Well, I *Was* Thinking About A Droid
…and then this weekend I saw the Verizon/Motorola ad spots, which are all about how manly and robotic and fast and strong and super awesome and completely not girly the Droid is. Lines from the ad include “tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen” and, “it’s not a princess, it’s a robot.” Kara describes the ad at All Things Digital
“Should a phone be pretty?” [the ad] begins, using an odd series of images that is packed full of random misogyny. “Should it be a tiara-wearing, digitally clueless beauty pageant queen?”
Then comes all the manly imagery–a racehorse, a powerfully pointed Scud missile, bananas and buzzsaws to represent the Droid. A surging missile, as well as several creamy explosions too. Get it?
And let’s not forget the bunch of fey, effeminately-dressed mannequins, with one getting bashed with an ink-filled ball thrown by some tough masked thug with the line, “Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone?”
Then back to anti-women name-calling, saying an iPhone is a “princess,” unlike the Droid, “a phone that trades hair-do for can-do.”
The ad suggests that the Droid is a toy for techie men, and that women are universally delicate idiots who value aesthetics over tech capabilities. I’m quite disappointed, because I had been seriously considering purchasing a Droid (my family is currently debating between Droids and iPhones, although I think we’ll end up sticking with feature phones), and now my excitement over the phone has completely soured: I have absolutely no desire to support a product or a business that treats me, a potential customer, as an idiot. I have absolutely no desire to support the continued misogynistic stereotyping and dismissal of women by giving money that, ironically, I earned while working in a tech-related, male-dominated field, to a product sold with this ad campaign.
I wrote a letter to Verizon and Motorola, using the addresses from Geekfeminism’s post on the subject:
To Whom It May Concern,
I am currently a Verizon customer with a contract up for renewal and a phone upgrade. Based on the tech specs, I had been considering upgrading from my current feature phone and purchasing a Droid handset. Indeed, I was the one to suggest the Droid to my brother, who is also looking for a new phone; my father, who currently has an iPhone; and my mother, who is considering purchasing a smartphone herself and is also the final decision-maker on cell phone purchases and contracts for our family. I followed the early reviews of Droid on tech blogs and was strongly leaning toward a Droid over a BlackBerry or an iPhone.
Then I saw the “Pretty” ad spot for the Droid. In addition to being incoherent, the imagery and voice over in the ad suggests that the Droid is specifically a toy for manly, techie men. It suggests that women are obsessed with fluff and aesthetics and are too idiotic to care about a phone’s specs and technical capabilities (“tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen”; “it’s not a princess, it’s a robot”; “a phone that trades hair-do for can-do.”). I have no desire to spend my hard-earned money–money that I earned in a tech-related field, incidentally–on a product that is sold with misogynistic advertising. Congratulations: you’ve successfully soured my enthusiasm for the Droid and ensured that when I purchase a new handset, Droid will not be on the list of possible options.
Best,
[PD]
Where Are the Men?
Another annoying NYT article, this time in the Health section, “From Birth, Engage Your Child With Talk,” chastises Brooklyn “mothers and nannies … tuned in to their cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPods, not their young children.” While the article’s basic premise (talk to your kid!), the article is off-putting in two respects:
1. Things were better in the old days! We had no high-tech devices then, so everyone was a great parent!
2. Damned mothers and nannies! Too selfishly absorbed in their conversations, emails, texts, and music to devote every waking minute and iota of attention to their babies or charges!
The first is the kind of knee-jerk, anecdotes-are-data, regressive, technology-warps-our-minds thinking that I don’t have much of a counter for, because it’s so patently ridiculous. Does a parent have to give every bit of her or his attention to their child? What if the kid’s asleep? Or tired? Or cranky? Or if you have a business call? Is it ever permissible to check your text messages in the presence of a toddler, or is it always a diversion of attention you ought to be paying to the kid? Actually, if you’re a parent, are you allowed to have a life independent of dancing around your child?
The second just grates. I want to know, where are the fathers in this picture? Why aren’t they out taking their kids for strolls and talking to them? Why isn’t any of the responsibility on them? At least the mothers and nannies are having conversations in the presence of the kids, so the kids are picking up some words; the fathers aren’t even around! They’re neglecting their kids’ verbal development entirely! OH MY GOD NO!
The assumptions behind the comment about “mothers and nannies” are that (1) women are always 100% responsible for child-rearing; dad isn’t even in the picture; (2) since they’re the ones responsible for child-rearing, women have to devote 100% of their attention to their kids. That latter point makes it difficult for women to have a life outside their kids…which I guess is the point. Gotta love the patriarchy.
Who’s stupider?
David Brooks, or the NYT for hiring him? At worst, his columns reek of a complacent, self-satisfied, privileged understanding of the world that has no connection to the experiences of anyone not rich, able-bodied, white, male, heterosexual, and cisgendered. At best, his columns are idiotic maundering about how he’d rather be a rugged mountain man than a beach lounger, but alas, he’s chosen to be a beach lounger. Wah, wah–seriously, cry me a fucking river. His most recent column, “The Next Culture War,” falls into the latter category. It’s classic David Brooks: sweeping statements that paint a picture of the good old days in America, when everyone was affluent but frugal, materialistic but moral. And then came the last 30 years, when society as we knew descended into depravity! Crass consumerism! Greed! Never before had such things happened in America, especially not among the ranks of the wealthy!
“Human nature, in no form of it, could ever bear prosperity,” John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, warning against the coming corruption of his country.
Yet despite its amazing wealth, the United States has generally remained immune to this cycle. American living standards surpassed European living standards as early as 1740. But in the U.S., affluence did not lead to indulgence and decline.
That’s because despite the country’s notorious materialism, there has always been a countervailing stream of sound economic values. The early settlers believed in Calvinist restraint. The pioneers volunteered for brutal hardship during their treks out west. Waves of immigrant parents worked hard and practiced self-denial so their children could succeed. Government was limited and did not protect people from the consequences of their actions, thus enforcing discipline and restraint.
Whenever I read one of these columns, I wonder how one gets to be an op-ed writer for the NYT. The excerpted paragraphs are full of broad assertions with nary a shred of supporting evidence.
The old WASPs were notoriously cheap, sent their children to Spartan boarding schools, and insisted on financial sobriety.
That sentence falls into the “disconnected from anyone outside his economic stratum” category. “Notoriously cheap” means sending your kids to “Spartan boarding schools?” Right. I’m sure Choate and Andover and whatever other New England bastions of private schooling Brooks is referring to are the height of spartan anti-luxury and frugality.
This sentence falls into both the disconnected and the “sweeping, inaccurate generalizations” category:
Our current cultural politics are organized by the obsolete culture war, which has put secular liberals on one side and religious conservatives on the other.
I suppose that if you’re rich, white, able-bodied, straight, cis, and male, then silly things such as women’s rights to control their own bodies, along with access to reproductive health care, or the right of GLBTQI people to live, work, marry, and love without harassment are part of the “obsolete culture war.” Going off my experience escorting at Planned Parenthood last week, the “culture war” is by no means obsolete. The fervent anti-reproductive rights effort to ban all funding for abortion from health insurance reform also indicates that the “culture war” is ongoing and relevant to contemporary politics. Additionally, the divide is not nearly as clear cut as “secular liberals” and “religious conservatives.” There are many people of faith who are liberals (such as the Christian church with a booth at Folsom St. Fair) and many conservatives who are atheists.
And, of course, any column on the decline of modern American civilization would be incomplete without the obligatory poke at fat people:
Chain restaurants went into supersize mode, offering gigantic portions that would have been considered socially unacceptable to an earlier generation.
What I want to know is, why do my high school teachers have higher standards for argumentation, writing, and intellectual rigor than the editors of the NYT op-ed section?
P.S. Quit it with the “society was great for hundreds of years, and then it declined.” Things were never better in the age of the maiores, David, and that song and dance were worn out way before Sallust and Livy got to it.
Shorter Peter Singer: Being Disabled Sucks, Or, How To Wallow In Ablism
An acquaintance of mine shared a post that linked to Peter Singer’s latest piece in the NYT Magazine, “Why We Must Ration Healthcare.” Most of the article focuses on the fact that health care is currently rationed in the U.S., whether by price or by less tangible factors such as ER wait times. I don’t disagree with that part; that’s nothing more than a clear-eyed look at the reality that the American health care system has barriers to accessibility. Where Singer goes off the rails for a demonstration of Able-Bodied Privilege 101, however, is when he discusses how to put a value on human lives as a precursor to putting a value on health care. In order to demonstrate the utility of quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) in rationing health care, he uses the example of how an able-bodied person reacts to a hypothetical situation in which they become quadraplegic, and how their desire to live changes. He then goes on to present a situation in which persons with disabilities (PWD) are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: he suggests that if a PWD is happy with their life, they don’t need any treatment that would improve their lives, and if a PWD is not happy with their life, then it would be wasteful to spend money on treatment that would improve their lives. In Singer’s QALY model, he assumes that being able-bodied is the norm and any disability is a negative deviation that makes the lives of disabled people inherently worth less than the lives of able-bodied people.
Health care does more than save lives: it also reduces pain and suffering. How can we compare saving a person’s life with, say, making it possible for someone who was confined to bed to return to an active life? … One common method is to describe medical conditions to people — let’s say being a quadriplegic — and tell them that they can choose between 10 years in that condition or some smaller number of years without it. If most would prefer, say, 10 years as a quadriplegic to 4 years of nondisabled life, but would choose 6 years of nondisabled life over 10 with quadriplegia, but have difficulty deciding between 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia, then they are, in effect, assessing life with quadriplegia as half as good as nondisabled life. (These are hypothetical figures, chosen to keep the math simple, and not based on any actual surveys.) If that judgment represents a rough average across the population, we might conclude that restoring to nondisabled life two people who would otherwise be quadriplegics is equivalent in value to saving the life of one person, provided the life expectancies of all involved are similar.
This is the basis of the quality-adjusted life-year, or QALY, a unit designed to enable us to compare the benefits achieved by different forms of health care. The QALY has been used by economists working in health care for more than 30 years to compare the cost-effectiveness of a wide variety of medical procedures and, in some countries, as part of the process of deciding which medical treatments will be paid for with public money. If a reformed U.S. health care system explicitly accepted rationing, as I have argued it should, QALYs could play a similar role in the U.S. [All emphases in the piece are mine.]
In this scenario, Singer assumes that being able-bodied is the norm. He assumes that able-bodied people are neutral arbiters of the value of life as a disabled person, which ignores the reality that in an ablist society, we are steeped in ablism from the minute we’re born. After a lifetime of living in a society that considers being able-bodied to be normal and best and looks upon any form of disability, whether physical or mental, congenital or not, visible or invisible, as a negative deviation that makes a person with disabilities a lesser human being than an able-bodied person, an able-bodied person can in no wise be an objective judge–or at least no more objective than a person with disabilities. Singer later makes the assumption that PWD are self-interested when it comes to evaluating whether or not the health care system should devote resources to PWD; their bias presumably makes them bad judges. This assumption of bias, however, draws a veil over the fact that able-bodied people also have a bias: Singer outlines a system where there is a limited amount of health care, which can be devoted either to PWD or to able-bodied people. In this situation, able-bodied people are equally as self-interested as PWD. As able-bodied people, they have a vested interest in the allocation of health care, and so, when they decide that it’s only logical and reasonable to devote health care resources to the treatment of able-bodied people, they are not neutral, objective arbiters. After positioning able-bodied people as the best judges of the worth of the lives of people with disabilities, Singer further normativizes the the idea of able-bodied person as objective judge by demanding that PWD prove that their lives are worth living.
Some will object that this discriminates against people with disabilities. If we return to the hypothetical assumption that a year with quadriplegia is valued at only half as much as a year without it, then a treatment that extends the lives of people without disabilities will be seen as providing twice the value of one that extends, for a similar period, the lives of quadriplegics. That clashes with the idea that all human lives are of equal value. The problem, however, does not lie with the concept of the quality-adjusted life-year, but with the judgment that, if faced with 10 years as a quadriplegic, one would prefer a shorter lifespan without a disability. Disability advocates might argue that such judgments, made by people without disabilities, merely reflect the ignorance and prejudice of people without disabilities when they think about people with disabilities. We should, they will very reasonably say, ask quadriplegics themselves to evaluate life with quadriplegia. If we do that, and we find that quadriplegics would not give up even one year of life as a quadriplegic in order to have their disability cured, then the QALY method does not justify giving preference to procedures that extend the lives of people without disabilities over procedures that extend the lives of people with disabilities.
This method of preserving our belief that everyone has an equal right to life is, however, a double-edged sword. If life with quadriplegia is as good as life without it, there is no health benefit to be gained by curing it. That implication, no doubt, would have been vigorously rejected by someone like Christopher Reeve, who, after being paralyzed in an accident, campaigned for more research into ways of overcoming spinal-cord injuries. Disability advocates, it seems, are forced to choose between insisting that extending their lives is just as important as extending the lives of people without disabilities, and seeking public support for research into a cure for their condition.
In this section of the article, the entire discussion of applying QALY to valuing disabled vs. able-bodied lives is nothing less than sheer sophism and poor logic, as the choice that Singer suggests between extending the lives of quadriplegic people and researching a cure for quadriplegia is a false one. Singer is essentially demanding that people with disabilities prove that their lives are worth living. The question is, prove it to whom? To Singer? To an objective judge? That assumes once again that PWD cannot be objective judges of their situations, making normative the idea of able-bodied person as objective and hiding the reality that able-bodied people also have a vested interest in the allocation of health care resources.
Furthermore, Singer’s doing a bait and switch. The premise of his argument is that a PWD has to prove that their life is worth living. If a PWD satisfactorily sucks up to the able-bodied masses and proves that life is worth living, even life as a PWD, then that means that their life is fine and so there’s no need to focus on research that would improve their quality of life (“If life with quadriplegia is as good as life without it, there is no health benefit to be gained by curing it.”). However, if a PWD admits that they require aid to get through the day, whether in the form of anti-depressants, therapists, or crutches, then that means that the life of a PWD is worse than the life of an able-bodied person, and so it would be wasteful and inefficient for society to spend money on research that would improve their quality of life. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The argument is designed to be a no-win scenario that perpetuates and justifies discrimination against PWD.
In reality, the situation is not an either-or choice. It’s possible to spend money and resources both on extending the lives of PWD and on researching ways to improve their quality of life. It’s also extraordinarily stupid to suggest that if a PWD enjoys living, then they’re satisfied with their lives and would be averse to improving it. Human beings, whether disabled or able-bodied, generally seek to improve their lives. The constant search for something more, something better drives our lives, and even the happiest person in the world, if given an opportunity to be even happier, would likely take it. Demanding that PWD be satisfied with their lives as-is and never allowing them to seek improvements seeks to articificially keep PWD behind.
The question of how to make health care both accessible and affordable is difficult, and Singer is correct in that it’s necessary to address the question of how to distribute health care resources. However, his QALY model discards people with disabilities from the start and ensures a system where their opinions are never as valid as those of able-bodied people. It is a system that perpetuates the ablist prejudices already pervasive in our society. In his next piece, perhaps he should actually talk with people with disabilities, both congenital and, for lack of a better word, acquired, rather than hypothesizing about how he, as an able-bodied man, thinks that PWD would think.
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NOTE: I am able-bodied and am trying to work through the social conditioning and able-bodied privilege. Feel free to tell me when I mess up.
Further reading: posts that I’ve found informative and broadening. Reading the words of PWD talking about their own experiences is different from reading about able-bodied people speaking about and for PWD.
amandaw‘s writing about disability and able-bodied privilege particularly her guest posts at Feministe. Her posts on Things That Make My Life Easier (Shower Chair, Symphony Pillow, Heat, Cute Pill Case, TENS) particularly came to mind when I read Singer’s implicit demand that PWD prove that their lives are worth living–and then seek no further improvements in their quality of life. These are things that make amandaw’s life easier and enable her to improve her quality of life and do more, but Singer’s argument would deny her both the medical devices (e.g. the TENS) and the expanded opportunities that they allow her.
Pocochina’s posts on living with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS). It occurs to me that both amandaw’s and Pocochina’s disabilities don’t precisely fit into the most common image of disability, which is mobility (e.g. the disability signifiers wheel chairs, ramps). Typically, it’s also the image that Singer uses, that of an able-bodied person who becomes disabled. I wonder what that means?
The posts on disability at Hoyden About Town. Lauredhel’s “Can I Have A Seat?” was also at the back of my mind when thinking about how Singer assumes that a need for accommodation automatically makes a PWD worth less than an able-bodied person.
Astraea’s post for Blog Against Disablism Day is about being neuroatypical and the positioning of neurotypical as the norm that everyone needs to adhere to.
Diary of a Goldfish hosted Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009 and has the links collected.
Blaming the Victims
SFChron: two articles blaming the victims, yet again. Two articles that attempt to lay the blame at the feet of “Newsom and his supporters.” Look, this is classic victim-blaming. Blaming the victims, the oppressed minority, for their attempts to get their rights recognized, is sheer assholery and if anyone is to blame, it is the people that voted yes, the people that supported Prop. 8, and the people that did nothing. I have problems with Mayor Gavin Newsom, but for his steadfast courage in advocating for GLBTQI people, he has my vote forever. It takes real integrity to stick to your principles even after an entire nation trashes you as a scapegoat for it, and to continue to do so for years afterward. I only wish Senator Feinstein had a modicum of his integrity and courage. And Senator Boxer–where the hell were you on Prop. 8? You’re the more progressive senator and the one that receives fewer irate calls from me, and you did virtually <em>nothing</em> from your position of authority.
Just for once, for once, I would like to see an article that recognizes how difficult it is to stand up for politically unpopular principles and that leaders that do so are passing rare and should be commended for showing leadership. How short is the historical memory? Do these people not realize that by positioning GLBTQI rights as a losing issue they’re perpetuating the “common wisdom” that GLBTQI rights are untouchable disasters that will sink politicians and impeding the progress of the civil rights movement? Do they not realize that every civil rights leader was thought of as an annoying loser at the time of the movement and they are playing the part of the reactionary status quo?
New rule around these parts: BLAME THE OPPRESSORS. NOT THE VICTIMS. This rule extends to marriage equality advocates, rape victims, social justice activists, and, hell, Nader voters and any other group.
Newsom was the primary target for the statewide campaign to ban same-sex marriages, featured prominently in radio and TV advertisements. He’s the one public figure most attached to the proposition, and he’s the politician most likely to lose face now that voters have approved it.
That could be bad news for his possible run for governor in 2010, political analysts said. It may be impossible for him to overcome his association with a losing cause. And perhaps more important, this election may have shown Newsom just how far away he is from winning support from key California voting blocs.
“The Latino and black voters really turned out in this election. They helped get Proposition 8 voted in, and that portends badly for Gavin Newsom if he’s intending to run for governor,” Boushey said. “He’s going to have to appeal to those voters. They’re socially moderate, and they don’t recognize Gavin Newsom as being socially moderate.”
Paradoxically, the mayor is seen as too liberal for much of the state and too conservative compared to the city’s legislators.
Newsom said he hasn’t given any thought to what impact Tuesday’s losses will have on his long-term career.
“It’s trivial and irrelevant,” he said at a news conference Wednesday. “It was never about me, it’s not about politicians. This is about people. This is about real human beings.” [emphasis mine]
Hell, I don’t care if he means it or not when he says, “It’s trivial and irrelevant.” The fact that he stood up and said that it’s not about short-term politics and his own career goals, it’s about equality and about “real human beings” means so much to me.
As for the rest–excuse me, “With a losing cause”? How about the right cause, how about justice and equality? As for repeating the assertion that Latin@ and black voters are responsible for the success of Proposition 8: stop with the goddamned racism. There are far more white voters than Latin@ and black voters combined, and yet, no one is blaming them for the success of Prop. 8. That sort of reprehensible racist analysis is easy but flawed. For one thing, it erases the existence of Latin@ and black GLBTQI people and for another, it reads as yet another instance of implying that white people are morally superior to those backward black and brown people. FUCK YOU. The biggest push behind Prop. 8 was THE MORMON CHURCH AND MANY “CHRISTIAN” CHURCHES, IN CASE YOU’VE FORGOTTEN, YOU INCREDIBLE FUCKHEADS. I am incredibly disgusted that people are forgetting that when the Mormon factor (no, not all Mormons supported Prop. 8, but the institution of the church threw immense volunteer power and money behind it and that’s what I’m referring to) was all over the news prior to the election.
Sacramento Bee, 08/10/13, “Mormons lead the way in financing Yes on Prop. 8 efforts”
NYT, 08/10/27, A Line in the Sand for Same-Sex Marriage Foes
“This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” said Charles W. Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and an eminent evangelical voice, speaking to pastors in a video promoting Proposition 8. “We lose this, we are going to lose in a lot of other ways, including freedom of religion.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby based in Washington, said in an interview, “It’s more important than the presidential election.” …
“He is a symbol of what is ahead,” said the Rev. Jim Garlow, the senior pastor of Skyline Church in the San Diego area, a leading organizer of the “Yes” ranks.
“When you have laws that make homosexual marriage a protected class, then the government has a compelling interest to normalize that and must declare anything in opposition to that hate speech,” said Mr. Garlow, who hosted both the recent simulcast and regular conference calls with as many as 2,000 pastors, to motivate the ranks. …
National religious organizations including the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic fraternal group; Focus on the Family, a ministry based in Colorado Springs that is led by James C. Dobson; and the American Family Association, based in Mississippi and led by the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, have been major contributors to the “Yes on 8” campaign.
And in June, the top three leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent a letter strongly urging members to donate time and money, and Mormons have responded with many millions.
Preachers from other parts of the country have dropped everything and moved to California in recent months. Lou Engle, who leads TheCall, a charismatic prayer ministry in Washington and Kansas City, Mo., with a large following among youth, moved with his seven children to California in September. He is holding large prayer rallies up and down the state, urging people to pray and fast for the 40 days leading up to the election. Some people are giving up solid foods; others are giving up clothes shopping or their favorite television shows.
“We believe there is a spiritual battle in an unseen realm, and that’s why I’ve called for united prayer for divine intervention,” Mr. Engle said. “It’s a defining moment for the definition of marriage in American history.”
LAT, 08/08/20, “Knights of Columbus tip the balance with big anti-gay marriage donation * UPDATED”
LAT, 08/10/26, “Proposition 8 supporters plead for more advertising funds”
“Through the grace of God, one of our most fervent supporters has agreed to make a sacrificial gift to match, dollar for dollar, whatever you and others can donate, up to a total of $1 million. That means that every dollar you give will buy two dollars in advertising time.
“Please help us buy more advertising time now. And if you can make a sacrificial gift yourself, we ask you to prayerfully consider doing so immediately. The institution of marriage which we so dearly love depends on what we do together over the next few days.”
LAT, 08/10/26, “Clergy on both sides of Proposition 8 speak out”
This last article makes it clear that not all religious people of any faith supported Prop. 8. However, many did, and many churches threw their institutional support behind the proposition of hatred, bigotry, and homophobia. The problem, as ever, is not with all religious people but with the homophobic religious people.
Pictorial History
I saw both these pages today:
(Click through for legible images but beware, they’re full size screenshots. And no, that FB post is not mine, although I agree with its sentiments.)
The Facebook page has a No on Prop. 4 ad and a No on Prop. 8 ad in the sidebar. The YouTube page has a Yes on Prop. 8 ad, even though the Yes on 8 ads violate Google’s own advertising content policy.
Tomorrow night, one of those images will be obsolete.
“I Want You To Be Nice To Sex Workers”
Last September, sex worker, pleasure activist, and artist Sadie Lune (NSFW) took first place at Tony Labat’s I Want You project at SFMOMA. As part of the contest, the five winners had their images and slogans turned into posters. I’d actually forgotten about that, but I can’t wait to see them go up all over the city. For one thing, it’s great, free publicity for Yes on Prop. K. For another, Sadie Lune’s poster looks fabulous and combines the personal, the political, and the artistic into a provocative political request:
I love that line, “I want you to stop punishing me because you can’t imagine being me.” I think a lot of the prejudice in society comes from a lack of imagination and an inability or an unwillingness to empathize with other people. That ignorance and lack of understanding results in fear of the unknown and then hostility, trying to keep the unknown as far away as possible. When it comes to sex work, that hostility manifests as criminalization, which drives sex workers underground and tries to lock them into jails, where they’re kept out of sight and thus out of mind. It’s the attitude of, “I can’t imagine being a sex worker and so I’ll punish them for making me think about it and feel uncomfortable–I’ll push them away so I don’t have to think about them–I don’t want to think about the issues and so I’ll just vote no on K to preserve the status quo.” “I want you to stop punishing me because you can’t imagine being me” looks that attitude of hostility, fear, ignorance, or just plain apathy in the face and says, “Stop. Think.” The combination of the image and the slogan says, “Stop. Think. I’m a real person, and your decisions affect me.”
“I want you to be nice to sex workers” is another powerful line, because it raises the question of what exactly it means to be nice to sex workers. How does one go about it? Does it mean being a good customer, respecting a sex worker’s rules and paying them well? Does it mean not harassing them? Does it mean not making dead hooker jokes? Does it mean supporting programs that help sex workers transition out, if they want to? Does it mean giving a damn when someone murders, rapes, or robs a sex worker and gets off with a slap on the wrist? Does it mean advocating for sex workers’ rights? Does it mean realizing that sex workers are no more a monolith than any other group of people? Does it mean not privileging the voices of non-sex workers over the voices of sex workers?
Does it mean listening to sex workers when they say what they want?
Questions, questions. The poster challenges the viewer and raises lots of questions. I love that.
Sadie Lune’s “I Want You,” video by activist, artist, and sex worker Scarlot Harlot (video NSFW):
Transcript:
[Organ grinder music]
[Applause]
I want you. I want you to listen to me, even if you think you’ve heard it before or don’t think I know how to speak for myself. I want you so bad, so bad right now–to respect me, and pay me, and understand that I do not sell myself, because I’m still here, and I’ve always been here.
I want you to know that I have your money. And your coworker’s money, and your father’s money has fed my family, and my rent, and my studies, and my habit, and my poverty, and my extravagance. And you might think that you don’t know me, but it’s more likely you just don’t know that you do.
I might want this job or hate it, but your condemnation and your ignorance and your accusations and your locking me down for my living, and your turning your back on my rape, and your knocking me off because you think no one cares, and your using me as the inhuman butt of your jokes–I want you to stop.
I want you to stop punishing me just because you may not be able to imagine being me.
I want you to be nice to sex workers. I want you, I really do. Please vote yes on Prop. K.
[applause]
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I’m not a sex worker, and so although I can write about Prop. K, I’m trying to navigate the boundaries of privilege such that I don’t appropriate the sex worker activist movement or claim to speak for it. On the one hand, I’m writing about Prop. K the way I would write about any other ballot initiative–opining, navel-gazing, and analyzing–but I realize that in our anti-sex work society, my voice is privileged over the voices of actual sex workers. That’s wrong and I’m trying not to replicate that same power structure when I write, so if I fuck up and put my foot in it, please call me on it and I’ll fix it (I realize that asking for that guidance is in itself an act of privilege, but I’m not sure how else to say that I will inevitably fuck up, despite trying not to, and I welcome being told how I’ve fucked up. Perhaps the writer’s tag, “constructive criticism always welcome” would work?)
Think B4 You Speak: +, +/-
Plus: Following up on the last post, I poked around the ThinkB4YouSpeak site and the Ad Council’s site to see what the ads were like. Overall, the print ads (I haven’t looked at the vids) are well-executed: they’re simple, they’re to the point, and they challenge the viewer in unmistakable terms to consider what it means to use gay, dyke, and faggot as insults.
Read the rest of this entry »
Language Matters
Question: How much do I love this initiative and this article? NYT, 2008/10/08, Stuart Elliott, “A Push to Curb the Casual Use of Ugly Phrases”
FOR the first time since the Advertising Council was founded in 1942, the organization — which directs and coordinates public service campaigns on behalf of Madison Avenue and the media industry — is introducing ads meant to tackle a social issue of concern to gays and lesbians.
The campaign, which is scheduled to be announced by the council in Washington on Wednesday, will seek to discourage bullying and harassment of teenagers who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.The campaign, created pro bono by the New York office of Arnold Worldwide, urges an end to using derogatory language, particularly labeling anything deemed negative or unpleasant as “so gay.” That is underlined by the theme of the campaign: “When you say, ‘That’s so gay,’ do you realize what you say? Knock it off.” …
The campaign is on behalf of a nonprofit organization in New York called the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or Glsen (pronounced glisten), which promotes tolerance among students. Glsen is spending about $2 million to develop and produce the campaign.
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The introduction of the campaign will be accompanied by Glsen’s release of the 2007 edition of an annual report, the National School Climate Survey. The survey will report that 9 in 10 teenagers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender said they were verbally harassed during the last school year. Almost half said they were also physically harassed because of their sexual orientation.
Answer: a lot. The article makes the argument that language matters, that the way you talk affects the way you think and the way you act. It makes that clear not once–
The campaign is “something I dreamed about for 10 years,” said Kevin Jennings, the founder and executive director at Glsen, and has been in active development for two years.“If you follow hateful language, you eventually get hurtful behavior,” he added. “The chain of events begins with kids learning it’s O.K. to disrespect people.”
–but twice:
Lynnette Schweimler, 17, a senior at Thunderridge High School in Highlands Ranch, Colo., said she hoped the campaign would “open people’s eyes a little bit.”Ms. Schweimler said that when she was attacked last year by assailants who singled her out for being a lesbian, “they used a lot of derogatory language.”
The repeating of such language “builds up intolerance,” she said, because “it’s used so often, people don’t understand the meaning of it.”
It makes the point that homophobic language, and by extrapolation, hate speech of any kind, is not innocent, is not “just a joke” or “just words.” Sticks and stones can break my bones and words can do just as much damage.
So the goal was “to show the situation in a new light,” Mr. Staffen said, “to point out this language can be hurtful and let the kids make their own decisions.”“Ultimately, we believe they will make the right decision,” he added.
Two students who were shown the ads to elicit their reactions praised the approach.
“These ads do a great job of making you stop and think,” said David Aponte, 16, a junior at Battlefield High School in Haymarket, Va., who described himself as a “straight ally” of Glsen and other organizations doing similar work. “I think people could connect to them,” he added. [emphasis mine]
The casual normalization of hate through homophobic language matters. It’s not a frivolous, meaningless exercise to avoid using homophobic, sexist, racist, ableist, classist, transphobic, and ageist language, it’s a real commitment to not endorsing hatred through using casual slurs. It’s awesome that Elliott wrote this article and didn’t once invoke the specter of “political correctness run amok;” I had to reread the article because I couldn’t believe it. Instead, he explored how hate speech does real harm to its victims, explaining through quotes and examples that the effect of verbally expressing hate is to endorse and build up homophobia. Even if you casually toss out gay as a synonym for bad, uncool, awful, gross, disgusting, wrong, etc., the effect is not innocuous: it hurts the GLBTQI people that hear it and it makes hatred acceptable to the speaker and the people that hear it.
If you’d like to send an email to the writer, contact him at stuart.elliott AT nytimes.com
Love, Honor, Cherish: Jay and Van on Proposition 8
While poking around YouTube’s suggestions of clips related to No on Prop. 8′s ad, I found one by Love Honor Cherish, an LA-based grassroots organization campaigning against Prop. 8. A quick skim of their YouTube homepage showed that their ads feature straight couples, gay couples, relatives, politicians, young people, old people, people of various ethnic backgrounds, and an ad in Spanish. No lesbian couples yet, though. I like their approach, which is generally direct and states that yes, GLBTQI are human beings and therefore deserving of rights, rather than that GLBTQI are humans, too, won’t you please give us our rights? The difference between the two approaches is that one positions GLBTQI people as human beings without positioning GLBTQI people or heterosexual people as the norm, and the other positions heterosexual people as the norm and seeks to slip GLBTQI people into that category as an addition.
I like this ad because it features gay men speaking for themselves; it features an interracial couple; it features two POC. The gay men speaking for themselves aspect is important to me because it states that GLBTQI people deserve these rights simply by virtue of being human and they don’t need a heterosexual messenger to appeal to society at large on their behalf. There’s dignity in that approach and the underlying message is that GLBTQI people are here and we will not disappear. We will not be silenced.
The ad addresses the question, “Aren’t domestic partnerships enough?” and acknowledges the emotional and cultural trappings of marriage. Domestic partnerships are not the same as marriage in terms of the legal benefits; although they might be the same on paper in terms of state-granted rights in California, in their execution, they are often not. Many laws, rules, and regulations say “spouse” rather than “domestic partner,” and many federal rights and benefits do not necessarily apply to domestic partners. Leaving all that aside, however, there’s the simple reality that the modern incarnation of marriage carries certain social and emotional connotations that domestic partnerships and civil unions do not. It’s something emotional and therefore difficult to explain, but Jay makes the point quite effectively: “I couldn’t tell you how I asked him, “If you want to be a domestic partner?” But believe me, I can tell you how I proposed to him.”
No on Prop. 8: Baby Steps, Baby Steps
Via Petulant’s round up of news and links, I saw No on Prop 8′s ad featuring the Thorons:
I have mixed feelings about the ad, namely frustration at its limitations, understanding for the reasoning behind its limitations, and frustration that it had to take that approach. It features a reassuringly straight, white couple dressed in gender-normed colors, and the literal blue collar also places Mr. Thoron as a dependable worker – not poor and unreliable, not rich and out of touch (I don’t hold either class stereotype, but that’s my interpretation of the motivation behind the blue collar touch). The Thorons are portrayed as Regular People, where regular signifies straight, white, and economically secure. Where does that leave GLBTQI people who are in fact GLBTQI, POC, and of all different classes? I understand that the ad would protect their right to marry, too, but the framing of the message bothers me.
It annoys me that the issue is framed as “GLBTQI people are your friends and family. Think about the children!” It annoys me that the issue of marriage equality is portrayed by using straight spokespeople as a front, because presumably having the icky queers speak for themselves would be too frightening and radical and scare voters off. The line, “My wife and I never treated our children differently, we never loved them any differently,” reinforced the “GLBTQI people are not FREAKS, they are JUST LIKE STRAIGHT-ER, NORMAL-PEOPLE, really, we swear,” impression for me. The whole “GLBTQI people are people, too!” message would be much more palatable to me if it were given by actual GLBTQI people speaking for themselves rather than by heterosexual proxies asking the viewer to protect their childrens’ rights.
On the other hand, the ad comes off as a lot less radical and a lot more level-headed than both the virulent Yes on 8 campaigners and the way the Yes on 8 campaign is portraying GLBTQI people. I suppose that it’s meant to appeal to the undecided or wavering voters, the ones that aren’t completely comfortable with GLBTQI people or don’t understand why domestic partnership isn’t good enough, etc., and then there is an advantage in presenting an ad that features unthreateningly straight, white proxies rather than actual GLBTQI people that are in love and married.
In the end, I guess the ad is inherently radical to some extent in that it does treat GLBTQI people as normal, i.e. people, too. Rocking the boat with baby steps. But do baby steps have to include propping up gender norms and the idea of white as the default? It’ll be interesting to see if No on Prop. 8′s other ads will feature same-sex couples diverse in race, age, class, and disabilities, particularly considering how diverse California is.
Bias, Media, and McCain 3
Some more headlines on McCain – but these actually express reality-based opinions!
WSJ, 08/09/15, “Obama Questions McCain’s ‘Honor’” – McCain scrapped whatever honor he once had ages ago, when he reversed his stance on virtually every position he once held, including lobbyists, warrantless wiretapping, and torture.
U.S. News & World Report, 08/09/15, “John McCain’s Journey From Maverick to Liar”
Boston Globe, 08/09/15, “Obama ad says McCain campaign one of dishonor”
The first and second headline unabashedly challenge the idea of McCain as an honorable person (which is tied to his personal story as a POW) and a maverick. By putting ‘Honor’ within quotes, the WSJ headline questions whether that honor is real – if the headline had been “Obama Questions McCain’s Honor,” the nuance would have been that Obama is unfairly questioning McCain’s honor. At the very least, not putting honor in quotes would have taken for granted that McCain’s honor is real. The quotes suggest that although McCain claims he has honor, the WSJ, as represented by its headline writer, disagrees or is skeptical. Compare that headline with the Boston Globe’s “Obama ad says McCain campaign one of dishonor,” which essentially says the same thing but in different words. “Says…dishonor” seems like the Obama campaign is just putting an ad out there saying the McCain campaign is dishonorable or making an accusation – the Boston Globe headline doesn’t take a position one way or the other on the veracity of the Obama campaign’s claims. “Questions…’honor,’” on the other hand, uses a more active verb and suggests that there’s little true honor left to question.
As for the second headline, it neatly acknowledges the maverick story and then points out that although it might once have been true, it no longer is (McCain voted with Bush 95% of the time in 2007). Not only that, it casts McCain as a liar now.
The Subtle Elision of Girls
In yesterday’s NYT, Kim Severson had an article, The Hockey Way of Life. It’s about the Palins’ eldest kid and their future son-in-law and how they played a lot of hockey, essentially. All fine and dandy, except that the summary blurb on the main page read
Hockey often keeps kids in Alaska on the straight and narrow, much the way football and basketball do in other places.
Football, basketball, and hockey keep “kids” on the straight and narrow, eh? I have a thing for rhetoric and precise speech, so I clicked through to see if the article was actually about “kids,” which come in more than one gender, or if “kids” was serving as shorthand for “boys.” Basketball and hockey can have both girls’ and boys’ teams, but I’ve never seen a girls’ football team, although there was always one or two girls on the team in my high school. Below the cut is a look at the article and how often it talks about boys while purportedly being an article on kids and children and how sports keep them “on the straight and narrow.”
Sen. Obama: Racism and the Race Card
I saw this article a few weeks ago in the FT but haven’t had time to sit down and write about it yet. FT, Gideon Rachman, “Why Obama Looks Vulnerable” (08/08/25) is a crappy op-ed that can be summed up thusly: Obama’s black/elitist/exotic/New England liberal elitist/BLACK BLACK BLACK and that makes me uncomfortable! So he’s going to lose.
The header graphic is what really pisses me off, though:
The race card. Hardy har har. The thesis of the cartoon is that using the “race card” is going to crush Obama and that there is such a thing as a “race card” and it’s used by people of color (POC).
That’s bullshit. The idea of a race card (or gender card or any other card) is that when POC, women, or any group that differs from the rich, white, straight, able-bodied, cisgendered male form in any way brings up their race, gender identity, sexuality, disabilities, they’re engaging in special pleading and making an unwarranted fuss about nothing, rather than raising legitimate concerns about the very real discrimination and prejudices they face. The idea of the race card denies that persons of color are systematically and constantly discriminated against and is in itself prejudiced, assuming that white is the norm. Not only does it assume that different experiences don’t exist, it also seeks to silence and shut down discussions about them.
That deck of cards ought to be labeled racism and it ought to be looming over McCain and the GOP, because they’re the ones engaging in racist tactics. May it blow up in their faces.
Bias, Media, and McCain 2
In the comments to my last post on McCain and the media (here), hlynn said, “Sadly, there could be a 1000 part series on how many misleading headline the biased media has produced about McCaine. [sic]“
In light of that, here are some recent headlines (courtesy of Google Alerts):
Telegraph, Simon Heffer, 08/09/05: “John McCain offered Republicans vision rooted in reality, not Barack Obama’s empty promises“
My take:
- John McCain offered Republicans vision rooted in neoconservative jingoism, not Barack Obama’s empty promises
- John McCain offered Republicans speech written for 2000, not current election
- John McCain offered Republicans vision rooted in misinformation and lies about Iraq
Here’s an excerpt from the article, which fawns all over McCain:
I very nearly didn’t make it to the hall for the McCain speech because riot police; National Guardsmen and a regiment of various other law enforcers had barricaded several approach roads in a stand-off with anti-war protestors.
There were hundreds of the former, and a raggle-taggle army of a few dozen of the latter. The security presence was a hysterical over-reaction. The sight of unflinching men in visors armed with staves and guns was exceeded only by some menacing National Guardsmen pointing cannons that fire rubber bullets straight into a knot of about 20 protestors.
They provided about as much of a threat to US democracy as Batman. When one sees these obscenely heavy-handed tactics at close quarters, one understands why America made the job it did of it in Iraq.
Does the “they” in that last paragraph refer to the protestors or to the security enforcers? Although the meaning of the sentence changes, the ultimate effect, which is that the Republican leadership are destroying democracy, remains the same.
U.S. News & World Report, 08/09/05: “Media Generally Positive On McCain Speech“
To be fair, the article is more about media coverage of McCain’s speech than coverage of the speech itself, and “Media Generally Positive” is a good description of that. However, the headline frames that positivity as either approval or a neutral evaluation, when it isn’t (see the last McCain post for discussions of headlines and how their framing matters).
My take:
- Media Unduly Positive on McCain Speech
- Media Earns Its Title as “McCain’s Base” (Wolfrum, Shakesville)
- Media Unquestioningly Praises McCain’s Speech; Fails to Fact-Check Content
For an example of an headline that effectively portrays McCain’s double talk and the falseness of his “maverick” image, check out the Times of India, 08/09/05: “McCain casts himself as peacemaker amid continued war-talk.” The article itself does a good job of covering all of McCain’s claims–portrays himself as against the D.C. establishment, calls for change–and then remarkably, exposes those claims for the falsehoods they are.
While going through a laundry list of domestic issues he’d address if he became President – simpler and lesser taxes, education reform, energy independence etc – McCain’s remarks also suggested that the world would not see serenity anytime soon despite his peace talk.
While Palin served up the domestic red meat for a mostly white audience last night, McCain replayed all the misplaced machismo of the Bush era. …
“We have dealt a serious blow to al Qaeda in recent years. But they are not defeated, and they’ll strike us again if they can,” McCain said, without elaborating on the area the administration now says is the chief source of terrorism, before turning to his broader concerns, Iraq and Iran. “We face many threats in this dangerous world, but I’m not afraid of them. I’m prepared for them.”
Bragging about his military background and experience – four generations of McCains have served in the military – McCain said, ”I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don’t.” …
But much of his address was devoted to rousing Americans for a domestic scrap against the establishment, of which he has been a part for quarter century (he used the word fight or fighting some 25 times in his speech) albeit as a frequent dissenter. [emphasis mine]
Well played, Chidanand Rajghatta and Times of India.
Obama & Gov. Palin: Sexism and Racism
I tried to write a thoughtful, eloquent post on Anne Applebaum’s op-ed in the Washington Post, “Class of ’64,” but it was not in the cards. So here’s the list version:
1. Sexist: the premise of the article is that Michelle Obama and Governor Sarah Palin are comparable because (a) they were both born in 1964 (Not coincidentally, Applebaum was also born in 1964, which makes this op-ed more than a little bit narcissistic, a la Erich Segal’s The Class.); (b) they’re both women; (c) they’re both involved in politics.
Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama, two of the stars of this year’s political conventions, do have a few important things in common.
For one, both were born in 1964 …
More important — for the purposes of this otherwise unlikely comparison between two women who probably don’t agree on anything at all — both of them belong to the first post-feminist generation.
So, they’re women of the same age and that’s enough to override the huge differences between them, the first being that Palin is an actual political candidate and Obama, although she is campaigning for her spouse, is not. Then there are the differences in ethnicity, education, careers, backgrounds, and, oh, political positions. Apparently, it’s irrelevant that more relevant and more meaningful comparisons actually do exist, such as Geraldine Ferraro, the first female VP candidate on a major party ticket, or Rosa Clemente, the current VP candidate for the Green party. However, writing about Ferraro or Clemente would mean focusing on Palin as a politician and admitting that there is substance behind the beauty queen history and gender identity that Applebaum seems intent on. The column reinforces the idea that no matter what a female politician accomplishes, she’ll be seen as part of the monolithic idea of Woman first and an unique individual second, if at all (see this xkcd cartoon for an illustration).
The op-ed relies on the same sexist assumptions as the women-voters-who-voted-for-Clinton-will-vote-for-VP-Palin-because-they’re-all-women idea: all women are similar and interchangeable because they’re women, and their gender is similarity enough to override their distinguishing characteristics as individuals. What other reason is there to compare Michelle Obama, spouse of Democratic presidential candidate Senator Obama, and Governor Sarah Palin, Republican vice-presidential candidate? The compare/contrast formula assumes that either there’s a reasonable basis for comparing them to begin with or there’s some meaningful insight to be gained from the discussion.
