There are a handful of books I’ve read in my life that have had a profound impact on me. One of them was Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, a book on the education system in the United States. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend that you do so, because it contains some rather …
Tag Archives: social justice
Social Justice Matters: Prison Labour and You
Hard labour, the concept of a prison sentence involving brutal work for no compensation, is often treated as a thing of the past. A relic of Soviet gulags, perhaps, or Southern chain gangs. People are sometimes surprised to learn that today, most prison sentences include labour, a lot of that labour is hard, and many …
Psychiatrisation: A Great Way To Silence Troublesome Women
Were you aware that there are tremendous disparities in mental health diagnoses? Well, there are. There’s a long history of using psychiatrisation as a weapon against ‘undesirables,’ as demonstrated in the use of diagnoses of schizophrenia to institutionalise Black men and the use of a broad array of psychiatric diagnoses to pathologise women. Long before …
Social Justice Matters: Prison Visitation
How many of us have seen a movie or a television show with a prison visit scene? It’s kind of a staple whenever a character goes to prison. At some point, we will see family members or friends visiting in prison. They are ushered through a series of doors and bars, they sit in a …
this ain’t livin’ Turns Five!
I know, I didn’t believe it either. What’s more, for the bulk of those five years, I have been writing something here every day. I know that anniversary posts are supposed to be lookback or lookforward posts, talking about the history of the site or where it is going, or that I’m supposed to write …
But The Nice Officer Is Just Here To Help
Let me tell you about the time that I was presenting as male, was arrested, and was jailed with male prisoners. Actually, let me not. Let me talk, instead, about the widespread and rather touching belief that law enforcement officers are ‘here to help,’ and why it is that so many of us do not …
Sundown Towns and Denial
Apropos of my discussion about historical contexts and the feminist movement, I’ve been thinking a lot more lately about history, particularly hidden and denied history. History shapes the way we think and act, even if we aren’t conscious of the ways it shapes us, the power it has to mold us and dictate our beliefs. …
Water, Water, Everywhere
Almost one billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water, and around 39% of the global population does not have access to ‘improved sanitation.’ By ‘safe drinking water,’ I mean ‘water which, under optimal conditions, is unlikely to make you sick.’ Water, lack of it, and control over it have been issues …
Social Justice Matters: Mental Health and the Prison System
Last month at FWD, I discussed the imprisonment of mentally ill youth in the United States. The issue of mental illness and the prison system goes far beyond juvenile detainees, however. Mental illness is also seen in adult detainees, and it’s just as poorly handled. It’s a symptom of a much larger problem: A system …
The Politics of Revulsion
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the politics of revulsion, because I think that they lie at the root of a lot of problems we experience as a society, especially problems related to inclusion and acceptance. The very idea that inclusion is often called ‘tolerance’ speaks to the way social attitudes entangle the mind …