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weiszklee · 1 year ago

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Thanks for the thorough response, this is rather helpful but some of it is still quite puzzling.

However, I don't think that this: We can't exactly take out our internal experiences and compare them side-by-side, can we? Even if someone says the exact same things about their internal sense of gender as you do, you still can't really be sure that you're both talking about the same thing. is sufficient basis for gender abolition, because this is true of literally everything. Language and symbolic systems are collapsing infinite complexity into finite comprehensibility for everything. We haven't given up on the concept of "colours" just because it's impossible to truly comprehend another person's experience of "red".

I wasn't arguing for gender abolition yet in this passage, I was arguing against employing internal feelings as a basis for a positive definition of genders, which was what this internal sense of gender was brought up for earlier in this post. If a positive definition of genders is not your intention, then ... why focus on an internal sense of gender at all? I'll get back to this, but first I have to nerd out a bit first about metaphysics again:

The comparison to colours is flawed because colours have an objective basis. With modern technology, we can even prove to a colourblind person that red and green really are different colours. Could you prove to a hypothetical genderblind person that there really is a difference between men and women?

More importantly though, being able to refer to different colours is useful in everyday life, and we don't have systems of control and oppression built around them. Let's say we bring gender to the same status. We succeed in all the things you and me agree on, we get rid of gender hierarchies, we introduce a bunch new genders, we break down the barriers between them so people can freely choose, we build a world where you truly cannot tell anyone's gender based on their body, their behaviour, their interests, and so on, there are no rules around gender, no restrictive gender roles. In this world, what use do the words "man" and "woman" (and all the other we have introduced) serve? What's left? What are the differences? I don't think there's anything left worth talking about which these words could help with. I'd be curious how you would argue that there is something left without necessarily implying a positive definition.

I agree that being born and raised in different times and places creates different gender subjectivities in people

So why not subjectivities without gender?

I also believe that once someone has a strong gender subjectivity, it cannot be meaningfully changed by outside forces.

Well, change is certainly possible, people's subjectivities change all the time, but probably not intentionally directed change like conversion therapy aims at, no.

Let's say that he doesn't tick the big M -- he ticks "choose not to disclose" or "other" or "F" instead -- and he only uses gender neutral toilets. Hell, let's say that he inhabits the gender roles of women perfectly, maybe even transitions so that he has a body that's gendered as a woman's. And then he still tells you that he's a man, when asked directly. [...] I do actually think that someone who identifies as a man could continue to identify as a man while fully occupying female gender roles

Okay now we're getting somewhere interesting. I mean, I would fully support him in everything he does, if only for the ultimate erosion of any meaning behind the word "man". I don't understand why he would do all that, it seems to me like a lot of effort ... But I don't have to understand his motives to be in favour of his freedom to do so.

I had a whole thing written about how he easily fits into my broader worldview, but I'm actually first curious how he fits in yours. Please, when telling us he is a man, could he instead have given us the same information but without using the word "man"?

I agree with you that I want a world where gender privilege is eradicated, but I think it's easy to extend "stop demanding different treatment based on gender" out to things like "why are you upset that I'm calling you 'she'? That's asking me to treat you differently based on your gender". Now, this may seem like I'm being unfair or strawmanning you, but I genuinely see it as the end point of your argument, because your position rests on the argument that all differences between gender will be eradicated.

I guess if one were to truly call everyone "she" without exception, that could be justifyable, but realistically it's just gonna piss off half the population for no discernable benefit, so why bother? Using people's preferred pronouns is just basic courtesy, it doesn't have to be about acknowledging gender even, after all he/him-lesbians exist and we use she/her for drag queens and so on.

You have to understand that ideology-based conversion practises hang over this issue like a sword of Damocles, to me. There's an entire vein of it based around the idea that trans men and transmascs need to be converted into women (or at least, not men), and part of the way they do it is by framing your feelings that you're a man as sexist -- because you were raised in a sexist society, your ideas of gender are inevitably going to be influenced by it, and "not wanting to be treated like a woman" is just internalised misogyny you need to overcome.

Yes, that is a real problem, and I hope my probing questions aren't too reminiscent of that. For what it's worth, someone's identity being informed by the society around them is not a grave issue, it's to be expected, that's how identity works, and it's true of women's identities as well. This does not make the identities themselves sexist, and it does not make fighting against these identities directly a good strategy for challenging sexism in society. The way I see it, gender identities really are just an epiphenomenon of gender as a system of social control. That identities are the source of the system of control, is a typical sexist myth, and accepting this myth is one of the biggest failings of radical feminism.

Finally. to loop it back to the original question of toxic masculinity in teens, the fact that we're talking about it taking effect "generations from now" illustrates why I think this isn't a useful approach for the teens who are developing toxic masculinity right now. We've taken our eye off the ball!

Maybe ... I do always get a bit hung up when the topic comes to the internal sense of gender. My own relation to gender is a bit fraught, it is shaped in no small part by my experience of perpetually failing societal expectations, so I really try to resist the establishment of a new expectation of feeling a strong connection to manhood internally, which I would fail again, and many other men probably too.

Toxic masculinity is I think in no small part a result of men fearing to fail at masculinity as well. That's why I'm skeptical of any approach that does not question masculinity itself. New, different masculinity is not the answer, acceptance irrespective of masculinity is. Teenagers will gravitate towards places that accept them as they are and then adopt the rules of those places. If you want them to adopt progressive instead of regressive rules, you have to make progressive spaces inviting to them as they are, and I think they are too diverse for "masculinity" to be of much use for that. Also, cautioning people against pinning their identity too much to concepts like masculinity is just good, pragmatic advice, I think. One's masculinity will always be under scrutiny, always be questioned, whether cis or trans, gay or straight. Better to learn to define oneself via other things and to then claim manhood as an act of audacity.

I never really understood the call for non-toxic masculinity. Shouldn't the goal be to build a world in which people are just not judged along the axis of masculinity at all? And to help men navigate such a world by constructing a sense of self which rests on things other than masculinity? How is a new and different masculinity gonna help with that?

Also, when people list traits of non-toxic masculinity, they're usually just traits of like ... a good person. Why even keep calling it masculinity when it's so far removed from traditional masculinity that you would advice women to adopt 100% the same traits? Teenagers aren't stupid, they'll see right through it. Might as well be honest.

Emulating traditional masculinity as Tate does is ridiculous and pathetic, and that's about all teenage boys need to understand about it.

On the one hand I think 'masculinity doesn't need to be defined around misogyny and you are not less of a man if you're less misogynistic and violent' is often a first stepping stone towards 'masculinity doesn't need to be defined at all' and an easier step to take for people still figuring out who they are and how that relates to their gender and the social expectations around their gender.

On the other hand, I think neither idea is going to be remotely appealing to most teenage boys because they exist within a group context that violently polices adherence to hegemonic masculinity and most of them would rather die than face social rejection.

Unless you can change the social context teenage boys exist in, you're going to be fighting an uphill struggle against guys like Tate who confirm hegemonic masculinity.

So, changing society as a whole is mostly where it's at.

#additions #long post

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fatliberation · 3 years ago

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I’m Abandoning Body Positivity and Here’s Why

In short: it’s fatphobic.

“A rallying cry for a shift in societal norms has now become the skinny girl’s reassurance that she isn’t really fat. Fatness, through this lens of ‘body positivity’, remains the worst thing a person can be.” (Kayleigh Donaldson)

• • •

I have always had a lot of conflicting opinions about the body positivity movement, but it’s much more widely known (and accepted, go figure) than the fat liberation movement, so I often used the two terms interchangeably in conversation about anti-fatness. But the longer I’ve been following the body positivity movement, the more I’ve realized how much it has strayed from its fat lib origins. It has been hijacked; deluded to center thin, able, white, socially acceptable bodies.

Bopo’s origins are undoubtedly grounded in fat liberation. The fat activists of the 1960s paved the way for the shred of size acceptance we see in media today, initially protesting the discrimination and lack of access to equal opportunities for fat people specifically. This early movement highlighted the abuse, mental health struggles, malpractice in the medical field, and called for equal pay, equal access, equal respect, an end to fatphobic structures and ideas. It saddens me that it hasn’t made much progress in those regards.

Today, the #bopo movement encapsulates more the idea of loving your own body versus ensuring that individuals regardless of their weight and appearance are given equal opportunities in the workplace, schools, fashion and media. Somehow those demands never made it outside of the ‘taboo’ category, and privileged people would much more readily accept the warm and fuzzy, sugar-coated message of “love yourself!” But as @yrfatfriend once said, this idea reduces fat people’s struggles to a problem of mindset, rather than a product of external oppressors that need to be abolished in order for fat people to live freely.

That generalized statement, “love yourself,” is how a movement started by fat people for the rights of fat people was diluted so much, it now serves a thin model on Instagram posting about how she has a tummy roll and cellulite on her thighs - then getting praised for loving her body despite *gasp!* its minor resemblance to a fat body.

Look. Pretty much everyone has insecurities about their bodies, especially those of us who belong to marginalized groups. If you don’t have body issues, you’re a privileged miracle, but our beauty-obsessed society has conditioned us to want to look a certain way, and if we have any features that the western beauty standard considers as “flaws,” yeah! We feel bad about it! So it’s not surprising that people who feel bad about themselves would want to hop on a movement that says ‘hey, you’re beautiful as you are!’ That’s a message everyone would like to hear. Any person who has once thought of themselves as less than beautiful now feels that this movement is theirs. And everyone has insecurities, so everyone feels entitled to the safe space. And when a space made for a minority includes the majority, the cycle happens again and the majority oppresses the minority. What I’m trying to explain here is that thin people now feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces.

Regardless of how badly thin people feel about their bodies, they still experience thin privilege. They can sit down in a theater or an airplane without even thinking about it, they can eat in front of others without judgement, they can go the doctor with a problem and actually have it fixed right away, they can find cute clothes in their size with ease, they do not suffer from assumptions of laziness/failure based on stereotype, they see their body type represented everywhere in media, the list goes on and on. They do not face discrimination based off of the size of their body.

Yet diet culture and fatphobia affects everyone, and of course thin people do still feel bad about the little fat they have on their bodies. But the failure to examine WHY they feel bad about it, is what perpetuates fatphobia within the bopo movement. They’re labeled “brave” for showing a pinch of chub, yet fail to address what makes it so acceptably daring, and how damaging it is to people who are shamed for living in fat bodies. Much like the rest of society, thin body positivity is still driven by the fear of fat, and does nothing to dismantle fatphobia within structures or within themselves.

Evette Dionne sums it up perfectly in her article, “The Fragility of Body Positivity: How a Radical Movement Lost Its Way.”

“The body-positive media economy centers these affirming, empowering, let-me-pinch-a-fat-roll-to-show-how-much-I-love-myself stories while failing to actually challenge institutions to stop discriminating against fat people. More importantly, most of those stories center thin, white, cisgender, heterosexual women who have co-opted the movement to build their brands. Rutter has labeled this erasure ‘Socially Acceptable Body Positivity.’

“On social media, it actually gets worse for fat bodies: We’re not just being erased from body positivity, fat women are being actively vilified. Health has become the stick with which to beat fat people with [sic], and the benchmark for whether body positivity should include someone” (Dionne).

Ah, yes. The medicalization of fat bodies, and the moralization of health. I’ve ranted about this before. Countless comments on posts of big women that say stuff like “I’m all for body positivity, but this is just unhealthy and it shouldn’t be celebrated.” I’ve heard writer/activist Aubrey Gordon once say that body positivity has become something like a shield for anti-fatness. It’s anti-fatness that has been repackaged as empowerment. It’s a striking double-standard. Fat people are told to be comfortable in their bodies (as if that’s what’s going to fix things) but in turn are punished when they’re okay with being fat. Make it make sense.

Since thin people feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces, and they get to hide behind “health” when they are picking and choosing who can and cannot be body positive, they base it off of who looks the most socially acceptable. And I’m sure they aren’t consciously picking and choosing, it comes from implicit bias. But the socially acceptable bodies they center are small to medium fat, with an hourglass shape. They have shaped a new beauty standard specifically FOR FAT PEOPLE. (Have you ever seen a plus sized model with neck fat?? I’m genuinely asking because I have yet to find one!) The bopo movement works to exclude and silence people who are on the largest end of the weight spectrum.

Speaking of exclusion, let’s talk about fashion for a minute.

For some reason, (COUGH COUGH CAPITALISM) body positivity is largely centered around fashion. And surprise surprise, it’s still not inclusive to fat people. Fashion companies get a pat on the back for expanding their sizing two sizes up from what they previously offered, when they are still leaving out larger fat people completely. In general, clothing companies charge more for clothes with more fabric, so people who need the largest sizes are left high and dry. It’s next to impossible to find affordable clothes that also look nice. Fashion piggybacks on the bopo movement as a marketing tactic, and exploits the very bodies it claims to be serving. (Need I mention the time Urban Outfitters used a "curvy” model to sell a size it doesn’t even carry?)

The movement also works to exclude and silence fat Black activists.

In her article, “The Body Positivity Movement Both Takes From and Erases Fat Black Women” Donyae Coles explains how both white people and thin celebrities such as Jameela Jamil profit from the movement that Black women built.

“Since long before blogging was a thing, fat Black women have been vocal about body acceptance, with women like Sharon Quinn and Marie Denee, or the work of Sonya Renee Taylor with The Body Is Not An Apology. We’ve been out here, and we’re still here, but the overwhelming face of the movement is white and thin because the mainstream still craves it, and white and thin people have no problem with profiting off the work of fat, non-white bodies.”

“There is a persistent belief that when thin and/or white people enter the body positive realm and begin to repeat the messages that Black women have been saying for years in some cases, when they imitate the labor that Black women have already put in that we should be thankful that they are “boosting” our message. This completely ignores the fact that in doing so they are profiting off of that labor. They are gaining the notoriety, the mark of an expert in something they learned from an ignored Black woman” (Coles).

My next essay will go into detail about this and illuminate key figures who paved the way for body acceptance in communities of color.

The true purpose of this movement has gotten completely lost. So where the fuck do we go from here?

We break up with it, and run back to the faithful ex our parents disapproved of. We go back to the roots of the fat liberation movement, carved out for us by the fat feminists, the queer fat activists, the fat Black community, and the allies it began with. Everything they have preached since the 1960s and 70s is one hundred percent applicable today. We get educated. We examine diet culture through a capitalist lens. We tackle thin, white-supremacist systems and weight based discrimination, as well as internalized bias. We challenge our healthcare workers to unlearn their bias, treat, and support fat patients accordingly. We make our homes and spaces accessible and welcoming to people of any size, or any (dis)ability. “We must first protect and uplift people in marginalized bodies, only then can we mandate self-love” (Gordon).

Think about it. In the face of discrimination, mistreatment, and emotional abuse, we as a society are telling fat people to love their bodies, when we should be putting our energy toward removing those fatphobic ideas and structures so that fat people can live in a world that doesn’t require them to feel bad about their bodies. It’s like hitting someone with a rock and telling them not to bruise!

While learning to love and care for the body that you’re in is important, I think that body positivity also fails in teaching that because it puts even more emphasis on beauty. Instead of saying, “you don’t have to be ‘beautiful’ to be loved and appreciated,” its main lesson is that “all bodies are beautiful.” We live in a society obsessed with appearance, and it is irresponsible to ignore the hierarchy of beauty standards that exist in every space. Although it should be relative, “beautiful” has been given a meaning. And that meaning is thin, abled, symmetric, and eurocentric.

Beauty and ugliness are irrelevant, made-up constructs. People will always be drawn to you no matter what, so you deserve to exist in your body without struggling to conform to an impossible and bigoted standard. Love and accept your body for YOURSELF AND NO ONE ELSE, because you do not exist to please the eyes of other people. That’s what I wish we were teaching instead. Radical self acceptance!

As of today, the ultimate message of the body positivity movement is: Love your body “despite its imperfections.” Or people with “perfect and imperfect bodies both deserve love.” As long as we are upholding the notion that there IS a perfect body that looks a certain way, and every body that falls outside of that category is imperfect, we are upholding white supremacy, eugenics, anti-fatness, and ableism.

#body positivity #bopo #body posi #body positive #body acceptance #fat acceptance #fat activism #fat liberation #anti fatness #anti blackness #anti fat bias #lookism #beauty standards #self acceptance

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gwynsplainer · 3 years ago

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On The Grinning Man and the De-Politicization of L'Homme Qui Rit (a Spontaneous Essay)

Since I watched The Grinning Man I’ve been meaning to write a post comparing it to The Man Who Laughs but I have a lot of opinions and analysis I wanted to do so I have been putting it off for ages. So here goes! If I were to make a post where I explain everything the musical changes it would definitely go over the word limit, so I’ll mostly stick to the thematic. Let me know if that’s a post you’d like to see, though!

Ultimately, The Grinning Man isn’t really an adaptation of the Man Who Laughs. It keeps some of the major plot beats (a disfigured young man with a mysterious past raised by a man and his wolf to perform to make a living alongside the blind girl he rescued from the snow, restored to his aristocratic past by chance after their show is seen by Lord David and Duchess Josiana, and the interference of the scheming Barkilphedro…. well, that’s just about it). The problem I had with the show, however, wasn’t the plot points not syncing up, it was the thematic inconsistency with the book. By replacing the book’s antagonistic act—the existence of a privileged ruling class—with the actions of one or two individuals from the lower class, transforming the societal tragedy into a revenge plot, and reducing the pain of dehumanization and abuse to the pain of a physical wound, The Grinning Man is a sanitized, thematically weak failure to adapt The Man Who Laughs.

I think the main change is related to the reason I posit the book never made it in the English-speaking world. The musical was made in England, the setting of the book which was so critical of its monarchy, it’s aristocracy, and the failings of its society in ways that really haven’t been remedied so far. It might be a bit of a jump to assume this is connected, but I have evidence. They refer to it as a place somewhat like our own, but change King James to King Clarence, and Queen Anne to Angelica. Obviously, the events of the book are fictional, and it was a weird move for Hugo to implicate real historical figures as responsible for the torture of a child, but it clearly served a purpose in his political criticism that the creative team made a choice to erase. They didn’t just change the names, though, they replaced the responsibility completely. In the book, Gwynplaine’s disfigurement—I will be referring to him as Gwynplaine because I think the musical calling him Grinpayne was an incredibly stupid and cruel choice—was done to him very deliberately, with malice aforethought, at the order of the king. The king represents the oppression of the privileged, and having the fault be all Barkilphédro loses a lot thematically. The antagonism of the rich is replaced by the cruelty of an upwardly mobile poor man (Barkilphédro), and the complicity of another poor man.

The other “villain” of the original story is the way that Gwynplaine is treated. I think for 1869, this was a very ahead-of-its-time approach to disability, which almost resembles the contemporary understanding of the Social Model of disability. (Sidenote: I can’t argue on Déa’s behalf. Hugo really dropped the ball with her. I’m going to take a moment to shout out the musical for the strength and agency they gave Déa.) The way the public treats Gwynplaine was kind of absent from the show. I thought it was a very interesting and potentially good choice to have the audience enter the role of Gwynplaine’s audience (the first they see of him is onstage, performing as the Grinning Man) rather than the role of the reader (where we first see him as a child, fleeing a storm). If done right, this could have explored the story’s theme of our tendency to place our empathy on hold in order to be distracted and feel good, eventually returning to critique the audience’s complicity in Gwynplaine’s treatment. However, since Grinpayne’s suffering is primarily based in the angst caused by his missing past and the physical pain of his wound (long-healed into a network of scars in the book) [a quick side-note: I think it was refreshing to see chronic pain appear in media, you almost never see that, but I wish it wasn’t in place of the depth of the original story], the audience does not have to confront their role in his pain. They hardly play one. Instead, it is Barkilphédro, the singular villain, who is responsible for Grinpayne’s suffering. Absolving the audience and the systems of power which put us comfortably in our seats to watch the show of pain and misery by relegating responsibility to one character, the audience gets to go home feeling good.

If you want to stretch, the villain of the Grinning Man could be two people and not one. It doesn’t really matter, since it still comes back to individual fault, not even the individual fault of a person of high status, but one or two poor people. Musical!Ursus is an infinitely shittier person than his literary counterpart. In the book, Gwynplaine is still forced to perform spectacles that show off his appearance, but they’re a lot less personal and a lot less retraumatizing. In the musical, they randomly decided that not only would the role of the rich in the suffering of the poor be minimized, but also it would be poor people that hurt Grinpayne the most. Musical!Ursus idly allows a boy to be mutilated and then takes him in and forces him to perform a sanitized version of his own trauma while trying to convince him that he just needs to move on. In the book, he is much kinder. Their show, Chaos Vanquished, also allows him to show off as an acrobat and a singer, along with Déa, whose blindness isn’t exploited for the show at all. He performs because he needs to for them all to survive. He lives a complex life like real people do, of misery and joy. He’s not obsessed with “descanting on his own deformity” (dark shoutout to William Shakespeare for that little…infuriating line from Richard III), but rather thoughtfully aware of what it means. He deeply feels the reality of how he is seen and treated. Gwynplaine understands that he was hurt by the people who discarded him for looking different and for being poor, and he fucking goes off about it in the Parliament Confrontation scene (more to come on this). It is not a lesson he has to learn but a lesson he has to teach.

Grinpayne, on the other hand, spends his days in agony over his inability to recall who disfigured him, and his burning need to seek revenge. To me, this feels more than a little reminiscent of the trope of the Search for a Cure which is so pervasive in media portrayals of disability, in which disabled characters are able to think of nothing but how terribly wrong their lives went upon becoming disabled and plan out how they might rectify this. Grinpayne wants to avenge his mutilation. Gwynplaine wants to fix society. Sure, he decides to take the high road and not do this, and his learning is a valuable part of the musical’s story, but I think there’s something so awesome about how the book shows a disabled man who understands his life better than any abled mentor-philosophers who try to tell him how to feel. Nor is Gwynplaine fixed by Déa or vice versa, they merely find solace and strength in each other’s company and solidarity. The musical uses a lot of language about love making their bodies whole which feels off-base to me.

I must also note how deeply subversive the book was for making him actually happy: despite the pain he feels, he is able to enjoy his life in the company and solidarity he finds with Déa and takes pride in his ability to provide for her. The assumption that he should want to change his lot in life is not only directly addressed, but also stated outright as a failure of the audience: “You may think that had the offer been made to him to remove his deformity he would have grasped at it. Yet he would have refused it emphatically…Without his rictus… Déa would perhaps not have had bread every day”

He has a found family that he loves and that loves him. I thought having him come from a loving ~Noble~ family that meant more to him than Ursus did rather than having Ursus, a poor old man, be the most he had of a family in all his memory and having Déa end up being Ursus’ biological daughter really undercut the found family aspect of the book in a disappointing way.

Most important to me was the fundamental change that came from the removal of the Parliament Confrontation scene, on both the themes of the show and the character of Gwynplaine. When Gwyn’s heritage is revealed and his peerage is restored to him, he gets the opportunity to confront society’s problems in the House of Parliament. When Gwynplaine arrives in the House of Parliament, the Peers of England are voting on what inordinate sum to allow as income to the husband of the Queen. The Peers expect any patriotic member of their ranks to blithely agree to this vote: in essence, it is a courtesy. Having grown up in extreme poverty, Gwynplaine is outraged by the pettiness of this vote and votes no. The Peers, shocked by this transgression, allow him to take the stand and explain himself. In this scene, Gwynplaine brilliantly and profoundly confronts the evils of society. He shows the Peers their own shame, recounting how in his darkest times a “pauper nourished him” while a “king mutilated him.” Even though he says nothing remotely funny, he is received with howling laughter. This scene does a really good job framing disability as a problem of a corrupt, compassionless society rather than something wrong with the disabled individual (again, see the Social Model of disability, which is obviously flawed, but does a good job recognizing society that denies access, understanding and compassion—the kind not built on pity—as a central problem faced by disabled communities). It is the central moment of Hugo’s story thematically, which calls out the injustices in a system and forces the reader to reckon with it.

It is so radical and interesting and full that Gwynplaine is as brilliant and aware as he is. He sees himself as a part of a system of cruelty and seeks justice for it. He is an empathic, sharp-minded person who seeks to make things better not just for himself and his family, but for all who suffer as he did at the hands of Kings. Grinpayne’s rallying cry is “I will find and kill the man who crucified my face.” He later gets wise to the nature of life and abandons this, but in that he never actually gets to control his own relationship to his life. When I took a class about disability in the media one of the things that seemed to stand out to me most is that disabled people should be treated as the experts on their own experiences, which Gwynplaine is. Again, for a book written in 1869 that is radical. Grinpayne is soothed into understanding by the memory of his (rich) mother’s kindness.

I’ll give one more point of credit. I loved that there was a happy ending. But maybe that’s just me. The cast was stellar, and the puppetry was magnificent. I wanted to like the show so badly, but I just couldn’t get behind what it did to the story I loved.

#the grinning man #the man who laughs #tgm musical #l'homme qui rit #victor hugo #gwynplaine's parliament rambles #long post /

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elains · 5 years ago

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BOOK REVIEW: HOUSE OF EARTH AND BLOOD, Crescent City Book I, by Sarah J. Maas.

First off, my sincerest thanks to @scraphim, who listened to my comments and rants with the patience of a saint and encourage me to put them down. Second, english is not my first language, so my apologies if there's anything confusing or awkward.

General Rating: ★★ 1/2

THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A CUT HERE OUT OF COURTESY BUT TUMBLR MOBILE IS BEING ITS IMPOSSIBLE SELF SO DO MIND THE RATING BEFORE CONTINUING.

Congratulations, Sarah J. Maas. You got me to sit down and write a review for a book, something I hadn't done (officially, anyway, might as well count the endless conversations with my friends) in a long while. Unfortunately, House of Earth and Blood was one more disappointment in an ever-growing list, and this review was born not out of pure, simple enjoyment, but of how much reading this bothered me.

Let me start by saying that I wanted to like this book. I did. I don't buy books which I don't think there's a chance I will not enjoy, I have way too much to do with my life and little money to spare on that. I hoped Sarah would go back to the early days of ToG, when the writing wasn't so choppy I kept questioning what is her problem with commas and when the characters weren't more and more of the same. Or perhaps that she would go back to ACoMaF, which at the time I loved reading.

Silly, silly me. The thing about having an eye-opener to something is that you can't go back. It's not so simple to close your eyes and pretend the bad doesn't exist, doing so feels irresponssible. I'm not sure her books have changed much, perhaps it was just me, the reader, whose perspective changed.

Let's go into the detail, then. Warning for spoilers of her previous books:

• THE LENGTH. It. Is. Ridiculosly. Long. I would say that length itself it's not necessarily a bad thing, something can be long but engaging. HoEaB's problem is that it drags on, to the point I had to put it down I don't know how many times out of frustration that nothing relevant happened. The infodumps do not help AT ALL, making the whole experience even more tiresome. I'll talk about worldbuilding separately, but jesus, so much unecessary information whose only purpose was to add to the wordcount and could have been woven into the story more organically. Readers are not dumb, they can make simple inferences, you don't need to explain every little detail.

The story only picks up and runs like the devil itself is chasing it in the last like, 20 chapters or so. Considering there are 97 of them... Yeah. It could have been a shorter, more direct and overall just more engaging.

• THE WORLDBUILD. I'll give Sarah J. Maas a point: it is more elaborate and refined compared to ToG and ACoTaR, whose worldbuilding are in general quite shallow and in the later's case, nearly nonexistent. However, the use of names blatantly lifted from real-world mythology and places bothered me to NO END. In a book which is built around those mythologies as their main source of inspiration, I can understand. Not here. Look, Maas can come up with original fantasy names, there are even some in HoEaB itself. But unless it's meant to be purposeful and Crescent City is to be Earth All Along, it's just jarring and feels lazy. It's not something new— refer back to the Illyrians and the Myrmidons.

Archean? Valbara? Pangera? Hel? REALLY? And those are just place names. Might as well name something Proterozoic. Or Laurasia.

The Roman inspiration, which was supposed to be a big thing from all her talk felt extremely loose and barely there. Oh sure, there are legions, a governor, the SPQR/M, and some names which to me, a portuguese speaker, where so cringy I had to laugh (Like Gelos and Cervo. You know, literally Ices and Stag or in that case Hind), but they did not feel Roman to me, naming aside. You could literally have named them anything else and it'd still have worked.

We studied Rome (mostly the government and the legal system) in our first semester of College and it might be the student in me, but I kept wanting to see more of the government structure, the politcal system itself. In a book that dealt with law enforcement and figures in places of power, this was a part of the worldbuilding that felt lacking, and a wasted opportunity to expand on the Roman inspiration.

What gets me is that some interesting concepts could have been explored better. I kinda like the idea of the Asteri, the rifts, the summoning salts.

• HUMANITY'S PORTRAYAL. Ahahaha. Where do I even begin with this one? In KoA, I hated that Aelin loosing her human side was seen as such a big sacrifice when the Fae were repeatedly shown to be "superior": stronger, more beautiful, immortal, the list goes on. Aelin herself preferred the Fae-side, so it felt a completely pointless sacrifice. In Crescent City, it gets even worse. Humanity is oppressed, trying to fight for their freedom and their inherent rights as sentient beings, and the books keeps going on and on about the Vanir.

Forgive me, but I'm supposed to be sympathize with the Vanir? To see the Vanir main-characters go on and change the world and make it better for everyone? I'm sorry but I'm not here for that. Bryce's mother and stepfather and Briggs aside, the HoEaB could have definetely used a human PoV or just. You know. ONE THAT DOESN'T FAVOR THE VANIR IN EVERYTHING. So yeah, I'm here cheering for the humans.

• THE CHARACTERS. I like Ruhn. He read like a concerned older brother, I could relate to that, not a possessive alphahole and I was baffled when Bryce kept insisting that. Oh, he has his flaws, but overall, I like him and his friends. They're nice. Danika, too. I would have liked to see more of Juniper and Fury, and them together, instead of using their relationship as kind of a surprise. Hypaxia is another Yrene/Sorscha. I also liked Lehabah, she was a sweetheart (Also I'm sorry am I supposed to think Bryce witholding the news on her freedom to throw a party WASN'T a WTF move? That Lele just knew because she looked at the documents???)

Now, to our main duo. I found Hunt boring. Simple as that. There was nothing in him that I found captivating, nothing new in terms of SJM's Love Interests. How he kept sexualizing Bryce in the most inappropriate of moments pissed me off. His and Bryce's relationship felt to me as Rowaelin 2.0, just as they themselves read as another versions of them, and not very different ones. He is not supposed to be an "alphahole" but... I didn't feel it. Hunt felt as just more of the same.

Now, Bryce Adelaide Quinlan.. Is it so much to ask for a main character who isn't gorgeous, super special, and super-powerful? I get the appeal of the trope, I'm no so hypocritical as to say that I've not indulged in it myself, but with Sarah, it feels overdone. When all characters are beautiful, special, so powerful it... kinda loses its meaning. However, that's not what bothered me about Bryce, no, it's the fact that she could be read as PoC (Golden, Tanned skin, two very ambiguous terms. My white cousin gets golden skin when she stays too long outdoors ffs), and as a PoC myself, reading her into those situations bothered me so, so much I cannot even begin to tell you.

Her curvy, sensual, bug boobs and butts are easily one of the more sought after where I live. People would go to great lengths for such a body and no, it will not hinder your dancing career. We have a word for it roughly translates to Hot, but having men call you that as something laid out on a table for their pleasure, objectifying you is horrible. And that's what most characters do in HoEaB: sexualize Bryce again and again, playing into harmful stereotypes.

My skin crawled reading those passages. I felt uncomfortable. And it wasn't even just the nameless, countless side-characters: it was Hunt himself. Every single move Bryce made was sexualized and I hated, hated it. "She's a Queen who owns her body and doesn't care for anyone else's thoughts" is all well and good, but women like me already have the stereotype of whores, sluts, homewreckers, and it was handled in such a tone-deaf way that it touched ALL of my wrong buttons. It was just uncomfortable, and cringy.

Two and a half stars, like those bad movies we still watch god knows why.

#hoeab #crescent city #book reviews #review #lacie reviews #or tries too #not that I'm any good at it #I JUST HAD THINGS THAT I WANTED TO SAY FOR ONCE #also i hate Tumblr mobile

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yradwan-stuff · 6 years ago

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The Flesh Machine

Over the many years since it’s release, Ghost in the Shell has often been seen as an icon when it comes to tackling the subject of the line between man, or in this case, woman and machine. Although the movie touches on a more important subject; giving us a warning about humanity’s potential fatal flaw, and its path to a more evolved civilization. To begin Ghost in the Shell has had a huge impact in science fiction media inspiring movies like Ex Machina and The Matrix, even shows like Westworld use similar aesthetics and share the same themes. These movies also the tackle the issue of man and machine and how technology will be mankind’s undoing and what not. However Ghost in the Shell presents a different resolution not with one side beating the other, but a synthesis between the two.

As we’ve seen, the movie centers around Major Motoko Kusanagi a cyborg government agent that works for Section 9 which I can only assume are a police task force or a black ops unit. They encounter a criminal that goes by The Puppet Master that ghost hacks people and implants fake memories to force it to do its bidding. As it turns out later in the movie that this hacker is actually an spy AI program called Project 2501, and developed by Section 6 that lost control of the program after it gained self awareness. At the end of the film after Kusanagi catches up to the program it makes her a interesting proposal. Project 2501 asks Kusanagi to merge and create a sort of child, which was literally the case at the end of the movie, Kusanagi accepts and the movie ends.

The confrontation and resolution of the two forces of human and digital consciousness reflects Georg Hegel’s vision of progress. Hegel believes that all throughout the progression of human evolution that every development was a cause of forces that confront one another and inevitably make something new. Hegel’s philosophy basically says that world functions on rational principles, and that the true nature of reality is almost always knowable, and this philosophy is well reflected onto Kusanagi who is driven by dissatisfaction with her limited perspective and is convinced throughout the movie that there is a better reality for her to live. The movie treats the “marriage” of Kusanagi’s consciousness with that of The Puppet Master’s with optimism, and Hegel’s system of dialectics explains why. Dialectics is more often construed, in classical philosophy, as a form of argumentative discourse to come to conclusions. It starts with one side of the argument which is the thesis and met by a counter argument called the anti-thesis. There are three possible end results one being the denial of the thesis, another is the affirmation of the anti-thesis, and the last one is the synthesis of the assertions that results in a better understanding of the subject. Hegel however uses dialectics differently where it’s the basic mechanism to human progress on an individual and collective level that when one force confronts the other something new emerges.

Ghost in the Shell at its heart is a dialectic between the human and digital world with Kusanagi on one side with her human mind that makes her unique, although she feels constrained by her limited perspective and personal identity. On the other side Project 2501 existed through cyber reality and therefore obtains the broader understanding that Kusanagi desires, although it’s also limited by a lack of personal identity. In the movie the program even acknowledges that it’s an intelligent life form because of its sentience and awareness of its own existence but at the same time it knows it lack the fundamentals in all living organisms, reproduction and death.

Hegel’s dialectics also present an interesting dynamic between master and slave. To put this more in context imagine in feudal times where you had the lord that owns the land and the serfs that work the land. The lord is the master and can exercise his power however he sees fit by forcing the serfs to work the land until they rot while the lord does nothing. The dynamic that ensues as a result of this system is that the more the serfs work the more knowledge and experience they gain, all the while the master learns nothing. This, according to Hegel, is what leads the oppressed to inevitably surmount their masters. Ghost in the Shell resonates this idea throughout the movie with Section 6 and Section 9 acting in a typical master behavior. More specifically Section 6 masters are stagnant and stuck in the politics of the old world, and Section 9 uses lethal force without compromise. Kusanagi is even ordered to destroy Project 2501 if she’s unable to secure it which is ultimately counterproductive since it makes it more difficult for Section 9 to learn the programs intentions and prolongs Kusanagi’s path to evolve. Project 2501 in this case is the slave because the authorities use the program to work for them and while it’s gaining knowledge and experience, the authorities continue to learn nothing until the program is finally more qualified and stronger and even starts becoming the master by controlling people such as the garbage worker. Hegel’s solution to this is synthesis or what he calls sublation, which is synthesis without loss. The result is a unique, superior idea that incorporates and accommodates both perspectives which is what Project 2501 offers Kusanagi at the end of the movie.

Sublation is crucial because it prevents stagnation when a person or an idea becomes too enclosed or dare I say too full of itself. Even Section 9 was put together with these types of dialectical principles and is presented in the movie when Togusa asks Kusanagi why someone like him, with almost no cybernetic enhancements, was on the team and she explains to him that diversity is what makes them stronger and she states “Overspecialize and you breed in weakness, it’s slow death.” Project 2501 is also aware of this issue of stagnation which is why it needs the constraints Kusanagi feels intimidated by. For Hegel sublation happens in conflicts like these whether it be on an individual level or on a much larger scale, and that the world evolves based on these dialectics even in subjects such as science and art where every time humanity advances it enters a new state of affairs that represents an improvement over what came before. Hegel calls this new state “Geist” which can be translated to mind, spirit, or ghost. Geist follows this trajectory after Kusanagi’s and Project 2501’s sublation where this being, that’s human, machine, and AI, exists starting a new era of human evolution, and is even hinted at in the movie during the final battle scene where the tank obliterates the tree of life and the names of less evolved beings, but leaves hominis on top untouched. This symbolizes that evolution will continue way past humans. This is what makes Ghost in the Shell so unique because it’s not about what happens if we do merge with our technology it’s what will happen if we don’t, it also relays the message to interact with the world, resolve our contradictions with it, and emerge stronger and better because clinging to our beliefs about what we are will only prevent us from becoming what we can be. Even in the movie Kusanagi asks Project 2501 if it can guarantee if she can still be herself to which it asks her why she would want to remain the same, and that her efforts to remain what she is is what limits her.

The first time I saw Ex Machina I was most astounded by the possibilities presented for AI’s to learn what it’s like to be human. The story starts with the protagonist Caleb who’s an office worker that gets invited to stay at his hilariously rich boss’s estate. When he gets to the estate his boss, Nathan, introduces him to the real protagonist Ava, a highly intelligent AI that’s built to look and act human learning from everything around her. Caleb becomes Nathan’s experiment to see if Ava is capable of real human thought, and after a few sessions Ava starts developing a romantic interest in Caleb. Ava causes a blackout so they can talk about what they want without supervision, such as not trusting Nathan. Nathan announces he’s going to upgrade Ava which would destroy her current self, so Caleb gets Nathan drunk and when he’s passed out Caleb goes to plan with Ava on how they’re going to escape together. Nathan then reveals that he’s been listening even when Ava cuts the power, and that Caleb was an experiment to see if Ava can emotionally manipulate him, which she did. After Caleb lets Ava out she says good-bye to Nathan by killing him, and then graciously thanks Caleb by locking him in the house and leaving him to die. She escapes and the last shot shows her blending in unnoticed in society.

Ex Machina explores the lines between human and AI. The visual imagery in the film illustrates the distinction between the artificial and the natural worlds. Muted colors inside Nathan’s mansion reflect the order of machines, and doors are controlled by a security protocol. In contrast the natural environment around the facility is colorful, beautiful, and unpredictable. Nathan describes true consciousness to the work of Jackson Pollock where he states “He let his mind go blank and his hand go where it wanted, not deliberate, not random, but some place in between.” The construction of Ava’s brain reflects the fluidity the human consciousness requires. On the other hand the film makes us question how useful Nathan’s test of consciousness really is, since calling humans conscious is far fetched as it is. Nathan points out that Caleb’s personality is determined by programming just like Ava’s which makes his responses and reactions more feasibly analyzed and quantified by Ava who ultimately determined that Caleb has feelings for her. In the end, the film leaves us with the impression of Ava’s humanity, and not just because she attaches new skin to her body, but because when she escapes we see the Pollock painting again to remind us of the distinction Nathan made between a programmed machine and the subconscious motivations of a human. When Ava murders Nathan she technically passes his test because it’s not an act she was programmed to commit, and demonstrates that she transcended her parameters.

The film is less a warning about the many horrifying dangers of technology and more a commentary about how man’s creations reflect human nature; cars have a heart that pumps, computers are modeled to process and produce information similar to that of the brain, and even the atomic bomb mirrors the violence of the societies that made them. In the film Ava reflects the manipulative tendencies of Caleb and Nathan who are the only humans she met. Thus, if Nathan has made Ava in his own image what kind of person will she be? She’ll be a murderous robot who uses others to achieve her goals.

The Corporation short video discusses the potential that corporations have in the ownership of biological and living organisms, and it started years ago when General Electric and a professor by the name of Ananda Chakrabarty went to the patent office with a microbe that’s been modified in labs in order to eat oil spills. However the patent office rejected GE’s and Chakrabarty’s patent saying they don’t patent living organisms. They tried appealing it in the US Customs court of appeal and successfully overwrote the patent office that later appealed. The central question of the video is whether a corporation should have the right to directly or through a license own a living organism.

This is a big issue of which I know very little about, but from what I can conclude is that a capitalistic approach when it comes to medicine and the body will more often than not result in what capitalism was meant for which is creating competition. As we’ve seen with other things other than biology, such as the media or products that big corporations will try and monopolize the field they’re competing in. Currently in the US only six corporations own ninety percent of all media outlets. As stated in the video as well that in the future only a handful of corporations will monopolize genomes, and the cellular building blocks of both humans and animals as intellectual party. Once a certain resource becomes monopolized or in the hands of one centralized entity then it ultimately destroyed any chance of anyone creating anything better that would advance the progression of society. On the other hand the need for advancement will create healthy competition between companies that will strive to better understand and develop products, or in this case, living organisms that will ultimately work for the betterment and progression of human society. Profit is all the corporations get out of these developments and advancements and later another corporation will overpower these developments with their own. In the early 20th century corporate lawyers gaves private corporations similar rights to those of a person, and is considered an entity with rights, they can sue, and can be sued just like everyone else. Based on this if a company uses its resources and man hours in order to develop something in which to profit off then they are well within their rights to own that property

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almajonesnjna · 6 years ago

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{#TransparentTuesday} It takes a village

The other night I met some incredibly interesting people, who grew up in an intentional community in Alaska.

This intentional community was founded over 30 years ago, by four families who took a look around at the flawed and dysfunctional society they lived in, and decided to try something different.

Their society is macrobiotic, minimalist, and communitarian. Everything is shared, decisions are made together in a daily meeting, there is no governing body, everyone is home-schooled, and there is no exchange of money.

Similar intentional communities exist all over the world, but I’d never met anyone who grew up in one. For hours, I asked questions, and we talked openly about the areas of modern society that are dramatically failing, and how different alternative communities are trying to do better.

Throughout the transparent discussion of politics, environmental sustainability, sexuality, food, and communication, I was completely mind-blown. My jaw kept dropping, my mind exploded about a million times, and the flood of non-stop synchronicities kept making me want to scream.

As early into childhood as I can remember, I wanted to join a nudist colony or hippie commune (both of which would now be called intentional communities). Even before I had to live life as an adult, our society didn’t sit right with me, and I felt drawn to communities of people who rebelled against it, and wrote their own rules.

I’ve also been obsessed with the idea of building a community lately, of finding a place to put down roots and become a fixture in a community of like-minded people. The internet is amazing and I certainly have built a community here that I adore, but I crave the energy of an in-person community, ideally somewhere that I am surrounded with friends, family, and emotionally intelligent strangers.

I want to have people over to discuss politics and personal healing, to practice transparent communication and challenge each other to be better, to support each other and raise each other up so that we may each fulfill our purpose, live our best lives, and leave the world better than we found it.

This craving for community is based on the isolation, disconnection, and profound loneliness I see the digital era sweeping across our generation.

I don’t mind being a person on the internet, but I need to balance it by being a person in the real world too. I don’t mind being a nomad, but the nomadic life isn’t my permanent plan.

I fantasize about finding or building a community in which we can all truly thrive, where we can all face this new landscape of the digital era (and the widespread systems of oppression and violence that it’s exposing) together.

Our society is deeply broken, and I don’t have all the answers but I know we can do better.

Personally, I believe doing better requires letting go of some “western value” darlings, like the myth of the meritocracy, the concept of being “colorblind” when it comes to race, toxic masculinity, the trickle-down theory, the idea that we need access to guns to protect ourselves from the government, the individualistic concept of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and the measure of “success” being materialistic.

My entire country is literally founded on colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, and misogyny. Capitalism hurts us in ways that were unimaginable before the digital revolution, gun violence is out of control, and we’re obsessed with power and money. We don’t give a shit about the planet, we don’t know how to care for our bodies, and we’re epically awash in unhealed trauma.

We can do better.

Since trump was elected, I’ve been feeling an ever-increasing call toward revolution, toward a political and emotional uprising of personal growth and healing. My intention has been to find a community of people whose values align with mine, and become an active participant, and help us move toward the revolution I feel is coming.

Perhaps we’ll overthrow the government, I’ve thought. Or secede from the union. Perhaps we’ll stay and fight for ground, as the dinosaurs die out and our generation takes over.

But something has been blossoming in my heart the last few days, since I had that transformative conversation– a desire to simply lead by example, rather than fighting. To simply create what I’m craving, rather than complaining about what’s broken.

The wheels have been turning about how I could create my own intentional community– one where gender roles are challenged, implicit biases are dismantled, hierarchies don’t exist, and traumas are healed.

I imagine a huge plot of land focused on permaculture, with multiple dwellings and a community house. I imagine everyone supplying their most authentic gifts, and really deeply seen and appreciated for who they are. I imagine hosting dinner parties and retreats and workshops, focused on building connection, intimacy, and communication skills.

I imagine living in community with other families, raising a child with other people who recognize that it literally takes a village to thrive.

Maybe this fantasy is silly. Maybe it’ll pass. Maybe it’s irresponsible and escapist. Maybe it’s my soul’s path.

I don’t know where all this is going yet, but I thought I might share it with you, in case any of you are feeling a similar dissatisfaction with our society, call toward revolution, or aching for community.

Note: you don’t have to agree with my politics to feel like everything in our society is broken right now. You don’t have to agree with what the “better way” could look like, but I think a lot of people are feeling right now that this way is not working.

I wonder what it would look like if more of us found our people, and founded intentional communities based on shared values and worldviews. If more of us might get our needs met. If more of us might thrive.

What do you think? <3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} It takes a village appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2Bmae7S

#{TransparentTuesday} It takes a village

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joshuabradleyn · 6 years ago

Text

{#TransparentTuesday} It takes a village

The other night I met some incredibly interesting people, who grew up in an intentional community in Alaska.

This intentional community was founded over 30 years ago, by four families who took a look around at the flawed and dysfunctional society they lived in, and decided to try something different.

This craving for community is based on the isolation, disconnection, and profound loneliness I see the digital era sweeping across our generation.

I don’t mind being a person on the internet, but I need to balance it by being a person in the real world too. I don’t mind being a nomad, but the nomadic life isn’t my permanent plan.

Our society is deeply broken, and I don’t have all the answers but I know we can do better.

We can do better.

Perhaps we’ll overthrow the government, I’ve thought. Or secede from the union. Perhaps we’ll stay and fight for ground, as the dinosaurs die out and our generation takes over.

I imagine living in community with other families, raising a child with other people who recognize that it literally takes a village to thrive.

Maybe this fantasy is silly. Maybe it’ll pass. Maybe it’s irresponsible and escapist. Maybe it’s my soul’s path.

What do you think? <3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} It takes a village appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2Bmae7S

#{TransparentTuesday} It takes a village

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albertcaldwellne · 6 years ago

Text

{#TransparentTuesday} It takes a village

The other night I met some incredibly interesting people, who grew up in an intentional community in Alaska.

This intentional community was founded over 30 years ago, by four families who took a look around at the flawed and dysfunctional society they lived in, and decided to try something different.

This craving for community is based on the isolation, disconnection, and profound loneliness I see the digital era sweeping across our generation.

I don’t mind being a person on the internet, but I need to balance it by being a person in the real world too. I don’t mind being a nomad, but the nomadic life isn’t my permanent plan.

Our society is deeply broken, and I don’t have all the answers but I know we can do better.

We can do better.

Perhaps we’ll overthrow the government, I’ve thought. Or secede from the union. Perhaps we’ll stay and fight for ground, as the dinosaurs die out and our generation takes over.

I imagine living in community with other families, raising a child with other people who recognize that it literally takes a village to thrive.

Maybe this fantasy is silly. Maybe it’ll pass. Maybe it’s irresponsible and escapist. Maybe it’s my soul’s path.

What do you think? <3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} It takes a village appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2Bmae7S

#{TransparentTuesday} It takes a village

0 notes

ruthellisneda · 6 years ago

Text

{#TransparentTuesday} It takes a village

The other night I met some incredibly interesting people, who grew up in an intentional community in Alaska.

This intentional community was founded over 30 years ago, by four families who took a look around at the flawed and dysfunctional society they lived in, and decided to try something different.

This craving for community is based on the isolation, disconnection, and profound loneliness I see the digital era sweeping across our generation.

I don’t mind being a person on the internet, but I need to balance it by being a person in the real world too. I don’t mind being a nomad, but the nomadic life isn’t my permanent plan.

Our society is deeply broken, and I don’t have all the answers but I know we can do better.

We can do better.

Perhaps we’ll overthrow the government, I’ve thought. Or secede from the union. Perhaps we’ll stay and fight for ground, as the dinosaurs die out and our generation takes over.

I imagine living in community with other families, raising a child with other people who recognize that it literally takes a village to thrive.

Maybe this fantasy is silly. Maybe it’ll pass. Maybe it’s irresponsible and escapist. Maybe it’s my soul’s path.

What do you think? <3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} It takes a village appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2Bmae7S

#{TransparentTuesday} It takes a village

0 notes

wowmelbourne-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Q&A with Jax Jacki Brown

(Image credit: Breeana Dunbar)

Jax Jacki Brown is a disability and LGBTI/Queer rights activist, writer and consultant. She has been a disability sex educator for seven years, and is a regular at Quippings, a live variety show and space for people with disabilities to perform anything from comedy routines, to dance. You can catch Jax giving her keynote at WOW on day two and three, and on the panel The Dependency Myth. Here Jax tells us how she became an activist and what the wider feminist conversation is missing.

What are some points you will be touching on in your keynote?

I am going to look at the intersectionality of LGBTI identity and disability identity, both from my personal experience of being a wheel chair user and also from my academic research and political interest.

Where did your activist flame come from?

I discovered feminism when I was 16. It was white, straight, able-bodied feminism, so it did not speak to a lot of my intersectional experiences. But it was the catalyst for me in which to start thinking about the ways in which society is constructed and how is disadvantages people and shapes people’s identity.

A couple years later, I discovered the Disability Rights Movement, and the social model of disability. The social model says the majority of disadvantage people with disability face is because the world is not inclusive, and does not take our needs into account – things in the built environment like inaccessible transport, inaccessible housing, low rates of employment, also things like disability stereotypes people might hold.

The social model empowered me to see things less from the medical perspective that says people with disability or impairments are flawed or need to be fixed by medical intervention. It kind of radicalised me. I really see activism as a powerful way of understanding our position in the world.

What keeps you motivated and active?

Definitely seeing things from the social perspective and understanding the way the world is constructed to disadvantage minority groups sustains me and energises me, because I do believe we can change things.

When I do a presentation or when I run a workshop, I hope people go out and look at the world anew, that they see all the stairs around that create access barriers to people.

I hope people think more deeply as to the ways disability is portrayed in the media, which is either as an object of inspiration or this terrible tragedy. Those stereotypes do not allow people to be full complex human beings.

You specifically call yourself an activist, rather than just advocate. Why is that?

‘Advocate’ for me means someone who loves going to a lot of meetings and taking minutes, trying to create change, from within a very kind of mainstream platform.

I think ‘activist’ can sometimes get a bad rap of being a bit of a rabble-rouser that exists outside the system. But I personally don not see anything wrong with that.

How do you try to remain the ‘activist’ rather than the ‘advocate’?

When I get booked to speak at a local council, I think they are not expecting me to advocate for systemic change. I think they are expecting me to say ‘You are doing a good thing for giving me a platform of 10 minutes for diversity,’ – which they are.

But what I am arguing for with the social model of disability is to change the system, and change in the way the world is constructed and built. I think those broad ranging ideas about power and identity speaks more to activist politics than they do to mainstream advocacy.

(Image credit: Anne Standen)

What does feminism mean to you?

It is an analysis of the world, and particularly gendered bodies – particularly women’s bodies, but also LGBTI, queer or non-normative bodies. Feminism is an analysis of the world that encompasses those experiences as being inherently political and as being influenced by structural oppression, power and privilege. For me it is a framework from which to unpack and understand my identities, but also understand where other people in the world sit within structural oppression.

What kind of discussions do you think mainstream feminism needs to have more of?

This is where the intersections of disability and feminism meet. I do not think we talk about that intersection well– sometimes I do not even talk about that well.

I think we need to look at the ways women with disabilities are often excluded from traditional gender roles, because we are presumed not to be carers or lovers or mothers. While mainstream feminism is fighting against those roles, I think for a lot of hetero, cis-gendered women with disabilities, one of their main fights is to say, ‘If I choose to enter those traditional roles, if I want to be read as a super femme woman, have a particular relationship, or mother in a particular way, I should be supported to do that.’

The right to have reproductive choice is another thing. We still have forced sterilisation of women with disabilities in Australia. There are still very gendered ideas of what it means to be a mother– that the mother should be able to do everything for the child, independently of other people. I do not think men with disabilities are subject to the same gendered process in relationships. I also think the issue around sexual desire and consensual sexual explorations of your body and objectification is an interesting one. We often get objectified because we have disabilities and it is presumed people with disabilities are not sexual.

The really pointy, important issue for many feminists with disabilities is the issue of selective abortions of disabled foetuses. Particularly for me, I am a feminist and pro-choice but I am also aware that two-thirds of foetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.

Often, the only person the woman will be able to talk to at the point of the 20 weeks is the medical professional. Not at all making a judgement about whatever choices the woman makes but as a disability activist it would be really awesome for people with disabilities be part of those initial discussions about what kind of life that foetus could have.

You mentioned the social model before, was there any other piece of writing, art, or perhaps a person that changed your view of the world?

The disability feminist called Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. She is an American who writes a lot of about disability feminism, which arose out of Disability Rights Movement. Her work was really instrumental to understanding where my disability intersected with my gender and what that meant for my feminism.

There is also a great genderqueer author called Eli Clare. He wrote Exile and Pride about his body feelings as a person with disability, which influenced me as a young person.

#jax jacki brown #lgbtiq #disablity #queer #activism #disability rights movement #wow melbourne #fcac #footscray community arts centre

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