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

Appreciating Beauty or Objectifying Women?

In the days since this experience, I have thought a lot about it.  Why did I, someone committed to the antithesis of this reality, participate in the way I did?  Why did I not question the situation or the language used by the men there?  Another thing that really has stuck with me is that the women in this space had bodies that were probably the closest to the unhealthy standard of beauty that our society has constructed that I have seen in a long time, and it left me wondering, a standard to which I am sadly attracted.  Is this healthy for them?

I can’t say for sure and I can’t judge because undoubtedly there are infinite numbers of body types and I am not a woman, but I imagine that it could be unhealthy in a few ways.  To achieve this body type, I imagine many women would need to pursue one of two unhealthy courses.  First, they could eat very little while toning their bodies through exercise, thus depriving their body of nutrients and calories that are needed for everyday functions.  Second, they could eat relatively normally but work out so regularly that it could become an unhealthy obsession, working out every day to the point that it is no longer healthy emotionally or psychologically (even if their bodies are rather healthy).

http://changefromwithin.org/2010/08/04/appreciating-beauty-or-objectifying-women/

Outcomes of cochlear implantation in deaf children of deaf parents

OBJECTIVE: This retrospective study compared the cochlear implantation outcomes of first- and second-generation deaf children.

METHODS: The study group consisted of seven deaf, cochlear-implanted children with deaf parents. An equal number of deaf children with normal-hearing parents were selected by matched sampling as a reference group. Participants were matched based on onset and severity of deafness, duration of deafness, age at cochlear implantation, duration of cochlear implantation, gender, and cochlear implant model. We used the Persian Auditory Perception Test for the Hearing Impaired, the Speech Intelligibility Rating scale, and the Sentence Imitation Test, in order to measure participants' speech perception, speech production and language development, respectively.

RESULTS: Both groups of children showed auditory and speech development. However, the second-generation deaf children (i.e. deaf children of deaf parents) exceeded the cochlear implantation performance of the deaf children with hearing parents.

CONCLUSION: This study confirms that second-generation deaf children exceed deaf children of hearing parents in terms of cochlear implantation performance. Encouraging deaf children to communicate in sign language from a very early age, before cochlear implantation, appears to improve their ability to learn spoken language after cochlear implantation.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22906641/

Hey White Liberals

"Your constant prioritization of the lives of white people over the lives of people of color is taking a serious toll on my psyche and those of many in my community. And by that I don't mean what you might expect. Most of us already know that racism and its BFF white privilege have detrimental effects on people of color. Racial oppression leads to any number of unhealthy conditions, including high blood pressure, depression, heart disease, diabetes and even asthma. But what I’m talking about is something different. Something I’m going to call DSWP: desensitization to the suffering of white people."

http://blackgirldangerous.org/new-blog/2013/4/22/hey-white-liberals