Attack of the Fanpeople!

I was recently having a conversation with Annaham about the role of very aggressive fans in pop culture, and in how people talk about and engage with the creators of pop culture. The fans I speak of are the ones who believe their creators can do no wrong. Who consume every piece of content from that creator uncritically, and who will fly up in a rage at anyone who dares to criticise The Great Creator, even if it is a fellow fan. This is a relatively uncomplicated approach to cultural texts, and it’s not really one that interests me; as a fan, what I enjoy is the criticism and the ability to engage deeply with a creator’s work. If I want to consume something without really thinking about it, I can always order some fries at Jenny’s Giant Burger1.

These fans make it fundamentally difficult for critics to engage, of course, especially smaller critics who may not be prepared for the deluge if they unwisely opine on the wrong creator. Bloggers who want to comment on texts they find interesting must be prepared for an onslaught, and definitely shouldn’t read the Reddit threads about their work unless they are wearing asbestos underpants. Confronted with criticism, fanpeople can turn extremely nasty; I’m not the only critic who has received rape and death threats over my work from people who were just that angry that I dared to take to my keyboard to discuss some topics of interest2.

This phenomenon is documented and widely discussed; I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, you are familiar with the issue. What I’m more interested in is the gendering that happens here, because the dynamic is unmistakably gendered, and it’s also heavily racialised. The creators who tend to attract this kind of intense following tend to be white and male. Almost overwhelmingly so, although of course there are exceptions, as there always are. I am hesitant to name specific examples for fear of being descended upon by angry fanpeople when I already have enough to do this week, but, again, if you are familiar with the issue, you can probably think of a few all on your own.

So we have a situation where people occupying a position of power, people who traditionally dominate pop culture texts anyway, attract a following that reinforces that dominance by soundly trouncing any critics who dare to speak up. Those critics may be marginalised people who are displeased with the way they are depicted, or they may be fans who actually share some of that power, but in either case, they are going against the accepted grain by wanting to talk about issues they identify with works they love, and they are severely punished for it in a way that maintains hierarchies.

Because it’s notable that some really vicious criticism is reserved for female creators, and for creators of colour as well. Last year I wrote at Feministe about the scapegoating of female creators and one thing I brought up was the tendency for women associated with male creators to take all the blame for any mistakes, without getting any of the praise for success:

When mixed-gender collaboration does happen, assessment tends to follow a road we’ve gone down before; everything great must have been the men, and everything bad must have been the women. It’s not uncommon to see male creators absolved of culpability if there’s a woman around to blame things on; ‘well, it’s obvious where the idea for that came from!’

Some of those same female creators get attacked by the same angry fans who go after critics, which can put them in an extremely uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous position. Creators who choose to partner with people known for very vocal and aggressive fans are taking a serious gamble because if something goes wrong with the project, it will categorically be framed as their fault, while the beloved creator escapes without any blame and is reassured by fans that it’s all the fault of the new person, with whom the creator should never work again to prevent a repeat of the situation.

I note that the only time aggressive fans will accept any criticism of projects associated with their creator is when the criticism places the blame where it obviously belongs, on someone else associated with the production. It’s ok to say you didn’t like the production, as long as you make sure to make people aware that you know where the blame should be assigned. Not with the creator, but with the partners, who may well be people in positions of less power. People who could, potentially, experience career setbacks after being publicly and abusively blamed for the failure of a project, while the creator goes on to other projects and will be followed by adoring fans.

There’s an embedded reinforcement of power in the way that fans react to work that is truly fascinating to me, as a person who doesn’t feel that way about any creators. Sure, there are some I love, but none that I love so much that I become convinced they cannot do anything wrong, and will happily march into other spaces to tell people who criticise them all about how wrong they are, and how really they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and did they even read the obscure interview in that one Swedish magazine, because if they didn’t, they aren’t really qualified to talk.

  1. Which, truly, people, if your platonic ideal of the French fry is a perfectly crisp and golden thing with a crunchy, almost caramelised exterior and a light, crisp core, go to Jenny’s. ↩
  2. I’ve even been descended upon by hordes of angry screenwriters! ↩
30 June, 2011 – 10:11 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in media | Tagged , , , |

More On the Institutional and the Personal

This is a topic I feel like I harp on a lot, and there’s a reason for it; despite constant harping, people still don’t seem to get it. When we’re talking about social justice, and activism, and how to effect change, one of the most critical conversations we need to have is one about the origins of oppression and the experience of marginalization. I firmly believe that oppression is institutional in nature, that it is created through social attitudes and beliefs and reinforced in law, culture, and environment. Others do not share this belief and seem to think that oppression is a personal problem.

Schisms in theory may seem purely academic in nature, and it’s true that not all of us have the leisure time to debate them, but they are also very important. Because beliefs about the origins of oppression play directly into the way that people confront, combat, and attempt to dismantle oppression. People who view oppression as a personal problem often actively work against those of us who view it as a social one, although they claim to be working in solidarity with us on common causes. I do not view someone who thinks oppression is a personal problem as someone who is working in solidarity with me.

The most striking example of this probably comes up in the context of disability, where the medical and the social model really neatly highlight the difference in the two views. Under the medical model widely used in the United States, disability is the result of an impairment experienced by an individual that limits that individual’s ability to engage with the surrounding world. Under this model, a wheelchair user is impaired in a way that prevents walking, and thus limits that person’s activity levels.

In the social model, people are impaired by society, and their disabilities are not personal problems. That same wheelchair user doesn’t have a problem because she cannot walk, or cannot walk reliably, or cannot stand for long periods of time, or for whatever reason she uses a wheelchair for mobility. She has a problem because the world she navigates is not, for the most part, designed to accommodate wheelchairs. Because when she heads to the office, she has to magically mount a flight of stairs. When she visits her cousin’s family, none of the sidewalks have curb cuts. These are not personal, but institutional, problems.

Both models have benefits and drawbacks; I personally incorporate elements of both into the way I view disability and talk about disability. I think that the social model has a lot to offer in terms of highlighting the importance of accessibility and the need to build inclusive spaces with room for as many bodies and minds as possible. I also think that the medical model has value because some impairments are personal, rather than social. There are no accommodations that would help me with my mental illnesses, for example; there is nothing that anyone can do to address them, beyond creating a world where I could be safely out, could receive treatment without judgment. Ultimately, there are some battles I must fight alone.

The embrace of the medical model to the exclusion of the social model, though, results in a lot of very ugly situations. A favourite example comes up for me in the media a lot. Some newspaper will have a profile of a ‘brave’ disabled person in an inaccessible house who was saved by some nice nondisabled people. Maybe it’s members of a basketball team who rotate responsibilities and carry a disabled child to his bed at night, up the flight of stairs the child’s parents cannot climb. Maybe it’s the local service organization that puts a ramp on a veteran’s house so she can leave by the front door.

These articles are often warmly received by nondisabled people. And it’s no wonder, because they highlight the idea that disability is a personal responsibility and problem. Both of these issues could be resolved by universal design and mandating accessibility for homes; they are not the result of some fundamental problem with the disabled person, but with the built environment. This also came up for me in the bioethics panel paper on the Ashley X case, where the parent of a disabled child was framing disability as the problem that needed to be fixed, instead of discussing the fact that the barriers she was presenting as problems were actually social ones. That, for example, there’s no reason a wheelchair user cannot go to the beach, if it is accessible and designed with wheelchair users in mind.

The consequence of treating disability as a personal problem is that any attempts to tackle institutional ableism, to change the way society approaches disability, meet with opposition and disdain. Many disabled people themselves subscribe to the idea that their disabilities are their problem and they just need to try harder or suck it down or work more. Those people tend to undermine the work that others are doing, even if they are not acting as spokespeople on behalf of the whole disabled community, because nondisabled people can always turn to them and use them as the justification for denying access, for treating disability like a personal problem.

Disability is not the only place where this happens; I see it with gender, race, class, and so many other oppressions, a neat personalisation of political issues that becomes slippery and impossible to fight. Because if you try to talk about the structural underpinnings, you’re just ‘making excuses,’ and if you try to confront institutionalised -isms, you’re told it’s all your fault. Your responsibility. With friends like these…

The question for me is not how we can change as individuals, but how we can change as a society. Is identifying the needs and interests and concerns of groups and determining which obstacles society creates, so that we can tackle those problems. Every time I see, say, people being provided with helpful ‘tips’ on how to deal with something that is fundamentally an institutional problem and barrier, I want to hit something very hard with an extremely moldy cupcake. The problem here is not individual, and it is not anything that an individual can fix. It is institutional, which makes it something we must fix together.

29 June, 2011 – 10:47 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in social justice | Tagged , |

Social Justice Matters: Prisoner Privacy

In May, there was a fascinating series of articles in The Press Democrat about a jailhouse recording. First the paper had a story on an allegedly illegal recording that a prisoner was trying to use as grounds to have his case thrown out. Then it was about a defense of the recording from the sheriff’s office. Finally, it was about a judge’s decision to seal the recording and bar it from evidence. The series of stories highlighted a problem that many people do not pay very much attention to: the right to privacy, and lack thereof, for prisoners.

If you are in prison or jail, your privacy is severely limited. There are a lot of reasons for this; for example, the public exposure in prison holding areas is argued to be necessary for the safety of occupants. Having open bars allows for easy monitoring and intervention in the event of a problem. Likewise, the lack of privacy in visiting areas is supposed to be for prisoner protection. If anyone could visit and say anything or hand anything off to a prisoner, the argument goes, prisons could become dangerous places. Family members could pass weapons, or drugs, for example, and thus prisoners are carefully watched during visitation and are usually not even allowed to physically contact their visitors.

About the only place a prisoner does have privacy is in meetings with an attorney. Attorney-client privilege extends through the prison walls and attorneys have the right to meet their clients in an isolated, private area without being observed. Or, for that matter, recorded. Privacy is necessary to discuss the details of the case and to create a safe environment for bringing up topics of concern. A prisoner who wants an attorney to help file a grievance on prison conditions, for example, does not want to talk about that in front of the guards who may be creating those conditions and making the prison a dangerous place.

So these stories were important, because they involved a situation where a supposedly privileged conversation was ‘accidentally’ recorded, violating privilege and potentially jeopardising a legal case. The handling of this situation could have turned out very differently and the prisoner could have used it as grounds for throwing the case out, as was initially attempted. The recording, in other words, would have defeated the purpose of holding an investigation at all, and the sheriff’s office could have directly hurt itself, and public safety, by making that recording.

‘Accident’ or no.

What’s intriguing about these stories is the response to them, which was, for the most part, lukewarm. There didn’t seem to be a lot of interest in the topic and some people didn’t really see what the problem was. Some felt that prisoners don’t have any right to privacy, while others believed that because it was an accident and the recording wasn’t used, there wasn’t any issue. Keep in mind that this was a person who had not yet been convicted of any crime, who was being held pending trial. Many of the civil rights violations that occur in the justice system happen to convicted prisoners, and in those situations observers have even less interest in them, because apparently to be a convict is to lose all humanity or right to even the most basic of human rights and protections.

Attorney-client privilege is a very important part of the legal system. Prisoners can only feel free to ask for legal advice and assistance when they know the information they discuss and the questions they ask will not be shared. Someone preparing for a confession or wanting to develop a legal strategy cannot do so in an environment where things can be used in a court of law. Where, for example, a deputy could hear a conversation and attempt to collect evidence and file new charges. While this would be fruit of the poisonous tree1, it’s only such if someone can identify it and bring up the matter in court to challenge the evidence.

Protecting the rights of people in jail and prison is critical. The justice system has rules in place for a reason. These protect the interests of all people, not just those currently navigating the justice system. It is important for me to know that when I am interacting with the justice system, I have the right to meet confidentially with my attorney to discuss the situation. To develop strategy in an environment where we are not being observed and recorded. When this right is not extended equally to all prisoners, it reinforces the inequalities that already plague the justice system.

It does not escape my notice that civil rights violations tend to disproportionately impact poor prisoners, prisoners of colour, and prisoners with disabilities. These prisoners are already at a disadvantage; that same disadvantage put them in the prison system in the first place. And it is compounded when they cannot do things like meeting in private with their attorneys. People should have been worried about this case, and the fact that they weren’t says a lot about social attitudes when it comes to people accused of crimes, and how they should be handled in the legal system.

  1. Put in simple terms, this refers to a situation where evidence itself may be legally sound and valid, but the methods used to obtain it were not, so it cannot be used in court. This often comes up in the context of illegal search and seizure, where police fail to respect the Constitution and in so doing, accidentally render the evidence they collect unusable. Prosecutors really don’t like it when this happens. ↩
28 June, 2011 – 10:32 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in politics | Tagged , , |

Exploring Queer Relationship Dynamics: Six Feet Under

One of my favourite parts of Six Feet Under is the depiction of David and Keith’s relationship. It’s complicated, there’s a lot going on, and the show pushed it in some very interesting directions. It was clearly informed by Alan Ball’s own experience, but it goes deeper than that. The show really wanted to create a layered, textured relationship that poked at some of the ideas people have about gay relationships and how they work, who is involved in them. David and Keith grew a lot over the course of the series and that really mattered in the context of their relationship because it had to grow with them, and didn’t always grow well.

Of particular interest for me as a viewer was the domestic violence in the relationship. Television depicts very few queer relationships to begin with, and it very rarely depicts domestic violence, especially when it is explicitly coded as such. Ball went out on a limb to include it in Six Feet Under and it worked very well, and forced viewers to confront some things. It was not, inevitably, entirely perfect; the show was not always careful in its depictions of Black masculinity and in the kind of messages it sent through Keith, and this is something that would bear closer inspection and discussion.

The undercurrent of violence in that relationship creates a constant sense of tension for viewers. It’s been a long time since I watched the show for the first time, but I felt like for me as a viewer the violence built and layered on itself. Keith wasn’t introduced from the get go as an aggressive cop who has trouble leaving the job at the front door. He was a multifaceted character and the show started very gradually easing in that storyline. It started with tone of voice, sudden movements. As a viewer, often the warning signs came in the form of how David reacted, cringing and starting when Keith got aggressive, and as the violence escalated and Keith became more physical, sometimes in direct response to David’s nervousness, it became this constant source of dread.

Domestic violence is a known issue for police officers, for a variety of reasons. An estimated 40% of police families experience domestic violence as part of their lives. It can escalate quickly and become very ugly. It is also very difficult to call the police for help when your abusive partner is a police officer. At best, they might actually respond and take the situation seriously. At worst, they might mock you or punish you. Police occupy a position of power even when they are not on duty, and some choose to abuse that power, to commit acts of violence against their families.

Keith struggles with a lot of things. His own family life and history is less than ideal, and he’s a gay Black man in a police department not exactly known for tolerance and respect. Balancing these issues, which clearly tear at his psyche and push him into places he is often uncomfortable, creates stress and unhappiness for him. We see that in the parking lot scene, which I remember vividly, where Keith gets extremely angry at a man who takes a long time to load his groceries, and physically intimidates him in addition to flashing his badge to exert power. Keith, in many ways, is emasculated by the people around him and one of the ways he attempts to reassert control is through physical aggression. David often becomes a target.

The balancing act between Keith being out and David preferring the closet often fed the flames in this case; I often got the sense that Keith, although loving David, was also impatient and angry and frustrated with his partner. As a man taking considerable risks, he wanted his partner to take those risks with him, to signify that he valued the relationship by being open about it, talking to friends and family. Keith’s frustration sometimes boiled over to dangerous effect, but the show was careful to cast neither character in the position of saint or sinner, which can sometimes be difficult to do with domestic violence. Not that Six Feet Under suggested that David deserved the abuse, but that it handled the complex nuances behind that abuse with care, instead of painting Keith as a simplistic angry man.

Violence in queer relationships is an issue that doesn’t get a lot of attention. It’s often hard to seek assistance in such situations, and can in some cases be actively dangerous. Not all communities welcome their queer members, not all responding officers and social workers necessarily see a problem with a relationship dynamic where one partner is abusive to the other, especially when those people are queer. Much of the work on domestic violence in queer relationships has come from our own community, working on our own issues and trying to draw attention to them. Six Feet Under was a particularly prominent example of awareness-raising that wasn’t just about showing straight viewers what queer life was like, but reminding queer viewers that no, domestic violence is not ok, and no, you do not have to tolerate it.

One of the reasons Six Feet Under succeeded so well as a show was because it included numerous coded social and political messages, but didn’t make a big production out of them. It didn’t flaunt them or shove them in the faces of viewers, instead allowing them to unfold naturally and appropriately within the context of the show. Keith and David’s relationship was one such example; a detailed, multifaceted depiction of two gay men navigating complex and hard things, like coming out, dealing with the aftermath of trauma, negotiating how they want to live their lives together.

27 June, 2011 – 10:14 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Sexuality, television | Tagged , , |

Beyond the Binary: What to Wear, What to Wear

In discussions about nonbinary people and clothing, a lot of conversations revolve around what we should wear; how to perform or present our genders so the general public can read them, and so we can feel comfortable in our own bodies. Since clothing is highly binaristic in nature, this creates real challenges, because any clothing that we could choose to wear is going to be inevitably gendered, and it may be further gendered by the way our bodies fill it out. When I wear men’s shirts, for example, I look like a girl wearing her boyfriend’s shirt.

In my post on nonbinary body image, one of the things I touched upon was the role that antifeminity plays in perceptions of self as a genderqueer person, and, inevitably, in the way we present ourselves to the people around us. A lot of guides on ‘how to dress’ feature very masculine-coded clothing. Nonbinary people should, these guides tell us, wear pants and undershirts, ties and bowler hats, clothing that is very much associated with men. Nonbinary people should also, of course, have lean bodies with few curves and small or nonexistent breasts. There is no room in these guides for fat people or nonbinaries of medium build, for people with large breasts and curvy bodies.

Consequently, when we buy clothes and try to decide what we want to wear, we inevitably encounter snags. I’m a femme. I like wearing skirts and dresses, but I sometimes feel like I am fake, or cheating somehow, when I wear those kinds of things. I’m not doing my part for the team by wearing slacks and a blazer, although I might also wear that on some days, because I feel like it. Gender presentations that might integrate a mixture of items; say, a large, floofy skirt and an undershirt with a sportcoat, are not necessarily read as nonbinary because of attitudes about who wears femme clothing, and how it should be worn.

Fashion guides for us are inevitably limiting because they are often focused on telling us how to look more masculine. Now, some nonbinary people are masculine leaning or want to cultivate a masculine look. Which means they fit in well and feel comfortable with these guides. But for those of us who do not, or for those of us who may move fluidly through several different kinds of presentations, these guides can be a real kick to the self esteem. They can create that niggling sense in the back of your mind that you aren’t real because you don’t dress like ‘they’ tell you to.

I’d personally prefer to push coded clothing more into the neutral zone; there’s no reason men shouldn’t wear skirts and dresses, for example, that people without gender shouldn’t wear big dangly earrings or elaborate curled hairstyles. And the only way to do that is to keep pushing at those boundaries, to wear that coded clothing and deconstruct it, but this can be hard to do when your clothes send a signal against your will. If I’m wearing a dress, people read me as a woman, no matter how I adjust my hairstyle, or if I wear boots with it instead of heels, or if I wear more masculine studs in my ears to change the appearance of my face. Likewise, a masculine nonbinary person who wears jeans and a t-shirt will be read as a man.

One way to degender clothing is to see more inclusion of femme nonbinary people on sites dedicated to nonbinary fashion and identity. To celebrate femme transgender people and to showcase us in all our glory instead of hiding us away and telling us we don’t belong. For masculine genderqueer people to wear dresses when they feel like it instead of being afraid to do so because they worry about the messages it might send. To see more people who might be read on the surface as ‘male’ in skirts and dresses, heels and pearls, with fabulous hair, this would be a good thing that would break people out of the belief that the only way to do nonbinary ‘right’ is to do it in a masculine way, with men’s clothing, with breasts bound.

Clothing is such a complicated thing, and it is so coded and layered with meaning, that we can become quite snarled and tangled in it. Every now and then I convince myself that I should be wearing more clothes designed for men and I go and try some on and look dreadful, because they aren’t cut for my body, and I end up resenting my body, instead of the society that makes me feel like my body is wrong. Or the clothing manufacturers who cut clothing in very specific and limited ways. Or the community that makes it impossible for tailored clothing for queer folks to really be an option; there are places I could go in San Francisco to find clothing that will fit my body, but I can’t find that clothing here because the stores that might be willing to stock it couldn’t sell enough of it to justify the expense.

I love fashion and I love looking at fashion sites, particularly street fashion. I just wish I saw more people like me represented on them. This is partially the fault of creators who do not seek out people who look like me, and it’s partially the fault of the society that hides people like me. If you saw me walking down the street, chances are, most days, you’d think I was a woman and you wouldn’t think anything more of it. If you were a fashion spotter in the street looking for interesting transgender and queer people to photograph, you wouldn’t think to stop me and ask to take my picture.

26 June, 2011 – 10:00 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in gender | Tagged , , , , , |

Servicey: You Don’t Have to Spend a Lot to Save a Lot

One upside of the current economic conditions is an increase in interest in helping people save money on things like utilities and other basic costs of living, complete with the endless release of savings guides. You know the sort of thing; little booklets and news features on how to lower your electric bill or use less water or what have you. One thing about the framing of such guides kind of disturbs me, though, and it’s the fact that many of them suggest that it is necessary to spend money, sometimes lots of it, in order to save money.

This is not particularly good advice to give people who may not have very much money, because it can be a real turn off. Why should you bother making your home more energy efficient when it apparently costs a lot of money that you don’t have? You might very much want to lower your electric bill or water bill but when the first entry on the list of recommendations is ‘buy an expensive energy-efficient appliance even if your existing appliance works just fine,’ it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. You might not skim further down the list to learn more.

I’ve discussed the problems with framing environmental friendliness in terms of what you can spend in the past, and these problems seem to be growing even more acute. Many poor folks naturally have a lower environmental footprint, and naturally have lower energy bills because they have smaller homes and fewer appliances by nature. Telling them they need to ‘do more’ while at the same time informing them they need to spend money they do not have is highly counterproductive. Especially now, when many people may be struggling with rising energy prices paired with unemployment or underemployment. The thing is that you actually don’t need to spend money to save money in all cases, and framing it that way is very exclusionary.

I can think of a number of things people can do to lower their water bills, for example, for free or at very low cost. Some of them may not be particularly glamourous and showy, but they can still be important. Things like dropping a brick in the toilet tank to reduce the water per flush. Replacing the washers in your sinks and spigots to prevent drips. Watering the garden (if you have one) in early morning or evening to reduce water loss through evaporation. Changing the way you wash dishes or brush your teeth; for example, wash all the dishes and drop them in the sink as you go, then rinse. You will use less water! Change the way you shower.

For what matter, save the water you’re using when you warm up sinks and showers. Stick a bucket in the shower so people can remember to do it. You can use the water on the garden, or to flush the toilet, or whatever. You’d be surprised by how much water goes down the drain while you’re prancing around the bathroom, waiting for the shower to get hot enough to jump in. You can make a significant difference in household water usage, again, without really spending money, beyond that necessary to obtain a bucket if you need to buy one.

These are all measures that can make a big difference, and some of them may be listed in those helpful guides, but they are often below ‘buy expensive appliances.’ Guides also may leave out things like renegotiating your water bill, or checking to see if you qualify for assistance. Some cities even have a program where households that drastically reduce their water usage get a discount for being more environmentally friendly. All of these options are things to pursue in the interest of saving money on water bills.

And, yeah, there are some appliances people can buy to save water. Using an on-demand heater requires less water and also cuts heating expenses. Likewise, low flow and power-assist toilets use less water, as do low-flow shower heads (a relatively minor investment). High efficiency dishwashers and clothes washers can also cut the water bill (and don’t you love how many of these articles assume everyone has a washer/dryer and a dishwasher? I do not!). But, the thing is, replacing appliances willy-nilly is not necessarily productive. It may be better to wait until they actually wear out, or to wait and see if a program for appliance recycling comes up. Sometimes the government offers financial assistance with energy-efficient appliance purchases, and that can be a good time to replace water hogs.

And, of course, many people rent (hello there!) and may not have very much control over their household appliances. Landlords do not need to ask tenants before replacing appliances and don’t necessarily solicit our input on it. I’ve had appliances replaced during my tenure in various homes and was never asked about my preferences. A new appliance arrived, the old one went away. Some landlords do check with their tenants and have a discussion, but they’re not required to. And a landlord may not want to pay the premium for an energy-efficient appliance when a cheaper one is available. After all, property owners don’t pay the utility bills in that case, so they might not think, or care, about the expenses for the tenant.

Refocusing these oh-so-helpful lists to include people of lower income and people with less power over, say, the appliances in their lives would be a very good idea, given that those folks may stand to benefit the most from things like lower water bills. After all, the advice for many rich people really basically boils down to ‘no, you can’t have your cake and eat it too, move to a smaller house.’

25 June, 2011 – 10:48 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in environmental issues | Tagged , |

The Best Advocacy is Self-Advocacy: The Dangers of Speaking for Others

There is a tendency among some groups of people to label themselves as advocates, or allies, and to use this label as a justification for speaking for others. These people claim to have the best of intentions. They just want to be supportive. To build a better world. To help. But any time you are speaking for someone else, you are silencing that person, because it is your voice being heard, and if you occupy a position of power, that means people are more inclined to listen to you than they are to listen to the voices of the marginalised people you claim to be helping.

I see this come up a lot in disability advocacy, where parents speak for disabled children. In some circles, it is generally accepted that parents are the most important voices and have the most to add to the conversation. Not their children. Not people who share the disabilities their children have. But the parents. And sometimes, the parents ‘advocating’ for disabled children say things that are not very helpful. Things like ‘we need to find a cure for autism.’ Sometimes parents are advocating eugenics and other hateful things, and we are placed behind glass to stare at, but we are not allowed to speak.

There is a certain amount of patronising involved in speaking for someone instead of allowing that person to self advocate. Especially when that person has not asked for your representation or assistance. I see this when I’m talking to someone with a cognitive impairment and someone jumps in and tries to finish her sentences instead of allowing her to communicate directly with me. I see this when someone asks me a direct question and another person answers it. I see this when ‘allies’ make pompous pronouncements ‘on behalf of the marginalised people’ and get angry when we say ‘we didn’t ask you to do that.’

When you speak for someone else, you take that person’s voice away and you dilute that person’s power. When a person who may have put considerable time and energy into communicating has that taken away, the feeling there is not ‘ah, I am so glad someone was there to help me.’ It is bitterness. Anger. Resentment. It is a reminder that certain modes of communication are preferred over others.

It is a reminder that people would rather hear things presented nicely, in an even, friendly tone. It is a reminder that, whenever possible, people will turn to ‘allies’ over actual marginalised people. I see nondisabled people speaking for people with disabilities all the time instead of centring the voices of people with disabilities. Instead of saying ‘well, I am not disabled, but here is someone who is, who has discussed this very issue.’ Instead of saying ‘why don’t you search for people who have that disability handling that topic, instead of appealing to me for information?’ Instead of saying, simply, ‘I am not qualified to address that, but here is some further reading that may lead you to an answer.’

People who position themselves as authorities and use that position to speak for others are not exactly breaking down oppressive systems. They are reinforcing them. They are making it that much harder for us to self advocate. I am painfully aware that there are nondisabled people who talk about disability much more nicely than I do; that some of those very same people even water down my words and ideas and repackage them, without credit, and receive accolades for doing so from ‘allies’ who want to say that they care about disability, but do not want to engage with actual disabled people.

As long as information from a majority source, from someone in power, is available, people are going to turn to that authority for information. And when minorities do claw a foothold, when our voices actually do get heard, we are taken as spokespeople for our minorities, rather than single individuals speaking for ourselves. Because we may be the only people that the majority sees and interacts with on a regular basis. And thus our voices, in turn, get used to suppress and dismiss the voices of people who are different from us, who have different lived experiences and opinions.

I often encounter people speaking for me, both as an individual and as a member of minority groups, who say things that I actually disagree with, very strongly. Who say things that minority groups have actually been actively fighting against for some time, as anyone who pays any attention to our actual words would know. And these people get very angry and resentful when I say ‘please stop.’ Or ‘please educate yourself.’ Or ‘please do not claim to speak for me.’ These people want rewards for their ‘brave advocacy’ when really, I just want them to shut up so that I can hear the voices of self advocates.

When ‘advocates’ claim to speak for me, it makes me feel very small and powerless. It makes me feel like a pawn being moved around on a chessboard. It makes me feel dehumanised and worthless; I am worth so little that no one even wants to hear my voice. No one wants to wait to give me an opportunity to respond, to take part in the conversation. No one wants to invite me to the table. All those ‘advocates’ are so eager to mount up on their white horses that they trample me and no one seems to notice that I’m lying in the dust, breath knocked out of my chest and bruised.

This is what many acts of ‘advocacy’ and ‘ally work’ leave me feeling. You want to hear what minorities think? Let us speak for ourselves. If we want your help, we’ll ask for it. If we want you to speak for us, we’ll say so.

24 June, 2011 – 10:52 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in social justice | Tagged |

Rape Culture, Above the Fold

Last year, I discussed the role of sexism in journalism and the fact that women working in journalism need to contend with sexism in the workplace, on interviews, in the field. In addition to the obstacles that can present themselves to journalists, like reluctant sources, obstructionist governments, and editorial budgets, women also need to deal with a constant string of sexist commentary and actions. Sexism continues to play a role in who gets bylines and plum reporting gigs, who gets the best seat on the press bus, who is allowed to speak and when.

There’s also a culture of silence about it, where women are routinely reminded that they shouldn’t say anything about the sexism they encounter, as journalists. Where women who do speak out may find themselves shifted to a different desk, getting fewer commissions, labeled with the dreaded ‘pain in the ass to work with’ and hung out to dry in a quiet corner.

And recently, a string of media coverage on sexual assault among women in journalism is another reminder of the dangers for female journalists; this CPJ report is particularly stark. The Lara Logan case was perhaps the most striking, not least because she spoke so openly about her assault. Mac McClelland at Mother Jones has also discussed concerns about sexual assault and wrote a piece about attending a self defense class in preparation for a reporting trip to Africa as part of her larger discussion about sexism and sexual assault and women journalists.

Sexual assault is a reality for women working in journalism. Some people might use this as an argument that women shouldn’t be journalists, because it’s always easier to blame the victim than it is to address the roots of the problem. Women journalists are targets for sexual assault because people think they are acceptable targets. One of the reasons for that is the sexism in journalism and the lack of support that women get from colleagues and their employers; it may not be obvious all the time, but the undercurrents are always there. They are there when women are told to dismiss sexual harassment in the course of getting a story, when networks and publications refuse to back up their journalists when they decline to engage with sexist pigs (as coworkers or interview subjects).

The reason that rape culture in general is so persistent is because women are, as a class, devalued. Because, culturally, sexism is alive and strong and it sets up women as acceptable targets for rape because the consequences of rape are often minimal. Because women are considered objects for entertainment and amusement, rather than human beings. Because we persist in blaming women for being victims, for insisting that violence against women is the fault of the women. Because we claim that some rapes aren’t real, are less valid, and we do so on the basis of sexism, again; women are weak, women are unable to stand up for themselves.

For women in journalism, the undercurrent of sexism is always there and they’re often told to ignore it. Just focus on the story. Or manipulate it to your advantage (because women, you know, they are always about the feminine wiles and exploiting situations whenever possible). Definitely don’t complain, because if you do, you might get taken off the story and reassigned to the gardening desk. If you’re bothered that stories about women end up in the ‘life and style’ section you would do well to keep it to yourself, because no one wants to hear about it. The sexism is just an occupational hazard, you see, it is part of the job.

And there comes to be a blur, between what is casual sexism, and what is sexual harassment, and what is assault. When you are routinely told by everyone around you that you are overreacting to instances of sexism, it’s easy to think that you are overreacting to the interview subject who grabbed your ass. To the coworker who leers at your breasts. To the fixer who suggests that you might get better service if you’re willing to offer some service in return. It becomes harder and harder to assert your boundaries because you are told to have no boundaries.

In the field, in dangerous situations, if something bad happens to you, somebody will tell you it was your fault. I can guarantee you that Lara Logan has been told, probably multiple times, that she shouldn’t have been where she was, shouldn’t have done this, shouldn’t have worn that, should have done this a different way. She’s also enjoyed support, of course, from colleagues, from supervisors; journalism is not a monolith, not all journalists at all levels of the hierarchy tolerate sexism, and in fact some actively work against it and speak out when they see it, encourage women journalists who may be less comfortable asserting themselves because of their subordinate positions to hold their ground and refuse to accept sexist behaviour. Just as there are people in this rape culture infused society who insist that rape culture is not ok and want to empower women to resist it.

But when the overwhelming messages you receive from society are that, as a woman, you shouldn’t pursue a career, especially not one that puts you in dangerous situations, that if you do end up in danger and something bad happens, you deserve it, you do tend to internalise that. And you internalise it even more when you work in an industry where people may suggest that you need to tolerate sexism if you want any hope of professional advancement. Where you must accept the constant casual litany of torments people reserve for people who look like you, act like you, dress like you.

23 June, 2011 – 10:30 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in social justice | Tagged , |

Aboard the U-505

I just returned from a trip to Chicago, where I did many exciting things, one of which was take a tour aboard the U-505, one of the few remaining U-boats left in the world. I was assured by many people that if I did only one thing in Chicago, this should be it; clearly people know my obsession with submarine movies far too well1. I went with my friend T, who may not share my fanatical devotion to submarines, but has an appreciation for fine engineering and an unflagging enthusiasm for museum adventures.

The U-505 exhibit certainly has considerable showmanship. You sink slowly below the surface of the earth through a corridor lined with pictures and displays, including things like examples of weapons, with increasingly dim lighting and moody music, before you finally emerge into a big room and see, well, this:

Deck: A U-boat in an underground room, looking very large and impressive.

Please forgive the blurriness, I didn’t choose the best of lenses for my MSI adventure. It’s really quite an impressive sight, you kind of can’t help but go ‘woah!’ when you see it. You go down a long ramp, past the superstructure2, to reach the floor of the exhibit:

Upper Deck: The superstructure of the U-505

On the ground floor, you can wander around the submarine and through a series of exhibits that are rather interesting; there are replicas of the galley and sleeping quarters, an original Enigma machine, cutaways of torpedoes, and other fun things. The best part, though, was that they had actual veterans from the submarine service on the floor as docents; T and I talked to a man who’d served in the 1950s as a cook. I am all about living history, especially as we lose members of that generation, so I was very excited that the museum had done some outreach to get veterans into their exhibits, and they seemed to be having fun interacting with visitors.

The tour of the submarine itself wasn’t quite to my taste, although the submarine was fascinating. It’s a sort of sound/light/acting tour where the capture of the submarine is dramatized, and I would have preferred to wander through at my own speed, looking at things under clear light. This feeling was apparently shared by a young person on the tour who started screaming in terror when the depth charges went off and the lights flashed. I ended up kind of falling to the back of the group to have a chance to actually look at things, because the interior of the submarine is largely intact. You can see the original engine works, radio room, and so forth. They’ve made some modifications to make tours easier (including modifications to make it accessible) but they by and large captured the flavour, with the low ceilings and narrowness that remind you of the very utilitarian and predatory functions of the U-505.

I also love that you can actually handle components of the submarine; you can touch the hull, you can feel the controls, and so forth. Some areas are glassed off and you can only look, but the rest of it is very open. Being a tactile person, I like being able to explore museum exhibits with my hands3. It was interesting to see who on the tour adopted the crossed hands, respectful looking at museum exhibits stance, and who else reached out to touch things and really get inside the submarine.

It looks monstrous from the outside, but the ballast tanks actually narrow it considerably, and all the machinery keeps the floor high and the roof low, which is pretty ideal for me at just under five feet, less so for T at over six. Our guide told us that internal temperatures could climb up well into the 90s on the U-505 because it was stationed off the coast of Africa, and of course water supplies were limited by the desalination facility, so conditions cannot have been pleasant inside. T was particularly impressed with the food loading strategy, where the crew packed every corner, including one of the bathrooms, with food, and had to literally eat their way into the second bathroom. Meanwhile, I was fascinated by the controls and gadgets, of which there were a considerable number, and of course boggled at the difference between U-boats on film and actual U-boats4.

It was a strange sensation to imagine being crammed on board with 59 people in limited space, trolling the shipping lanes for prey. The U-505 sunk eight boats over the course of its career and each one must have been an ordeal, before its luck finally ran out and it was captured. Our guide pointed out that when submarines were hunted, while they were forced to battery power to be as quiet as possible, superfluous personnel were sent to bed, to use less oxygen and stay out of the way of the working crew. I tried to imagine lying in one of those narrow bunks, listening to the occasional ping of the sonar and men in stockinged feet creeping up and down the length of the ship, deep in evasive maneuvers. It’s a thing I’ve seen in the movies, but it felt much more immediate when I was actually on board, touching things the crew had touched.

A submarine-hunting explosive, known as a hedgehog.

  1. Das Boot is one of my favourite movies of all time and one of the largest sections of my DVD collection is, yes, submarine films. ↩
  2. They will try to waylay you to take your picture with the submarine so you can be charged an exorbitant amount for it when you emerge. Resist. Or just laugh at them when they try to sell you your photo package as you leave. ↩
  3. Lest you think this is a horrible travesty of conservation, the submarine was left rusting above ground until 2004, and needed a lot of work when they brought it underground, so it was hardly in a pristine state to begin with. ↩
  4. Hint: they’re smaller in real life than they appear in the movies. The experience is actually rather reminiscent of coach class on a budget airline. ↩
22 June, 2011 – 10:13 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in adventures | Tagged , , , |

The Longest Day

After today, the days will start shortening up. It will happen slowly, at first. I probably won’t notice for at least a week and then I’ll start to wonder if I’m working later than I thought I was because the sun seems lower in the sky than it should be. A strange feeling will creep over my skin and I’ll look over my shoulder to see the sun sliding below the horizon and then, suddenly, almost before I am aware, we will be at the fall equinox and the unstoppable juggernaut of winter nights will be on its way. Everything will get cold and dark again.

I think I view the seasons the opposite of the way other people do. Summer is when I get all dry and dusty and feel like everything is wrung out, like there’s nothing left. Juiced dry. Winter is when I’m storing up energy and growing, somewhere inside. You usually don’t see it because it’s happening deep beneath my roots, but they’re getting ready so that, come spring, they can burst into a riot of color. If I was a plant. But you know what I mean.

You’d think I would think about happy things at the summer solstice. After all, it is the longest day of the year. I have so many hours in which to enjoy the sunshine. I can bask in it and suck up the warmth like a lizard on a rock. But turning points always make me panic about the other side. On Saturday afternoon, I’m already nostalgic for the weekend and resigning myself to the fact that it’s over. By Sunday night, I’m in a deep funk. Which is funny, because I work on the weekends, too, so it’s not like the weekend represents some kind of break for me.

That’s sort of how I feel about the summer solstice. I want to revel in the sunshine and the long day but I’m already starting to think ahead to winter because if we’ve hit the solstice, it means that winter is absolutely not avoidable at this juncture and it’s time to buckle down and recognise it. Winter will come. Well, unless I decamp for the southern hemisphere and enjoy the anticipation of slowly lengthening days eventually leading to summer. Then I suppose I could skip back here and do it all over again. I think they made a movie about that but I don’t remember it turning out well.

My preemptive nostalgia for warm, long, bright days might be some sort of bizarre defense mechanism; don’t enjoy it too much, because then you’ll be even more unhappy when they are really, officially gone and the days are brief and brutal. If I pretend hard enough to be indifferent to the summer months, I won’t be as woeful when they’re over.

I used to love the summer so much. I was free to do whatever I wanted on those long days. I could go to the beach or read on the porch or engage in baking experiments. It was pure delight, that giddy anticipation in May as the days started to get longer and our minds got unfocused and even our teachers were starting to turn their minds to summer and we’d have class on the lawn so we didn’t spend the whole time looking out the windows with a building sense of longing. Smelling the cut grass on the breeze. Making cold drinks to stick in the fridge so they’d be ready after a long day and we could sip iced tea while working on dinner. The extent of my future planning was measured in hours, not months, or years.

It was, you know, carefree? Sometimes I’d go days without talking to anyone or seeing anyone and other times I’d be in the thick of social activities and I didn’t have to think about all the myriad things that seem to consume my days now. Now I’m just bitter about the summer because the nice weather goes on but I’m trapped inside. The most I get to see of it is the glare off my screen that forces me to close the blinds so I can see without slitted eyes. Or the flit of the sun along the horizon as I’m driving somewhere to do something for someone. Those puffs of warm air that waft through the house and make it so hard to focus because my whole body is twitching in my desk chair and I want to go bolt across the lawn and fling my limbs around in the air and then flop down. Even though the grass is starting to dry up and it will crackle and the little stickyburrs will adhere to my clothes and I’ll be picking them off for an hour. Even though.

Summer just feels like a torment, now, and maybe that’s why I get so dour on the solstice because soon, I think, soon, everyone will be trapped indoors, not just me. And it will be dark and murky and overcast. There will be no glare because there will be no sun. I won’t want to run around on the lawn because it will be wet and cold and there will be puddles that could swallow my feet whole. I won’t resent everyone having fun because no one will be having fun.

Evidently I’m becoming more bitter with time. Luckily, it’s traditional to set things on fire at the summer solstice.

21 June, 2011 – 10:49 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in reflections | Tagged , |