Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Commenting thread that seems important to me
I'm going to leave this here with very little comment. Normally I would put one-link posts in my tumblr, but I'm trying to keep them separated thematically.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Daria Werbowy by Mikael Jansson for Interview: Racism
Recently I ran across this fashion editorial in one of the blogs I follow in my reader. The response to it has been mixed, of course, and for my initial reaction you can check my tumblr.
Other blogs have gotten around to saying that they don't like this editorial of course. Refinery29 says they aren't down with it, and fashionlogie presents the info in a more news-like manner. My least favorite reaction was from fashion copious where the poster asked: "Maybe she was taking in a culture? Is the problem
in our own viewing?"
Another poster on Refinery29 said the same thing in a more ham-fisted manner, stating "If Daria wasn't a famous model, no one would be discussing the editorial like this. Other models are the subjects as well, and I think if people interpret these surreal and almost painterly images as "racist," that's their own problem, not the photographs'."
So yes, I think that these images are racist. If not racist, I think, at minimum, that they are the paragons of bad taste. Fashion editorials routinely fall into traps of cultural appropriation and the objectifying of the "other" and I find this shoot to be no different. The problem isn't that the other models are subjects. The problem is that the white woman in the shoot is seen as a focal point. I don't give a damn that Daria Werbowy is famous. What I really care about is the fact that she is white, and her juxtaposition with people of other races in this shoot clearly points to her being more important than the other models. In a society where notions of white beauty are clearly prioritized, putting a white woman in the center of a fashion shoot is nothing surprising. It just reinforces the same old (fundamentally racist) ideas.
Additionally, the claim that the problem is in the way we view the spread: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I agree it is not the responsibility of the artist to be held accountable for every single interpretation of a piece. However, when your "art" draws from common racist ideology, you have to be aware of the implications. In these photographs, the lighting and coloring of the shoot makes the models of color blend into the background. They are nothing more than actors in the fantasy that is the white woman's descent into exoticism. The bottom line is that an artist can't put an enormous canvas featuring a penis into a gallery and then claim that it doesn't mean anything, that it's just a portrait of the artist's boyfriend's dick. No, a painting of a penis would carry many cultural implications, and the artist has to be aware of these possible interpretations. Artists' responsibility is to be deliberate with their imagery. If they are going to manipulate racist tropes, there most certainly can be an explanation as to why they have been used. But putting the art out there, saying that it's just for the aesthetic and has no deeper meaning, and then claiming racism is only in the eye of the beholder is, at best, irresponsible. [for the record, Interview/the photographer have not staked this claim, but their defenders have]
So yes, I'm calling "racist" on this shoot. If I wanted to be kind, I would at least call it "careless" and that's equally as bad.
Public Transportation Part 2: The Nature of Ableism
A primary difference between living in isolated car culture and consistently riding public transportation is that I encounter many, many more people (as I stated in my previous post) in my day to day life. The sheer quantity of people with whom I share a space within one day is astounding. And, thanks to that quantity, some of these people I encounter are differently abled, either physically or mentally. I ride a route on the commuter train that I believe leads to some sort of school or workplace for people with physical and mental differences. I have no concrete proof of this (I don't know how to look it up) but sometimes they are together in groups on the afternoon train and the fact that I see them quite regularly led me to this conclusion.
There is a man with a mental handicap who rides practically the entirety of my commute. He is talkative and obsessed with the details of the commute. He has an extensive knowledge of all of the intersecting bus and train routes along our commute. I encounter him in direct and indirect ways 2-3 times a week and to be honest, he makes me extremely uncomfortable. I am not proud of this emotion. This discomfort is the reason I wanted to write the blog post.
I have struggled with an intense fear surrounding people with handicaps my entire life. I am not writing this sentence as a means of excusing myself; it would be easy to write off anything I feel uncomfortable about as a "phobia" and never change. I thought that this problem stemmed from my extreme sensitivity. It pains me to deal with the knowledge that there are people in this world whose lives are so severely constricted by circumstances outside of their control. It pains me to the point that I feel uncontrollably sad and uncomfortable.
When I look at this fear, and even this sense of injustice, I realize that it smacks of ableism. Yes, I am afraid of this man who insists on talking to me about the bus every day because I simultaneously fear and dislike his difference. As a person who can be extremely shy, it is often difficult for me to think of things to say, and I resent him for putting me in that position because that is who he is.
I have had discussions in the past about the nature of feeling physically or emotionally threatened in public places and how that intersects with my conception of myself as racist/anti-racist, classist/not-classist. I should add ableist/not-ableist to this list, although I believe the entire matter is something for another blog post. I would like to note, however, that I am not implying that you, reader, are a bad person because one time you felt afraid when you were threatened while walking on the street. I'm just pointing to my experiences with fear in conjunction with disability on public transportation and asking--how do privileged people confront these feelings that perpetuate a system where people with different bodies are valued differently?
And ultimately, who am I to decide that this man, the one I encounter weekly, will live a life of less value than me? Who am I to think that about anyone? Who is anybody to think that of anybody? Isn't the value of a life mostly determined by the person living it and their actions, not those people who think that the way that person's body looks or brain works makes them inherently less valuable?
The concept of ableism and how I could live my life as somebody who is more at ease with the idea of disability is relatively new for me. I can't say I have all of the answers on this one, but I do think that in many ways riding public transportation is an edifying experience because it makes me come to terms with all kinds of people. And the idea of dealing with certain types of difference, including disability, had once been a theory when I didn't have to confront it as part of my daily existence.
I want to stress that I don't think that riding a bus is a magical world where people from all walks of life can join hands and sing kumbaya. Sometimes the bus runs late, people are cruel to one another, and it is way too crowded. On the other hand, I know from experience it is easier for a single person to recognize the validity of all types of human experience if this person is in contact with many types of people in their day to day life. And I think these experiences are important to my conception of my feminism and myself.
For the end of this post, I'd like to refer my readers to this series of photographs. They were taken by Holly Norris. She writes in her statement about the series, "American Able' intends to, through spoof, reveal the ways in which women with disabilities are invisibilized in advertising and mass media." What if we lived in a world where advertisements like this were actually on billboards? How would we perceive disability, both physical and mental, and where would we be? How do you feel when you look at these images? How is your reaction related to what you have internalized about disability?
To end, one more blog of note.
Earlier
I have struggled with an intense fear surrounding people with handicaps my entire life. I am not writing this sentence as a means of excusing myself; it would be easy to write off anything I feel uncomfortable about as a "phobia" and never change. I thought that this problem stemmed from my extreme sensitivity. It pains me to deal with the knowledge that there are people in this world whose lives are so severely constricted by circumstances outside of their control. It pains me to the point that I feel uncontrollably sad and uncomfortable.
When I look at this fear, and even this sense of injustice, I realize that it smacks of ableism. Yes, I am afraid of this man who insists on talking to me about the bus every day because I simultaneously fear and dislike his difference. As a person who can be extremely shy, it is often difficult for me to think of things to say, and I resent him for putting me in that position because that is who he is.
I have had discussions in the past about the nature of feeling physically or emotionally threatened in public places and how that intersects with my conception of myself as racist/anti-racist, classist/not-classist. I should add ableist/not-ableist to this list, although I believe the entire matter is something for another blog post. I would like to note, however, that I am not implying that you, reader, are a bad person because one time you felt afraid when you were threatened while walking on the street. I'm just pointing to my experiences with fear in conjunction with disability on public transportation and asking--how do privileged people confront these feelings that perpetuate a system where people with different bodies are valued differently?
And ultimately, who am I to decide that this man, the one I encounter weekly, will live a life of less value than me? Who am I to think that about anyone? Who is anybody to think that of anybody? Isn't the value of a life mostly determined by the person living it and their actions, not those people who think that the way that person's body looks or brain works makes them inherently less valuable?
The concept of ableism and how I could live my life as somebody who is more at ease with the idea of disability is relatively new for me. I can't say I have all of the answers on this one, but I do think that in many ways riding public transportation is an edifying experience because it makes me come to terms with all kinds of people. And the idea of dealing with certain types of difference, including disability, had once been a theory when I didn't have to confront it as part of my daily existence.
I want to stress that I don't think that riding a bus is a magical world where people from all walks of life can join hands and sing kumbaya. Sometimes the bus runs late, people are cruel to one another, and it is way too crowded. On the other hand, I know from experience it is easier for a single person to recognize the validity of all types of human experience if this person is in contact with many types of people in their day to day life. And I think these experiences are important to my conception of my feminism and myself.
For the end of this post, I'd like to refer my readers to this series of photographs. They were taken by Holly Norris. She writes in her statement about the series, "American Able' intends to, through spoof, reveal the ways in which women with disabilities are invisibilized in advertising and mass media." What if we lived in a world where advertisements like this were actually on billboards? How would we perceive disability, both physical and mental, and where would we be? How do you feel when you look at these images? How is your reaction related to what you have internalized about disability?
To end, one more blog of note.
Earlier
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Arizona raises the bar
WHAAAAAAAAAT?? (click on the what for a link to this indescribable bill in Arizona that just got passed)
What? What? What?
Horne said he believes the Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people. Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said.
What? What? What?
This is the greatest form of intellectual censorship of ALL TIME. Anybody who says that it's possible for history to be objective was smoking a crack pipe. I'm honestly so baffled I don't know what to say other than WHAAAAAAAT?
Thursday, May 6, 2010
On Public Transportation: A Two Part Post
Recently I've been unpacking my ideas about what it's like to ride public transportation consistently. I would prefer to write two blog entries about it separately, as my first entry is going to to be based more on personal experiences and observations while my second entry will dive more deeply into some societal issues at play about ableism and transportation. If you're more interested in what I have to say about bias and moving around, come back for the next post which should be up sometime by the end of next week.
A brief rundown of my transportation history: while I was growing up I lived in an area where not driving was virtually impossible. I got a car before my junior year of high school and lived in it until going to college. I took it with me to my sophomore year and while I didn't drive it as much while I was there, it was still an integral part of my life.
In college I lived in a small town where you could walk to get everything you needed; however, you definitely needed the car if you wanted to go anywhere outside of the town or if you wanted to buy quality booze. That being said, minus the drives to the nearest "big city," I totally could have bought all of my booze by using a bike to drive to the state-operated liquor store that was two miles (more or less) down the road.
When I graduated I wanted to be able to live somewhere where I wouldn't need a car. One of the biggest considerations was money; I knew I wouldn't be making enough of it to justify having a car. I wouldn't be able to pay for car insurance or upkeep. I also want to put my money where my mouth is. I talk a salty game about caring for the environment, or at least loving big cities, and if I lived in a place where I needed a car on a day to day basis, then I feel I wouldn't be doing my ideals any justice. I'm not saying that having a car or not having a car has any meaning in terms of who you are as a human being. However, we have to acknowledge that we are on the verge of a major planetary shift when it comes to fuel; as such, I wanted to try my hand at having a smaller carbon footprint.
I made the big move to Chicago and started living life as a free-wheeling walker, bus-rider, and train-taker. However, a few months after I moved here, I got a temporary (but still relatively long-term) job in the suburbs that made my public transportation commute quite long. In the morning, it isn't such a big deal (it is about an hour door to door) but in the afternoons the train doesn't come until 30+ minutes after I get out of work, so the commute ends up ranging from an hour and 15 to an hour and 45 minutes long. This amount of time is insufferable for me because I am all about efficiency, and as somebody who lived in car culture for most of her life, I don't understand having to wait thirty minutes for a train. For that reason, I participated in an after-work carpool for three months. Basically this meant that a couple of my coworkers were generous enough to drop me off on their way home since we all lived in relatively the same area. However, somewhere along the line the situation got complicated and I decided to start taking the train home.
That was actually four days ago. I'm in the first week of riding the train home regularly, and I am struggling with it. For one thing, it is common for the train I take to show up 15 minutes later than scheduled because of a "boarding passenger" (I have never been clear on who could delay a train 15 minutes by boarding but I will take the intercom's word for it). Secondly, the train system that I have to take (the Metra, for all of you Chicagoans) does not announce the plans of the train arriving in the station. On my second day of riding the train home, I distractedly boarded a train that was going to run express from my work stop to downtown. I didn't get home until 630 that day, 2 hours and 10 minutes after I left work, because of all the backtracking I had to do. It was a brutal experience. And my third point is that the Metra is LOUD. You think the CTA is loud but then you're standing next to a train that has got to be a couple tons heavier than the longest CTA train and it's blasting past you with the DING DING DING of its bell and all you want to do is curl up in the fetal position in bed and listen to the cars dimly rush past your window. Anything but this loud, awful train!!!!!!!!!
But one of the most interesting (for better or for worse) things about public transportation is the people. I enjoy looking at them and knowing who is on my commute. It's a strange phenomenon when you ride in the same vehicles with the same people every day and you don't know their names. This evening, I took a bus I don't normally ride on weekdays to the bank, and I saw a man who is always on my morning commute. It felt like I was seeing a ghost and I kept stealing glances at him. I have no idea if he recognized me, as he is the stoic type.
Even though I enjoy knowing all of these people by face, fundamentally I am not interested in them talking to me. I am introverted, and when I am freaking out mentally about my commute, I need my space. This anonymous privacy is not always possible and you can bet your bottom dollar that I am PISSED OFF when somebody insists on talking to me past a couple of platitudes about life on the rails. It makes me wonder a lot about my life philosophy: I believe what makes my life rich is the people that populate it; however, I am entirely uninterested in meeting people when I'm transporting myself to a destination. I know I'm not alone in this: it's why we have our ipods and our books and our newspapers and our phones and our etcetera. I just wanted to point out the inherent fallacy in the fact that I complain constantly about it being difficult to meet people after college when I'm surrounded by them every day. I doubt seriously that I'll be meeting my next BFFer on the train to work, but should I be open to the idea?
Sigh. Now that I've worked through that via blog post, tune in next post to read my thoughts on the intersection of the disabled and public transportation.
A brief rundown of my transportation history: while I was growing up I lived in an area where not driving was virtually impossible. I got a car before my junior year of high school and lived in it until going to college. I took it with me to my sophomore year and while I didn't drive it as much while I was there, it was still an integral part of my life.
In college I lived in a small town where you could walk to get everything you needed; however, you definitely needed the car if you wanted to go anywhere outside of the town or if you wanted to buy quality booze. That being said, minus the drives to the nearest "big city," I totally could have bought all of my booze by using a bike to drive to the state-operated liquor store that was two miles (more or less) down the road.
When I graduated I wanted to be able to live somewhere where I wouldn't need a car. One of the biggest considerations was money; I knew I wouldn't be making enough of it to justify having a car. I wouldn't be able to pay for car insurance or upkeep. I also want to put my money where my mouth is. I talk a salty game about caring for the environment, or at least loving big cities, and if I lived in a place where I needed a car on a day to day basis, then I feel I wouldn't be doing my ideals any justice. I'm not saying that having a car or not having a car has any meaning in terms of who you are as a human being. However, we have to acknowledge that we are on the verge of a major planetary shift when it comes to fuel; as such, I wanted to try my hand at having a smaller carbon footprint.
I made the big move to Chicago and started living life as a free-wheeling walker, bus-rider, and train-taker. However, a few months after I moved here, I got a temporary (but still relatively long-term) job in the suburbs that made my public transportation commute quite long. In the morning, it isn't such a big deal (it is about an hour door to door) but in the afternoons the train doesn't come until 30+ minutes after I get out of work, so the commute ends up ranging from an hour and 15 to an hour and 45 minutes long. This amount of time is insufferable for me because I am all about efficiency, and as somebody who lived in car culture for most of her life, I don't understand having to wait thirty minutes for a train. For that reason, I participated in an after-work carpool for three months. Basically this meant that a couple of my coworkers were generous enough to drop me off on their way home since we all lived in relatively the same area. However, somewhere along the line the situation got complicated and I decided to start taking the train home.
That was actually four days ago. I'm in the first week of riding the train home regularly, and I am struggling with it. For one thing, it is common for the train I take to show up 15 minutes later than scheduled because of a "boarding passenger" (I have never been clear on who could delay a train 15 minutes by boarding but I will take the intercom's word for it). Secondly, the train system that I have to take (the Metra, for all of you Chicagoans) does not announce the plans of the train arriving in the station. On my second day of riding the train home, I distractedly boarded a train that was going to run express from my work stop to downtown. I didn't get home until 630 that day, 2 hours and 10 minutes after I left work, because of all the backtracking I had to do. It was a brutal experience. And my third point is that the Metra is LOUD. You think the CTA is loud but then you're standing next to a train that has got to be a couple tons heavier than the longest CTA train and it's blasting past you with the DING DING DING of its bell and all you want to do is curl up in the fetal position in bed and listen to the cars dimly rush past your window. Anything but this loud, awful train!!!!!!!!!
But one of the most interesting (for better or for worse) things about public transportation is the people. I enjoy looking at them and knowing who is on my commute. It's a strange phenomenon when you ride in the same vehicles with the same people every day and you don't know their names. This evening, I took a bus I don't normally ride on weekdays to the bank, and I saw a man who is always on my morning commute. It felt like I was seeing a ghost and I kept stealing glances at him. I have no idea if he recognized me, as he is the stoic type.
Even though I enjoy knowing all of these people by face, fundamentally I am not interested in them talking to me. I am introverted, and when I am freaking out mentally about my commute, I need my space. This anonymous privacy is not always possible and you can bet your bottom dollar that I am PISSED OFF when somebody insists on talking to me past a couple of platitudes about life on the rails. It makes me wonder a lot about my life philosophy: I believe what makes my life rich is the people that populate it; however, I am entirely uninterested in meeting people when I'm transporting myself to a destination. I know I'm not alone in this: it's why we have our ipods and our books and our newspapers and our phones and our etcetera. I just wanted to point out the inherent fallacy in the fact that I complain constantly about it being difficult to meet people after college when I'm surrounded by them every day. I doubt seriously that I'll be meeting my next BFFer on the train to work, but should I be open to the idea?
Sigh. Now that I've worked through that via blog post, tune in next post to read my thoughts on the intersection of the disabled and public transportation.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Beyonce Why Don't You Love Me?
"Why Don't You Love Me" - Beyoncé from Beyoncé on Vimeo.
Beyonce's got a new video out and I think it has to be in my top ten favorite music videos (now there's a list that would be hard to make!) You got to watch it to believe it but she does the 1950s housewife thing in typical Beyonce fashion: totally fucking bitching while kicking ass and taking names. I'm not sure this is necessarily more than '50s eye candy, but you could definitely interpret it as a critique of this way of thinking (i.e. asking "Why don't you love me?" and fawning all over your man is soooo 1950s). WATCH IT!!!
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