What I’m Reading, January 6, 2015

Posted on January 6, 2015 by wellsdc

Hollywood’s Disability ‘Inspiration Porn’ Is Terrible, but Here’s How We Can Fix It, Holly Eagleson, TakePart, November 21, 2014

The general consensus is that American Horror Story: Freak Show is a gift. Sure, the story lines have been teetering on the rails for the last two episodes. But it’s one of a pathetically few places you’ll see a talent like Mat Fraser on television.

Fraser has phocomelia, a congenital disorder that causes malformed appendages. On AHS, he beautifully embodies Paul the Illustrated Seal, a tattooed member of a 1950s freak show under threat of nefarious forces. Unlike so many infantilizing roles for disabled actors, Paul isn’t stripped of his eroticism; he has affairs with two different female characters on the show. Play on, player!

It’s a breakout role for Fraser, a performer who’s well known on the cabaret and burlesque circuits and is also a drummer and playwright. Fraser is fierce by any measure, even more so for his perspective on his new-found fame. In an excellent interview with The Onion’s AV Club, he puts media eager to exploit his story directly in his crosshairs: “I’ve already turned down two offers from really mainstream people, too f—ing mainstream, to do a life-story interview, because I am not interested in ‘inspiration porn.’”

That term may not be familiar, but you know the concept. It’s that soft-focus prime-time sitdown about a “heroic” soldier who lost limbs in battle. The relentless memes of developmentally disabled people as Successories posters. The documentary about a person triumphing over a disfiguring disease to run a marathon and climb a mountain. It’s all to celebrate ability in many its forms, if you’re being generous. In reality, it’s a clarion call to the able-bodied: If these less-thans can do so much with so little, by God, you can do anything! (Cue “reach for the stars” graphic.)

Consent, Emma Holten, Hysteria #5 ‘Nonsense’ Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, January 2, 2015

Posted on January 2, 2015 by wellsdc

On Mishearing “Get Consent” as “Don’t Have Sex”, Miri, Professional Fun-Ruiner, Brute Reason, December 25, 2014

Countless writers, educators, and activists have weighed in on what consent is and what it is not and how to communicate around it. If you Google “what is consent,” the first page has numerous resources meant to help young people learn what consent is, such as this one and this one. Don’t like reading? There are graphics!

Yet (some) men insist that this is all so mysterious and perilous that they have no choice but to avoid the whole enterprise altogether.

I don’t want anyone to be lonely, insecure, and sexually unfulfilled. I don’t want anyone who wants to have sex to be unable to have it. I want everyone to have the confidence to pursue and find the types of relationships they’re interested in. I want everyone to feel worthy and valuable even if they haven’t found a partner yet.

But I also want people to pursue all of this ethically. That means that if you’re ever unsure if someone is consenting, you stop and ask. And if you don’t think you are able to do that, then you should abstain from sex until you are able to do it.

People Don’t Hate Millennials, Laura Bradley, Slate, December 26, 2014 Continue reading →

MLK’s Nonviolence Meme (UPDATED x 2)

Posted on November 26, 2014 by wellsdc

I’ve seen the following meme passed around on Facebook in recent days, generally in response to the protests in Ferguson. I think that the quote lacks context.

The meme, in case you can’t see the image, it quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. as follows:

Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

A common tactic to discredit a movement is to point to illegal acts of some people and associate that with the entire group. That way, people start to see nothing but violence in months of peaceful protests with only sporadic violence by some people, combined with people’s reactions to a grossly disproportionate police response (and I don’t think that ought to be a controversial characterization of the situation in Ferguson from August until a few days ago, but others may disagree).

I think it’s important to look at the MLK quote in its broader context. He drew a considerable amount of inspiration from Gandhi, who for all of his virtues had an almost comically naive view of how people should have responded to Germany in WWII. That said, nonviolence is a strategy that is much more complex than just saying “don’t be violent.” Without expressly defending certain things that may have happened on the protesters’ side in the past few months, I will say that history reveals again and again that you can only push people so much before they start to push back, and people in Ferguson have been pushed quite a bit. Now, getting back to the MLK quote, here’s a larger section from the speech (his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964):

Continue reading →