Published: Wednesday 08 July 2020 | 12:10:47 am
By Mileyda Menéndez Dávila
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Let me shut up about your silence.
–Pablo Neruda
Have you noticed how many times a man explains to a woman or a girl something she already knows, often in an affected tone? That attitude is a type of micro-machismo that since 2008 is identified with the term “mansplaining” (its literal translation would be “macho-explanation”), and it is a typical [form of] gender violence, a patriarchal mechanism that takes away from the value of the female experience in order to silence it.
It can be an unconscious act, transmitted for centuries through diverse cultural channels. When it is brought to their attention, some revise their attitude and try to unlearn it.
CHART (Translation)
WHEN DOES IT HAPPEN?
It can happen at home, at work or in any public place, to women of any age or social status:
You tell a story and he interrupts you because he thinks he can tell it better, even if it’s an experience of your own.
In a children’s fight, the boy is first asked to explain what happened and is held responsible for what the girl involved does or says.
Male health care workers downplaying female ailments
You propose to discuss a vital issue and you are stopped with a derogatory ¨no start with your stuff¨
A service provider disregards your opinion about the problem whose solution you are going to entrust to him
When you complain about the way they treat you, they ask you if you are ¨on your days¨
When arranging a payment or service you are asked if there is not a man in the family to represent you
Your colleagues reinterpret your ideas to present them as their own, without giving you credit
You are describing something and a man interrupts you to talk about another source ¨más importante¨, without acknowledging your expertise on the subject
They refer you to deepen your publications on a subject and they don’t even notice that they are yours
In a task of your responsibility, they ask someone of a lower professional level for his judgment because he is a man!
Anatomy of the macho-explicator:
Interrupts with intimidating or arrogant gestures
Explaina in a condescending or professorial tone
Raises his voice to cancel yours
Smile with irony and dismiss your demands for respect
He doesn’t look at you when he talks, he prefers to look at another man
If you criticize him, he establishes a hostile silence
Cut the chain:
To curb male chauvinism, you must first be aware that not because it’s often right
Let him know that you perceive that attitude as violence, and that even if it’s not intentional, it hurts
Stand firm when speaking, change your tone slightly and raise your voice if necessary so that you are not cut off
Defend your position with firm arguments, without apologizing for having your own viewpoint
If they insist on explaining the obvious to you, ask questions that will show how deep your knowledge is
Support other women when you see them being silenced, both at home and in public spaces
By Graziella Pogolotti
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
June 20, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
For work reasons, there was a time when I traveled with some frequency to the Isle of Youth, then known as the Isle of Pines. On one occasion, I took advantage of the stay to get to Punta del Este and see the mark left there by the first settlers of Cuba. The famous caves of Altamira keep the expression of a representative art. The caves of Punta del Este, on the other hand, seem to announce the appearance of geometric abstractionism.
Weakly built, our first inhabitants arrived from South America, after traveling in fragile canoes through the arch of the Antilles. They planted yucca, lived in huts, produced articles necessary for life, along with some that were not of a utilitarian nature. These words were incorporated into the Spanish language, to which the word allusive to the most feared natural phenomenon, the hurricane, was also added. Its testimonial mark in the cave of Punta del Este raises many questions about the meaning of the work. Perhaps it was a way of averting the threat of an event of mysterious origin that regularly struck men and destroyed their meager possessions.
In any case, in the beginning, art, philosophy and literature were closely intertwined. With the passing of the centuries, as the division of labor was imposed, they gradually became independent. But artistic creation has not ceased to be a specific means of access to knowledge, indissolubly linked to a conception of the world, to the cult of the dead in ancient Egypt, to the rescue of the human dimension of motherhood in the Gothic cathedrals.
The rise of capitalism led to the conversion of art into a commodity. Like a condemned man at hard labor, always persecuted by his creditors, Honoré de Balzac had to submit to the rules established by the publisher. Each chapter of his novels had to close with a question that imposed on the reader the need to acquire the next publication in order to find continuity and an answer.
He turned that experience into LOST ILLUSIONS. As an aspiring writer, the main character Lucien de Rubempré goes on a pilgrimage through publishers reduced to the condition of pure manufacturers of goods. In the 19th century, gallery owners appeared who would buy works that would reach millions of dollars in value for pennies. In modern times, when the value of money is subject to economic crises, investing in art means acquiring a good with a lasting and often growing value.
Adventure of knowledge, artistic creation explores the conflicts and twists and turns of the human condition. In the words of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, we are a drunken boat rocked by storms of all kinds. In the course of history, the works that retain a living presence revealed to us the serene harmony of the mother with the child in her lap.
The baroque fracture showed the tensions generated by power, the image of the Pieta, a painful mother with her son collapsed on her knees, the passing of the ages in the beautiful adolescent body of David and the venerable old age of Moses, brought to light the underground universe of begging and picaresque, the tricks of the Tartuffe climber, sharpened Quevedo’s satirical whip, while the renewal of the codes of architecture showed the precarious balance between illusion and reality. The incision in the depths of our individual and social being has a liberating function, based on the recognition of what we are and is therefore an indispensable springboard for our full emancipation.
Since the conversion of art into merchandise, capitalism castrates the emancipatory function of art. Under the guise of neo-liberalism, with its imposed hegemony over the media, it advances even further in the perverse sterilization of the role of art. An ephemeral fair of show business vanities, which has become a disposable consumer good, produces shows designed to subject and seduce, from a one-way transmitter, a recipient modeled on their whim. It thus undermines the essential nature of artistic creation, its dialogical character open to multiple meanings, a guarantee of transcending from the local to the universal, from yesterday to today and tomorrow. For this reason, despite the millennia that have passed, we are still moved by Oedipus Rex’s tragic confrontation with his destiny. He had to tear out his eyes because he did not know how to recognize the reality that comprised his existence, that of his family, that of the citizens of Thebes.
In this month of June, we have evoked the 90 years since the birth of Armando Hart, a protagonist of the historical vanguard of the Revolution and lucid manager of our cultural thought. It is about to be the anniversary of the [speech] Words to the Intellectuals, given by Fidel in the National Library. This is not the time for routine recounts. The perverse use of culture with the purpose of manipulating consciousnesses, calls for a broad and deep discussion on the role of art in the struggle for human emancipation. [This is] a decisive issue in these days, when the death of art, the disappearance of the species in a process of accelerated climate change and increased poverty threatens us. Taking into account the current panorama and the experience acquired, it is urgent to design integral strategies to offer an adequate response to the great challenges of contemporary life. I will return to this subject in the next issue.
by Yaymara Villaverde Marcé // Cuban News Agency
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
Guantanamo, 11 abr (ACN) After the heroic medical army, today on the first front of battle against COVID-19, there is also a commendable rear guard of professionals and essential workers, food producers, dependents, carriers, and journalists, recorder or camera in hand always present in times of contingency.
Every profession entails sacrifice, yes, and communicating in times of global health crisis a risk quota, a reality that challenges media institutions to unleash all the reporting and creative capacity of their journalists. They have reorganized their routines to ensure the safety of the guild and the time to inform the population in a timely and transparent manner.
We have that responsibility to our people and humanity-as Taimi Fernández, president of glove journalists, tells it, this is our duty to avoid misinformation. More so in this difficult context where accurate guidance is needed, from reliable and scientific sources, to raise public perceptions of risk and encouraging preventive behavior.
Information is a vital tool, a way to fight the new coronavirus and its spread-points out. The responsible press must take advantage of the influence that the media exert on the collective consciousness, with reliable and contrastable data that cut the wings to rumors and false news that only generate confusion and hinder an effective response.
Consequent with the decisive measure of social isolation and confinement, the Cuban media has redesigned its daily dynamics, strengthened the teleworking modality to reduce the influx of professionals and technicians, and have exempted those with chronic suffering from risks which make them vulnerable in this epidemic scenario.
This is how Mabel Pozo, director of the radio station CMKS Guantanamera, where today the necessary health and protection measures are taken. She works with the essential staff, programming was adapted to the context shee points ou, and this and the views of the people are monitored by specialists, depending on which deliveries move.
Similar strategies assume reporters and technicians of the newspaper and provincial television. There, several take advantage of remote work, in an informative reality in which mobile journalism intensifies, taking advantage of the potential of smartphones and basic technologies to generate content and products communicative for online platforms.
Lisván Lescaille, in front of Telecentro Solvisión, tells us that his medium reduced active staff-as a first step to protect vulnerable groups – adjusted the billboard by prioritizing three information magazines with the theme COVID-19 and invited experts, and working groups were created both on the streets and from homes, through social media.
Ariel Soler, Head of Information of the weekly “Venceremos”, spoke of vital hypermedial work in this context spoke about the journalistic exercise in which their reporters are inserted, six with corporate mobile phones and others with the Internet in their homes, with whom the editorial board of the journal organizes the work by phone, giving special follow-up to the epidemiological situation.
And nothing more revealing than the opinion of the people regarding this work, like that of the septuagenarian Guantanamera Dalia Aguilar, of those sharp to which no one makes a story, who told the ACN that no report from the national press is lost and local, “because warfare well warned does not kill soldier”, and thanks the professionals in that sector for their credibility.
Last March Ricardo Ronquillo, President of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), sent recognition to the professionals of the country’s public media system, for the extraordinary informative work in the confrontation of the global pandemic, urged to join this campaign to all communication platforms, and take institutional measures to protect the guild.
Journalists are close to the first line of battle against the disease, because they have to report what is happening around it in Cuba, so it is important to the media to ensure its protection, he stressed.
These are times to act quickly and informative transparency said Ronquillo in a meeting of the expanded presidency of the organization and emphasized-” UPEC is not demobilized, on the contrary, we must now unleash all the creative capacity to make visible to public opinion, national and international, the work of the media”.
By Yurisander Guevara
guevara@juventudrebelde.cu
April 8, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Conspiracy theories are generally harmless phenomena that rely on circumstantial issues to generate questions that often go unanswered. Thus, they sow doubt about a topic and generate debates that, in this age of the Internet everywhere, become endless.
However, when one of these theories causes consequences in the social fabric, it can already be described as dangerous. This is what is happening right now in the United Kingdom, where several telephone poles with 5G transmitters have been burned in some cities. These facts that are linked to an evil rumor that is spreading like wildfire in the networks, taking advantage of the social hysteria generated by SARS-CoV-2.
According to the “conspirators”, the deployment of the fifth generation of mobile data transmission technology, or 5G, is linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the burning of transmitters, a sign of the panic caused by the epidemic.
Theories
Rumors and conspiracy theories about a link between the launch of 5G and the spread of the coronavirus have spread mainly through social networks. There are groups on Facebook and Nextdoor, where thousands of members repeat false and misleading claims that 5G is supposedly harmful.
The theory claims that the new coronavirus originated in Wuhan because the Chinese city had recently launched 5G. Supposedly it has now spread to other cities that also use this technology.
It is the hottest hoax on social networks these days, after another one was dismantled, claiming that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was created for obscure geopolitical purposes. In this last case, the theory falls apart with a study entitled The Proximal Origin of the Coronavirus, published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Research compares the ribonucleic acid sequence of this microorganism with that of other coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS, and bases its conclusions on the characteristics of a protein called spike. This spike is found in the external envelope of the virus and has a sort of hook through which it attaches to human cells. This “ability” of the pathogen is essential in its ability to infect people, one of its most damaging characteristics.
And it is so perfect, according to the study, that “it is most likely the product of natural selection (…) strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of self-serving manipulation”. In the same sense, and even more categorically, researcher Kristian Andersen, from Scripps Research Institute, in Florida, United States, stated in La Repubblica, an Italian publication: “Confronting the generic data available today on the various types of coronavirus, we can resolutely state that SARS-CoV-2 is the result of natural processes”.
In the case of the theory linking 5G to the new coronavirus, there is no more than investigating the properties of this new technology, so-called because it is the fifth generation of mobile phone networks, designed to multiply the connection speed of our portable devices tenfold.
Those who defend the theory claim that 5G weakens the immune system, emitting harmful radiation and therefore facilitating the entry of the coronavirus into the body. They also add that viruses use radio waves to communicate.
The first “argument” collapses when we look at the radio spectrum. At the low-frequency end of the spectrum, we find the radio waves used by 5G. Therefore, this technology does not produce ionizing radiation and does not damage human DNA, which other frequencies such as X-rays or ultraviolet light, responsible for causing diseases such as cancer, do.
According to the AS newspaper, “radiation emitted by radio waves is at a similar level to that produced by televisions and natural light. It is true that this new generation is a bit above its predecessors in this type of emissions. It is also true that, according to Ofcom – the UK’s telecommunications regulator – the maximum it can generate is 66 times below the safety limit.
The Department of Health in England adds that 5G “should have no impact on public health” and the World Health Organization has included 5G under heading 2B of carcinogens. That is, among those not proven to be capable of producing cancer. According to this classification, it would be as potentially carcinogenic as coffee.
The second argument is pure fantasy, while there are no studies that point in that direction. There are, however, that admit that this communication through radio waves could occur between bacteria (in no case between different viruses). For example, there is a study by a group led by Allan Widom at Northeastern University in Boston, USA, whose conclusions have been discussed by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The facts
Despite all the evidence that disproves this crude conspiracy theory linking 5G to SARS-CoV-2, UK territories such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Melling have been the scene of cell tower fires in recent days.
The UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport tweeted that “there is absolutely no credible evidence” of a link to the conspiracy theory, while commercial agency Mobile UK said such rumours and conspiracy theories were “worrying”.
UK telecoms operators now believe the attacks undermine the nation’s security. According to a tweet from Vodafone’s chief executive officer there, “this is now a matter of national security. The police and anti-terrorist authorities are investigating.
There have even been reports of harassment of telecommunications workers as they deployed fibre optic cables, as witnessed by a video also broadcast on Twitter by a BBC reporter.
The truth is that Iran, for example, is among the nations most affected by the new coronavirus, and there is not a single 5G tower there. There’s lots of evidence that dismantle this misleading theory, but the emotional fragility begins to make a dent. 5G is not a factor in its spread. Globalization is. And once the virus enters a territory, social isolation is the most effective measure to prevent its spread.
For our readers, who today are contributing to the great global battle against SARS-CoV-2 by staying at home, here is some advice: follow only official information from authorities about the pandemic and do not contribute to the networks that expand the reach of false news. We already see how harmful and dangerous it can be to feed on unverified facts, especially when the situation we are living in requires poise and a lot of common sense.
By Hugo Garcia digital@juventudrebelde.cu
April 9, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Jack Gaetan Joseph Villiers is a Frenchman who is miraculously alive. It’s as simple as that. But the miracle has also come about because of the proven professionalism of Cuban health.
“This is the first time I’ve seen the blue of the sky after almost 20 days of admission,” he said in a choppy voice from the wheelchair in which he was being transferred to the ambulance that would take him to Havana.
This man with a graying beard conveys with his clear eyes the immense gratitude that no resources, no tiredness, no sleep were spared to save him.
“But I feel good already. When all this is over, we will return to Cuba,” he whispered in his deficient Spanish as he said goodbye to the bus at the Mario Muñoz Monroy Hospital’s isolation center, becoming the sixth confirmed positive patient of the COVID-19 to be discharged in this city.
“Now I can confirm what my brother, who is a doctor, said about the capacity of Cuban doctors, who have specialized in fighting pandemics and diseases like these,” the Frenchman stressed to the Matanzas television and radio media.
Dr. Juan Carlos Martin Tirado, director of the hospital, confirms that this is another achievement of Cuban medicine, because this patient had many of the expected complications at his 72 years of age, including heart disease, hypertension and a major underlying diabetes mellitus.
Martín Tirado praised the delivery of the multidisciplinary team of intensive care, which worked day and night to save the patient.
By Juana Carrasco Martín
April 9, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
He’s definitely not crazy, he’s a shameless, cynical bastard. A criminal of the same ilk as Hitler. A being unworthy of belonging to the human species. Every day he does or says an atrocity or various monstrosities. Of course, I am referring to Donald Trump, the powerful president of the United States, which is why he tells us so much about what he says or does.
This Tuesday, April 7, when the world counted 78,269 deaths and at least 1,381,014 people infected with Covid-19, figures that continue to grow by the minute, Trump announced that he will suspend the U.S. contribution to the World Health Organization (WHO).
An hour before this mention at his daily press conference at the White House – not before he had given a rapid test of the virus to everyone in the vicinity of the president and vice president Mike Pence, especially reporters – Trump had exposed on his personal Twitter account that the World Health Organization (WHO) was too focused on China and had given – in his opinion – wrong advice during the outbreak of the new coronavirus.
The campaign to discredit the World Health Organization coincides with a revelation by the WHO’s director-general, Ethiopian microbiologist Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said that in the past three months, during which his organization has led the global fight against the coronavirus, it has received threats of death and attacks of various kinds, including racist ones.
“I’ve been getting personal attacks for three months, some of them racist, and to be honest I’m proud of my color. I have even received death threats, but I don’t care at all. Why would I care about being attacked if people are dying, we are losing lives every minute,” he said.
“When it’s personal I don’t care, I’m no better than anyone else, but when an entire community is insulted, then that’s it, I can’t tolerate that,” he said in a calm tone.
Tedros has been clear about attitudes like those of Trump and others: “Quarantine politics…”, at the WHO “you don’t make politics”, its mission is “to care for the poor and vulnerable” in these times when the whole world is embroiled in the crisis caused by the coronavirus.
This was the motivation of the American president, when the Director of the WHO rejected the racism of “scientists” who propose to use Africa as a laboratory for criminal experiments on the population. This would have been under the pretext of looking for a Covid-19 vaccine, Trump decided to punish the WHO. Venezuelan diplomat Samuel Moncada, commented on Twitter: “It is colonialism at war with the world”.
But Trump’s actions are not limited to looking to the WHO as a scapegoat for his own mistakes in handling the crisis, which he long ignored, but he had even denied the terrible importance of the disease.
If we are particularly affected and hurt by the application of the laws of the blockade to prevent a Chinese donation to Cuba from reaching the Greater Antilles, it must be pointed out that it acted with equal dishonesty and lack of ethics towards its allies. For example, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pointed out that he is still working to persuade Washington to lift the blockade on a shipment of half a million masks that should have arrived in Ontario on Wednesday.
The lord of the White House does not lose his ways, and when the world needs love, courage, compassion, generosity and commitment to the truth of what is happening, Donald Trump continues to set deadly traps.
By Mariela Rodríguez Méndez
April 6, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Isolation is an effort for the world economy and subjective, applied with the intention of gaining health and life. Every contagion that is avoided is a way to stop the progression of this epidemic that is costing humanity so much.
Paradoxically, this dramatic moment for the human being is an opportunity to stop the consequent damage of so many other excesses that put at risk the existence of the planet and life or its enjoyment.
Pause in the urgency, the haste, the daily race to fulfill, to win, to be successful, to consume, to be in fashion, etc. A pause from those days with the feeling that time was not enough, that what matters most or is enjoyed was postponed. We are invited to a pause for reflection, reorientation, the encounter with the compass that indicates those little things that make us feel and help us to live. This is also a break longed for by many, even if it is difficult to recognize.
It is a pause that will make us look, listen and speak to those who accompany us in the home. It will be an opportunity to rediscover what unites us with them. Perhaps it is also a time to ask ourselves how we would like to live the next isolation, even if that is chosen in the best conditions of a planet pulsating with life and vigor. Isolation to love, work and create.
By Hugo García
April 7, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Matanzas: Two extraordinary and emergency events took place during the last days of confrontation with COVID-19 at the Mario Muñoz Monroy Hospital’s isolation center.
First, a Russian tourist who had suffered a hip fracture at the hotel where she was staying was successfully operated on. Then, Dayana Almeida Gómez was assisted in giving birth at the same institution, where she remained suspected of carrying the new coronavirus and there was no time to transfer her to the city’s maternity hospital when she went into labor.
A medical team made up of Doctors Ramses Isaac Marrero, Lourdes Gonzalez Cabrera and Noel Rodriguez Ortiz, assisted by staff from that hospital, brought the 22-year-old to full term. She was admitted on April 2 and was transferred to the provincial maternity hospital on Sunday, April 5.
“I named him Mario Ramses, in honor of the doctor from Moncada, whose name the hospital bears, and Dr. Ramses,” says Dayana, a resident of the Ciénaga de Zapata municipality, who entered as a suspicious case and finally she and her baby were diagnosed as negative.
Both the surgical intervention for the foreign tourist and the unexpected birth are samples of the capacity, experience and cohesion of the medical team that works in this isolation center in the city of Matanzas, from which four patients in good health have already been discharged.
The new mother behaved very well and it was a quick delivery, says Ramses: “We had all the conditions in this hospital, even though normally deliveries are never carried out here. Everything went well and the baby weighed 3,250 grams.
Related photos:
By Mileyda Menéndez Dávila
March 31, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
“Love becomes greater and nobler in calamity”
— Gabriel García Márquez
“It is a human thing to have compassion for the afflicted, and although it is convenient for everyone to feel it, it is more appropriate for those who have already had need of comfort and have found it in others. Among these, if there was someone who needed it or was loved by it, or already received from it, I count myself.
This is how the Italian Giovanni Boccaccio begins the first book of tales of the Renaissance court era, The Decameron, in which, through the double sense, comedy and youthful audacity, he recreates the duality of a Europe devastated by the plague in 1348, one of the 40 serious epidemics that humanity has recorded in its historical annals since the Roman Empire.
Seven girls and three boys are the supposed narrators of these one hundred stories, in which desacralized eroticism is the true protagonist of a daring break, not only with the mold, but also with the purpose of medieval literature.
This would be one of the essential books to revisit (or discover) in order to liven up the wait in the virulent context we live in today, and the other, obviously, is that of the immense Gabriel García Márquez: Love in the Time of Cholera.
Both have in common, besides the dangerous epidemiological scenario in which they are developed, an explicit message of hope and good judgment. Firstly, because they appeal to common sense to survive, with joy and love as antidotes to the lack of freedom unleashed by some selfish behaviors of our species. Secondly, because they show that creative isolation is the sanest of all options, if you want to get rid of an invisible and mortal enemy, but one that needs carriers to reach you.
Returning to the present, let us address one of the questions raised by the rapid spread of IDOC-19 and the quarantines imposed in most affected countries: Could the agent responsible for this emergency, SARS-CoV-2, be transmitted through sexual intercourse, like other viruses known to date?
The World Health Organization (WHO) has made it clear that the only route of transmission is through droplets from the nose or mouth of a carrier, expelled by coughing, exhaling or speaking.
This can be through direct contact or by transferring droplets onto your hands from various surfaces, such as clothing or other commonly used objects. Five seconds is enough to pick up most of the virus and bring it to your mouth, nose or the mucous membranes of your eyes in a mechanical or nervous gesture.
For now, the genital route of transmission and the presence of the virus in the semen or vaginal secretions of people who have become ill have been ruled out. Does that mean that sex in time of COVID-19 is safe?
Yes and no. First you should answer: Can you guarantee that the person you are trying to have sex with was not in contact with a confirmed patient (whether symptomatic or not), or with someone who was close to a carrier, for example, in a queue or on public transport?
Would you enjoy an intimacy where hugging and kissing are prohibited? You may try to play from afar or try positions where faces are distant… And when passion takes hold, what will you do to keep your sanity, health, and potentially your life in a very short time?
The proximity implicit in intercourse facilitates the inhalation of particles expelled by your sexual partner, whether you want to or not. Therefore, those who have casual relationships with strangers are at greater risk (including being required to violate the recommendation not to go out unnecessarily), and the greater the number of such exchanges, the less likely they are to ensure that those people (and those who were in their beds before you) are not infected, even without feverish symptoms or respiratory disorders.
It should be noted that the risk is the same for those who have carnal sex, talk face-to-face or kiss, and the latter is the quickest way to get the virus.
If it is your stable partner, the one you love and want to be healthy, you have two options: either wait to be in isolation long enough to know that both are out, or take it as any other time in the relationship when you needed to distance yourself and kept love alive by other, more innocuous and equally useful ways to feed the passion. The third would be to add the nasobuco in a role play, perhaps personifying thieves and maidens…
One last question: Can you live a full sexual relationship without kissing and with fear of leaving the place with more than you came in? Many people will feel unsatisfied under these conditions and will prefer to postpone the encounter, among other things so as not to develop sexual dysfunction due to anxiety or distracting fear. Others will take up the challenge and appeal to their imagination (or technology) to take care that the malicious virus does not take over in the sacred space of their sexual life. You decide which side to be on…
By Iris Oropesa Mecías digital@juventudrebelde.cu
April 2, 2020
Translated by Merri Ansara for CubaNews.
Edited by Walter Lippmann
One of the issues that we have valued much more since the beginning of the current pandemic is the work of every worker who has been kept in place. From artists who play for us in their homes, to street sweepers who stay in the streets, bakers and cooks, caretakers of the elderly, traffic inspectors, teachers who give digital classes on their own initiative… and yes, them, the everyday doctors, whom we applaud at agreed hours, a gesture that seems to us still small in the face of their daily greatness and which in countries like Spain has become almost religious in its fulfilment.
These are also days when we have to learn to deal with matters in an intelligent way. That is why this time Detrás de la ciencia goes in search of that mystery of hundreds of people clapping their hands on their balconies as we Cubans do every night. Is the applause an exclusively human gesture? How did it come about? What are the secrets of its contagion? What does science know about this social phenomenon?
Most human beings just beat the palms of their two hands rhythmically. In some sectors there are variations. There are universities where tables are beaten when a lecture is over, or the well-known clapboards of tobacco farmers, for example. But, in general, applause is an expression of admiration for a well-done performance. And we find it so natural that we might come to believe it is part of our DNA.
Joaquim J. Vèa, a Catalan primatologist, has explained the human exclusivity of applause, quoted by the magazine Quo: “After many years studying primates in the forests, I have never seen a (non-human) primate applaud”.
This phenomenon is discovered totally socially. We are not born as a species knowing what applause is in its current concept. We need to learn it in society. History, then, is a science that has much to say about it.
The emergence of the custom dates back to ancient civilizations. The ancient Greeks expressed their approval of plays by cheering and clapping their hands. The Romans preferred to snap their fingers, but they also clapped and waved the tips of their robes, or used special strips just to generate a sound of admiration.
It is often said that Emperor Nero paid nearly 5,000 people to applaud his public appearances. They would practice two types of applause: imbrex, with hollowed-out hands, and testa, with flat hands.
Over the centuries, several sounds alternated in the taste to express approval of a show: whistle and even spit became among the favorites, widely used in the seventeenth century.
The churches, both during the Middle Ages and much later, in the Protestant era, played an important role alongside the theater, in the social development of applause. But even when the Catholic clergy forbade these manifestations at masses, coughing, humming or blowing through the nose became the way a brilliant sermon or a well-toned chorus was approved.
But this journey does not yet answer: why do we do it, what human needs do we satisfy in this very contagious cultural fact?
Psychologists say that any form of applause satisfies the human need to express an opinion, a euphoric emotion, and the need to communicate with a protagonist with whom we cannot engage in a conversation in person. Social psychology specialists also explain that applause gives the audience the feeling that they are participating. Since the audience cannot pat the actors on the back, they applaud.
Another mystery studied by psychologists, which was published in a study in the journal Nature, by the way, was the highly contagious nature of applause.
The specialists who analyzed thousands of recordings of massive applause in different parts of the world concluded that the great contagion of applause is not due to the imperiousness that is recognized in itself, but to the social nature of the act of applauding.
Another study, from Uppsala University in Sweden and published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, sets out mathematical models for measuring applause in a social group, and shows that if a person starts clapping 2.1 seconds after a lecture or presentation ends, 0.8 seconds later the whole group starts clapping, whether they like it or not.
“We used the selection of the Bayesian model to test several hypotheses about the spread of simple social behavior, applause after an academic presentation. The probability that people will start clapping increased in proportion to the number of other audience members already ‘infected’ by this social contagion, regardless of their spatial proximity,” explained the lead author.
The Greek Plutarch (46-127 BC) says that due to paid plaudits, for example, Philemon of Syracuse (361-263 BC) managed to surpass the famous Menander (342-291 BC) several times in theatrical performances, not necessarily because he surpassed him in the dramatic.
But science, this time physics, has discovered more than mysterious features of this social action. The authors of an article on applause published several years ago in Nature pointed out that they alternate in periods in which the ovation is an incoherent sum of palms along with other periods in which the audience applauds in a rhythmic and synchronized way, and they verified that in the synchronized applause the frequency of the palms of each spectator is half that of the incoherent applause.
The dynamics of the group applause was summarized: at the beginning of the ovation most of the applauses are enthusiastic and synchronization is not possible; but after about ten seconds the spectators reduce to half their applause frequency and a synchronization period begins. If you are a ballet lover, you will not let these scientists lie.
The journalist Juan Manuel Rodríguez Parrondo explained it this way: “Imagine that at the end of a play you have especially liked and you applaud as you would in the theatre; count the number of palms you give during ten seconds and obtain the frequency of the applause; repeat the experiment, but imagining that you are in the situation of synchronized applause. You will see that the frequency in the second case is about half that of the first.
This mystery of frequency doubling and synchronization of applause is a widespread phenomenon in nature and there is no particular reason for it, but it has been proved that nature likes periodic oscillations.
Heart rhythms, menstrual rhythm, the swing of a swing… Thus, a person tends to always applaud with two frequencies, one double the other, depending on his or her enthusiasm. But in short, it seems to be true that we have an unconscious attraction when we synchronize our applause with the rest of the audience.
Which of these scientific explanations do we put into practice when people from various regions of the world go out to their balconies to give their doctors a standing ovation? Probably, the psychological explanation of wanting to be part of something, of communicating with actors that we cannot pat on the back, this time, the best actors and actresses: all the health personnel who every day put themselves in the line of battle against the virus that is plaguing us. To compensate us, the Spanish clinical psychologist Juan Castilla assures us: “It is an invaluable gesture. We are not aware of the positive impact this generates”.
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