowadays, because they learnt it was horribly painful.
I don’t remember that initial experience, obviously, but my mother tells me several years later when I was a young child and having problems walking, she took me to the doctor and they finally worked out that I was in excruciating pain all the time. They asked why I hadn’t said anything and I told them it was because everyone was always in excruciating pain, but nobody else was complaining about it, so I shouldn’t either. I’d been in pain since birth, and just figured it was normal.
That experience prevented me from getting proper care and made my early childhood hell. I still have emotional trauma from it. So yeah, early pain is not benign.
That rim sucked, though. There was always pudding up under there, and it was a delicate game how much you were willing to get and risk lacerating your tongue.
Also, anyone who was good at this, DM me your info.
I don’t think you’re trying to be insensitive, but you are. Do you think I’ve been sitting on my hands saying ‘well this sucks, but I’m not doing anything about it until some random person on the internet tells me to?’
Telling disabled people they should just try harder, and pointing out other people who you think have tried hard enough without knowing any of their personal situations is very callous. You know nothing about me, and even less about those you’re using as an example I should strive towards.
In an effort to help you understand, in an effort towards fostering empathy, I’ll give you a quick synopsis: I fought hard for my career. My upbringing set me up for failure, but I overcame all that and built a fantastic career in software starting in 1998, despite having an 8th grade education and recovering from being kidnapped for sexual purposes.
Within a few years of that, I was designing some of the most popular software on the planet, and was a finalist for the Apple design awards. I never thought I was a victim. Quite the opposite: everything I did was in defiance of what happened to me.
I’ve had a severe genetic issue since birth that made everything hard that whole time. I mostly tried to ignore it, because I wasn’t going to be defined by that. I’m now in my mid 50s, and my condition has become worse steadily over the last 20 years. Nevertheless, I was married for 30 years and raised a wonderful son who is now 25. I worked my ass off, ignoring my condition, for which I said, there’s no treatment or cure. I just lived my life and got very good at being as normal as possible.
The sicker I got (that’s how this works; the older you get, the worse it becomes), the more angry my husband got. It’s hard to deal with something that can’t be fixed. I totally understand how that’s frustrating. I didn’t want to have sex much anymore, because as my intestinal system came under attack, I felt like I had the stomach flu constantly. How horny are you when you’re having constant vomiting and diarrhoea? Every single day for years. I couldn’t eat fruit or vegetables anymore, because my body couldn’t digest it. If I eat a regular hamburger, I shit intact lettuce for days. It took me years to figure out what I could eat, and it’s not much. And eating the wrong thing leads to fainting and seizures. But I was getting flak for not eating around people, like I was trying to make them feel bad.
So after 30 years of doing my absolute best, we divorced. I was the one who asked for it, because I felt he was miserable and I didn’t want to make him suffer for my health issues anymore (he’d made it very clear I was a drag on his life), and I didn’t ask for anything, no alimony, nothing. My life was reset as though I was the 17 year old with no history again. That’s nobody’s fault but my own. Everything had been in his name the whole time, and that’s on me for assuming our relationship would never end.
In the five years since the divorce, while I’ve been getting progressively sicker, I’ve also lost my entire family and all my closest friends to death, and all my pets have died, too. I’ve been completely alone this whole time. But I’ve managed to deal with all these deaths and my deteriorating health, which involves constant diarrhoea and vomiting that’s like having the stomach flu every day for seven years, my mother, aunts, uncles, two best friends, and other friends, three cats, my rabbit, and my dog all dying, and my beloved son moving away.
And during all that, I wrote a novel in an attempt to make money.
And now I’m supposed to deal with not being able to afford food and housing when I have to spend literally five hours every day on the toilet, just wishing it would end. (eta: the next time you have a stomach flu for a couple of days or get food poisoning, think about that lasting for fucking years. That’s my life.) I’m just so very fucking tired.
So please, tell me how I’m supposed to have a stiff upper lip and once again pick myself up by my bootstraps. I’ve already done that multiple times and I’m just done.
People have been fighting for those rights for decades. That doesn’t change the fact some people are destitute because of health issues with no way to improve their personal situation. And if I had the physical ability to organise people and fight for things, I’d have the ability to work. I’m not sure you know what ‘100% disabled’ actually means.
That’s what regulations are supposed to do, and the very large network of regulations working within and across industries are nearly invisible to the public because they’re beneficial. Some regulations were put in place to serve malicious actors at the expense of the public, but they’re not the norm, and many do get repealed when more people become aware of their damage.
This seems like a good example of regulations improving the system, which also had beneficial knock-on effects.