Bones: The Plain in the Prodigy

Hey, who else spotted the ableist language in this week’s Bones? Because I did!

This week, Bones went to Amish country, and a lot of very interesting issues were brought up.

The first was teen sexuality, as a running B plot. It was nice, first of all, to see Cam’s daughter, Michelle. I feared last season that she was being introduced as a prop that we would never see. And she may still be being used as a prop, but hopefully we will see her regularly this season, because she’s an interesting character and there is great potential there.

At any rate, Cam faces a dilemma: Michelle is growing up, so how do we handle her sexuality? On the most part, I think it was handled really well. I loved Angela’s discussion about sexuality, and her stress on the fact that, you know, teenage girls like to have sex too. I also thought Cam’s reaction was very realistic. She struggled at first about how to talk about it, and kind of messed up, and then apologized, and stressed that Michelle needed to do what she was comfortable with, whether that was waiting or not. It was really great to see people saying that it was ok to wait (especially Brennan, confessing that she lost her virginity at 22), but that Michelle didn’t have to wait if she didn’t want to and was making a choice without pressure.

The outlier, of course, was Booth. I really didn’t like his response to the situation, but, the thing was, it was also spot on for his character. Booth does embody the double standard in a lot of ways, and it would have been uncharacteristic of him to do otherwise. I kind of appreciated that they struck a balance, showing us various models of handling sexuality, and kind of letting us form our own judgment. And I appreciate that Brennan called him on his double standard. Again, in keeping with her character, and also great for viewers to see a reminder of the fact that Booth was being kind of unreasonable.

The one thing I did not like, though, was Booth’s paternalizing attitude at the very end of the episode, where he stepped in to hassle Michelle’s boyfriend. It was the classic dad act, and it made me feel uncomfortable, the man protecting teh innocent wimmiz from the evil menz. (For the record, my father never did this, probably because he knew I’d punch him in the schnozz if he did.) The bit at the very end, in which Bones demonstrated actual knowledge of the boyfriend and the fact that he’s going to Princeton, was especially interesting, because Booth kind of did a doubletake. I felt like the scene was, in a way, showing some subtle racism, with Booth making assumptions about Michelle’s boyfriend because he is a young black man and those assumptions being refuted by Bones, who likes evidence and does not speculate or jump to conclusions (although she may infer).

Speaking of racism, I loved the very subtle play between Brennan and Clark. Brennan has delegated fieldwork to Clark, because she thinks he’s the best fit for the job, but he feels more comfortable in the lab. One of his acts of protest is to use a stereotypical slave accent from Southern dramas, referencing the fact that, you know, it’s kind of problematic to stick the only Black member of the team out on the railroad tracks in the hot sun. The protest flies right over Brennan’s head, of course, as she thinks (and is right, as far as I know) that he is the most appropriate person to supervise some delicate fieldwork.

The A story was the investigation of the death of a pianist, which brought our characters into connection with the Amish. I am not even going to pretend that I know anything about the Amish, because, while they interest me, I have not studied them, so am not really qualified to talk. So I have no idea about the accuracy of the Amish storyline. But I did think it raised some great questions which, once again, put the faith versus reason debate in the spotlight.

If someone is forced to choose between being an incredibly talented pianist, and following the religion ou was raised with, what do you choose? I can’t begin to judge or say, but it was interesting to see the characters explore it. Brennan, of course, thought that the pianist should have stayed in the English world and performed, because he had an amazing gift. Booth, though, respected the desire to keep the Amish faith.

Brennan also brought up a great point, and something I really respect about the Amish: You have to choose to be Amish. Even if you are born into Amish culture, you are still expected to actually make a conscious choice to commit to the church. This is in contrast with a lot of other faiths, in which people are born into a faith and expected to keep it.

I know I’m kind of getting off on a tangent here, but I wish we dealt with more things like the Amish do with faith. Like, say, gender in children, or sexual orientation. Why assume that just because someone is born into something, ou will follow it?

Laura also reviewed “The Plain in the Prodigy,” and you should check her review out as well.

2 October, 2009 – 8:37 pm | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, reviews, television | Tagged |

One Of My Best Friends Is…

It’s supposed to be the triumphal moment in the argument. Backed into a bit of a corner, the person in the wrong finally musters the argument-killing blow: “Well, one of my best friends is [a member of a minority group], and ou says…” After this statement is pronounced, the person who is wrong sits back, puffed up with self pleasure, and dares you to top that. Even if you are also a member of said minority group, you must be wrong, because the best friend has been dragged out.

“Well, one of my best friends is a woman, and she loves Tucker Max, so obviously he’s not degrading women!” “One of my best friends is Black, and he says it’s fine to call him ‘coloured’!” “One of my best friends is a wheelchair user, and she doesn’t mind at all when you push her chair!” “One of my best friends is gay, and he doesn’t think that ‘faggot’ is an offensive word.” It always follows this formula: “One of my best friends is/my best friend is/some of my best friends are [member/s of minority group] and [they/she/he/ou] say/s that [your point] is wrong.”

This is called “tokenizing.” When you represent the point of view of a minority group through a “best friend” who is not present to use it to prop up your argument, you are invoking that person as a token. And this is not cool, for a number of reasons, among which is that fact that it alerts the person you are arguing with to the fact that you do not care about that minority group. As soon as the “my best friend is…” argument gets hauled out, I know it’s pointless to continue the discussion, because the person I am talking with is not willing to engage.

So, there are a couple of reasons why tokenizing is not cool. In the first sense, it’s a poor rhetorical tactic, because it focuses on individual experiences and anecdotal evidence, rather than regarding a group as a whole. The thing is, minority groups are not uniform. Women, for example. A pretty big percentage of the planet’s population, in fact, is female, and women do not think in lockstep. There are, in fact, women that like Tucker Max. However, their like of Tucker Max does not invalidate critiques of him which suggest that he is offensive and degrading to women.

Anecdotal evidence is dangerous. People tend to think of anecdotal evidence before they think of actual evidence, and that creates faulty logic and a cognitive bias. There’s actually a term for this: “the availability heuristic.” The more easily an example of something can be mustered, the more likely someone is to view that example as the truth and as the deciding factor in the matter. So, if one happens to know a gay man who doesn’t have a problem with “faggot,” one is going to reject the evidence from gay men one does not know, or from gay allies, which indicates that “faggot” is actually an offensive word which should not be used.

People are different. Everyone experiences the world in a unique way. Advocates for minority groups try to be aware of this, and try to point out that they are making generalizations, and that individual people within a group may feel differently. And, furthermore, that these feelings are valid, that individual experience and beliefs matter, even when they seem to conflict with the whole. When one tries to advocate for an entire group, one speaks in general terms to accomplish a goal which will do the most good. And individual people rarely suggest that they are speaking on behalf of their entire group, because they know they can’t. If one knows a Muslim and one asks that Muslim questions about Islam, ou is not speaking for all Muslims, but rather for ouself, and ou own experiences with Islam. That means that one can’t turn around and take what that person says as evidence of “what Muslims do.”

It’s also possible that a “best friend” is actually just humoring someone. Kind of like how the Obama Administration recently released a statement saying that the dangerous rhetoric in this country is not racially motivated. They knew full well that race is a factor, but they also knew that to say that would incite ugliness. Just like a wheelchair using acquaintance actually hates it when people push her chair, but doesn’t want to make a big production of it, so grins and bears it. Members of minority groups appease people with privilege all the time, for a variety of reasons, and that’s something to be aware of when you are in a position of privilege and people without privilege assure you that your privilege doesn’t bother them. Newsflash: it does, they just don’t feel like having A Discussion about it.

Knowing a single member of a minority group does not make one an expert on that group. It also doesn’t mean that one is not racist/sexist/ableist/heterosexist/cissexist/etc. It may mean that one has been exposed to one person’s knowledge and experiences, that one has been given a glimpse of a very large whole, but that’s about it.

The other thing about tokenizing is that the token usually is not a “best friend.” It’s someone known casually, or maybe it’s someone one doesn’t even know, like that Black man overheard at a party last week. Possibly, it’s someone invented out of whole cloth (like Sarah Palin’s “gay best friend”). If this person was actually a friend, ou would probably not appreciate being cited as an argument-killer, and one would probably know that. Most people don’t enjoy being used as tokens. People who are advocating for social justice and genuinely willing to engage with social justice issues should know better than to engage in tokenization.

Tokenizing is also offensive because, in the cases when the person being cited is actually known to the person doing the citing and might even be ok with being cited, the person doing the citing often gets it wrong. Or takes a comment out of context. Or deliberately misrepresents. Unless the best friend is there, saying “oh, yes, I love it when you call me a ‘faggot,’” I am going to be extremely skeptical. I’ve have my own views misrepresented or grossly exaggerated for the benefit of someone with privilege who wants to win an argument, which means that when I hear someone citing a “best friend,” I am immediately suspicious.

When people tokenize, it’s yet another example of how people with privilege use people in minority groups for their convenience. And, when one with privilege is having a discussion with someone who belongs to a group without privilege about a matter relating to privilege, if tokenizing is used, it serves as an immediate alert. When the person a tokenizer is talking to walks away or ends the conversation, it doesn’t mean the tokenizer won. The tokenizer lost, and just hasn’t been informed of it.

2 October, 2009 – 5:35 pm | By s.e. smith | Posted in disability, Everything, gender, LGBQT, race, social justice |

This Is My Body That You Are Talking About

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, in case you’ve been wondering why the world around you suddenly went pink. Now, I happen to think that breast cancer awareness is a very good thing, and that educating people about breast cancer and numerous other health issues is a terrific idea. I hate breast cancer. And cancer in general. Cancer, in my opinion, can go take a long walk off a short pier, and anything which improves prevention and treatment of cancer is awesome, in my opinion.

But I hate Breast Cancer Awareness Month, or, as Laura aptly puts it, “Objectify Women’s Bodies Month.”

There are a lot of reasons why. Let’s start with the obvious, which is that most breast cancer awareness campaigns focus on using exploitative images of women’s breasts. Many include sexist language in their very campaign names, like “Save the Ta-Tas.” Women of all walks of life, including prominent celebrities, participate in ads which focus on breasts. And by focus on breasts, I mean “do not address the whole body,” as in ads with floating, disembodied breasts, tight camera cuts onto women’s chests, etc.

You know what I think when I see disembodied body parts? I do not think “oh, what a great way to raise awareness.” I think “oh my Pete, this is incredibly fucking triggering and I am flashing on centuries of violence against women right now.” I think of the centuries of torture techniques which involve cutting or ripping off women’s breasts. I think about the fact that purses made from women’s breasts were popular keepsakes among some Latin American death squads. I think about the time that I was on a BART train and a drunk man groped my breast so fucking hard that I had a purple bruise for weeks. I think about the fact that human society has thought that it owns women’s breasts for hundreds and hundreds of years.

When these ads go on to say things like “grope for the cause” and to use language about how we need to protect women from breast cancer so that they can keep their breasts, it makes me want to vomit. Literally, it makes me physically ill. The focus isn’t on the fact that breast cancer kills people, it is a focus on the fact that breast cancer makes breasts go away. And what’s life without the funbags?

Note that I said “kills people,” above. That’s because breast cancer kills people, not women, which brings me to another problem with breast cancer awareness month, which is that it is cissexist all to hell. Not everyone in this world has breasts, but everyone in this world can get breast cancer. And the focus on breasts, specifically, means that breast cancer goes untreated in people who are not cis women. Those people? They die.

Something else, which I am editing to add, is that I don’t heart breasts. My position on breasts? Is actually pretty neutral. I feel the same way about breasts that I do about arms, legs, noses, ears, toes. I don’t attach any special value or importance to them. In fact, I would probably have a prophylactic double mastectomy if I could afford one. Without reconstruction. That is how much I do not care about breasts.

You know what I do care about? I care about health. I care about the health of all people. I care about the fact that cancer kills people. Cancer does not confine itself to specific areas of the body. Cancer likes to metastasize. Cancer likes to sprawl its little cancer tentacles all over the body. As a result, I care about brain cancer. Stomach cancer. Throat cancer. Colon cancer. Skin cancer. Pancreatic cancer. Liver cancer. Etc. I don’t see any awareness-raising shirts shirts that say “save the esophagi” or “I heart colons.” If breast cancer awareness ads which use sexualized and disembodied breasts aren’t exploitative and sexist, then why don’t we see awareness campaigns for, say, cancer of the bile duct featuring cutesy little pictures of bile ducts? (end edit, original resumes after this)

I’m also not a huge fan of the cause marketing, in which every corporation slathers their crap in pink (also sexist) in the hopes of appealing to people who want to make a difference. The proceeds from sale of pink-branded crap? Don’t necessarily go to breast cancer research. When they do, they often go to organizations which do not use funds in efficient ways. And they also go to funds with nebulous connections to breast cancer, like “women’s health initiatives” which focus on scaremongering about abortion.

You want to make a difference? Donate directly to organizations which research breast cancer and which have high ratings from third party organizations which rate charities. Donate to funds which provide mammograms, education, and other intervention for low income women.

There’s something else that I want to say about the tone of breast cancer awareness campaigns, which is that it’s my body they’re talking about. I have multiple family members who are breast cancer survivors and I have variant BRCA1 & 2. So, when I talk about how much these campaigns offend and upset me, I am speaking from a personal place. Because it is my fucking body that is being exploited by these campaigns, it is my fucking health that is at risk from breast cancer.

So when people tell me that I should “lighten up” and “not be so offended” and that these campaigns aren’t problematic or sexist or, ok, maybe they are a little but it’s for a good cause, I want to scream. You do not get to tell me how to feel. You do not get to tell me that I should not be offended, furious, and upset by campaigns which exploit women’s bodies. Which reduce women to disembodied sexualized body parts.

(Incidentally, this post is part of a larger conversation which started at Adventures of a Young Feminist and moved to Small Strokes Fell Big Oaks, so you may want to check out the posts/comments there as well.)

2 October, 2009 – 10:16 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, health, social justice | Tagged |

Sunny Buttocks

The industry is running scared. Evidently millions are being spent to fight health care reform, with six lobbyists for every congressperson. Seriously, how can single payer advocates compete with that?

Is concierge medicine an option for health care reform in America? I don’t think so, personally.

Laura writes about all of the problems with breast cancer awareness month (hint, those problems have a lot less to do with breast cancer than they do with exploitation of women’s bodies).

Some great thoughts on abstinence/conscious celibacy as a feminist choice. Indeed, even a sex positive one!

In legal news, court injunctions being served over Twitter? That’s an interesting legal precedent.

This story, about the abduction of a four day old baby, is repulsive on a lot of levels. Bottom line: we have so terrorized the Latino and Latina population in this country that when a white person demands entry to a private home claiming to be a government representative, they get in. Scary.

Newly discovered early hominid remains! Yay science!

Even more on the Nestle debacle: an excellent post on Blacktating about #NestleFamily and race.

And even more on Roman Polanski, at Tiger Beatdown. Finally, Sady hath spoken, and we may all retire in peace.

2 October, 2009 – 10:11 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |

What Do You Get When You Combine a Press Junket, Uninformed Bloggers, Angry Activists, and the Internet?

A mess. Is what you get.

Readers may have noted that I’ve been including links to discussions about Nestle in the last few days, and some of you may have been wondering what the sudden uptick in Nestle-related stuff is all about. Those of you who follow my Twitter (I’m sorry, Meridith, I know I said I wouldn’t talk about Twitter, but it’s relevant to the larger story) may also  have noted that the hashtag #nestlefamily has been showing up repeatedly over the last few days.

So, what in the heck/hashtag is going on?

Well, sit back and I’ll tell you a story. I’m going to assume, for the sake of brevity, that all of my readers are aware that Nestle has been subject to a boycott since the late 1970s for questionable, unethical, and sometimes blatantly illegal business practices. These include the use of child labour, sourcing chocolate from cacao farms which use slave labour, stealing rural water resources in the United States, marketing formula with questionable and sometimes outright illegal claims, etc etc. This is capitalism 101, of course, but Nestle has taken it to an entirely new level. Cara brought up an excellent point about degrees of evil when it comes to Nestle, pointing out that, you know, evil does come in shades, and Nestle’s got some serious evil going on.

So, Nestle also has a long history of hosting press junkets in which journalists are invited on swanky trips and plied with Nestle propaganda. Most journalists, thankfully, refused, but this year, Nestle found a new target: mommy bloggers.* Not all mothers who blog are mommy bloggers, but there’s a large blogging community of mothers, many of whom are already kind of crossing the lines when it comes to advertising and integrity; someone else refers to them as “ad bloggers,” and that’s basically what they are. But, you know, everyone needs to make a living somehow.  The ability to monetize parenting means that these moms get to stay home and take care of their children, and I think that’s pretty cool (and very feminist, reversing a history of unpaid work for mothering).

So, Nestle issued them with an all expenses paid vacation complete with ample goodybags at Nestle’s California offices, and most accepted. Most were apparently not aware of the problems with Nestle, and did not bother to do any research about Nestle before accepting an invite. Some apparently knew, and didn’t care, or were dismissive of the claims. It sounds like some thought that they could “open a dialogue” with Nestle by accepting handouts from them.

This was clearly an advertising event. The bloggers were expected to tweet using the hashtag #nestlefamily during the event, and to write about the event afterwards. Nestle wanted to capture some of the very valuable market share found among mommy blog readers. This was most definitely a cynical and kind of brilliant advertising move. Except that Nestle must have known that activists would find out about the event and become upset. Is it possible that Nestle was also willing to throw these poor women (and a handful of men) in front of the bus as sacrificial lambs by using them as middlemen?

Because, what happened is that some activists did find out. And that’s where the fun began, because activists started also using the #nestlefamily hashtag to talk about Nestle’s corporate wrongdoing, and to ask why bloggers were attending the event. And here’s where things started to get complicated, because when you only have 140 characters to work with, your message is, by nature, truncated.

Some activists were very respectful, posting links to facts and asking probing questions. Some conference attendees responded in kind, relaying those questions to Nestle spokespeople and engaging with activists; several specifically responded to me and asked questions on my behalf (many of those also later turned on me, which is why I am not naming them). Others were not. People asking questions were called “crackpots” and “loony toons” and “idiots” while mommybloggers claimed that they were being “attacked” by people who were “hijacking their hash tag.” Asking questions is not attacking, but in the eyes of people who may be feeling some ethical unease about their participation in an event like this, I can see how being questioned would feel like an attack.

Some activists also crossed the line, making inappropriate comments and, yes, attacking people. The gloves really started to come off on both sides with racist, sizeist, and ableist commentary, accusations that people were being bad mothers, and a host of other things. At one point, activists were policing food choices while the mommy bloggers tried to defend themselves, and I stepped in to say “hey, let’s not do that,” and, amazingly, everyone stopped. It was actually pretty cool.

Activists were furious that event attendees were hearing factual information and ignoring it or claiming that it was propaganda. Several people, provided with ample information from numerous reputable third party sources, were still saying “there’s not enough information.” Attendees were making jokes about the use of slave labor. And, all the while, tweeting the propaganda given to them by Nestle executives. While activists were linking to studies on violation of the WHO code, mommy bloggers were tweeting about how they heart Nestle and how Nestle employees stay there for years, so the company must be good.

The debate quickly became clouded. Infant formula marketing was a major bone of contention, and this was taken to be an attack on formula feeding, turning the situation into a breast vs bottle debate. In fact, it was about illegal marketing practices, about the fact that infants in the third world die on watered down formula (because it’s too expensive to mix properly), badly mixed formula (because parents can’t read the directions), and formula made with contaminated water. At one point, mommy bloggers were proposing that the solution to this was for Nestle to bring in supplies of bottled water. No fooling. Serious questions about business practices like using chocolate made with slave labour fell by the wayside, and people dismissed this as a mommyblogger catfight, though people like me were involved (and I’m about the furthest thing from a mommyblogger you could possibly imagine).

Nestle finally realized that the situation was getting out of control, so they got an executive Twittering. I asked him several questions, excited to see that Nestle was actually engaging and giving people like me a chance to communicate with the company. I’ve been boycotting Nestle for 10 years, and I’ve written, phoned, emailed, and picketed Nestle, all to no avail, so it was very neat to be able to talk to a real Nestle executive. I actually squeed with delight.

But he answered only one of my questions, with a lie.

This pattern repeated itself with everyone who asked questions; Nestle said “stop attacking our attendees and ask us questions,” so we asked Nestle questions, and they didn’t answer, or they straight up lied. So, we started asking why Nestle was lying, and asking conference attendees about what they thought they might accomplish by going to this event. And…things pretty much ran in circles for two days.

Yesterday, I was repeatedly attacked by multiple mommy bloggers who called me some very unkind things, asked me if I was stupid and couldn’t read, and made derisive comments about how Nestle was reaching out and I wasn’t cooperating. I was told that if I “really cared” I would “try harder” despite the fact that I pointed out that I have been trying for years. Other activists on the #nestlefamily hashtag were also subjected to some incredibly rude, mean, dismissive, and hurtful commentary. It got extremely intense. I was so angry at one point that I was actually shaking, as I had made a good faith effort to keep my tone civil, asking questions and not insulting or personally attacking (although I did ask several people tweeting about how much they loved eating Nestle chocolate about how they felt knowing that it was made with slave labour).

The tone of the discourse really started to get out of control. Nestle just vanished, leaving their mommy bloggers to the wolves, after posting one message saying “answers to all questions are here” (when they weren’t) and that other questions should be sent by email.

Did we learn anything? Well, I hope that some conference attendees learned that they should do their due diligence before accepting handouts, and specifically learned that Nestle is a very problematic company. I hope that Nestle learned something about social media, because this event revitalized the somewhat moribund Nestle boycott (I was astonished to  learn that a lot of people didn’t know about the boycott, and once they found out, they joined).

A collision of intersecting issues happened here. I’m not convinced that everyone was totally blameless.

I think that people should not accept free handouts (which amount to compensation with an accompanying expectation of favourable treatment) without researching the issues. I also think that people should not expect straight answers from advertising executives. This is pretty basic. Company executives are not going to answer serious, probing questions honestly when they haven’t been doing it for 30 years.

I was very upset with the way that Nestle treated their bloggers. These poor people were thrown into a firestorm they don’t understand, and it was tragic to see them repeating propaganda fed to them by Nestle about Nestle’s good deeds. (Hint: building a few houses in New Orleans five years after Katrina does not make up for using slave labour. Providing lactation rooms for employees is not better than giving them more family leave to breastfeed at home. Providing books for school children in America does not address illiteracy in Asia. Etc.) These folks went on the defensive because they were being saturated in information which was clearly new to them. In the process, many said some offensive and really horrific things.

This also raised questions about blogging ethics, an ongoing problem. Bloggers are not journalists, and are therefore not held to journalistic ethical standards. But when you have a huge readership which trusts and respects you, you  have credibility and some ethical responsibilities. When you make statements on your website, your readers trust them. And that means that you need to do some legwork to make sure that you are not inadvertently backing something you do not support (like, say, the use of child labour). This is one reason I do not accept advertising or freebies of any kind, because I feel like it would compromise me. Inevitably it compromises you, sometimes because of contractual obligations, but also because you want more freebies. Nestle’s never going to invite me and people like me on a junket because a. we would refuse and b. we wouldn’t make it easy for them, and we wouldn’t say nice things at the end.

Activists learned nothing new and did not benefit from this, despite the claims from the mommy blogging shills who said that “see, Nestle is listening!” Nestle did not listen. Nestle went on its usual plan of obfuscating and lying, because Nestle is a corporation, and that is what corporations do. But the #nestlefamily debacle did raise awareness about the Nestle boycott, which is awesome, and I also think that it encouraged some people to start seriously thinking about issues like the sources of information, which companies own what, and how they can make a difference in the world, as individuals.

I’d like to take a moment to recognize some of the folks on Twitter who respectfully advocated in this debacle. They came from all perspectives and all walks of life and they brought factual information and probing questions to the discussion. I am sure that I am leaving out a few folks here, and I apologize: Retrohousewife5, thesmartmama, that_danielle, phdinparenting, Blacktating, TheLactivista, Artemnesia, ilauredhel, CrunchyGoddess, and BlabberMom, you spoke some serious truth to power.

I’d also note that I now have a lot of mommy bloggers in my followers, which I think is kind of awesome. I’m hoping that I don’t lose them over the coming days and weeks, because a lot of the social issues I write about (like gendering children) definitely pertain to childrearing, and a lot of these folks are very socially conscious and awesome people whom I am honored to have as readers. I never thought I’d have so many parents among my fans, or that I would dig it this much.

*I actually really hate the term “mommy blogger,” because it seems kind of…dismissive and disrespectful to me. But many women describe themselves as mommy bloggers, so I’m going to use that label.

2 October, 2009 – 8:20 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in commentary, Everything, technology |