Sunday, February 28, 2010

Prison=bad

Rape is never ok... not even in prison

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23690

And more about how prisons are bad

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23382

Good bits from the intarnets

Cross-cultural communication...

http://whattamisaid.blogspot.com/2010/02/friday-morning-rant-im-not-your.html
http://diversityinc.com/content/1757/article/113/?Youre_So_Articulate

http://colorlines.com/article.php?ID=685 (article on a lot of the problems with post-"reform" welfare...)

More on Roth

Just in case it seemed like I was being unfair... specifics on her beliefs about healthy eating habits! Also, a clip from Fox that I actually like. (amazing, right?) :)

http://jezebel.com/5479381/just-what-are-meme-roths-qualifications-exactly?skyline=true&s=i

http://jezebel.com/5313795/fox-anchor-cries-foul-on-fat+shamer

Friday, February 26, 2010

iPhone apps...

http://jezebel.com/5379070/pepsi-releases-iphone-app-to-help-men-score-with-women-and-brag-about-it-on-twitter

iPhone also had lots of other apps--like Asian BOOBS! (Pictures of Asian women's boobs). Wonderful.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

How do people like Roth manage to be taken seriously??!

While the first part of this article isn't too great, pay close attention to the last part especially--in which it is revealed that Roth engages in symptomatic behavior for anorexia. Which is clearly why we should believe her about fat people and the danger of fat. (Also note just how much she suffered because her mother was fat.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/24/meme-roth-obesity-nutrition

Commentary on that article and the director Kevin Smith being kicked off a plane for being "too fat."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-17/leave-fat-people-alone/?cid=hp:vertical:r

(One of) The original story(ies) on Smith and the SW plane.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/kevin-smith-fat-fly/story?id=9837268

And more....

http://the-f-word.org/blog/index.php/2009/05/27/the-skinny-on-meme-roth/

http://kateharding.net/2009/05/27/its-not-easy-being-meme/

http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2007/05/this-meme-roth-jordin-sparks-fat.html

Really? REALLY??

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2010/02/23/how-stay-at-home-dads-can-keep-women-in-their-place/

http://blog.crisswrites.com/2010/02/stay.html

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The joys of pregnancy

http://skepchick.org/blog/2010/02/what-pregnant-women-wont-tell-you-ever/

http://www.cracked.com/article_16508_6-terrifying-things-they-dont-tell-you-about-childbirth.html

"Meritocracy"

I could write so much about this, but here is a snippet. This is where privilege comes in.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/04/illusions_of_merit.php

Good work by the ACLU

The dangers of carrying class flashcards while flying...

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-sues-over-unconstitutional-airport-detention-and-interrogation-college-studen

And patenting humans and other things we did not create.

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-womens-rights/aclu-challenges-patents-breast-cancer-genes-0

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Body and fat positivity

http://adipositivity.my-expressions.com/galleries/9478_1745602162/56796

http://happybodies.wordpress.com/

Thoughts on (vegan) oppression, pt 3

I also realize that I have not been distinguishing between vegans and vegans who are also animal advocates. Admittedly, vegans who are not animals advocates probably do not fit into the ally framework. However, many vegans who are animal advocates have stated that vegans as a class are oppressed in part because of the discrimination against a specific group of vegans because of their activities (thus the reason for my lack of distinction to this point). This distinction, however, separates the treatment of even animal advocates from the treatment of other political groups such as communists. While the site www.greenisthenewred.com has a lot of great articles on how ridiculous (in my opinion) the specific targeting of animal activists AND other environmental activists is, vegans as a group are not targeted. Yet during the Red Scare, anyone known or thought to have Communist beliefs--regardless of their actions--was targeted. Contrast that to draconian legislation that unfairly targets specific types of activities.

Similarly, even those vegan animal advocates who have been targeted by the government are being targeted by legislation also designed to target radical environmentalists. Yes, I think this legislation is bad, but it is based on actual behaviors, however slight, versus just being vegan. I hope everything I wrote makes sense now. This is the end of this portion of the series.

Thoughts on (vegan) oppression, pt 2

One thing I have thought about a lot since I went vegan about a year ago now is the framing of veganism within the animal rights community. Many times when I tell people I'm vegan, they react negatively. One reason people give is that "vegans are so over-sensitive" or "vegans are always being offensive/rude/forcing their views on other people." However, people often say this without reflecting on how it sounds to someone who is vegan for ethical reasons when they say, "Yeah, I don't like factory farming either, but I love cheese." Or "Factory farming is bad, but if you get your meat and dairy from good suppliers, it's ok"--even though you know the person in question makes NO effort to do so. These comments ignore the fact that veganism is not about a bunch of people who don't like meat or dairy. Vegans frequently *do/did* love eating meat and dairy, but are vegan anyway. Because even though I used to love the taste of cheese, I have decided that preventing animal cruelty and exploitation is more important than my love for that food.

The point of that tangent was that some vegans I know who are active in the animal rights community have a tendency to see "vegan" as an oppressed category. I have always disagreed with this, but have not always been able to articulate my views. Recently, I came across several blogposts by vegans (primarily vegans of color) explaining why they believe the same thing. I will link to several of these discussions but also explain how I weigh in and give some examples. Note that some of these discussions focus on white men, which is easy to do, especially when many people resistant to the idea are white cis-gendered men ("biological" males who identify their gender as male). However, I have noticed the same trend among white women.

Some vegans have argued that, just as veganism is a choice, religion is too, so vegans can be considered an oppressed group because of the ways in which vegans are discriminated against by society and the government. I disagree with this belief for several reasons. First of all, while religion is a choice for some, the phenomenon of religiously-based oppression is not actually strictly religious. For example, many Arab (or Arab-seeming) Americans are discriminated against every day without being Muslim. I also think that religious belief is different from political belief. Along those lines, I think there is a difference between political repression and oppression, religious or otherwise.

However, I do believe vegans are allies, which is one of the primary reasons why I don't think vegans fit into the oppressed category. Allies are people who are not members of an oppressed group but rather members of a privileged group *who nevertheless fight with members of the oppressed group to eradicate that oppression.* Other examples are white people against racism and male feminists. While a little problematic because humans and non-humans do not collaborate in quite the same way, I see vegans as allies of primarily non-human animals facing oppression and exploitation as a result of the animal industries (food, clothing, etc).***

I think this is the most important reason why vegans are not themselves oppressed by their veganism. History is full of examples where allies have been discriminated against, persecuted by the government, and even killed. This was not uncommon during the U.S. Civil Rights movement, particularly during the 1950's and 1960's. Male feminists have been and continue to be targets of discrimination, mean-spirited jokes, etc, as are straight allies of the LGBTQ community. However, all of these people were targeted not because they fit into an oppressed group of people, but because they were fighting with a group of oppressed people to improve conditions. Being an ally is not about centering your experiences, particularly because as members of privileged groups, allies experiences (in these areas at least) are already centered. It is about centering the experiences of, in this case, animals. Discrimination against vegans certainly exists, but so does discrimination against white people, men, and the wealthy. Yet white people, men, the wealthy, and humans still hold the balance of power in these relationships.

Anyway, hopefully these posts articulate this theme better than I do.

http://veganideal.org/content/why-vegan-oppression-cannot-exist#comments
http://vegansofcolor.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/veganism-is-not-for-vegans/
http://vegansofcolor.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/the-cult-of-veganism-or-sit-down-shut-up-little-brown-girl/ (a comment I thought was especially edifying)


***While veganism focuses on animal exploitation for what I hope are obvious reasons, it is also the case that animal industries are some of the worst industries in terms of human exploitation because of the ways they exploit their workers.

My thoughts on (vegan) oppression, pt 1

Ultimately, I am aiming to write about veganism and oppression, but here is a primer to what I mean and believe by oppression.

First of all, let me say that I view oppression as being a systemic group-based phenomenon. That is to say, while individual men and women are discriminated against for all sorts of reasons all the time, sexism is a form of oppression targeting women as a group. This is not to minimize the experiences of men who have been discriminated, but to recognize that the causes, context, and frequency with which men are discriminated against are very different than the causes, context, and frequency with which women are.

Secondly, my shorthand definition of oppression is the combination of discrimination and state-sanctioned power. Due to the history of oppression within the U.S., the U.S. state is racist, patriarchal, classist, anthropocentric, etc, etc. It favors white, middle and upper-class, cis-gendered, heterosexual, Christian, able-bodied middle-aged men who speak English as their native language, were born in the U.S. and are U.S. citizens, are from nuclear families, and have at least an undergraduate education. I'm sure there are more categories I'm missing--sorry! You get the point, though, I hope. This helps explain what I mean about the context of discrimination that I mentioned above. An individual woman discriminating against an individual man does so from a very different place of power than an individual man discriminating against an individual woman. Some women may even discriminate against men as a survival tactic developed from years and years of facing sexism every day.

I also view oppression as being linked to certain identity categories. These include "race," ethnicity, class, gender, "biological" sex, sexual orientation, ability/"disability," native language, religion, citizenship status, place of origin, current geographic location, age group, etc. Now, while some of these may change, such as class or citizenship status, most change far less than people would like us to believe--particularly class, which is pretty firmly entrenched on a statistical level. (See www.realchangenews.org/index.php/site/archives/3561/ for a discussion of inequality in the U.S.). Others, such as age, do change over the course of every lifespan, but people frequently do not acknowledge the extent, effects, or even the existence of ageism. Because of ageism, everyone at some point or another has been a member of an oppressed category. Yet almost everyone has also at some point been a member of a privileged category as well, and these different categories intersect, interact and affect one another in a way known as intersectionality. For example, being a white, middle-class heterosexual cis-gender woman is different than being a black, middle-class heterosexual cis-gender woman, and also different from women who are working-class, bisexual, transgender, etc. In many struggles against one type of oppression, this is not always recognized, which can lead to problems.

This is already very long-winded, so I will stop here for this post. Here are some more resources to learn more, both on- and off-line.

Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/

bell hooks, "Ain't I a Woman Too?" (book)--this looks primarily at mainstream feminism. Pretty much anything hooks writes deals with some form(s) of oppression

ColorLines (www.colorlines.com) and their blog RaceWire (www.racewire.org)
A good post on "reverse racism": http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/07/reverse_racism_word_distracts.html

Pretty much anything by Time Wise (book, and focuses on race)

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence http://incite-national.org/
They published some great books called
"The Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology"
"The Revolution will not be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex"

Anything by Dr. Andrea Smith

Monday, February 22, 2010

...And finally, musing on a new (?) brand of comfortable activism

I will say, my 'favorite' kind of passive, consumerist, and misguided activism has got to be Ethos water: the gimmick is that a portion of the price of every bottle goes to funding grants the company makes towards humanitarian water programs... They are trying to give children clean water and raise awareness of the global water crisis. But wait--the global water crisis and lack of clean water is frequently caused by the very privatization of water that allows Ethos to sell bottled water in the first place!!

http://www.womanist-musings.com/2010/02/activism-round-here.html

Ending violence against sex workers!

So I know this is way late, but I just found out about it thought it was important to post for several reasons. First of all, the NW has been a bad area in terms of violence against sex workers (Gary Ridgeway anyone?). Secondly, the NW is also a bad area in that it is an identified stop in national and international sex trafficking rings, frequently of young girls! In fact, the NW--the broader Seattle area in particular--is a hotspot for underage sex workers, some of whom have been unwillingly trafficked into the area and forced to work. Finally, sex workers should not be subject to rape or violence because of their occupation anymore than a boxer should be subject to illegal/unsporting violence or violence outside the ring. Any woman can be determined "unrapeable" in U.S. society, but sex workers particularly are.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/12/18/international-day-to-end-violence-against-sex-workers/

http://thecurvature.com/2009/03/31/pulling-the-plug-on-rape-culture-one-word-at-a-time-caras-wam-presentation/

Marked/unmarked catagories

A number of short posts around the intarweb about marked/unmarked categories. Basically, unmarked categories refer to what is the default or presumed to be "universal" within a certain category. For example, men, Christians, and white people are common unmarked categories because you usually do not have to specify when you are referring to people or things fitting into these categories, and they are universalized. Example: "he" is considered 'gender-neutral' or 'universal.' Marked categories are when you must specify the category. For example, people generally specify people's race or ethnicity when talking about someone who is not white, but make no reference to it when they are white. Marked and unmarked correspond somewhat with specific/exclusive and general (marked=specific/exclusive, general=unmarked). These posts all give examples.

On men's/"unisex" shirts and (men's) "T-shirts" and "Women's T-shirts." Bad because it assumes the universality of males (have you ever seen a a women's/unisex shirt anywhere and do you think it would be acceptable?) he "Men Can't Wear Skirts" article points out that this is bad for men as well because it gives them only one option instead of two.

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/12/14/women-can-wear-mens-shirts-but-men-cannot-wear-womens/

Other examples of male as an unmarked category.

http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/02/10/your-body-men-are-people-and-women-are-women/

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/05/18/stick-figures-and-stick-figures-who-parent/

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/05/04/default-avatars-a-collection/

On "flesh-colored" (read: white) items.

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/11/27/stunning-example-of-the-neutrality-of-whiteness/

http://sociologicalimages.blogspot.com/2008/03/from-pale-to-pumped-with-racial.html

http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/08/06/for-normal-to-darker-skin/

http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/08/03/white-privilege/

http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/04/01/the-neutral-and-the-marked-a-primer-for-your-kids/


****Also note that many of the categories commonly employed are binaries--what about people who don't fit either? Think female/male, black/white, etc.

Essays: Traditional Masculinity

A great article on the dangers of traditional masculinity in the U.S. from a great magazine! Focuses on health and emotional issues. (Although I like the idea about people seeing themselves as human *doings* rather than human *beings* and think that applies more generally). It's adapted from a chapter in the author's (Calvin Sandborn) book, Becoming a Kind Father: A Son's Journey.

http://briarpatchmagazine.com/boy-code-and-the-modern-man/

The next article looks at radical masculinity and what a narrow range of expression is allowed to most men who want to be perceived as masculine. Includes a rather disgusting (IMHO) Dockers ad...

http://carnalnation.com/content/43798/44/when-men-wear-skirts

A slightly different take on masculinity: butch masculinity and its attendant layers.

http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Throwing_in_the_towel-7855.aspx