In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: May 2006

The Trans Agenda

Jay has a post up on what his trans agenda is. I agree with most of it, with some reservations. It’s interesting to note, however, that at least two of his platform planks are controversial; they might even place him in the distinct minority.

He’s also got a post up on the social construction of disability.

You’d Think This Would Be a No-Brainer

Zuzu wrote about this a few days ago, but I’ll add this article from the NYTimes about the Catholic church and the debate over condoms to further demonstrate the tenuous connection between a professed love for life and an actual demonstration of that belief.

The issue is AIDS. Church officials recently confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI has requested a report on whether it might be acceptable for Catholics to use condoms in one narrow circumstance: to protect life inside a marriage when one partner is infected with the HIV virus or is sick with AIDS.

Here, we’ve got all the things that the Church claims to hold dear: The sanctity of the marital relationship. Marital love between a man and a woman. Life.

And yet there’s a conflict about whether married people should or should not attempt to avoid HIV infection.

The issue has surfaced repeatedly in recent years as one of the most complicated and delicate facing the church. For years, some influential cardinals and theologians have argued for a change for couples affected by AIDS in the name of protecting life, while others have fiercely attacked the possibility as demoting the church’s long advocacy of abstinence and marital fidelity to fight the disease.

Advocate abstinence and marital fidelity as much as you want, but all the marital fidelity in the world isn’t going to prevent HIV transmission if your husband has it and you’re having sex with him. The answer, then, should be abstinence for life, even though you’re married? That hardly seems practical — or something that many women are in a position to demand.

“It’s just hard to imagine that any pope — and this pope — would change the teaching,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Culture of Life Foundation, a Catholic-oriented advocacy group based in Washington that opposes abortion and contraception.

See, we love life — except, you know, when the people we’re talking about are born. Then we love masochism, guilt and personal deprivation!

The debate has two levels: one on moral theology and church doctrine, the other public relations and politics. Many factors are driving the debate: The church is experiencing its greatest growth in Africa, which has the most severe AIDS problem. Much health care in Africa is provided by Catholic charities, whose workers, barred from providing condoms, have often spoken of being torn between church doctrine and the need to prevent disease.

More broadly, critics of the current Vatican policy say it is hard for the church to remain consistent on “life” issues, like its opposition to abortion and euthanasia and the death penalty, when condom use can help prevent the spread of AIDS.

Let’s see… consistency, or saving the lives of millions of people. I can see how that would be a tough choice.

Must-Read Article on Crisis Pregnancy Centers

It’s so good, I don’t even know where to start quoting (and I don’t just say that because it’s written by our own beloved Amanda Marcotte). It’s the best article I’ve seen yet on Crisis Pregnancy Centers, and takes a different tack than most: Instead of just emphasizing the CPC’s system of lying and coercion (although she does that too), she tackles the issue from a healthcare perspective, pointing out that these crisis pregnancy centers simultaneously suck up tax dollars and short-change women.

Read More…Read More…

By the Numbers

It’s Blog Against Disablism Day!

I spent the weekend digging into No Pity (okay, and also reading a collection of Jonathan Lethem short stories), on Jay’s recommendation. It’s sort of a primer on the idea of disability as a civil rights struggle against cultural oppression; i.e., applying the reasoning behind words like “[blah]normativity” and “social construction” to disability and people living with disabilities, but for an audience that might not be familiar with either set of ideas. It was written three years after the ADA was passed–back in the bad old days before all businesses were compliant, institutional discrimination ended, and people living with disabilities faced no barriers whatsoever. I suspect it is current because of continuing disablism (also called ableism; Michael Berube makes the point that this redundancy exists because of mainstream obliviousness: there has not been enough discussion amongst the temporarily able-bodied to default to a standard).

One of the most fascinating passages I’ve encountered is the one on numbers; No Pity quotes the one-in-seven statistic mentioned here, and muses on some of the reasoning behind it. By one measure, we all will be people living with disabilities; until the cyborgs invade, we all will age. Other measurements for inclusion or exclusion are severity and permanence; the statistics quoted below indicate a few biases against certain conditions. Any statistic may include some disabilities that do not fit within the archetype of disability, such as clinical depression and celiac disease; it may exclude others, such as the aforementioned fibromyalgia:

There are some 35 million to 43 million disabled Americans, depending on who does the counting and what disabilities are included. In 1991 the Institute of Medicine, using federal health survey data, came up with a total of 35 million–one of every seven Americans–who have a disability that interferes with daily activities like work or keeping a household.

(snip)

During debate on the Americans with Disabilities Act, lawmakers, President Bush, advocates, and members of the media freely used the higher figure of 43 million. That number came from other federal data. But even this figure did not include people with learning disabilities, some mental illness, those with AIDS, or people who are HIV positive and have other conditions covered under the civil rights legislation. Researchers cannot agree on the size of the disabilitiy population because they have no consensus on what constitutes disability, notes Mitchell LaPlante of the Disability Statistics Program. Most researchers like LaPlante use activity limitation as the definition. Many disability rights advocates, however, include health conditions that may not be limiting but still stigmatize or cause discrimination, like having had cancer. Some even looser estimates that include any disease or chronic health condition count 120 million or more disabled Americans. Some 31 million Americans, for example, have arthritis, but it limits the activities of only 7 million.

–No Pity, by Joseph P. Shapiro, pp. 6-7

An almost three-hundred-percent potential increase from one standard to another, in other words. For example: is a woman whose carpal tunnel syndrome prevents her from putting her groceries away disabled? What if she is not restricted from activities like “keeping a house” but cannot work at a clerical job? What if she can keep that job, but cannot perform certain of its duties? What if she must wear a brace or do hand and wrist exercises? What if her employer is relatively supportive? What if her employer is not? What if she had never needed to work in a clerical job? What if she has options beyond clerical work now that she must take advantage of them? What if she does not? What if she can afford to take care of her wrists outside of work, or take advantage of treatments like physical therapy? What if she cannot? What about her cousin, who knows about a family propensity f0r carpal tunnel, and takes measures to prevent developing a problem? All of these hypothetical people are affected, and carpal tunnel may not even make the list.

Ballsy

If you haven’t seen Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, go watch now (part one, part two, part three). It’s… blistering. Funny, but to the point of being jaw-droppingly rude. I can hadly believe he had the guts to say what he did with Bush sitting a few feet away. I’m pretty mean and I don’t think even I could do that.

It almost made me feel bad for the president. Almost.

and p.s. I love Helen Thomas.

Pre-Blogging Against Disablism Day

(Christ. Even on time, I still manage to be belated.)

I did not know about this.

So, on Tuesday morning Patrick [Califia] had a heart attack. He’s pretty upset, and feeling ashamed that he’s not well. He doesn’t have any health insurance to do any follow up care at the moment.

Like Matt says, Patrick Califia has no health insurance. He also has fibromyalgia:

Unfortunately, Patrick has been unable to work full-time since September 2002. He has lived with fibromyalgia, a chroic auto-immune disease that causes muscle pain and fatigue, for several years. The fibromyalgia has gotten bad enough to cause nerve damage in his legs and hands. Perhaps because of the fibro, he currently has severe tendonitis in his arms and hands and so typing is very difficult for him.

Although Patrick is not wheelchair-bound, an electric chair or scooter and a van with a lift would make it much easier for him to participate in conferences, street fairs, and other community events. He also could really benefit from voice recognition software, Dragon Naturally Speaking, and a PC computer. (He is currently using a Mac laptop, and VSR for the Mac is of poor quality.) Used equipment is gladly accepted!

Damn it.

I just realized that I totally don’t own the book I wanted to use for Blog Against Disablism Day.

Off to google.