July 2008 – Page 15

Esmin Green

If this story doesn’t disgust you, I don’t know what will:

It was a nightmare captured on surveillance video. A woman who had waited nearly 24 hours to be seen in a Brooklyn public hospital collapsed, fell face-down on the floor, convulsed and for nearly an hour — while several hospital staff members looked at her and one staff member even prodded her with her foot — received no aid. At some point during that time, she died.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has been sounding the alarm about New York City hospitals for some time now, calling the emergency room and inpatient units at Kings County Hospital “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger.” It’s disgusting that someone had to die before the city bothered doing anything about it.

And this is just the one that we know about because the video was released on YouTube. The callous disregard that the hospital employees showed to Esmin Green is not possibly a one-time occurrence. Ms. Green was a poor, mentally ill woman of color. She apparently didn’t matter one bit to the employees at the hospital who were supposed to be giving her care. I would bet everything I own that she is not the first “unimportant” patient to receive that kind of treatment — she is just the first to have her death broadcast on YouTube, and so she is the first that the city cannot turn a blind eye towards.

And via Panopticon in the comments:

A state agency, the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Service, filed a lawsuit a year ago, calling the psychiatric center “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger.”

Patients, the suit said, “are subjected to overcrowded and squalid conditions often accompanied by physical abuse and unnecessary and punitive injections of mind-altering drugs.”

“From the moment a person steps through the doors,” it added, “she is stripped of her freedom and dignity and literally forced to fight for the essentials of life.”

The suit was especially critical of the hospital’s emergency ward, saying it is so poorly staffed that patients are often marooned there for days while they wait to be evaluated.

Sometimes, the unit runs out of chairs, according to the lawsuit, forcing people to wait on foam mats or on the waiting room floor. The suit also claims that bathrooms are filthy and filled with flies, and that patients who complain too loudly are sometimes handcuffed, beaten or injected with psychotropic drugs.

In case this doesn’t make it clear, mental health (and health care in general) is a feminist issue. This should appall and enrage all of us.

And no, it’s not just a New York City thing. A similar incident happened in LA about a year ago; and it’s only the most shocking horror stories that get reported. Usually, the people who are neglected are so low on the social totem pole that their deaths are just swept under the rug — another crazy colored lady? Nothing to see here.

We’ve had a lot of conversations at Feministe lately about mental illness, disability, the words we use, and how all of that intersects with feminism. Esmin Green and Edith Rodriguez died in part because they were poor women of color without very much influence, access or power. They died because they sought help in a system that is over-burdened to the breaking point — a system that enables the people within it to make cruel choices and to perpetuate racist, sexist and ableist hierarchies in their jobs. Esmin Green wasn’t just a woman; she was a woman of color who was mentally ill. She was “crazy,” she was poor, and she didn’t appear to be particularly powerful, so she was left to die on the floor. We are a truly sick society when we allow these abuses to continue.

Doing the analysis so I don’t have to

Pixar’s Gender Problem, by Caitlin GD Hopkins at Vast Public Indifference, via ill Doctrine.

. . . Whenever a new Pixar movie comes out, I wrestle with the same frustration: Pixar’s gender problem. While Disney’s long history of antipathy toward mothers and the problematic popularity of the Disney Princess line are well-traveled territory for feminist critiques, Pixar’s gender problem often slips under the radar.

The Pixar M.O. is (somewhat) subtler than the old your-stepmom-is-a-witch tropes of Disney past. Instead, Pixar’s continued failure to posit female characters as the central protagonists in their stories contributes to the idea that male is neutral and female is particular. This is not to say that Pixar does not write female characters. What I am taking issue with is the ad-nauseam repetition of female characters as helpers, love interests, and moral compasses to the male characters whose problems, feelings, and desires drive the narratives . . .

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The Expat Perpetual

“People are strange, when you’re a stranger.” – The Doors

The first time I became an expat, I was ten. My parents and I moved from Ukraine to the U.S. We bought a home in a quiet neighbourhood, and deer came to graze in our backyard. I nearly had a nervous breakdown when I discovered that the windows of our new house were OMIGOD NOT BULLETPROOF. Sounds hilarious now, doesn’t it? I got over the non-bulletproof thing eventually, and went on to have a pretty good life as an American, with no small thanks to Mama & Papa.

Moving to the Middle East for work, and occasionally going back to Ukraine (where my family is presently located), means that I’ve almost made peace with the fact that I will be, to some extent, a stranger everywhere. After all, being a stranger is can be made easier by being a white person with an American passport. I learned that even before I moved to Jordan.

While on a visit, I went to register at the local police station, and witnessed an officer shout abuse at a family of Iraqi refugees, then turn to me with a smile and ask me if I want a cup of tea in the same breath (!!!).

I ask readers to refrain from forming stereotypes of Jordanians based on that encounter, but I do wish to bring it up to highlight the fact that different people have different experiences, and mine is not the gospel.

Now if only people would stop assuming I’m soulless and sexually available to all and sundry…

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A Brief(?) Addendum

Exholt left a comment on my last post that I thought warranted further discussion:

Hate to be cynical, but most parents of undergrads and the undergrads themselves I’ve met in college, the workplace, and in grad school tend to not care or be willing to understand what education in the sense that you and I are thinking about. Most don’t really care from my experience and the few that do are confused and thrown off by the academic environment which is often alien to anything they experienced unless they were academics themselves or were MA/MS PhD students in non pre-professional programs. Heck, even my lawyer uncle has admitted the only reason he could understand some of what I’ve experienced was the fact he was a PhD candidate before he bailed for law school due to being fed up with a toxic departmental environment.

As Bitter Scribe has alluded, the vast majority only care about paying the tuition to get that piece of paper with the B.A./B.S. label on it with a perfect transcript to match so these undergrads can parlay them into some sort of a lucrative/prestigious job/grad school. This tendency is especially bad at many top-tier research universities where the priority of most undergrads from what I’ve seen is to land that highly lucrative job like ibanking/finance/business or to gain admission to topflight MBA/Law programs.

So long as one manages to graduate with a decently high GPA whether gotten through one’s own hard work, browbeating Profs/TAs, or in extreme cases…cheating…few parents will be overly concerned. Unfortunately, this trend was already underway when I was an undergrad and has only gotten worse after I graduated from what I’ve heard from current Profs and TAs.

I didn’t want to admit it at first, but exholt raises a good point. Sure, I’ve met parents and students who aren’t happy with the way things are – in fact, one of my current students is enrolled at a university, but is taking classes at my community college because she doesn’t want to be taught by a grad student. (I didn’t have the heart to tell her that many community college instructors are also grad students.) The fact that US News and World Report publishes the numbers of classes taught by TAs and lecturers indicates that it’s of at least some concern. But… I’ve also read that students routinely report high satisfaction with their classes. I think part of this is due to simple ignorance – many students don’t realize that part-time positions exist – but if the degree is the only thing that matters, then it makes sense that they don’t care if the actual education is substandard.

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Feministe Feedback: Stocking a Library with Feminist Books

A great call for suggestions:

I’m a young feminist librarian in my first out of grad-school professional job, and I’ve already volunteered to fix up the feminist section of our library, which consists of about 8 books entirely about second-wave white women. My boss is only letting me purchase 3-4 new books for the section, and we’ll see how well those check out. But I don’t really know what to buy. Our non-fiction standards are pretty tight, and we only purchase books published in the last 5 years unless there is an extraordinary need and I want something that is third-wave and diverse. I could go with Full Frontal Feminism and/or It’s A Jungle Out There, but I really would like something that focuses more on WOC because we have a lot of Hispanic and black residents here. And given the anger towards Seal Press, I would like to find some alternatives. I would like to keep it on an “intro to feminism” level, at least for now. Anyone have any suggestions?

Any thoughts? Which feminist books must a library have?

More Fathers Owning Daughters

I came across this article, and something about it totally creeps me out the door:

He once sought blood. Now he wants justice.

The father of a 15-year-old girl who reported being gang-raped after an underage drinking party in Neptune Beach a month ago said Monday he is patiently waiting for police to solve the case and has no plans to rest until then.

The Tennessee man said he came to Jacksonville seeking revenge after learning of the attack, which police said occurred on the beach after the girl and others left the party. But as time passed he said he began to focus more on wanting those involved to be caught and punished as a message of intolerance.

“I pray for something that breaks it [the case],” the 37-year-old man said in a telephone interview. “I’m not going to have someone victimized and there not be someone who pays a price.”

Okay, first of all, that first sentence sounds like a trailer for a Jean Claude Van Damme movie.

Second, I think it’s great that this girl’s father is supportive of her and takes sexual assault seriously. But something about the way the article totally focuses on his emotions, his thoughts, his reactions… It’s as if there has been a crime against this guy and his property, not another person.

Kinda gives me those purity ball wiggins.

I’m not a coffee drinker

but I feel your pain:

Starbucks to close 600 US stores, rein in growth, by Jessica Mintz, AP.

I remember a day when Starbucks could do no wrong. When Lewis Black could rant about building a Starbucks across from another Starbucks. Then came the $1 coffee, and I knew there was trouble a-brewing. Ha! When you’re positioned as a company that provides a distinctive experience for the discriminating coffee enthusiast, and your top competition starts coming from McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, there’s a problem. It’s not entirely the fault of the Starbucks corporation. With gas prices rising literally every day, fewer Americans can continue to afford $5 coffees.

I don’t have a solution to the problem with the American economy. No, wait, I do. Stop the illegal occupation of Iraq and the underfunded war in Afghanistan, and prosecute the oligarchy of oil companies for price gouging. That would help me.

Stealth, Marginalized Communities, and the F word

When is the label “feminist” useful?

I hadn’t heard of antifeminist “feminist” Megan McArdle until I came across one of her silly columns today (in which she bashes Feministe—good work, guys!). However, I’ve long been acquainted with Christina Hoff Sommers, Katie Roiphe, Cathy Young, Camille Paglia, and their ilk.

All of these women spend their lives bashing feminism, with one thing separating them from your average conservative: they preface their sentence by saying, “as a feminist…”

So, for example, “As a feminist, I think feminism is a terrible idea. Also, feminists are hairy and mean and not pretty.”

You know how it goes.

So on one hand, we have a bunch of stealth conservative assholes muddying the waters when it comes to an actual, positive definition of feminism. It kind of freaks me out that in situations like this, the word is so amorphous as to be virtually meaningless. As stealth conservatives have figured out, anyone can call themselves a feminist. What good is a word if it’s that easy to fuck up its meaning?

On the other hand, we have serious, bigtime, ginormous problems with the marginalization of all kinds of people by mainstream “feminism.” For this reason, I have sometimes found myself struggling with whether I could identify with the word, especially lately with the outright racist apologism I heard during the primary election from some of my fellow “feminists.” If that is what feminism is, take my name off the list.

I know that some random racist doesn’t get to define what feminism is for me, but at what point has the movement become so tainted by racist/transphobic/ableist/classist/Islamophobic etc. etc. etc. individuals that we alienate entire swaths of the population and erase our own identities just by identifying as “feminist?” We can try to tackle it when someone does something offensive, but people are going to keep doing offensive things. Even if every existing feminist magically poofed away our blind spots (which ain’t gonna happen), the culture is still what it is. There would be brand new feminists with all the same blind spots, perenially presenting themselves and causing pain and division. This problem isn’t going away.

On the other hand (I realize I am on my third hand), isn’t it important to have words to describe the movement against gender oppression? How else do we find each other? Maybe most of the time we can just organize around an issue and forget the labels (and most of the time, we’ll be more effective if we do), but sometimes in order to be effective we need to recognize gender oppression as something larger than one specific issue. We need a framework. How do we do that without a word?

I know this is a can of worms. I’m asking commenters ahead of time to be civil, please.

The Ivory Ceiling Part 2

Why Our Problem is Your Problem
First off, thanks for all the great comments on part one. I’m glad people are finding this helpful; it goes without saying (I hope) that I’m finding your thoughts helpful, too.

Recently, two friends of my husband – a graduate student at a major research university – had a baby. My excitement for them was tempered by the troubling question of how they were handling health insurance, since the university refuses to cover spouses and dependents. I myself pay fifty dollars a month for a Blue Shield plan that doesn’t cover maternity (but does cover abortions, in a not-so-subtle message to its customers). Grad students at this university make $18,000 a year after their fourth step increase. How in the world was this couple going to come up with the money to cover an infant’s health costs?*

When I found out that the baby is on MediCal, I couldn’t help but think of the service and agriculture industries’ policies of encouraging employees to go on welfare, in essence foisting their responsibility for their workers’ well-being onto other taxpayers. Obviously academics have it a whole lot better than farm workers; my intent isn’t to try and compare the two. I just think it’s very interesting that universities are taking their cues from corporations like Walmart, even while researchers and educators within those very universities work to put an end to worker exploitation. Why should you care about whether child-bearing women in academia – not to mention their partners and colleagues – receive fair compensation for their time? Because if universities don’t pay for essentials like health care, then you will. In fact, you already are.

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When I grow up

I want to be a gay icon. Not a lesbian icon like Jackie Warner. She scares me. A gay icon like Kathy Griffin. On last week’s episode of My Life on the D-List, Kathy traveled to Australia with Team Griffin; her mother Maggie stayed at home and cleaned up the condoms Kathy had tossed around her room. Kathy provided the entertainment on the 14-hour gay flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. Once she arrived on the big island/country/continent, Kathy met up with Lance Bass, Margaret Cho and Cyndi Lauper. How cool is that? I need my own Lance Bass. If any newly-gay, former boy band members want to be my friend, give me a ring-a-ding. We can snuggle with tiny kangaroos at an Australian zoo whenever you like.

On a more serious note, in reference to the title of this post, Kathy Griffin is one of the few good role models, for women or otherwise, currently on TV. She runs her own business, and she stays in control of her financial matters. She’s quirky and odd, and her fans love her for her nonconformist attitudes. Outside of the weight loss, elective surgeries, spray tans and hair extensions, that is. There aren’t many women allowed to have their own shows on the television, so I’m happy we have this one for now. If any network executives are reading, make more shows like this, please! You can mine the reject piles from Last Comic Standing for talent. Most of the women on that show who make it to the callbacks are very good.