I Don’t Belong Here: Breast Cancer, Breast Schmancer

This is going to blow your mind. I mean, this is going to utterly titty-fuck the lobes of your brain. Are you ready? You might want to sit down. No, not in that chair. That looks pretty unstable. Maybe you should just lie down on the ground. Now, through the looking-glass we go:

THERE ARE OTHER KINDS OF CANCER BESIDES BREAST CANCER

I feel really dumb even having to point this out, but with the sharp turn the culture has taken towards making breast cancer the only kind of cancer that is worth mentioning or trying to cure, I will point it out. There are, in fact, many kinds of cancers. Every part of the body that is made up of living cells (i.e., basically everything but hair and nails) can cancer out on ya. Breast cancer is a killer, and so forth, but why single it out? People die of throat cancer, and lung cancer, and leukemia, and prostate cancer, and brain tumors, and bone cancer, and heart cancer, and lymphoma, and so on and so on. None of the rest of them have colored ribbons or “awareness months” — or, if they do, they need to get better PR because this year, Breast Cancer Awareness Month is EVERYWHERE. Go into any store and notice the special pink products, the pink ribbons everywhere. The proceeds go to City Of Hope.

The other cancers get City Of Go Fuck Yourself. So why breast cancer? What about it? Is there some reason? Not necessarily a GOOD reason, but any reason at all? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!!!! Now when I ask a question like that, it’s only because I already know the answer. I am carrying on a torrid love affair with my own rhetoric. Live with it. So. It’s really difficult to get percentages of this kind of thing on the internet, which frankly, blows my mind, but I am going to go ahead and say that breast cancer is not 1/12th of all cancer cases. So why does it get 1/12th of the year to make people “aware” of it? Is there, possibly, some group of people that are largely effected by breast cancer? Might there be some kind of cultural bias going on?

I’m sorry. I’m dancing around it. It’s because women get it. Obviously. Now wait, I know you’re going to protest. Object, even. Men get breast cancer too! I can’t find those statistics either, but there are definitely incidents where it happens. Why, the very idea that I would imply that there is some sort of perception of breast cancer as the “women’s cancer,” it’s preposterous! Borderline offensive! Then you look at the symbol:

Nothing says “gender neutral” like a PINK RIBBON. Or wait, if that’s not effeminate enough:

See, it all goes back to the days when women were valued property. Because they bore children. Genetics drives biology drives society drives psychology. That’s why they don’t get sent off to die in wars, traditionally. That’s why they don’t usually get drafted for slave labor building pyramids or great walls. Traditionally. Not to say that women had it any easier, or have it any easier. Women also have vaginas; so while they weren’t often soldiers they were frequently raped by soldiers. While they didn’t have to work on the chain gang they would often wind up sex slaves. And hell, THAT shit still goes on, today. So please, it’s not like I’m trying to say it’s one gender or the other. We’re all in this together. BUT, back in the days when women were valued property, it was culturally embedded in the males that they must TAKE CARE of the women. This is still around today as some form of retrograde “chivalry” whereby some people think that you should hold a door open for a woman because she’s a woman and not just because it is polite to hold the door open for any human regardless of their chromosomal makeup. But that’s a topic for another time.

My point is, the reason breast cancer is made such a big deal about is because of cultural throwbacks to less enlightened times.  WE MUST PROTECT THE WIMMINZ! BAD, BAD, CANCER! So the next question is, why breast cancer? There’s all sorts of places women can get cancer that men don’t, (and no, I haven’t forgotten that men get breast cancer too,) so why breast cancer in particular? Is there something about the breast that naturally captures the attention of the heterosexual male? Is there…

…

…Sorry. I was thinking about breasts. I got distracted.

Noel Rogers is no toy. He’s a real bopper. He will wreck your set!