Cultural appropriation or cultural appreciation

"Where it gets really tricky is with traditions or symbols that have roots in several different cultures. For example, dreadlocks are found in Indian, Buddhist, Rastfari, African, and Celtic culture. Most recently, dreadlocks are known as a symbol of Black resistance to racism and Rastafaris’ commitment to Jah. When white people wear dreadlocks, we/they strip dreadlocks from their symbolism of resistance to racism and a commitment to Jah. But as a general rule of thumb, it’s not appropriation if it’s from your own culture."

https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/cultural-appreciation-or-cultural-appropriation/

Wanting to be Indian

"Structural racism is a system of oppression in which the structures of society are operated and controlled by White people. Racism combines prejudice against people of color with political, economic, and social power over their lives. Racism is in the air we breathe. It is not so much about individual guilt or innocence, as it is an atmosphere of injustice with which we all have to reckon in some way."

https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/wanting-to-be-indian/

Deaf School

1.     Benefit 300+ students? Really? Did you even watch the video or read the article?  Tara showed how the requirement for LSL specialists + auditory-only environment narrowed down the number of schools to two. Maybe there are three private and two public A/O schools in the state, but where are the certified LSL specialists? Hmm. I notice you haven’t offered SPECIFIC information about those schools and how or whether they meet the qualifications.

2.     FSDB serves more than 600 students on that $45 million. Not 399. It serves the full gamut of needs for a huge variety of kids. K-12, single disability (deaf or blind), multiple disabilities (deaf-blind, learning disabilities, psychiatric conditions, CP, mental retardation, physical disabilities, etc.), students from all over the state whose families don’t have access to good deaf and/or blind ed in their hometowns. Can private schools accommodate a student from a family from way out in the middle of nowhere who can’t afford to move to near the school? No. So a big chunk of that money for FSDB goes to dorms for those kids who have to live away from their families because their home schools can’t serve them. And then there’s all sorts of specialists to meet all sorts of needs – like Tara said. FSDB offers everything, including speech and auditory therapy. And they have to have counselors and therapists and etc. on staff. That’s gonna be way more expensive than offering only ONE mode and not employing any specialists in anything other than AVT and LSL.

3.     There’s a reason FSDB students often don’t enter the mainstream. They came FROM the mainstream! Some of them even came from A/O programs! State schools for the deaf are the last resort after kids can’t hack it at A/O schools or in public schools. How fair is it to judge a school that’s the dumping ground for kids that started out in A/O or public schools. When those schools can’t meet those kids’ needs, they get pushed out and into FSDB through no fault of their own or FSDB’s. And yet FSDB gets beat up for it and people yell about how expensive it is? Duh. Cleanup and damage control is expensive.

IMHO, people who spout off about choice but then tell parents the only responsible choice is AO and then back it up with questionable (or even unsourced) “research” showing ASL is oh so terrible and will gasp HURT your child!! have no place trying to stick their hands in taxpayer pockets to support something that offers absolutely no choices for parents and nothing nearly resembling a range of options as a safety net if their students don’t take 100% to the AO method. These kids just go without full language access for however long, and then they get kicked out … ahem .. “encouraged” to transfer to a program more “appropriate” to their needs.

And don’t tell me that never happens. There are posts all over the internet by those products of the system – whether still kids or now adults. As much as AG Bell and AO programs would love to pretend they don’t exist.

AO supporters go on and on and on about how ASL isn’t the only option. Um. FSDB and public schools offer ALL options, including AVT. And they have GOOD therapists and specialists too. AO private schools offer only one option and tell people that options can’t be combined. Did the dictionary change the definition of options when I wasn’t looking?

And you go on about the “ASL community” … FYI, the deaf community isn’t just ASL users, and not all ASL users use ONLY ASL. Far from it. The deaf community is way more complex than that and tons of deaf people use multiple modes … oh, wait, excuse me … OPTIONS. They sign. Many started out or grew up oral. They learned ASL later. Does that mean they're now disowned by AO even tho they still "listen" and talk with hearing people even as they use sign language to socialize with other deaf people? Good to know you lump all signers together regardless of speaking ability.  They wear CIs or hearing aids.  They talk. They lipread. They’re truly bilingual and multimodal. Get with the times and reality. It’s not two separate camps, as much as your own fantasy fairy tale might like to argue.

BTW, aren’t you hearing? You sure sound like it. Hearing people have no business telling others how to manage their deafness when they don’t even understand what it’s like to grow up or be deaf themselves. Try it first, honestly.  And just so you know, I come from an AO background and have been mainstreamed my whole life and am what you people like to call a “success story”.  I’m also fluent in ASL and have a CI. What you got to say now?  Don’t preach it until you’ve LIVED it.

"Get over it"

"It's not like I was raped, and it was an isolated event with a neat ending, and that was that. I was stalked. My best friend was attacked. I was left with scars and with PTSD. The enforced denial in my family resulted in profound fractures.

My experience is not terribly unique. Rape reverberates.

"Get over it" elides a reality that sexual violence is usually not a contained incident, but a starting point on a divergent path along which lie pebbles, stones, emotional landmines that one otherwise might not have encountered.

Rape did not turn me into a survivor's advocate; I was a survivor long before I was an advocate. But even if it had, I don't know why on earth I would want to "get over" that. I am not keen to abandon my position that rape is vile, nor silence my voice from speaking that truth."

http://www.shakesville.com/2012/07/on-getting-over-it.html?m=1

Drugs

"I feel strongly that there is nothing inherently wrong with using drugs, and that's a matter of bodily autonomy and self-determination. I only have a problem with it if you're also hurting other people in the process (such as with driving while drunk or hitting people while drunk, but being drunk in and of itself isn't a bad thing and shouldn't be shamed). Particularly when juxtaposed to the incredibly poor treatment marginalized victims of crime receive by law enforcement, it's incredulous that we continue to prosecute drug users for exercising control over their own bodies instead of, oh, I don't know, taking as a serious threat to any supposedly "free" and "equal" society the rampant institutionalized violence against children, undocumented immigrants, the disabled, people of color, indigenous people, religious minorities, queer folks, women and female-presenting folks, and other multiply-marginalized people."-Lydia Brown

Generalization w/ labels

"We have received messages and seen comments on this page about how some of the articles we have posted up have been generalizing about "white feminists." 

It really doesn't take much to understand that when the topic of "white feminists" is discussed, that of course not all white feminists are to blame. Emphasis doesn't have to be placed on each sentence, stating that we don't intend to refer to every single white feminist as being wrong and in privilege-denial.

Why? Because it should be fairly obvious that the writer is NOT referring to every single white feminist as being a Femen-style racist. But living in a white supremacist world, critiques of racism and privileged behaviour not just from Femen but from any well-meaning person who gets it horrily wrong is something that we need. That doesn't make us divisive- those very people refusing to check themselves, and listen to what Muslim women have to say are the ones that are being divisive in the first place for provoking such criticism."-Muslim Women Against Femen

The Right Not to Work: Power and Disability

"While issues regarding racial, gender, and sexual orientation equality are all at the forefront of political and social theory, disabled people are almost always left out of these conversations. The disabled are viewed with sympathy as victims of “bad luck” who will simply have to accept disadvantage as their lot in life, not as an identity group that is systematically discriminated against. Unlike sexism and racism, which are perceived to be significant social problems, disability falls under the social radar and disablism is not recognized as a damaging or even particularly serious form of prejudice."

http://monthlyreview.org/2004/03/01/the-right-not-to-work-power-and-disability

open letter to eve ensler

When I told you that your white, colonial, feminism is hurting us, you started crying. Eve, you are not the victim here. This is also part of the pattern which is a problem: Indigenous women are constantly trying to explain all of these issues, and are constantly met with “Why are you attacking me?!” This is not being a good ally.

http://chiefelk.tumblr.com/post/49527456060/an-open-letter-to-eve-ensler

objectification of women

My gaze also communicates that I have the weight of capitalist patriarchy behind me. Behind my stare exists an advertising industry that objectifies women’s bodies for incredible profit. Behind my stare is a political system that seeks to regulate women’s bodies outside of their control. Behind my stare is a pornography and media machine that communicates in nearly every single message that women are endlessly inadequate, weak objects and that men are dominant, in control, and powerful.

And this has real-world effects!

At age 13, 53% of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to 78% by the time girls reach 17. Five to 10 million adolescent girls and women struggle with eating disorders and borderline eating conditions, and 90 percent of those who have eating disorders are women between the ages of 12 and 25. (Source)

Now, am I causing the women around me to hate their bodies simply because I am looking? Absolutely not!

But when nearly every single man stares or hollers at a woman while she walks past ultra-thin models in billboards whose bodies are dissected and distorted to sell a product, it has a compounding effect.

But in talking about this, we should also recognize that this hurts men too.

Is it the same thing when men are objectified in a Calvin Klein ad or when a someone stares at my body at the pool? No, simply because there is not the weight of an all-encompassing system of gender oppression behind that objectification.

http://www.rolereboot.org/sex-and-relationships/details/2013-04-the-difference-between-the-appreciation-of-beauty-an#.UYM7Ymg1pro.twitter

medical industrial complex

"as a deaf person, I'd like to say that--while I understand why hearing people and even some deaf people would find this procedure miraculous and wonderful--I really don't share that sentiment. society's obsession with normalization is what causes cognitive and language delays in deaf children. by focusing on making a child able to hear and speak, often their language development is completely neglected until they attend school. the language window closes at 5 years of age, roughly the time when most children start kindergarten. I work at a school for the deaf and I see many kids come to us between 5-10 years of age with zero or very minimal language abilities. these children spend the rest of their school careers trying to catch up with those who were exposed to a natural language (ASL is the natural language of deaf people) at birth or at least at 2 or 3 years of age. it's really sad. this procedure is only a fix for the middle ear structures, basically an invisible, permanent hearing aid that you can never turn off. it won't make a profoundly, severely, or moderately deaf person hearing. even with a hearing aid I have to work hard at hearing. there will never be a 100% fix for deafness. I wish hearing people would stop trying to normalize us and start embracing our natural language and culture. believe me, deaf culture is a beautiful thing to be a part of. I have nothing against people who decide (on their own) that they want this surgery, but to force it onto innocent children, when the long term effects are not known and the success rate is likely very low is unethical.

if this is what it comes to.. I fucking hate science."-vivienne schroeder

medical industrial complex

"here are more failures than success stories with CIs, the industry buries these failures and builds up the success stories, giving hearing parents everywhere the idea that a CI surgery will make their child hearing. It doesn't. Hearing parents of deaf babies are innocent people being preyed on by the CI industry, using their fear of the unknown to promote surgeries and methods that have been time and time again proven NOT to work. If a child gets a CI surgery, but ALSO has full access to ASL and visual communication, that would be wonderful. I know a few deaf couples who decided to implant their deaf child while giving them access to ASL and I think it's wonderful. Unfortunately, the majority don't do this. They decide to normalize their child in every way possible, denying them access to ASL and the deaf community and culture. As a result, these children grow up with significant cognitive delays, limited social opportunities, and ostracized by their peers. You know me, I went to hearing schools all my life because I was hard of hearing and I could function fairly well in that environment. When I got to high school I started feeling the effects of my limited hearing abilities. I would avoid large groups because I'd always be lost in the conversation. I avoided raising my hand in class because a few times I repeated what others had already said because I couldn't hear them. Now that I'm older and my hearing is getting worse, I'm so grateful that I grew up knowing ASL and involved in the deaf community. Otherwise I'd be a very lonely person right now. At the end of the day, even with a CI, that child is still deaf. There will never be a 100% fix for it. There are people who are fighting hard to prevent deaf children from learning ASL, joining the deaf community, and acquiring deaf culture. It's a crime against humanity because in the long run, the child suffers irreparable damage, not only to their ears, but to their social, emotional and intellectual well being."-Vivienne Schroeder