Ideas

Katy Steinmetz is a TIME correspondent based in San Francisco.

With a federal LGBT non-discrimination bill in the pipeline, it's a good time to think about the words we use

Last week, Sen. Jeff Merkley announced that he will be introducing a comprehensive LGBT non-discrimination bill in the spring, which means, among other things, that a lot of lawmakers and media outlets are going to be making decisions about how they talk about LGBT people.

Reporting for TIME on transgender issues (particularly for what became the cover story “The Transgender Tipping Point”), there was one maxim that pretty much every person I interviewed seemed to agree on: there is no single story about being transgender that sums it all up, much like there’s no one story about being Hispanic or blonde or short or straight that sums that experience up. But I also came to learn that there are some good rules of thumb to follow when it comes to language.

For instance, if you meet a trans person—someone who identifies with a gender other than the sex they were assigned at birth—it’s generally a good idea to ask which pronouns (he or she, him or her) they prefer and to use whatever that is. If you meet a trans person, you should not ask about the particulars of their body, much as you would likely prefer strangers not to inquire about yours. And if you meet a transgender person, you should not refer to them as “a transgender” or “transgendered.”

Referring to someone as “a transgender” can sound about as odd as saying, “Look, a gay!” It turns a descriptive adjective into a defining noun and can make the subject sound distant and foreign, like they’re something else first and a person second. This guidance is part of GLAAD’s media reference guide, under the heading “Terms to Avoid”: “Do not say, ‘Tony is a transgender,’ or ‘The parade included many transgenders.’ Instead say, ‘Tony is a transgender man,’ or ‘The parade included many transgender people.’” These key language nuances haven’t been consistently adopted by the media. For example, on Dec. 15, the Associated Press listed this story in among their “10 Things to Know For Today:”

4. PHILIPPINE AUTHORITIES CHARGE US MARINE WITH MURDER

Prosecutor says the 19-year-old American is accused of killing a transgender in a hotel room. (The story has since been updated to say a “transgender woman.”)

This is something TIME has done in the past, too.

Of course it’s hard to find a word in identity politics that goes undebated, that is universally panned or lauded as just right. Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, says that older transgender people might prefer and use transgendered when speaking about themselves; in the 90s she recalls that term being de rigueur among trans activists.

But the language people use to refer to themselves, particularly minority groups, changes. Today some people prefer the abbreviated trans or trans*, and transgendered has largely fallen out of favor (though some media outlets are still using it). When I recently asked San Francisco-based attorney Christina DiEdoardo, a transgender woman, how many out of 10 trans people she knows would say they dislike the word transgendered, she quickly answered: “11.”

“The consensus now seems to be that transgender is better stylistically and grammatically,” DiEdoardo says. “In the same sense, I’m an Italian-American, not an Italianed-American.” The most common objection to the word, says Serano, is that the “ed” makes it sound like “something has been done to us,” as if they weren’t the same person all along. DiEdoardo illustrates this point, hilariously, with a faux voiceover: “One day John Jones was leading a normal, middle-class American life when suddenly he was zapped with a transgender ray!”

Moving away from the “ed”—which sounds like a past-tense, completed verb that marks a distinct time before and a time after— helps move away from some common misconceptions about what it means to be transgender.

One is that being transgender might be a choice that involves a person simply deciding to be that way or a result of something that happened to them, like sexual abuse. The majority of trans people I’ve spoken to have said they knew they had feelings of identifying as a boy (when assigned female) or girl (when assigned male) as far back as they can remember—even if they didn’t have the vocabulary or understanding to articulate what was going on—and even if they tried to change or stifle those feelings for half their lives. Imagine how it would sound if one described people as “gayed” or “femaled,” as if there was a point when that wasn’t the case.

Another misconception is that the defining part of being transgender is having surgery, as if a trans person isn’t really trans until they’ve gone under the knife and come out the other side fully “transgendered.”

“There’s a tendency in American culture for entertainment and news outlets to focus on surgery, surgery, surgery,” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told TIME in a previous interview. But, she says, while surgery is very important for some trans people, others have no desire to have surgery; they might not have surgery for medical reasons, religious beliefs, financial constraints and so on. There’s an “authenticity issue that trans people face,” says Elizabeth Reis, a professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Oregon. “People are so focused on whether or not they’ve had surgery, as if that’s the pinnacle of authenticity. Even if they haven’t had it or if they haven’t had it yet or they’re never planning on having it, they still have these feelings about their gender.” Avoiding the ed isn’t going to solve that authenticity issue, but it doesn’t hurt.

However, Keisling also says that focusing on whether the “ed” is tacked on the end of transgender can be a distraction. She believes it’s more important for everyone to be having a conversation about LGBT civil rights issues than to wag fingers at people over terminology. “I don’t ever want to say that communities or cultures can’t have language variations,” she says. “Language is very important and what people want to be called is very important. But we have to have a common language that we can bring people into. We have to have language that they can grasp.” And, she says, just as transgendered has become unpalatable, there’s no telling what will be preferred down the line.

Still, “for now,” Keisling says, “I would use the word transgender. Particularly if you are outside of the family, that’s going to be okay.” (If you have more questions about terminology, the GLAAD media guide is a great place to start.)

Katy Steinmetz is a TIME correspondent based in San Francisco. In addition to writing features for TIME and TIME.com, she pens a feature on language called Wednesday Words and organizes the occasional spelling bee. Her beat is wide but it thumps hardest in the Northwest.

Jeffrey Kluger is Editor at Large for TIME.

California's whooping cough outbreak is largely the fault of a harmless but imperfect vaccine

Anti-vaxxers are epidemiology’s repeat offenders—the first and sometimes only suspects you need to call in for questioning whenever there’s an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease. So on those occasions when their prints aren’t all over the crime scene, it’s worth giving them a nod. That’s the case—sort of, kind of—when it comes to the current whooping cough (or pertussis) epidemic that’s burning its way through California, with nearly 10,000 cases since the first of the year, making it the worst outbreak of the disease since the 1940s. So far, one infant has died.

Before we start giving out any laurels, let’s be clear on one point: the anti-vaxxers continue to be risibly wrong when they say that vaccines are dangerous (they aren’t), that they lead to autism, ADHD, learning disabilities and more (they don’t), and that you should take your public-health advice from the likes of Jenny McCarthy, Rob Schneider, and Donald Trump instead of virtually every medical and scientific authority on the planet (you shouldn’t). But a safe vaccine is not always the same as an entirely effective vaccine, and here the whooping cough shot is coming up a little short—with emphasis on the “little.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the pertussis vaccine starts off perfectly effective, with 90% of kids developing full immunity from the disease in their first year after inoculation. But that protection starts to fade in year two, and by the five-year point, only 70% of kids are still protected. Until the 1990s, a more effective formulation was available, but it was replaced due to side effects (pain, swelling and perhaps some fever—not autism, thank you very much). The newer version eliminates those problems, but at a cost to effectiveness.

The waning protection the vaccine affords helps explain the cyclical nature of whooping cough outbreaks, with cases usually beginning to rise every three to five years. Certainly, the anti-vax crowd has not helped matters any. When a vaccine offers only imperfect protection, it’s especially important that as many people as possible get it since this maximizes what’s known as herd immunity—the protection a community that’s largely immune can offer to the minority of people who aren’t.

Last spring’s mumps outbreak in Columbus, Ohio was due in part to a combination of the relatively low 80-90% effectiveness rate of that vaccine and the poor level of vaccine compliance. As I reported in Time’s Oct. 6, 2014 issue, 80% of people who contracted the disease said they had been vaccinated in childhood, but only 42% of those cases could be confirmed. In the current whooping cough epidemic, California health authorities estimates that only 10% of all people who have come down with the disease were never vaccinated. That’s up to 10% more people than needed to get sick, but a lot fewer than the total in Columbus.

The heart of the anti-vaxxers’ argument is not, of course, that some vaccines offer incomplete protection. If it were, they wouldn’t find so many willing believers. For one thing, the large majority of vaccines achieve at least a 90% effectiveness level—and often much higher. For another, it’s hard to make the case that even if they didn’t, imperfect protection would be better than none at all.

Seat belts, after all, aren’t 100% effective at preventing highway deaths either, and condoms don’t entirely eliminate the risk of pregnancy or STDs. But that doesn’t mean you stop using them, because your brain makes a rational risk calculation about the wisdom of taking cost-free precautions. You might not make such smart choices, however, if somebody muddied the equation by introducing the faux variable of imaginary risk—seat belts and condoms cause autism, say.

Persuading people to run that flawed calculus is where the the anti-vaccine crowd does its real damage. A new—and scary—interactive map from the Council on Foreign Relations tracks the global rise or fall of vaccine-preventable diseases from 2008 to 2014. In the same period, during which most of the world saw a 57% decline in cases, North America—driven mostly by the U.S.—showed a stunning 600% increase.

It’s fitting somehow that the locations of the outbreaks show up on the map as a sort of pox—with the once-clear U.S. slowly becoming blighted from one coast to the other. Misinformation is its own kind of blight—one that’s every bit as deadly as the bacteria and viruses the vaccines were invented to prevent. And it’s the anti-vaxxers themselves who are the carriers of this particular epidemic.

Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology from UC Berkeley and is a career and personal coach.

An internal debate about the pros and cons of starting a family

In this series’ previous installments, I used the internal debate technique to explore the three of life’s big decisions: Should you marry or break up? Should you change jobs? and If and what sort of college should you send your child to?

Today, I use the internal debate technique to explore the pros and cons of having a child.

Person: I’ve always felt I wanted a child.

Alter ego: Is that a should or a want?

Person: A little of both.

Alter ego: It’s stupid to have a baby even partly because your friends are having babies.

Person: That’s not mainly it. I don’t know if it’s estrogen or conditioning but I feel I want a baby.

Alter ego: I’m hearing a little ambivalence in the way you say that.

Person: Well, I’m not crazy about giving up my freedom for 18 years.

Alter ego: It’s longer than that. Your life starts changing from the day you get pregnant. And with lots of adult children back on their parents’ sofa after college, who knows how long it’s going to be?

Person: You make parenthood sound like a liability. I love the idea of holding my baby, seeing my child grow up, leaving a legacy.

Alter ego: Think of all your conversations with your friends. Are they in such la-la land about parenthood? They complain about parenthood making your brain go to mush, the relentless responsibility, the nonstop crying when they’re a baby, and when they’re older, the fights over homework, drugs, sex, just getting them to complete their college applications!

Person: You’re being cold. Think about the joys of nurturing a child, seeing your kid develop, being lifetime friends. The relationship!

Alter ego: Speaking of relationship, what about your husband? He’s willing to go along with your having a kid or two and he’ll do a fair amount of the parenting, but you know he really doesn’t care that much to have kids. In fact, if you told him you didn’t want kids, he’d mainly be relieved.

Person: I think that having a child or two would be good for our relationship. As it is, we’re starting to have parallel lives. He’s into his work and his hobbies, I’m into my work and my hobbies. There isn’t a common activity to draw us together, except sex.

Alter ego: That counts.

Person: But I’m feeling that, especially as time goes on, we need something else to bond us.

Alter ego: Having kids will hurt, not help, your relationship. It’ll hurt your sex life, which is already starting to go downhill. And parents fight a lot about their kids; “You’re too permissive.” “No, you’re too strict.” “She doesn’t need that.” “You’re being cheap.” And big stuff like public versus private school. And what about religious training? You’re a little religious while your husband is an atheist. Having a child to help your relationship? Hah!

Person: You’re seeing the ¾ full glass as ¼ empty.

Alter ego: I haven’t even mentioned the cost. It costs a quarter of a million dollars to raise a kid in a middle-class way, and that’s not counting college. And in the Northeast, a more upscale upbringing costs a half-million!

Person: It doesn’t have to be that expensive. I find it obscene that parents keep showering their kids with endless toys and designer label clothes. That not only teaches them shallow values but makes them feel entitled, like if the shower of stuff stops, they’re somehow being wronged.

Alter ego: You’re deluding yourself to think that exerting some moderation on buying them clothes and toys is going to put a dent in that quarter or half million—I’m talking food, clothing, the bigger apartment, health care, child care, haircuts, smartphone, summer camp, private school if you feel it’s too risky to send your kid to the public school. And I know you: After you have one kid, you’re going to say, “It would be so nice for my child to have a sibling.”

Person: So what? Family is what it’s ultimately mainly about.

Alter ego: What about your career: making a difference, making good money? If you have a child or two, you know you won’t be as devoted to work. You may even quit.

Person: I don’t think I will. Plenty of women do good work and have children.

Alter ego: Are you sure you want to bring children into this world? It’s a scary place.

Person: There will always be good and bad but I choose to believe that, ultimately, humankind progresses. I believe my child will live in a better world.

Alter ego: I hope you’re right.

Person: What if my kid is born defective? I’d still love the baby but it would change my life forever. My life is good now.

Alterego: Again with the fear-mongering?! The chances are tiny, especially because you don’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. And you and your husband have good genes.

Person: My grandmother did die of breast cancer. My father died early of a heart attack.

Alterego: I’d tell you to go get your genome analyzed at 23andme but the FDA just stopped them. You could though see a genetic counselor.

Person: I may do that. I’m feeling all this resistance now. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m scared of giving birth–a bowling ball coming out of me?!

Altergo: Billions of women do it, have done it for time immemorial. You’re strong and healthy. You’ll be fine.

Person: I need to think about more pros of having a child—It would be nice when I’m older to have grandchildren. I know I’d love being a grandma.

Alter ego: You shouldn’t have kids so that 20 years from now, you can play grandma for a few hours a week.

Person: And moms and daughters are usually very close with each other.

Alter ego: What if it’s a boy. Are you going to abort it?

Person: Stop it. Of course not. It would be comforting to know I’ll have someone to take care of me in my old age. Women live a lot longer than men. My husband probably won’t be around.

Alter ego: Your reasons for having a kid are getting absurd. If, and I do mean if, you need someone to care for you in your old age and your husband isn’t alive and you haven’t met another guy, you can do what millions of people do: hire a caretaker. Don’t be irrational.

Person: But this is about feelings. The main reason I want a child is feeling: f-e-e-l-i-n-g. Doesn’t that count?

Alter ego: Not all feelings should be followed. Why don’t you wait until you get really clear about whether you want kids?

Person: If I wait, I’ll still have a child at home when I’m in my mid-to-late 50s. Will I have the energy to be a mother then? And even if I did, would that be how I’d be wanting to spend those years?

Alter ego: Maybe you should adopt an older child. Or get a dog.

Person: I need to think about all this (sigh).

Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. specializing in education evaluation from U.C. Berkeley and subsequently taught there. He is the author of seven books and an award-winning career coach, writer, speaker and public radio host specializing in career/workplace issues and education reform. His writings and radio programs are archived on www.martynemko.com.

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Our centuries-long ambivalence about meters and liters mirrors our ambivalence about our place in the world

We Americans measure things our own way. Our yardsticks are marked in feet and inches, measures that are unfathomable to foreigners, nearly all of whom have been brought up in a decimals-only environment.

It was supposed to have been different. My generation of schoolkids was told a switch to the metric system was imminent. The popular narrative holds that this 1970s conversion movement failed, and that Americans have never gone metric because we are too obstinate or patriotic or just plain stupid to do so. This tale is wrong.

The United States is metric, or at least more metric than most of us realize. American manufacturers have put out all-metric cars, and the wine and spirits industry abandoned fifths for 75-milliliter bottles. The metric system is, quietly and behind the scenes, now the standard in most industries, with a few notable exceptions like construction. Its use in public life is also on the uptick, as anyone who has run a “5K” can tell you.

Why is it that America hasn’t gone full-on metric? The simple answer is that the overwhelming majority of Americans have never wanted to. The gains have always seemed too little, and the goal too purist.

The measurement debate actually goes back to our nation’s very beginning. The original metric system was developed in France during its revolution, and was so radically decimal that it divided the day into 10 hours. As our first secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson was charged with deciding which set of measures would be best for the country. He had been instrumental in creating the dollar—the first fully decimal measure any nation ever used. Jefferson rejected the metric system, however, because in origin he found it to be too French—which was saying something coming from the nation’s foremost Francophile. His beef was that the meter was conceived as a portion of a survey of France, which could only be measured in French territory. John Quincy Adams, for his part, couldn’t recommend that the United States adopt a measurement system that nearly vanished after the demise of the French Empire.

The meter’s fortunes would soon rebound, however. A new wave of revolutions in the 1830s would see France and Belgium re-adopt the system, while the second half of the 19th century would see it become a truly international system. The reasons for its adoption were various. Italy and Germany were unified out of dozens of statelets, duchies, and principalities, and a neutral system of measurement helped soothe parochial jealousies. Decolonization in Eastern Europe and South America created new nations keen to adopt modernity and standards that would align them with Western Europe. In all these cases, however, conversion was dictated by democratically deficient governments bucking the will of the people. The 1880s imposition of the metric system in Brazil led to a full-scale uprising that lasted months.

The strongest push in the U.S. actually came at the start of the 20th century, Alexander Graham Bell, and other notables testified at congressional hearings on metric conversion. The head of the new Bureau of Standards put forth the metric system as a vital national interest. But charges of elitism and wasting money came from a public that increasingly believed the U.S. should be the leader in global affairs and not just another follower.

Politics and economics have been the real incentives to go metric. The world’s most anti-metric nation—Great Britain—grudgingly began to ditch its Imperial system in the 1970s because it was the only way to gain access to the markets of continental Europe. Most of the rest of the world adopted the measures in order not to fall behind in the global economy.

There is no question that a uniform global system of measurement helps cross-border trade and investment. For this reason, labor unions were among the strongest opponents of 1970s-era metrication, fearing that the switch would make it easier to ship jobs off-shore. (Which it did.)

Is global uniformity a good thing? Not when it comes to cultural issues, and customary measures are certainly a part of our national culture. But to have brains trained in the thirds, quarters, sixths, eighths, and twelfths of our inches and ounces, as well as the relentless decimals of the metric system can only be beneficial, in the same way that learning a second language is better than knowing only one. That ours is a dual-measurement country is part of our great diversity.

Zocalo Public Square is a not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. John Bemelmans Marciano is the author of Whatever Happened to the Metric System? He wrote this for What It Means to Be American, a partnership of the Smithsonian and Zocalo Public Square.

Christopher Krebs and Christine Lindquist are Senior Research Social Scientists at RTI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute. They are both in the Center for Justice, Safety, and Resilience at RTI, and they directed the Campus Sexual Assault Study, which was funded by the National Institute of Justice and completed in 2007.

There are caveats that make it inappropriate to use the number as a baseline when discussing rape and sexual assault on campus.

If you’ve followed the discussion about sexual assault on college campuses in America, it’s likely you’ve heard some variation of the claim that 1-in-5 women on college campuses in the United States has been sexually assaulted or raped. Or you may have heard the even more incorrectly abbreviated version, that 1-in-5 women on campus have been raped.

As two of the researchers who conducted the Campus Sexual Assault Study from which this number was derived, we feel we need to set the record straight. Although we used the best methodology available to us at the time, there are caveats that make it inappropriate to use the “1-in-5” number as a baseline or the only statistics when discussing our country’s problem with rape and sexual assault on campus in the way it’s being used today.

First and foremost, the 1-in-5 statistic is not a nationally representative estimate of the prevalence of sexual assault, and we have never presented it as being representative of anything other than the senior undergraduate women at the two universities where data were collected—two large public universities, one in the South and one in the Midwest.

Second, the 1-in-5 statistic includes victims of both rape and other forms of sexual assault, such as forced kissing or unwanted groping of sexual body parts—acts that can legally constitute sexual battery and are crimes. To limit the statistic to include rape only, meaning unwanted sexual penetration, the prevalence for senior undergraduate women drops to 14.3%, or 1-in-7 (again, limited to the two universities we studied).

Third, despite what has been said in some media reports, the 1-in-5 statistic does not include victims who experienced only sexual assault incidents that were attempted, but not completed. The survey does attempt to measure attempted sexual assaults, but only victims of completed incidents are included in the 1-in-5 statistic.

Fourth, another limitation of our study—inherent to Web-based surveys—is that the response rate was relatively low (42%). We conducted an analysis of this nonresponse rate and found that respondents were not significantly different from nonrespondents in terms of age, race/ethnicity, or year of study. Even so, it is possible that nonresponse bias impacted our prevalence estimates, positively or negatively. We simply have no way of knowing whether sexual assault victims were more or less likely to participate in our study. Face-to-face interviewing tends to get higher response rates, but is considerably more expensive and time consuming. That said, given the sensitive nature of the questions, the anonymity and privacy we afforded respondents may have made women comfortable with responding honestly. Overall, we believe that the trade-offs associated with low response rates were overcome by the benefits of cost-efficiency and data quality.

To back up, it makes sense to explain exactly how a woman responding to our Web-based survey—conducted in 2007 and funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice—would get counted as a victim in the 1-in-5 statistic. In the survey, all 5,446 randomly sampled undergraduate women who participated were presented with a prompt explaining that subsequent questions would ask them about “nonconsensual or unwanted sexual contact” including:

* forced touching of a sexual nature (forced kissing, touching of private parts, grabbing, fondling, rubbing up against you in a sexual way, even if it is over your clothes)

* oral sex (someone’s mouth or tongue making contact with your genitals or your mouth or tongue making contact with someone else’s genitals)

* sexual intercourse (someone’s penis being put in your vagina)

* anal sex (someone’s penis being put in your anus)

* sexual penetration with a finger or object (someone putting their finger or an object like a bottle or a candle in your vagina or anus.

Among other items, the students, after being told they were going to be asked about their experiences with unwanted sexual contact, were asked these two key questions:

Since you began college, has anyone had sexual contact with you by using physical force or threatening to physically harm you?”

and

Since you began college, has someone had sexual contact with you when you were unable to provide consent or stop what was happening because you were passed out, drugged, drunk, incapacitated, or asleep? This question asks about incidents that you are certain happened.”

To be counted as a victim of sexual assault or rape, and included in the 1-in-5 statistic (19.8%), a woman would have to be a senior and answer “Yes” to one or both of these questions.

In our reports, sexual assault victims who selected only “Forced touching of a sexual nature” in a follow-up question asking about the type of contact that happened were classified as victims of sexual battery only, whereas victims who selected any of the other response options (oral sex, sexual intercourse, anal sex, or sexual penetration with a finger or object) were classified as victims of rape.

Our survey had limitations, as outlined above. However, we believe the results have value for several reasons.

First, all research of this kind faces methodological and logistical challenges, but we approached the study objectively and implemented it with as much methodological rigor as possible given the budget we were given and the state of the field at that time.

Second, our results are not inconsistent with other studies that surveyed undergraduate students about their sexual assault experiences, and surveying students directly about their sexual assault experiences using behaviorally specific language remains the most scientifically valid way to measure the prevalence of sexual assault. Survey data have limitations, but they are universally believed to be more accurate than official law enforcement or campus crime data on sexual assault. A large majority of sexual assault victims do not report their experiences to law enforcement or other authorities, so official crime statistics dramatically underestimate the prevalence of sexual assault.

Third, the study results are helping fuel a conversation about sexual assault on college campuses, a problem that likely exists at most colleges—not just the two with which we collaborated—and it negatively impacts many thousands of students every year. We are pleased to be part of this conversation and to see attention being paid to this issue, especially since there seems to be ample room for improvement in terms of how universities, service providers, law enforcement, and the justice system go about trying to prevent victimization, encourage reporting, meet the needs of survivors, and respond to reported incidents.

What we are perhaps most excited about is that additional research is currently being conducted that will build and improve upon what has been done to date. For example, at RTI, we are working on a new study with the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Violence against Women, and the White House to develop a survey instrument and methodology for collecting valid and reliable data on campus climate and sexual assault.

Although there will never be a definitive estimate of the prevalence of sexual assault, these new research efforts are larger in scale and are employing scientific best practices, which will result in methodological improvements that should increase the validity and utility of the findings. With these methods and the knowledge we gain along the way, we can begin to envision a meaningful research agenda, which could involve collecting data from students at many universities, perhaps on an annual or ongoing basis, creating nationally-representative as well as university-specific estimates.

Christopher Krebs and Christine Lindquist are Senior Research Social Scientists at RTI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute. They are both in the Center for Justice, Safety, and Resilience at RTI, and they directed the Campus Sexual Assault Study, which was funded by the National Institute of Justice and completed in 2007.

Talk about extended nursing (what we in the U.S. consider breastfeeding any child past the somehow magic age of one) and the crazy comes out

At three years old, my middle son wakes up as a different animal every morning. He tells me which by calling my name: “Mama Dragon,” he says, or “Mama Bear,” or “Mama Owl.” He calls me by name, always, and asks the same question: “Mama Stingray,” he says, “I have mama milk?”

“Not until after breakfast,” I tell him. “You know the rule. Breakfast first, then mama milk, or else you don’t eat your breakfast.”

Sometimes he accepts this easily, wolfs down some Gorilla Munch, and forgets about milk. Sometimes he gets angry, yells and insists he wants mama milk right now. Sometimes he cries and pouts so badly I write a note: MAMA MILK AFTER BREAKFAST, I spell out on a Post-it. He can’t read, but he clutches it like a ticket, this written assurance that he will, indeed, get the cuddles and milk he needs.

Yes, needs.

Baby Bear is three years old, and Baby Bear still needs to nurse. I’m OK with that and have even encouraged it. Not forced — encouraged. And I’m happy with it.

Talk about extended nursing — what we in the U.S. consider breastfeeding any child past the somehow magic age of one — and the crazy comes out of the woodwork.

“Weird” is the nicest word some commenters muster. Extended nursing has been likened to sexual abuse, to a power play in the mommy wars, to a sick desire to keep a child a baby. People claim it’s for the mother’s benefit, that children are forced to keep nursing, that it’s all about the mom and not about the child.

When I told my mother-in-law I planned to nurse my first son until he chose to wean, she could only manage to splutter, “But how do you expect him to go to preschool?”

Mostly, though, our collective discomfort with extended nursing comes from our persistent sexualization of breasts. Despite legal protections, hardly a week passes that a nursing mother isn’t asked to leave a store, cover herself, or decamp to the bathroom. Breasts, it seems, are only for sexual pleasure. Therefore, their association with children — especially children who can ask for them — becomes tantamount to child abuse.

I’d like to take my breasts back, thanks.

Let me quote the Bloodhound Gang here: you and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals. My breasts are not my husband’s. They are not my son’s. They are, first and foremost, my own. And I have chosen to use them for extended breastfeeding: their biological purpose.

There are a lot of reasons for that. Kathy Dettwyller, anthropologist and professor at the University of Delaware, claims the natural age for human weaning, when children are allowed to nurse for as long as they wish, falls somewhere between three and four years of age. Based on physiological and maturational comparisons to other mammals, she estimates the minimum age of human weaning at 2.8 years of age, with a maximum of seven years.

In light of that, nursing barely-three-year-old Baby Bear seems pretty unremarkable.

But it’s not just evolution that tells me to keep going. The benefits of nursing don’t just disappear at age one. Antibodies in breast milk help keep Baby Bear healthy. The longer I nurse, the lower my risk of breast cancer — something every pink-ribbon-waving feminist can support. But most important for me are the psychological benefits.

Baby Bear’s little brother Sunny is a year old. Sunny was a surprise; while we planned Baby Bear and his older brother, we didn’t bank on Sunny. And one of the reasons for that is Baby Bear himself. He’s always been needy, always begged for extra assurances. He warms slowly to family and friends alike. He approaches life with a narrow-eyed skepticism, as if he’s waiting for it to disappoint him. A fall that has his older brother laughing makes him wail. Of all my children, I worry about him inheriting my depression and anxiety the most. He’s a delicate soul, Baby Bear is. And I knew he wouldn’t handle being supplanted.

Because I knew that, I nursed all through my pregnancy. Nursing gave Baby Bear a chance to be a baby again. Like his new little brother, he got special cuddles from mama. He had that magic time of mama all to himself. He nestled in my lap; I kissed his head; we were still deeply, uniquely together. It helped his transition from baby to middle child.

And so we just … kept going. Nursing gave him a safe place. Baby Bear finds the world a pretty overwhelming place sometimes. Loud noises, lots of movement, bright lights: they become too much for him. For months, mama milk stayed his refuge. I handed off his brother to friends and cuddled him close on the floor of a gymnasium, or in the middle of a playdate. He nursed and calmed down and then got up to play again.

Yes, I nursed a toddler in public. It’s normal. It’s unremarkable, no matter how seldom we see it today. And no one asked me leave or told me to stop. If they shot me death glares, I didn’t notice. If I had, I wouldn’t have cared. Extended nursing might not be their choice. But I will not allow their discomfort to minimize or discredit mine.

Nursing has also taught Baby Bear some important rules about consent. A toddler doesn’t nurse like a newborn, and because he doesn’t have a nutritional need, I can say no if I want to. And sometimes, I don’t want touched again. I don’t let him nurse for too long — it can get uncomfortable, and I can’t let him drink all the milk if his brother will need it soon. Sometimes he’s okay with unlatching. Sometimes he gets mad, and I tell him that I understand he’s sad, but he can’t nurse if he throws fits, because it’s too upsetting for both of us. Most importantly, he nurses only once or twice a day, usually in the morning (always after breakfast) or mid-afternoon, post-lunch, pre-quiet-time.

So sometimes I say no.

Baby Bear has to accept this. Nursing a toddler is a relationship, and as the World Health Organization says, breastfeeding should continue “for as long as mother and child desire.” Both mother and child, not one or the other. A nursing relationship takes two.

And will I say no one day? Absolutely.

I weaned Baby Bear’s older brother at age three, when I became pregnant with my youngest. I picked a trip out of town, turned down requests for milk a few times, and that was that. I choose to be finished.

Extended breastfeeding has helped Baby Bear stay healthy and adjust to a changing family dynamic. It’s helped him feel loved. It was a choice I made: to use my body in the way I saw best for my child. Not every mother will make the same choice. Some know formula is right for them; some wean at one year. Their breasts, like mine, are their own. And as women, we can use them however we see fit.

I refuse to give my breasts to the male gaze. I refuse to bow to a one-size-fits-all, nurse-til-one-and-done world. For me, for now, for Baby Bear and his little brother, my breasts are for nurturing. I am happy with that decision. I love nursing my children, and I am grateful Baby Bear has benefited from extended nursing.

I have made my choice, and I will not be shamed.

Elizabeth Broadbent is a writer and mother. This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

You might be surprised to figure out how easy it is to willfully make yourself unlovable

I just read Katelyn Carmen’s 5 ways you are unknowingly destroying your husband and killing your marriage and I have to say it that while it was super great advice, it just didn’t work for me. (Yup—he’s still here.) Anyway—and to all the wives out there, I hope this is helpful!—here are a couple things I’m trying out to see if we can really get the ball rolling around here, if you know what I mean. (Caveat: Every woman is different. This is just what’s working for me. :) )

Quitting my job

A week ago, I was head of sales and marketing for a small technology company. But I quit so I could watch Law and Order: SVU all day. My husband came home and saw me on the couch and asked me if that was really how I was going to spend all my time. So I showed him a needlepoint I’d just done of Mariska Hargitay interrogating a suspect. “Really? That’s it?” he demanded, and I showed him a totally different one, of Mariska Hargitay getting out of a taxi, and he was not amused.

Talking a lot without thinking about what I’m saying

I used to try to be interesting, funny, and insightful when I talked to my husband. Now I tell really long stories and refer to everyone I mention as “my best friend.” I narrate my dreams, always relying heavily on the phrase: “Umm, and then, there was like, I don’t know, like, this weird thing, I can’t really describe it.” Naturally, I also narrate entire plots of Law and Order: SVU, and I have added Christopher Meloni needlepoints to my repertoire—even though I obviously have no intention of keeping those, or even giving them as gifts—so I can use them to help act stuff out. (Needlepoints make great handpuppets if you’ve got some rubber bands lying around!)

Wearing flannel nightgowns everywhere

When I was a little girl, my mother, who was always full of the wisest, kindest advice, sat me down, took my tiny hands in her big ones and said, “There’s nothing a man hates more than a flannel nightgown.” Then she winked and said, “Seriously, they really hate them.” When I greeted my husband at the door in it, he went ashen. And it was at that moment I realized how much my mom really loved me.

Doing stuff to look older faster

I sunbathe in an aluminum foil lined pen while working myself into states of great stress, consuming foods with a high content of free radicals, and drinking Bacardi 151 mixed with Coke Zero. But like I said, you have to find what works for you.

Just kind of being a big bitch a lot of the time

I do a lot of bitchy stuff but here’s just one example. The other day my husband said “Maybe for the holidays we can have Christmas with your parents and New Years with mine” and I said “Ugh.” Then he said “What’s for dinner, babe?” and I said “Circus peanuts” and he said “Are you serious?” I thought about how Katelyn Carmen said we should always be open with our husbands about how we really feel. So I dumped a bag of circus peanuts in his lap and I said “Do I seem serious?”