What Do We Want for Our Children?

Battles over education policy are raging across the US this year, part of a long and explosive buildup that’s created acrimonious relationships between teachers, administrators, parents, children, policymakers, and others involved in the process of education. One of the things that the debate has highlighted is a deep sense of conflict in the United States over what people want for their children, who gets to be in charge of determining what is good for children overall in the US, regardless as to the personal wishes of parents and their families. In an era when everything seems to be falling apart, we are failing the future generation, and all the proposals for ‘fixing’ education seem to be focused on some very specific aims that don’t necessarily address the needs of children and educators.

We’re told that education is meant to provide opportunities to the next generation, to benefit them and society. And that’s something I happen to believe, as well. More educated people have a better chance of succeeding at life, and they become part of the replacement generation of professionals we need to replace retiring firefighters, doctors, attorneys, and other critical members of society. Education also provides more intrinsic benefits to society, creating a culture rich in arts, exploration, research, and curiousity. Opening young minds opens society as a whole to create a more complex and innovative nation.

Yet, these goals seem to be at a mismatch with what schools are actually providing. Not by fault of the teachers, but as a result of peculiar tangles of policy that don’t serve children at all. At the same time politicians trumpet about accountability for teachers and demand the use of standardised testing in the classroom to assess children and their instructors, they don’t seem to be clear on what they want teachers to be accountable for; and this is a key component of this discussion.

While schools are ostensibly about providing education, policymakers seem to have their own priorities. There’s a definite tendency to promote policies that aren’t designed to expand young minds and provide opportunities, but rather to force children into conformity, creating molds that children must adhere to. Teachers are ordered to stick to extremely narrow curricula that advances specific ideas and their instruction is supposed to be more about rote and forcing information into children, rather than encouraging children to explore.

I had what one might consider a sort of liberal arts education through high school because of the nature of the schools I attended and the priorities set by teachers and administrators. I was encouraged to think critically, to evaluate information independently, to challenge my teachers. I was not taught to the test, although standardised testing was imposed in our schools by the state (I didn’t take the tests because I requested an exemption). I graduated as a well-rounded student, but, more than that, as a student with the tools to go on educating myself and engaging with society in new ways.

Such opportunities can’t be provided in an educational model where teachers are restricted and where the focus is on arbitrary metrics of performance rather than meaningful evaluations. It’s telling that advocates for testing, limited curricula, and very prescriptive educational methods usually aren’t educators and don’t have education experience. Children are not machines; you can’t perform an 18 point inspection to determine whether they’re good to go. They are complex human beings with varied talents and skills who need to be encouraged and allowed to develop in the way that best serves them, which is going to vary from student to student.

One student might be more suited to a very academic path, with an interest in higher education and specific educational needs to prepare for it. Another student might be interested in the arts, or planning to become a tradesperson, and these students have different requirements. All these students would potentially perform very differently on standardised tests, but that wouldn’t mean the teacher or students are failing; they could be preparing for precisely the lives they need and want, developing the skills they need, and being enriched by their educational experience. None of that shows when you fill out a bubble sheet.

Politically, the signaling I’m getting about what this nation wants for its children is a nation of standardised automatons who perform in exactly the same way and are taught to think, act, and move in uniformity. This is at odds with the stated goals for education, with the reality of education, and with the supposed mission of the US as a whole. This is supposed to be a nation of innovators, of thinkers, of people who can dream of amazing things and then do them. The current approach to education on a national policy level is not one that facilitates that. In fact, it actively hinders it.

What do we want for our children? We want them to be happy and safe, of course, but we also want them to be educated appropriately. And everyone seems to have a very different idea of what an appropriate education looks like, which illustrates the failings of a system that attempts to be one size fits all. There’s a reason so many teachers are frustrated and fed up, striking because of poor working conditions and onerous policies. And there’s a reason so many parents and children are angry with the education system, feeling let-down and underserved by it.

Very few students flourish in an environment dedicated to very rigid educational standards that don’t have a meaningful connection with reality in the classroom or the outside world at large. And I don’t want to live in a country that suppresses critical thought, creativity, and diversity in its youth and calls it education.

30 November, 2012 – 10:25 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in social justice | Tagged , , |

Can We Challenge Genetic Perfectionism In Science Fiction?

One of my recurring frustrations with science fiction as an overall genre is the tendency towards eliminationism in texts; disabled people are often entirely absent unless they’re being used as plot devices. The idea is that they’d be eradicated by manipulating genetics and using advanced medical techniques to resolve serious injuries and prevent or cure disease, ensuring that both genetic and acquired disabilities would be things of the distant past. Very few texts explore what it might be like to live with disability in the future, unless, of course, they’re playing with post-apocalyptic themes, in which case the disability becomes a symbol of how far society has fallen.

Which makes me wonder why more authors aren’t exploring the possibilities found in challenging genetic perfectionism and eugenics in science fiction, rather than just accepting them as the norm. It would be amazing to see mainstream books going against the flow in this regard, creating thought-provoking content for readers who might not be used to having their paradigms flipped. The whole point of speculative fiction is to speculate, to imagine different versions of futuristic societies, to think about how the world might look differently depending on changes in technology, social attitudes, and more.

Think about a world where disability is not viewed as an inherent negative or flaw that must be fixed. Take, for example, autism, which is on my mind of late because researchers are starting to develop genetic tests for predicting and diagnosing autism. Such testing inevitably raises the spectre of using testing to eliminate children with autism by simply not having them, eradicating the autism spectrum from the human race. The consequences to diversity could be immense, but I don’t see a lot of people talking about that.

I see people talking about how great it will be to be able to prevent autism, to ensure that ‘no one suffers.’ I don’t see people asking if this is the best priority for society, or thinking about the consequences of reducing neurodiversity in society. Science fiction provides an ideal medium for asking some of these questions and getting readers to think about these issues in new and different ways. What if a futuristic society actively promoted neurodiversity, viewing it as a feature, not a bug? What if autistic people and other people with cognitive and intellectual impairments were seamlessly integrated in society instead of being marginalised?

And not in a gross, exploitative way where they’re treated as magical and amazing geniuses capable of strange and eerie feats, but just as human beings who have their own things to contribute to society. Autistic researchers working alongside neurotypical people, for example, developing new technologies in a world where disability is just accepted as a natural human variation. Science fiction provides so many opportunities for exploring topics like universal design and full social inclusion, and these opportunities are so often missed.

What if instead of fixing the people, writers fixed the environment? Imagine a world where there are many ways to get around, all of which are considered equally valid, where people can control complex mobility devices with a touch or voice command and it’s not viewed as abnormal or worthy of note. And a world where impairments are not inherently viewed as negatives, but as neutrals; just as some people have blonde hair while others have black or red, some people are autistic or mentally ill, say, and they are welcomed in society like anyone else. And they manage their specific traits just like anyone else.

Speculative fiction provides a golden opportunity to challenge the assumption that genetic perfectionism is a worthy end goal. It creates a chance to put readers into a very different position than the one they may be accustomed to; readers approaching a text thinking that disability is bad and doesn’t belong in a utopian futuristic society could be forced to rethink what impairment and disability mean with a text that showed disabled characters in a neutral or positive light. One that didn’t reduce them to stereotypes, but treated them as full human beings.

The eliminationism in science fiction is just widely accepted, without comment or challenge, in much of the community. People sometimes seem shocked and surprised by challenges to it, because they assume disabiltiy is bad and that every disabled person would love for it to go away. Despite the fact that there are numerous organisations active now that are disability positive and focus on highlighting natural diversity. Some members of these groups actively reject treatments and therapies because they, quite rightly, don’t see anything about them that requires treatment, let alone curing.

You don’t see Deaf people in much science fiction. Because most authors assume that no one wants to be deaf, that Deaf people themselves hate their deafness, and that in a perfect world, everyone would have ‘perfect’ hearing, that this is a normal and desirable human trait. Yet, even a casual glance at Deaf culture will reveal that these assumptions are false, that some identify not as impaired or disabled but as members of their own specific culture, and are vehemently opposed to ‘cures.’ In a depiction of a truly diverse futuristic society, there should be Deaf people. There should be neurodiverse people. There should be people who look, move, and think in a variety of different ways, because that’s a reflection of humanity as a whole, not the narrow slice authors seem to want to focus on.

And perhaps by challenging these assumptions textually, authors could start to get readers to challenge them socially as well; for every reader of science fiction who goes ‘aha, I hadn’t thought of this that way,’ there’s a potential person thirsty for more information and context. Someone interested in learning more and perhaps connecting with real-world issues right now to help build a vision of a better future: A future that includes disability, rather than erasing it.

29 November, 2012 – 10:51 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in disability | Tagged , , , |

Pink Boys, Tomboys, and Bias

There’s been a lot of coverage of pink boys in the media this year, which, on the one hand, is really exciting. I like seeing people discussing gender nonconforming children and talking about the various forms gender expression can take. And the more information is out there, the more comfortable parents can feel. Instead of feeling alienated and distanced from their children, they can find out that their kids are far from being freakish figures of horror, and that there are resources out there for them.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, pink boys are, in essence, boys who enjoy femmeing it up. Not necessarily all the time, but sometimes. Maybe they wear dresses and skirts, prefer long hair, play with makeup and jewelry. This doesn’t mean they’re experiencing conflict with the gender assigned at birth, although in some cases that is definitely happening, nor does it mean they’re gay. The deeper meaning of the gender expression depends on the individual child, and the more the child is able to explore, express, and talk about it, the more comfortable the child will feel when it comes to talking about what it means.

One so-called pink boy might actually be a girl who needs appropriate treatment as a transgender patient. Another might grow up to be a heterosexual cis man who happens to have a good eye for frocks. Another might grow out of the phase entirely, enjoying femme genderplay for a few years in childhood and then moving on to other things. In a supportive environment where every garment doesn’t come with a loaded context, children can feel more free to be themselves, and in the process, find out who they are.

But there’s one thing about the coverage that troubles me, and that’s the need some people seem to have to play a form of oppression Olympics, suggesting that pink boys have it worse than other gender variant children, particularly more butch girls. ‘Tomboys,’ we’re informed, ‘don’t experience the kind of pushback pink boys do.’ Seeing that statement makes me want to claw someone’s eyes out because it’s not true, and it’s also not very productive. It doesn’t add anything to the conversation, nor does it help address deeper issues about gender presentation and stigma.

Because, uh, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but tomboys absolutely do experience stigma, judgment, and general nastiness from other children as well as adults around them. They’re punished for not being ‘traditional girls’ just as pink boys are stigmatised for not being ‘traditional boys.’ To be a tomboy means being taunted for your practical clothes, for not having a fashion sense, for wearing torn jeans and casual shirts that you can be rough and wild in. It means being told you’d look so much prettier if you put on a dress now and then, or ‘did something’ with your hair, or learned how to use makeup.

It means your parents and other adults insinuate you’ll probably grow up to be a lesbian (as though there’s something wrong with that) on the basis of how you dress and behave. If you’re a girl who likes field hockey and prefers climbing trees to playing princess, obviously you’re suspect and should be closely watched. Tomboys in unwelcoming families may be actively punished for expressing themselves the way they want to, while in others, they may be met with perplexity by parents who aren’t sure what to do with them, while other children on the playground mock them for not performing femininity well enough.

Even being an athlete doesn’t save you from nasty commentary. If you’re a tomboy who participates in school sports you’ll get some points for that, but you’ll also be reminded that when you’re not at practice or games, you need to go into girl mode. You should wear nice dresses and pretty things at school during the day, for example, and should gussy up for events in outfits becoming a girl. If you prefer to wear suits or more masculine clothing, or dress casually, you will absolutely be singled out and punished for it.

Claiming that tomboys don’t experience prejudice, that they can’t be at risk of bullying, taunts, assaults, and other problems, is ridiculous. Suggesting that pink boys have it worse or they’re the only ones who experience that kind of discrimination writes off the very real and sometimes painful experiences of tomboys. And it doesn’t do anything meaningful to change the way people think about gender, presentation, and expression. If you want people to talk about gender nonconforming children, to make a world that is safer for them, you need to openly admit that they all experience discrimination and social problems.

While these problems may vary in nature, it doesn’t mean one group suffers more than another. The parents of a tomboy and the parents of a pink boy are going to face different issues with their children, and they’re going to need to work with their children in different ways to keep them happy, safe, and supported, but playing a comparison game to see who’s the most troubled doesn’t serve anyone. The focus here should be kept on expanding conversations, not narrowing them; and parents working on awareness campaigns to promote the cause of gender variant children shouldn’t be hurting their own community by undermining the lived experiences of other children, their families, and their friends.

There’s nothing wrong with saying that pink boys experience unique forms of discrimination and can face a rough road, especially in conservative communities and areas where people aren’t familiar with gender variant children. This is an absolutely true statement, and it highlights the need to create safer spaces for children. More critically, it accomplishes the goal of discussing gender variance in children without suggesting that other gender variant children don’t matter as much, or shouldn’t be a priority.

28 November, 2012 – 10:47 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in gender | Tagged , |

When Wardens Become Judge, Jury, and Executioner

In 2005, a woman passed away shortly after her arrest by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department. Such deaths in custody or shortly thereafter are rare, but they do happen, and this case was complicated by the fact that she had diabetes. Her family is suing, arguing that she was denied insulin and this led to the deterioration of her condition that ultimately caused her death. This particular sheriff’s department is already rife with malpractice and accusations, so the case is attracting nationwide attention when normally it probably would not have; it would have been just another quiet prison death.

But there is nothing quiet about such cases, and they should not be taken lying down. Like scores of people who encounter the US prison and jail system every year, Deborah Braillard had a chronic health condition that needed to be managed in order to keep her stable. She may have broken the law, but the people in charge of incarcerating her had a responsibility to ensure that she had access to the medical treatment she needed for her condition. That included providing her with medical attendants, medications, and anything else she might need, as well as monitoring her for signs of complications or problems that might indicate she was decompensating.

Inmates are routinely denied even basic medical services, even when they request them and have clear evidence of a chronic condition that requires management. Someone wearing a medic alert bracelet, for example, is not guaranteed care or treatment from arresting officers and other officials, even though the bracelet should be an indicator that the inmate might have potentially complex medical needs that could turn serious if neglected. Denial of access to medical treatment in prison is a form of torture, and a very repugnant one. It’s used as a way to control and manipulate prisoners, sometimes with fatal effects.

The thing about chronic illnesses is that if they aren’t treated, patients can experience irreversible setbacks or may develop complications that require even more extensive treatment, like organ damage from medications that are not managed properly. For inmates with such conditions, there is a very real risk that a stay in jail or prison could have serious long-term health effects, and that’s if the stay doesn’t prove to be fatal, which it can be. It certainly was in Braillard’s case, and she’s not the only inmate, nor the most recent, to have died of her medical condition while under the ‘care’ of authorities.

People have been allowed to bleed to death in their cells, screaming for help. Other prisoners have called out to alert guards to the fact that something serious is occurring, and they haven’t taken decisive action to get medical aid, or they’ve said the patient can wait for the morning. Patients have pleaded for medications they need to survive, including drugs that need to be maintained in consistent levels in the body in order to avoid severe complications; psychiatric medications, for example, and antirejection drugs. Other inmates have informed officials about existing medical conditions in the hopes of having them handled responsibly, only to find that this makes them targets; pregnant inmates, for example, may be beaten or threatened.

This case, like others, will be hotly debated in courts and there will be considerable fuss made by the sheriff’s department in an attempt to deflect responsibility. They may try to argue that her diabetes was poorly managed before she arrived, making it difficult to determine the precise reason for her death, or claim that she didn’t notify them and they weren’t aware of the issue. Meanwhile, her family will attempt to fight not just for some kind of justice in her death, but for other prisoners in her situation, in the hopes of sparing them potentially painful, miserable, and lonely deaths at the hands of the system.

Law enforcement officers are not judges and juries. They do not have the authority to condemn people of crimes; they can cite people, they can hold them, they can participate in a variety of activities intended to protect public safety, but they cannot sit in judgement. And they certainly don’t have the authority to execute people. No one should have that authority; that the United States persists in retaining the death penalty long after many nations have given it up is a national shame, and it’s all the more shameful that frontier justice like this occurs across the country every year.

Because that’s effectively what’s happening here. When an inmate enters a holding facility alive and comes out dead, something has happened inside that facility. If the prisoner entered with a chronic health condition, there’s a good probability that adequate care was not provided and this played a deciding role in the death. Whether it be through ignorance, neglect, or active abuse, the people in charge of the facility have caused the prisoner’s death.

In the case of jails and other facilities used to hold people on suspicion of crimes, that amounts to execution without a trial. And we need to be looking at who dies in these situations, how law enforcement officers interact with inmates, who is most likely to be at risk of this kind of execution by default. Many of these cases involve inmates of colour who are typically low-income as well, considered disposable. They aren’t full human beings, and consequently prison and jail officials don’t feel any pressing need to make sure they receive respect, medical treatment, and protection in jail and prison settings.

When we allow prisoners to die from manageable medical conditions while in holding, we are condoning the use of extrajudicial justice. And this, too, should be a national shame, because everyone is entitled to a fair trial and other protections under the law, no matter what that person stands accused of.

27 November, 2012 – 10:34 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in social justice | Tagged , , , |

Wanted: Good Soil Management

If you’re a nerd, like me, you’re aware that one of the emerging issues in agriculture is soil management, and it’s a critical issue that people in general should be concerned about, because, uh, soil is pretty important. If you hadn’t noticed, you need it to grow most crops, and it plays a key role in the ecosystem. When the soil is unbalanced, you end up with all sorts of problems, ranging from excess nitrogen clogging waterways and creating algae blooms to huge amounts of wasted water spent trying to keep poor soil hydrated so crops don’t dry out in drought conditions.

Conventional agriculture has historically exhibited a profound disregard for soil. Soil is, yes, the stuff that crops grow in, but it’s not kept in good condition at all. No efforts are made to rebuild topsoil and to keep it in good shape for future generations. Instead it’s tilled and worked as much as it can be, pounded with chemicals, and heavily irrigated to keep dust down. Trashed soil starts to resemble sand more than anything else, and plants can’t get that much out of it. Nor can they hope to retain water, because it trickles away in a flash.

Other modes of farming have more of a focus on soil management; the goal is to build up soil, to keep it in good condition, to use it sustainably. The difference between good and bad dirt is obvious, even to those who aren’t farmers. You know it when you see it.

Think of dark, crumbly, moist dirt that smells rich and intense, versus crumbly, dry dirt that pours through your fingers. One is designed to sustain life. It includes complex relationships between microorganisms in the soil and the roots of the plants that grow in it, creating a network that facilitates nutrient intake, stores water, and helps plants grow healthy and strong. The other requires constant and often ineffective work to produce crops in an uphill struggle.

Farming depletes soil, by nature. Plants take things from the soil and while some put things back into it, there’s a net loss. You can help mitigate that loss by rotating crops to add different things to the soil, inoculating the soil with bacteria and fungi, and building it up with compost and manure. Those activities will help create a net gain over time, increasing the layers of rich, useful topsoil that can be used to yield crops.

When you just keep taking from the soil without any efforts to rebuild it, though, you’re on a dead-end road and you’re going nowhere fast. Soil in poor condition requires more work for food. When you’re using mechanised farming equipment and counting things on a huge scale, that might not be such a problem in your eyes, but the long-term costs are immense. Chemicals added to the soil aren’t as easy for plants to uptake when they’re not supported by beneficial soil, and they wind up in waterways, while farmers spend a lot of money buying enough of them to cover their crops sufficiently. The upper layers of soil slowly blow away as they grow finer and lighter, leaving less and less workable ground. Eventually, you have a desert where lush growing things used to live.

This is not sustainable or practical, especially with a growing population. Industrial agriculture is in critical need of aggressive reforms to force companies to rethink the way they use the earth, not just for the benefit of future generations, but for themselves. Sustainable soil management practices benefit crops, the planet, and people in the long term. And they offer some additional benefits that make them well worth adopting now, before a crisis point in the food system is reached (if we aren’t already there), rather than scrambling after the fact to put them in place.

For example, good soil tolerates droughts much better. As the climate changes and conditions shift in farming communities, farmers with good soil are going to fare better than those without. Yes, genetically modified crops are being developed to cope with drought, but their performance is irregular and some people prefer crops without such modifications. Just keeping the soil in good shape can allow farmers to avoid costly seeds and complex farming management practices.

And especially in low-income communities and those relying on subsistence farming, practices that people can apply themselves without outside intervention are critically important to build and sustain. Farmers struggling to survive may not be able to afford drought tolerant seeds and other tools needed to handle a shifting climate with the latest technological developments, but they can work their soil to build it up and retain water.

There’s increased interest in soil management because people understand that it’s important, and now traditional practices are being ‘discovered’ and used again on farms large and small. It could be the first sign of an important shift; perhaps there will come an era where industrial agriculture includes good soil management by default, where soil is kept in good condition as part of a debt of responsibility to future generations and a desire to get good yields now and in the future.

While topics like soil management aren’t terribly sexy and don’t make great public relations campaigns, they’re still important, and food advocates need to be participating with these discussions. Because people who care about food should care about farming, just as environmentalists need to be involved in these conversations as well; all sides have a lot to offer each other if they can communicate over artificial divides, because they have common interests at heart. We all need to eat, in the end.

26 November, 2012 – 10:17 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in environmental issues | Tagged , |

Television: Intrigued by the Science, but Not the Emotion, of Death

When CSI premiered in 2000, no one had an idea of how big the show would grow, nor could they have imagined the spinoffs on CBS as well as the slew of forensics shows that followed suit across multiple networks. While forensic and crime dramas had always been around and there was some interest in programming like CSI, the show broke through a barrier and firmly captured the eyes of viewers, establishing a mighty foothold for itself in the world of television. Six Feet Under started airing a year later, and while the two were about the same subject, death, they took it in very different directions.

One went on to become the stepping stone that launched a thousand shows; you can hardly throw a remote these days without hitting some kind of forensic drama taking viewers into the lab with dead bodies and special effects intended to make everything as grossly realistic as possible.

The other became a classic in its own right, but it didn’t stimulate the same attempts to reproduce the phenomenon. Not, I suspect, because people looked at Six Feet Under, saw that it was amazing television, and decided to not even bother attempting to make something as good, but because of something more complicated.

We are fascinated with the science of death. We love forensics shows because they give us a watered down pop culture version of science with soap opera on the side. People think they know more about forensics than ever before as a result of watching these shows, and that in turn is having a social impact as jurors interact with evidence in criminal cases. Science makes death explainable and easy to process; this is what happens to the body when it dies, here’s what occurs in different conditions, here are the stories your corpse can tell after you’re gone.

I’m reminded of the belief that the eye could somehow be tapped to see the last thing the dead person saw, that theoretically one could use the eyes of a cadaver to look into the face of a murderer. Forensics, in a way, speaks to that desire, to have death explained scientifically and cleanly, in an orderly fashion. These shows process evidence quickly and it’s never ambiguous; this DNA matches this person, it’s possible to find any weapon for any wound, all cases are closed in the end. Death cannot evade the skilled attentions of scientists, and will be subject, in the end, to careful analysis that picks it apart and wraps it up in an hour with commercials.

Six Feet Under was messy. It wasn’t about the clinic, scientific side of death, but the emotional one. The part no one wants to face or think about because it cannot be contained, defined, and neatly cleaned up. In forensics, everyone examines the body, draws conclusions, and presents them. The murderer is identified and the body goes away. In reality, this is only part of the process, because it doesn’t account for the people left behind; the people who want to know why in the cosmic sense, who need less forensics and more emotional consolation to explain what has happened.

This was a show about a side of the world of death people avoid at all costs. One of the things that made it such great television was the unflinching look at the emotional cost of death, but that was also the thing that sank it, ensuring it would never get a huge audience, because many people don’t want to have to deal with that part of death. Forensics shows allow them to think both that death can neatly fit in a box, and that it will never happen to them. These cases are so odd, so confined to urban areas, that they are safe; they could live forever, in bodies that will never wind up on slabs in city morgues.

The often prosaic, dull, and quietly tragic nature of the deaths on Six Feet Under were a terrifying reminder that death comes for all of us, and when it does, people are never really prepared. No one knows how to respond. Emotions warp and twist around you. Sometimes you get so snarled in them that you can’t function for weeks, months, or years. This is messy and ugly and frightening. It cannot be swept up in an hour, neatly resolved by running some samples and holding a conference with your colleagues.

It is ugly, naked, gross, whining, filth-covered death. While forensic dramas may have more splatter and gore, more vividly made-up bodies and gruesome tests, they are in their own way very sanitary. Clean and orderly, with sharp, clear edges that allow people to stand on one side of death or the other. This can’t happen when death is an emotional experience, not a scientific one, when death is all around you and you’re interacting with the people who are experiencing it with you.

We live in a culture where grief is deeply feared and viewed as something dirty, so it is not at all surprising that a show exploring the emotional fallout of death wouldn’t get a lot of copycats, unlike shows focusing purely on the science. There is something a little sad about that, though, because Six Feet Under explored the human condition in ways that CSI never really achieves, and never well, with the hyperfocus on death as a scientific phenomenon rather than a cultural, emotional, and sometimes deeply personal one. Characters move in and out of the drama in an episode in neatly-compressed depictions of grief, but we don’t see the complex, drawn-out processing that Six Feet Under offered, because that’s not what viewers want to think about.

25 November, 2012 – 10:57 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in pop culture | Tagged , , , |

Book Review: Unpsoken, by Sarah Rees Brennan

I was really looking forward to the release of Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan, and darted out to buy a copy the minute it hit the bookstore. Then I read it a few times, as one does, in order to fully ponder over everything in it so I could write about it coherently. Unspoken is superb, and it’s got a lot of delicious things to tease apart. For the purposes of this review, I will be talking about some plotty things, which is one reason I wanted to wait, so more people would have had a chance to read it. If you haven’t yet and you want to stay unspoiled, now might be a good time to wander off.

So, Unspoken. Girl has a best friend who is deliciously ornery and recalcitrant, and another best friend who is equally delightful in his own way—but he lives only in her head. When he comes to life and turns out to be a real person who’s magically connected to her, she finds out that her lovely little town of Sorry-in-the-Vale is loaded with secrets, some of which are of the explosive and fatal variety. Sorcery, backstabbing, and more abound in a story that is also, at its heart, a classic mystery. Oh yes. Tell me more, you say.

Did I mention it has all the gothic trappings a person could want? It’s a very atmospheric book complete with creepy names and an obligatory looming manor which create a sense of tension that counterplays dramatically with the very modern characters. They sparkle like firecrackers in that setting, which manages to be appropriate to them and the story without feeling like an anachronism or a clunky plot device. You can believe that this place exists, that there are corners of the world where things are not quite as they seem and where there’s a conspiracy of silence surrounding the town’s past, present, and future.

Kami, our heroine, runs the school paper and has a nose for investigations. She always wants to know more and she’s utterly unafraid when it comes to pursuing information. When weird things start happening around town, she goes on a mission to investigate, but quickly winds up in over her head. Good thing she has friends new and old to support her, because they’re the ones who will help her through in the end. And, of course, because Sarah Rees Brennan is an evil woman who is bad and should feel bad, Unspoken leaves us salivating for more with a totally intense ending.

What intrigues me about the novel are the relationships between young women, because they’re varied and complex here. Kami and her best friend Angela have an amazing, deep, complex friendship that I really love watching, not least because Angela reminds me so much of myself. She’s profoundly misanthropic and deeply lazy; I love the running gag with Angela and her brother Rusty basically falling asleep wherever and whenever it pleases them. (And I suspect there’s more to that than meets the eye.)

Beneath Angela’s seemingly placid surface, though, there’s an extremely sharp mind, and Angela has some things of her own she’s dealing with. She may not feel like sharing them with Kami, though, which is an aching reminder of how friendships evolve over time. When you’re growing into a new person and you’re not sure how you feel about it, sometimes the last person you want to talk to is your best friend. And it sucks, because the person you want to talk to most when you’re stressed out and trying to figure out who you are, of course, is your best friend.

Holly’s the new addition to the circle, and I love that she’s presented as someone isolated because of who she is, both because of her lower social status and because of her good looks. There’s an assumption that pretty girls always have lots of friends, but that’s not always the case. For Holly, beauty is more of a curse, because she feels separate from other girls, some of whom actively dislike her or feel jealous of her because she’s attractive. Talk about a serious case of ‘don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.’

To see Kami’s understanding of Holly and her position in life evolve over the course of the book is really exciting, and it shows a lot of growth on her part. That she can go from feeling a little insecure and nervous around Holly to embracing her as a true friend is huge, especially when Angela’s romantically interested in her so Holly presents a threat of a different colour to her life. Rather than stealing her boyfriend, Holly might be in line to steal her best friend, and that can be a difficult emotional line to walk. Brennan’s handling of all three characters is sensitive and nuanced, turning them into a fascinating triad instead of a plucky heroine with two sidekicks kept firmly in the background.

Brennan’s gothic influences are obvious in the text, but so is her love of authors like Austen, who wrote so beautifully and insightfully on women’s friendships. These are strong female characters of the best sort, dynamic, complex, and interesting, each with her own strengths and weaknesses to bring to the alliance. Watching them interact with each other was one of the most exciting things about Unspoken for me; who needs love triangles when you have strong women’s friendships?

These are not simple happiness and light friendships. Nor are they stereotyped backstabbing mean girls without an ounce of authenticity. All the women in Unspoken come alive and jump off the page, whether they be sinister sorceresses or teens. This is nothing new for Brennan, of course, nor for young adult fiction, but it still warms the cockles of my heart. And it’s one of the reasons I’m unimpressed with people who trash YA, because this kind of emotionally complex characterisation requires a mastery of the craft, and it’s not always evident in literary fiction.

24 November, 2012 – 10:33 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in reviews | Tagged , , , , |

How Your Attitudes Might Be Trapping Disabled People In Their Homes

Progressives struggling to grasp the concept of ableism often want to be pointed at specific, real-world examples of how ableism works against disabled people. Despite the fact that disability-based discrimination is a huge social construct that contributes to everything from how policy is made to how spaces are laid out, they want a crystal-clear thing they can understand.

So.

Here’s an example of how social attitudes can act to keep people at home, which is a direct illustration of why ableism is a problem, and why we need to fight it. Because people shouldn’t be trapped in their home by anything—not crappy policies, not inaccessible structures, not point and stares on the street. Right?

Some disabled people need to use mobility aids like canes, walkers, wheelchairs, scooters, or mobility assistance dogs. They do this because the nature of their impairments makes it difficult to get around bipedally for whatever reason; maybe they have neurological impairments that interfere with motor control, or a spinal cord injury that’s resulted in loss of sensation in the legs. Using a mobility aid, though, means that you run a gauntlet every time you leave your home.

Not just one of inaccessible surfaces; ‘just one step’ doorways, bad paving, lack of curb cuts, people parking at awkward angles, roads with no sidewalks so they’re forced to be in the street or on a rocky, rough shoulder. But a gauntlet of responses from other people as they move through the world, and those responses are both irritating and dangerous.

The irritating is obvious; most people want to be left alone while conducting their daily business. They don’t want people to point and stare at them, gawking and drawing attention. They don’t want to be subjected to intrusive personal questions about how their bodies work, or gooey comments about how nice it is to see ‘people like them’ out in public, and they don’t want people making a big production of the fact that they exist and are, shockingly, daring to venture into the outside world. It’s annoying. It’s really annoying when it happens over and over again, every time you leave the house.

And yes, it’s still annoying when you say ‘I know I’m not supposed to ask, but…’ This is actually more annoying, because it indicates that someone, at some point, informed you that you shouldn’t discuss disabilities and mobility aids, but you decided to do so anyway. In progressive circles, it’s often done as a way to show that you’re oh-so-educated and aware. If you want to impress a disabled person with your awareness, treat that person like a person, and ignore whatever that person is using to get around; believe me, a service dog user will go into private rhapsodies with a friend over ‘that lovely chat I had with someone in the hall who acted like my dog wasn’t there the whole time, didn’t bring him up, and actually wanted to talk to me about astrophysics instead of my legs.’

It can get to the point where you weigh your decision carefully before leaving the house. You want to go to the library for books. Do you want to do battle with the inaccessible paths that force you to take the long route to get there, and members of the general public who will insist on making you their business? Maybe you’re up for it, so you set out. Maybe you’re not, in which case you just stay home. The attitudes of other people have forced you to stay in your house.

When it’s pointed out that this stuff is irritating, people often get it, because it can be easily framed in a way that they understand. Women, for example, understand how upsetting it is to be approached by random strangers who start talking to you when you just want to be left alone. Using that as a base, nondisabled women can see how it’s a problem to be making a big production out of disabled people; they may modify their own behaviour as well as encouraging others to do likewise, because a line of empathy has been established. They don’t know what it’s like to be disabled, but they do know what it’s like to feel constantly under scrutiny in public.

It’s harder to get people to understand that their interference, well meaning and otherwise, can be dangerous. When people grab mobility aids, which they do, they can not only break them, but also endanger the people who are using them. A wheelchair user who’s operating her manual chair just fine doesn’t need help; and your unexpected push could throw her out of her chair, unbalance her, or hurt her. A cane user doesn’t need you to grab his arm while he’s attempting to use his cane; he’s already got his balance down just fine, thank you very much. In both of these examples, you’re effectively kicking someone’s legs out from beneath.

This is an especially big problem for people with mobility assistance dogs, because they endure a combination of fascination with disability and ‘ooh shiny look at the puppy!’ Like other service dogs, they are not pets. They are working. They should be left alone. And that means not just not petting them, but not distracting them by making kissy noises, trying to make eye contact, pointing at them, waving food at them, or otherwise acknowledging their presence in any way, which includes asking the handler about the dog and redirecting the handler’s focus from work to your annoying questions. These activities are irritating for their handlers, but more than that, they are dangerous. If you see someone using a mobility dog and you shout and the dog gets distracted, the handler might fall. If a dog is distracted because the handler is agitated or focused on conversation, that dog can’t act to quickly counterbalance the handler if she loses stability.

Which means that people using mobility aids need to think about this, too, when they go out. Despite the fact that they know how to use their mobility aids just fine and can ask for help if they need it, they must ask themselves if they’re ready to advocate for themselves in public when someone attempts to interfere. And that is a when, not an if. Are they ready to deal with being endangered by a random member of the public? Because if not, they’re going to have to stay home.

And the thing is that the more this happens, the more you start to think staying home might be a pretty damn good idea.

23 November, 2012 – 11:57 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in disability | Tagged , |

Little Movement on Carriage Horse Reform

Last year, I wrote about the plight of carriage horses in New York, highlighting the fact that horses are being abused to provide people with quaint, romantic, nostalgic rides in and around Central Park. Cities across the US have similar carriage horse programmes, but New York’s horses have become iconic, not just in pop culture but in the movement to abolish the use of carriage horses in urban areas. Organisations like NYCLASS work hard to educate members of the public about the issues with carriage horses and to push for reforms, but they have an uphill battle.

Even small gains are won at hard price, and we haven’t seen movement on the big issues, even with increasing public awareness of the miserable conditions endured by carriage horses.

Groups like the ASPCA argue that horses are not suited for living and working in urban environments:

In addition to the dangers of working in congested areas, these horses spend their days directly behind cars, trucks and buses, inhaling their fumes. Given the constraints and challenges that New York City presents, and as the primary enforcer of New York City’s carriage horse laws, the ASPCA does not believe New York City can meet the needs of its horses. Neither the New York City environment nor the current law can provide horses with the fundamental necessities to ensure their safety and well being.

Horses can spend up to nine hours a day, every day, pounding the pavement in New York. They don’t have access to pasture for grazing or rolling, and often develop symptoms of stress like chewing themselves, snapping at handlers, and kicking at their stalls in frustration. They’re prone to respiratory and foot problems, and despite claims that carriage drivers love their horses, the turnover is astronomically high; of the approximately 200 horses working in New York City, one third are rotated out every year. While there are restrictions on the climate conditions in which horses work, they’re limited; they don’t take issues like humidity and wind chill into account. Bystanders routinely document horses in obvious physical distress who are being forced to work to satisfy the thirst for carriage rides.

In August, a carriage horse collided with a car, attracting widespread outcry and national headlines. Luckily the horse, Oreo, wasn’t killed, but three people were injured in the accident, highlighting the fact that keeping horses in the city isn’t just dangerous for the horses, it’s also dangerous for people. While horses are big, that doesn’t mean they’re fearless, and despite selective breeding and training, carriage horses can become stressed or alarmed, and may act out. When they do, the results can be explosive.

All of this is for something that serves no function. No one in New York City needs a carriage horse for transportation; there are numerous alternatives available. These working animals are treated as little more than decorative cars by handlers and customers who seem to forget that horses are living, breathing animals who shouldn’t be tormented for amusement and pleasure. Urban environments are miserable for horses, and when they’re done with short, brutish service in the city, they’re likely to end up on auction kill lots, not the nice pastures and rolling hills that people want to imagine when they hear carriage horses are being retired.

The lack of action on carriage horse welfare is frustrating and infuriating. Despite the fact that several organisations advocate for carriage horses and they’ve been joined by celebrities, politicians, and activists, New York and other cities are reluctant to pass any welfare measures, let alone come out with a direct ban on the use of carriage horses in the city. They justify it as a tourist attraction, little considering the fact that they could be focused on developing alternatives instead of preserving an inhumane and disgusting tradition. Or they say that carriage horses provide jobs; for drivers, for grooms, and for other people associated with the industry. Surely it’s possible to transition them to cruelty-free employment in the process of creating a new and equally engaging tourist attraction that doesn’t require torturing animals for fun.

Carriage horses in the city are inhumane, and the people who continue to promote them should be deeply ashamed of themselves, especially when they evoke love of horses and the preservation of historic traditions. There is nothing loving about urban carriage horses, and anyone who truly loves horses would agree. And there are numerous ways to preserve carriage breeds, driving, and the history of horses as transportation that do not involve a spectacle performed in all weather, every day of the year, to the great detriment of individual horses.

A loved, healthy, happy carriage horse has access to grazing, dirt, and open land to roll, frolic, and graze on. And that horse is handled with love and respect during every driving session, by a handler who uses harness properly fitted to the horse’s body and drives on appropriate surfaces. And when the weather is foul, that horse stays tucked up cozily inside the stable where it stays cool on hot days and warm on cold ones, with access to comfortable, clean bedding and handlers who treat the horse with the compassion it deserves as another living being.

It’s long-past time to end the use of urban carriage horses. The only question is why the people in a position to do that are being so stubborn about it, and seem determined to refuse to acknowledge that the presence of such a tradition is a stain on their cities.

22 November, 2012 – 10:38 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in animals | Tagged , , |

Looking to Domestic Workers for Labour Organising

I’m in love with this Labour Day interview with organiser Ai-Jen Poo by Sarah Jaffe, discussing organising among domestic workers and the victories they’ve had in recent years. Poo is a dedicated, fascinating, and driven organiser so it’s great to see her profiled, but more than that, the interview provides some insight into the shifting landscape of labour organising, and how to achieve and cement gains for people in a variety of industries.

Domestic workers occupy an important, interesting, and challenging place in the labour landscape. They can’t be outsourced, for one thing, and they’re everywhere, for another. They keep the country humming, from private nannies and housekeepers to the staff at large hotels. Many are underpaid, subjected to awful working conditions, and forced to endure abuse on the job because they’re considered disposable labour. Some are undocumented labourers, which puts them in an even worse position, because any kind of organising might result not just in being fired, but in being deported.

Which makes it especially hard to identify problems and address them, let alone organise domestic labourers into unions and collectives. Yet, that’s exactly what people like Poo are doing, and more than that, they’re succeeding when it comes to gathering workers and agitating for change. The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and other gains have shown that organisers can force regulators to pay attention, changing the workplace and the landscape for domestic workers, and they aren’t stopping when it comes to pushing for more policy reforms.

As Jaffe points out, this is an era when the conditions formerly faced by domestic labourers are increasingly spreading into the rest of the workforce. The use of contingent labour with few protections is on the rise in scores of industries, as are abusive working conditions and unreasonable demands on workers. In part, this is because of the economy, but it’s also because labour victories of the past weren’t enforced with constant vigilance and ongoing work. Workers were content to rest, not fully understanding that by not enforcing their rights and being proactive, they were allowing them to lapse. As the landscape of the workplace changed, with a growing focus on a knowledge economy, these problems became even more acute.

The protections fought for and won in an era when work looked very different weren’t adequate to today. How, for example, do you deal with a world in which 30% of the workforce is freelance? This is something that wasn’t imagined in an era when the United States focused heavily on manufacturing, and where people stayed with one employer for years and sometimes their entire working life. The systems used to create and protect benefits were based on things like 9-5 jobs, steady employment, and other ‘norms’ that are no longer the case in the new workplace.

Domestic labourers, meanwhile, were already intimately familiar with these issues because they’d always been facing them. Precarious employment, abusive situations, and low pay were a way of life, which means they were in a good position to agitate for change because they had experience and knew exactly what they needed and wanted. Now, people in other sectors of the economy would do well to turn to domestic labourers for organising tips, because they have the experience we don’t; and they have successful campaigns to illustrate what works, what doesn’t, and how best to agitate for change in regards to specific workplace issues.

To do so, though, there are a number of social barriers that need to be overcome. There’s a hesitance and disdain when it comes to engaging with domestic labourers because their work is traditionally devalued, something that has, as Jaffe notes, a heavily gendered aspect. People who clean, cook, care for people, and perform similar tasks are considered lesser-than, and there’s a reluctance to approach them as authorities on given labour organising issues. To do so would be to admit that they actually have specific skills and knowledge that we do not, and, furthermore, that they deserve respect and should be positioned as authorities.

It would require treating them with respect.

We are already seeing signs of change in how people within the labour movement approach domestic workers, and we’re seeing more and more solidarity campaigns to promote their interests alongside other workers, and to support their individual campaigns. That gives me hope that people are turning away from outdated, sexist, and racist attitudes about domestic work and the value of the people who perform it, but we still have a long way to go. I can see it in progressive conferences held in non-union hotels, in the unwillingness to engage with people who provide care as part of their jobs, in the desire to distance from the people who clean toilets, empty garbage cans, raise other families while still trying to support their own.

Cooperation across boundaries is key for the future of labour organising, and that’s going to require some individual soul-searching on the part of some participants. Even as key organisers are working on solidarity campaigns and coalitions, like the push for paid sick days in New York that’s uniting a variety of women not just in labour but in other fields of social justice, some of the very workers who could benefit most from these initiatives are still lagging behind on joining the movement. Some of that lag is a culturally-induced fear of unions, where ‘labour organising’ is a dirty phrase, but some of it is also a reluctance to mingle with people across the spectrum, from varied walks of life and experiences, and that needs to come to an end if we want to protect all workers and create a coalition to ensure our rights as workers aren’t undermined again once we start winning key victories.

21 November, 2012 – 10:07 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in economy | Tagged , , , |