Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

Linkspam: “I’m back” edition

Posted on January 11, 2010 by unusualmusic

And how was your holiday season? I hope it was as enjoyable as mine. May your new year be filled with much joy and not much sorrow. In the meantime:

Feminism Fail

Perhaps it is time for women to examine whether the largest organizations that claim to represent them are really delivering on their promises.

They’ve failed to organize the millions of supporters they have into a coherent and powerful movement. ‘Cause when your movement looks like an amateur mess compared with the “keep your government hands off my Medicare” teabaggers, you’re doing something wrong.

They’ve failed to frame the debate and influence how we talk about issues that affect women’s lives. While they’re still arguing about “choice” — a word that persuades no one and narrowly focuses the conversation on abortion instead of the full spectrum of reproductive health — opponents are thinking up clever new phrases to use incessantly and force into the public consciousness until they become law. “Partial birth abortion.” “Rights of the preborn.” “Culture of life.”

They’ve failed to make women’s rights a legislative priority for the very representatives they help send to Congress. And if their supposed allies don’t worry about losing support of the feminist organizations, certainly their opponents don’t lose a lot of sleep over invoking the almighty wrath of the feminists. What’s the worst they can do? Organize another march? Hey, that might actually be great news for Republicans!

They’ve failed to adapt their movement and their message to a new era and a new generation of would-be feminists. Where are the bumper sticker slogans, the tactics, the refreshed, revised 21st century approach to a problem as old as time? Are they using the internet for anything more than urgent emails and processing donations? Where are the clever YouTube videos by a new generation of feminists talking about how this or that bill affects them? Where is the television presence? Where are the bloggers? (Oh, there are plenty of feminist bloggers out there, but they’re not being supported or promoted or elevated by the feminist organizations, who still think the internet is primarily for sending email. For example, guess who the “featured blogger” on Emily’s List is? Why, it’s Ellen Malcolm, the president.) MORE

The Abortion Healthcare Christmas Edition: Everybody Ain’t the Virgin Mary

And, so the health care questions for women of color are: Who should I choose? Should I support a “lackluster” healthcare bill that will insure additional Americans? Or, should I choose women and their ability to have access to affordable abortions? And of course for women of color this is not an easy choice because on one level we know that more people of color lack access to healthcare. However, we also know the historical and current struggles (i.e. forced sterilizations, unaffordable abortions, state unethical use of Norplant) for reproductive health for women of color meaning that we know any encroachment on the ability of a woman to choose what is right for her body be it by law or by affordability is quite damaging for our struggles to ensure reproductive freedom for women of color (i.e. the ability to have a child and to terminate a pregnancy).MORE

I saw the movie Precious, but what about her mother, Mary?

TRIGGER WARNING. TRIGGER WARNING. TRIGGER WARNING. Really really nasty case of what a family’s transphobia can lead to: is a dream a lie if it don’t come true / or is it something worse

Goodbye Mary Daly-And Please Take The Transphobia With You

How To Respectfully Cover A News Story Involving A Trans Person

Passing, revisited

What Happens Across The Diaspora IS My Business

Crossing My Fingers For The Future

The Americanization of Mental Illness

Project 880 vs Avatar

Spotlight on the Forbidden Topic

Spotlight on the Forbidden Topic: Part Two

Alternatives to Marriage Project

Making an Immigrant “good”

Should the goal of immigration be assimilation?

A new year without her daughter:Update on the Angelina Hassel Case

Sex conference, What happens at the sex conference does not stay at the sex conference, Part 2: One man’s diversity is another man’s Klan Rally and The Future and Sexuality of Communities of Color

And now a word from our sponsor…

Your ad could be here, right now.

Linkspam: “I’m back” edition

Reid and Lott

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Jeff Fecke

As you all most certainly know, an embarrassing quote from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surfaced over the weekend. Reid apparently stated during the 2008 election that then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would be an electable African-American candidate because he was lighter-skinned, and because he had the ability not to speak in a “Negro dialect.”

The quote was cringeworthy, and full of what Josh Marshall once described as “racial grandpaism,” the sort of archaic, muddled statement made by a guy who is generally well-meaning, but also generally possessed by some racist baggage left over from their upbringing.

Was the quote racist? Well, yes. But racism is not a capital offense; I have said racist things and so have you. One can’t grow up in America and not be suffused with some of the racist legacy our culture carries. The best any of us can do is recognize this and strive to overcome it, and apologize and learn when we fail to live up to our responsibility to overcome it.

More to the point, Reid’s statement, while clumsy and racist, was not malicious. He wasn’t saying that Obama shouldn’t be president because he was a charlatan, or that it was reasonable and proper that darker-skinned African-Americans should be less electable. A more artful phrasing of what he was trying to say might have gone something like this: Because of the legacy of racism in this country, a candidate like Barack Obama, who is biracial and who is able to speak to audiences in a manner that is less connected with stereotypically African-American speech patterns, will be more electable than a candidate like, say, Al Sharpton, who is darker-skinned and whose speaking style is more stereotypically African-American.

That doesn’t mean that this is right; it’s a value-neutral statement of fact. And what’s more, it’s true. Just as it’s true to say that being white makes one more “electable,” historically, than not being white, or that men are more likely to be elected president than women. It’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s something we should work to change. But it’s true, and saying so doesn’t make one a racist or sexist. Saying so makes one observant.

Which brings us to former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

As you may recall, Trent Lott used to be Senate Majority Leader until, in 2002, he was forced out in a scandal involving a statement he made that included racist language. The then-Majority Leader’s statement that got him in trouble came in a tribute to retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond, KKK-S.C. Lott said of Thurmond:

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.

Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948, at a time when he was a Democrat of the traditional Southern variety — i.e., a flaming racist douchebag who nevertheless had an illegitimate biracial daughter conceived, quite probably, in rape.

Southern Democrats were furious at efforts by President Truman to ameliorate the damage caused by the apartheid system of segregation. The breaking point came at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, at which a young Minneapolis mayor by the name of Hubert Humphrey urged the party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” The speech prompted a walkout of Southern Democrats, who left to form their own party, the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats nominated Thurmond, at the time the Governor of South Carolina, as their standard-bearer.

The party’s platform was simple: States’ Rights. Anti-Miscegenation. Pro-Segregation. Pro-Lynching. They were a party whose raison d’être was the full-throated defense of Jim Crow. Perhaps their platform was summed up best by Thurmond, who during the campaign said, “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra [sic] race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

Again, when he said those words, he had a 23-year-old African-American daughter.

Flash-forward back to today. Many on the right, apparently wowed by their ability to connect that both Trent Lott and Harry Reid were or are Senate Majority Leaders, and that both were accused of racism, are now calling on Reid to step down as Majority Leader, because the situation is totally the same. Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., said flatly, “If he [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should.”

This is, in a word, bonkers.

Again, what Reid said was inartful and cringe-inducing and yes, racist. But it was not malicious. A different phrasing could save it from racism, and the core idea — that America in 2010 will treat candidates of varying racial backgrounds in different ways — is absolutely true.

Compare to what Lott said. Lott said that if America had followed Mississippi’s lead in 1948 and voted for the Dixiecrats, that America today would have avoided a lot of problems.

And yet the Dixiecrats stood for the worst sorts of barbarism committed in this country. They were the spiritual heirs to the slaveholders, the men and women who were absolutely and completely committed to keeping a boot of the throats of all non-white Americans. They expressly supported lynching, for God’s sake.

There is no way to save that quote, no way to phrase it that does not make it offensive and malicious. Lott was saying, flatly, that if only we’d maintained a system of segregation and racial apartheid in the South, that America today would be better off.

To compare the two situations is ludicrous.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it:

Claiming that Harry Reid’s comments are the same, is like claiming that referring to Jews as “Hebrews” is the same as endorsing Nazism. Whereas a reputable portion of black people still use the term Negro without a hint of irony, no black person thinks the guy yelling “Segregation Forever!” would have cured us of “all these problems.”

Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid’s comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren’t simply having a hard time re-branding, they don’t actually understand how and why they got the tag.

Exactly right. Harry Reid said something stupid while arguing that a specific African-American man could get himself elected to the presidency. Trent Lott endorsed the worst part of America’s racial legacy, and held it up as our nation’s salvation. That Republicans can take these two situations and not see a difference between them says far more about the Republican Party than about Harry Reid.

Posted in Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Elections and politics, Race, racism and related issues, The Obama Administration | 23 Comments

Big Other Post – Thinking About Age Differences, Relationships, and Academics

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Mandolin

Another post at Big Other:

It happens. I think we all hear about it. I don’t think most of us talk about it much. It’s a subject for whispers — a dirty academic secret. The TA really is making out with the student she recognized from suicide girls. The married, “monogamous” professor who hosts get-togethers at the home his wife keeps for him and his kids is slipping his own hors d’oeurves to the obnoxious boy who won’t shut up in class…

I am aware that teacher/student romances are the subject of many an erotic fantasy, but I’m the odd one out on this kind of eroticism. On a gutteral level, I just don’t get it. Students — especially younger ones — are… bleah. They’re students. I could no more think erotic thoughts about them than I could my siblings or parents. I’ve become fairly good friends with a few of my ex-students, and even so, when they do things that I’d never blink at another young adult doing — like post pictures of themselves topless and drunk at a party — I have to suppress my gag reflex. Because ew. Students…

I think it’s a good thing to discuss taboos rather than leave them hidden. I was once involved in a really interesting discussion with anthropologists about how a lot of people have relationships with their informants in the field. By making those dynamics overt, anthropologists gain the ability to discuss them, analyze them, and hopefully deal with them productively.

So, here are my questions to fellow people who are working in academia (though I know people might want to go anonymous to comment on this):

1) Policies against student/teacher relationships are a fact at most (all?) institutions. Should they be? Are the ones that exist reasonable? Are there tweaks that would make things more practical or safer for students?

2) If your students are attracted to you, how do you deal with that? If you’re attracted to your students, how do you deal with that?

3) Have you been in a relationship with a student or ex-student, a teacher or ex-teacher? From that point of view, are such relationships just like any other relationship — sometimes exploitative, sometimes fine — or are they particular minefields?

4) Are student/teacher relationships inevitable? They seem to be. Is there a way of dealing with that better than we currently do? Is there a version of the campsite rule that people involved in such relationships should follow?

5) Is it less problematic to date someone right after they get out of your class (or right after you get out of their class)? Or does that not make much difference?

6) Anyone care to attempt a good explanation for why teacher/student relationships are problematic? Obviously it’s got something to do with power, but is that sufficient? After all, heterosexual relationships involve systemic power differentials, and almost no one opposes those.
Is it just the mechanics of grading that makes these relationships untenable? Is it the nature of institutionalized authority? Is it the incest taboo, repurposed to cover a different kind of relationship? Is it just prudery? Let me know what you think.

Read the rest and comment over there.

Posted in Sex | Comments Off

Harry Reid's Negro Comment

Posted on January 10, 2010 by Ampersand

A new gossip book about the 2008 election has been getting lots of press for this report about Harry Reid:

He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as he said privately.

Reid has apologized for his choice of words.

I think Matt gets to the heart of the matter:

It’s good that Reid apologized, but at the same time you can’t really apologize for being the sort of person who’d be inclined to use the phrase “negro dialect” and it’s more the idea of Reid being that kind of person that’s creepy here than anything else.

Amanda thinks this shows a need for forced retirements of our more senior Senators. In contrast, Mark can’t see why people are objecting to Reid’s quote:

Other than using an old-fashioned word to refer to African-Americans (a word which was the standard word for about the first half of Reid’s life), what did Reid do wrong?

But “Negro” isn’t just “old-fashioned”; it’s a racist epithet. It’s true that a half-century ago, “negro” was commonly used by both Blacks and whites. But things have changed since then. From Wikipedia:

During the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African American leaders in the United States objected to the word, preferring Black, because they associated the word Negro with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse. During the 1960s Negro came to be considered an ethnic slur.

The term is now considered archaic and is not commonly used, and is widely considered a racist slur. The term is still used in some contexts for historical reasons such as in the name of the United Negro College Fund. or the Negro league in sports.

I don’t want to make too big a deal of this; this isn’t a judgement on Reid as a person, or an indictment of his entire character. A sincere anti-racist can slip up and have a racist moment.

Nonetheless, it is racist for white folks ((I’m ignoring for this post the question of Black people using the word “negro” ironically, or of elderly black people using the word non-ironically, because Reid clearly isn’t in either category.)) to casually use racial slurs as part of everyday speech, and Mark’s mistaken to think otherwise. It’s not even slightly unreasonable to expect that someone who is sharp enough to be the head of the Democrats in the Senate, who is one of the most powerful people in the world, would have learned sometime in the last four or five decades to stop using the word “negro.”

Posted in In the news, Race, racism and related issues | 47 Comments

Fictional Depictions of Women Running Infrastructure

Posted on January 10, 2010 by Mandolin

Elsewhere, Nancy Lebovitz wrote:

I’ve been into Ayn Rand (details if you like about what I do and don’t agree with from her)[1], and how I still don’t see the emotional stench that’s obvious to a lot of people from her writing… [1]She’s the only writer I can think of who put a woman character in charge of a huge piece of infrastructure– one that was part of the larger society. Signy Mallory (captain of a big spaceship) doesn’t have the same emotional effect, I’d say.

I replied:

…the only writer? can you qualify that in some way (timespan, political writings only, etc) because, er, if you’re somehow suggesting no other writer has ever done this, that’s a very strange claim.

Suggestions of other depictions welcome here.

Posted in Whatever | 31 Comments

New Post on Big Other: “We know he’s busy, but why didn’t she clean the house?”

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Mandolin

A new post at Big Other, where I’ve recently joined as a blogger:

Over on his own blog, Jeff Vandermeer adds another dimension to the conversation by adding that women face particular challenges toward establishing a home life that will facilitate their writing careers. One difficulty is what feminists often call the second shift, wherein working wives and mothers put in a full day at the office and then come home to put in a second shift doing chores at home. Data suggests that women tend to spend a lot more time on this than men do, even in households where partners report they have an equal division of labor. Even if labor is divided equally, women are more likely to be held responsible for an unclean house, and so they’re often under more pressure.

…There are any number of ways that systemic sexism interferes with women’s careers, but one of the most direct is time. Time spent on housework is time not spent on writing. Time spent on hair and clothes and makeup is time not spent on writing. If women put in more of this time (and overall in America, they do), then that’s fewer woman-hours that are available for writing stories. When we start to address unequal representation in magazines, it’s important to ask questions on the editorial level, the content level, the submissions level, and so on — but it’s also important to interrogate the gendered ways in which sexism blocks opportunities for writing to occur in the first place.

The rest of the entry — and comments — over there.

Posted in Whatever | Comments Off

Sady from Feministe on Mary Daly's Death

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Mandolin

Quoted for brilliance:

It wasn’t the end of the problems with Daly. For starters: Daly hated on trans people something fierce. This has been sort of lightly mentioned and hinted at elsewhere, but I have to tell you this in plain language: MARY. DALY. HATED. TRANS. PEOPLE. Particularly trans women. She intimated, at times, that they were part of a plot to eliminate “real” women, and to assign “men” all “authentic” female functions. She also said that they were like whites putting on blackface (yeah: Lorde might have been right, about the whole appropriating-other-people’s-oppression thing?) and implied that they should have bodily violence done to them, or at least should be physically intimidated, by “real” feminists, so that they could not enter the feminist movement or feminist space. Let’s not be coy, here: no matter whether she believed this for her entire life, no matter whether she privately got over it later, she published it, without apparently ever publishing a retraction, as far as I can tell. This is hate. This is privilege. This, right here, is the face of the oppressor.

And I’m not saying this to defile Mary Daly’s grave. I’m not saying it because I get a dirty little thrill out of tarnishing the legacy of a fallen feminist. I’m not saying it because I want to start a fight. I’m saying it because, for much of my young life, Mary Daly was my favorite feminist author, meaning that I believed this shit, too. There are still women who believe this, and these women often call themselves “radical feminists.” Because queer-bashing and misogyny are just so fucking threatening to the Patriarchy, apparently. I believed it, because Mary Daly published it, and I believed in her. And, let me tell you, I have worked like Hell Itself to get over that, and to get over the privilege that allowed me to place such emphasis on my own oppression that I could go around blithely oppressing other folks because clearly I had won the Whose Suffering Is Most Important game, and to be an actual functioning ally. Some encouragement from Mary Daly – some retraction, some statement of accountability – would have helped. It would have slapped me out of this unbelievably gross way of thinking with one blow, rather than making me go through life hurting people and being an asshole and having to receive many, many less powerful slaps until I got my shit straight.

Daly and I were both Catholics, at one point, so I know both of us understand the power of Confession – not the version handed out by the church, where you say it and apologize for it and have all your guilt magically wiped away by the hand of God, but the version that actually works in the real live world, where you admit to being wrong and you take your consequences like a grown woman and you do your acts of contrition and your assigned penance, for the rest of your life, by living with those consequences and not repeating the actions that caused them in the first place. People might forgive you; they might not. The point is to value doing the right thing, for the sake of the right thing, more than you value your own personal comfort.

I’m exerpting this from the rest of the essay because I think this will be an important dialogue for feminists to have, and to continue to have, until the particular forms of transphobia which are fostered by the radical feminist movement die a long-awaited death. Mary Daly’s passing provides fodder for this conversation — a starting point — but it’s not really the core of what needs discussing.

Feminism is, still, used as a tool of oppression against trans people. Those who perpetuate this violence toward fellow human beings should feel ashamed. If they, like Mary Daly, have an investment in the imagery of the church — they should confess and repent. If they, like me, have no such investment, then they should apologize and stop hurting other people immediately.

Also, rest in peace Mary Daly and thank you for the good work you’ve done, but that’s just a footnote to this conversation.

Read Sady’s whole post here.

Posted in Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues, Transsexual and Transgender related issues, Whatever | 17 Comments

J Street Los Angeles!

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Julie

Because I am a glutton for punishment with no sense of restraint, when the email came in saying that J Street was opening up local chapters, not only did I immediately sign up, but I checked off every single skills/interests box. (Can I help it that I’m so well-rounded?)

Sooo, I’m going to need some help, people! Sign up, please! And maybe we can even get a Long Beach branch going? (I have no idea what these local chapters entail, by the way, but I’m pumped.)

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)

Posted in Jews and Judaism, Palestine & Israel | 37 Comments

Yes, Health Care Is Constitutional.

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Ampersand

In an open thread, Ron and Rob discuss the prospect of a Constitutional challenge to health care reform, and in particular to the individual mandate:

Ron: Anybody have any idea how this might turn out? I’m trying to think of anything else the government forces me to buy. I have to buy car insurance if I buy a car, but then I don’t have to buy a car and if I don’t I don’t have to buy car insurance. I’m trying to think of anything that the government forces me to buy purely for the privilege of living in the U.S. and I’m coming up short. […]

Robert: As for how the court challenge will go – I’m inclined to think the courts will be fairly sympathetic to the individuals not wanting to make the payments. The other side’s interest amounts to “We really really want health care reform and making people buy insurance is the only way we could find to make the political deal work”. That’s good enough for legislation, but not good enough to override people’s rights.

Of course, the government isn’t going to force RonF to buy anything. My possibly mistaken recollection is that Ron has a job that includes health benefits; if so, the individual mandate wouldn’t apply to Ron. But if it did apply to Ron, Ron still wouldn’t be forced to buy health insurance; he could always elect to pay a tax instead.

The constitutional arguments about the individual mandate hinge on two questions: whether or not Congress has the authority to create an individual mandate as part of health care reform, and whether or not Congress has the authority to tax individuals in this way. In both cases, the answer seems to be yes.

Conservatives have argued that the commerce clause doesn’t give Congress the power to mandate individual’s personal decisions. Jonathan Adler, writing at the conservative legal blog Volokh Conspiracy, writes:

As much as I oppose the various health care reforms promoted by the Obama Administration and current Congressional leadership (and as much as I would like to see a more restrictive commerce clause jurisprudence), I do not find this argument particularly convincing. While I agree that the recent commerce clause cases hold that Congress may not regulate noneconomic activity, as such, they also state that Congress may reach otherwise unregulable conduct as part of an overarching regulatory scheme, where the regulation of such conduct is necessary and proper to the success of such scheme. In this case, the overall scheme would involve the regulation of “commerce” as the Supreme Court has defined it for several decades, as it would involve the regulation of health care markets. And the success of such a regulatory scheme would depend upon requiring all to participate. (Among other things, if health care reform requires insurers to issue insurance to all comers, and prohibits refusals for pre-existing conditions, then a mandate is necessary to prevent opportunistic behavior by individuals who simply wait to purchase insurance until they get sick.)

Congress’ power to tax individuals is extremely well-established.

For further reading, see Michael Dorf’s articles at FindLaw (part 1, part 2); this statement from Max Baucus; Jack Balkin on taxing authority; the general discussion at Volokh; and especially this debate between David B. Rivkin & Lee A. Casey, and Jack Balkin.

But what about the Supreme Court — couldn’t they decide health care reform is unconstitutional? Remember Bush v. Gore — it’s within the Supreme Court’s power to make transparently partisan and unprincipled decisions.

Yes, the Court could overturn health care reform. But they probably won’t. At Volokh, conservative legal scholar Ilya Somin writes:

Current Supreme Court precedent allows Congress regulate virtually anything that has even a remote connection to interstate commerce, so long as it has a “substantial effect” on it. The most recent major precedent in this field is Gonzales v. Raich, where the Court held that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce was broad enough to uphold a ban on the use of medical marijuana that was never sold in any market and never left the confines of the state where it was grown. This regulation was upheld under the “substantial effects” rule noted above. As I describe in great detail in this article, Raich renders Congress’ power under the substantial effects test virtually unlimited in three different ways:

1. Raich holds that Congress can regulate virtually any “economic activity,” and adopts an extraordinarily broad definition of “economic,” which according to the Court of encompasses anything that involves the “production, distribution, and consumption of commodities.”

2. Raich makes it easy for Congress to impose controls on even “non-economic” activity by claiming that it is part of a broader regulatory scheme aimed at something economic.

3. Raich adopts so-called “rational basis” test as the standard for Commerce Clause cases, holding that “[w]e need not determine whether [the] activities [being regulated], taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a rational basis exists for so concluding.” In legal jargon, a “rational basis” can be almost any non-completely moronic reason for believing that a particular claim might be true.

Any of these three holdings could easily justify a federal requirement forcing people to purchase health insurance.[…]

…it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would invalidate a major provision of the health care bill, should it pass Congress. In addition to requiring the overruling of Raich and considerable revision of other precedents, such a decision would lead to a major confrontation with Congress and the president. The Court is unlikely to pick a massive fight with a still-popular president backed by a large congressional majority. Of course, it is still possible that the Court could invalidate some minor portion of the bill on Commerce Clause grounds. But even that is unlikely so long as the majority of justices remain committed to Raich. Five of the six justices who voted with the majority in that case are still on the Court. The only exception – Justice David Souter – has been replaced by a liberal justice who is unlikely to be any more willing to impose meaningful limits on congressional power than Souter was.

Even if you don’t buy that the Court would be unwilling to pick a major fight with the other two branches — or even if you don’t buy that Obama is still popular, or that Democrats will continue to hold a significant majority in Congress ((And by the way, if you’d like to discuss these questions, please take them to an open thread.)) — it’s still unlikely that a Court with five justices who voted for Raich plus Sotomeyor, will overturn Raich.

Posted in Health Care and Related Issues, Supreme Court Issues | 19 Comments

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Maia

So it’s the time of New Year’s resolutions (and if you live in Wellington grumbling about the weather).* The newspapers didn’t have much copy over the last couple of weeks, so they were full of: “50 ways to be healthier in 2010.”

So I was delighted to see this post on The Fat Nutritionist called Don’t be Poor (and other New Year’s Resolutions):

The traditional 10 Tips for Better Health

1. Don’t smoke. If you can, stop. If you can’t, cut down.

2. Follow a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables.

3. Keep physically active.

4. Manage stress by, for example, talking things through and making time to relax.

5. If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation.

6. Cover up in the sun, and protect children from sunburn.

7. Practice safer sex.

8. Take up cancer-screening opportunities.

9. Be safe on the roads: follow the Highway Code.

10. Learn the First Aid ABCs: airways, breathing, circulation.

The social determinants 10 Tips for Better Health

1. Don’t be poor. If you can, stop. If you can’t, try not to be poor for long.

2. Don’t have poor parents.

3. Own a car.

4. Don’t work in a stressful, low-paid manual job.

5. Don’t live in damp, low-quality housing.

6. Be able to afford to go on a foreign holiday and sunbathe.

7. Practice not losing your job and don’t become unemployed.

8. Take up all benefits you are entitled to, if you are unemployed, retired or sick or disabled.

9. Don’t live next to a busy major road or near a polluting factory.

10. Learn how to fill in the complex housing benefit/asylum application forms before you become homeless and destitute. ((It’s a great, but obviously incomplete list – don’t have ancestors who were colonised, be selective about the country you were born in… we could go on and on.))

[these are quoted from a wikipedia article.]

There’s a visual illustration of the same idea at the food for thought pyramid. I disagree with the proportions, but I think it’s kind of beautiful. I particularly appreciate the large space given over to luck.

Oh and if you obsess over what you eat and exercise and still get cancer – it must be your attitude. “Healthy living” has to be a goal that is always out of reach, a set of behaviours that can always be added to.

The endless health tips and New Year’s advice are about policing, and making people feel bad so they will buy products (if you stop drinking one soda a day I will gratitously link to a Sarah Haskins Video). But that’s not the only purpose they serve.

The reason for repeating over and over again that we can individually control our own health, is to hide the fact that we can’t. It is to hide the fact that collectively, societally we could do heaps to improve people’s longevity and quality of life and we don’t.

I’d make a New Year’s resolution to write more about that, but I probably wouldn’t keep it. ((For the record my New Year’s resolution is to keep up with what Joss Whedon is doing. I’m setting myself up for success.))

Posted in Disabled Rights & Issues, Fat, fat and more fat | 30 Comments