Tuesday 22 June 2010

Pride Scotia 2010

Pride Scotia will be on Saturday 26 June, assembling in East Market Street, Edinburgh, at 12.30 pm, to move off at 1.30 sharp.

More information at the Pride Scotia website.

Hope you all come along.

--IP

Thursday 17 June 2010

De-alienating bodies

The National Health Service informs me that 7 out of 10 people experience lower back pain at some point in their lives. 7 out of 10. I had no idea it was that many. In my line of work, it's extended sitting-still-time that can exacerbate conditions like these. So here we are, the majority of academics, who would benefit from the occasional stretch, but the work environment is such that those who do attract a lot of attention. It's a Big Deal to deviate from the norm by standing up. We think it's the management, not the institutional structures, that are the "choice".

So I can understand why people might be unable to stretch in meetings, and I don't want this post to be read as a criticism of the management strategies of people who can't negotiate their work environment in this way. For a really long time I felt awful and awkward standing. And obviously, lots of people can't stand up. The issue isn't the standing up itself, but rather inhabiting bodies in a different way, and using my body differently just happened to be how it happened for me.

I found
I like it.

I'm so used to thinking I mustn't be seen, mustn't be in the way, mustn't take up space, mustn't be a size 12, mustn't be needy, mustn't make my needs obvious, mustn't get angry, mustn't have a body that does messy feminine things, mustn't, mustn't, mustn't.

Stand up straight, and you can breathe longer, deeper breaths -- inhale the fire of your belly and push it into words -- and when you're breathing like that, you can talk a lot louder with virtually no effort. When you breathe like that you can feel the breath in your fingers, in the space between your cartilage, in your words, in your toes that are like roots

sucking up more
more
more
I'm still hungry
for all these words.


Projection. That's what it's called: when we get all the voice in our bodies and make words.

These questions don't just come from my mouth anymore, they come right out of the soles of my feet, out of the roots of my hair. It's not my mouth talking now, it's my whole body.

(When you're wrong, be wrong with conviction (but open to the new). When you're right, be right with hunger for more knowledge. Be hungry for more with your whole body.)

Turns out I like being louder. Well, being loud enough, anyway. That's all part of these words coming out of my belly, which is all full of voice.

I take up space in the world. This space, here, where I'm standing. This is the space I take up in the world. This is mine, just like these words are mine. They are both created by me.

I am my own method of production. De-alienated. This is the space I take up in the world. I didn't always know that.

--IP

[Cross-posted at Modus Dopens]

Saturday 12 June 2010

the icelandic parliament...

... changed the wording of marriage legislation to include matrimony between 'man and man, woman and woman' yesterday.

The vote was unanimous. UNANIMOUS.

And about that ashcloud - consider it forgiven and forgotten.

Thursday 10 June 2010

The criminalisation of HIV status

Via FWD/Foward comes news of a Michigan case in which an HIV-positive individual was charged with, wait for it, bioterrorism. The judge dismissed the charges.

This has to be seen in the context of a culture of the criminalisation of HIV status. Many countries have laws restricting the travel or immigration of people who are HIV-positive, or the marriage of people who are HIV-positive. In many countries, disclosure of HIV status is legally compelled.

--IP

Monday 7 June 2010

Don't have answers.

(Alert: some disability theory is presupposed here. If you're struggling, give a shout in the comments.)

I've been wanting to write something about the DSM V since the draft was published back in February, at which time I noted that it was looking grim for queer folk. But every time I started to write about it, I got stuck.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM, currently on edition IV-TR), is produced by the American Psychiatric Association, and carries considerable weight in North America and Europe, although it is intended primarily for use in the USA. The World Health Organisation also has a rough parallel -- Chapter V of the International Classification of Diseases (aka, the ICD-10).

The DSM and the ICD almost go out of their way to pathologise queer people, although there is no longer any diagnosis of Homosexuality. The DSM-IV-TR and the ICD-10 do, however, pathologise trans identities (Gender Identity Disorder, Transsexualism, Dual-Role Transvestism) and asexuality (terminology varies considerably). They also pathologise a number of consenting sexual practices like fetishism, BDSM, making "obscene" telephone calls. And, because there wasn't enough heteronormative fail already, they also pathologise anxiety due to not knowing if you're gay or straight (Sexual Maturation Disorder), and having non-long-term relationships (Sexual Relationship Disorder). Notably, there is no disorder of Being An Unmitigated Heterosexist Shit Disorder, so we can safely conclude that heteronormativity is a factor here.

For some time, there has been a campaign to have Gender Identity Disorder (GID) removed from the DSM-V.

...Every time I sit down to write this post, this is as far as I get. Because at this point, I feel that I should say something about how appallingly heteronormative it is that gender identity should be pathologised.

Which is all very well, as far as it goes.

But what exactly is wrong with all the other people who are pathologised by the DSM? Is there something wrong with asexual people? With people who have non-heteronormative sex? Or people with non-sex/gender DSM diagnoses like...autism? As long as the protest chant is "trans people aren't crazy", there's an unspoken rider: "not like those other people, who are".

Moreover, since the campaign is to have GID removed from the DSM but still have (free) medical transition available as an option for people who want it, it seems to me that such a change wouldn't actually de-pathologise GID: it would replace categorisation as a mental disorder with categorisation as a physical disorder. It's not clear to me that saying "there's something wrong with trans people's bodies" is preferable to saying "there's something wrong with trans people's minds", because, well, there's nothing wrong with trans people, and that should go without saying. It seems to me that we each get to negotiate gender in the way that seems most appropriate to individual circumstances, preferences, and needs. For some people, that will mean wearing skirts. For others, trousers and leather jackets. For others, it will mean transition. But I find it deeply problematic to say that some of the people who wear skirts or trousers are "normal", and some are "crazy"; or that the people who wear skirts or trousers are "normal" and the people who transition are "crazy". If gender is a pathology, then either everyone who negotiates a gender binary is "crazy" or no one is.

It seems to me that the choice we're being asked to make is entirely wrong. Jay Sennett writes:
This constant hating on people with so-called real mental disorders has got to stop. Frankly from the perspective of a society that wants everyone to goose-step to strict gender roles, I’m surely a heretic. But our salvation will never be found in goose-stepping to the belief that they are somehow differnt from us.

[...] Given a choice between a mental health diagnosis or a medical one, I opt out. They are two sides of the same coin. They are both needed by us to obtain medical services and used by others to diagnose and medicalize and manage in a systemic way our so-called differences.

I don't have any answers. I'm not sure I agree 100% with everything Jay Sennett writes, but it seems to me that rejecting the pathologisation of gender and sexuality without rejecting the basic dichotomisation between the "crazy" and the "heteronormative" (or "non-disabled" or "non-crazy") is not going to work for us. That is, a politically workable solution may be closer to rejecting the DSM framework entirely.

(Not all the behaivours in the DSM-IV and DSM-V are ones we would want to say are fine and dandy, by the way. The DSM-V, for example includes a diagnosis for coercing sexual activity. It's not clear to me there's any political advantage to pathologising this behaviour, however. That is, the existence of bad behaviours as diagnoses may not be a reasons to keep the DSM around.)

Like I said, I don't have answers. Just lots of questions.

Thoughts?

--IP

[Crossposted at Modus Dopens.]

Wednesday 2 June 2010

come as you are.

IP, the number of posts you've written over the last few weeks is out of control - more power to you. I spend all day, every day at the library these days and when I get home my mind is a vacuum (with an occasional AIDS metaphor floating around) so I'm just going to post yet another video.

McDonald's has apparently decided to woo the French public with a bit of father-son-bonding over pretty boys in a school photo. Apart from finding it a bit worrying that these people spend quality time in a fast food restaurant, what do you make of it (as a message, as a marketing strategy...)?

Foreign aid and human rights

I guess by now you've heard about Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, who were convicted to 14 years of hard labour in Malawi for celebrating their engagement. Following international outcry, they were pardoned.

What struck me was the terms in which the outcry was phrased. In the UK, much of the outcry seemed to be associated with the fact that Malawi relies on foreign aid, much of it from the UK: that is, the UK sends foreign aid to a state that oppresses queer people.

What was done to Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga was appalling and inexcusable. The oppression of queer people, of any people, is always inexcusable. This post does not advocate non-intervention, nor do I propose to explore the ins and outs of intervention and circumstances in which it is/is not justified in this post.

Among those commenting on Malawi's status as a receiver of foreign aid, and suggesting or advocating that it could or should be withdrawn: nearly all the news coverage including the Guardian article linked above, The F-Word, the Huffington Post, and the columnist Dan Savage. UK-based gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell is also on the record as saying that the US should withdraw foreign aid from countries that oppress LGBT people, and he has been actively involved in campaigning on this case.

Here's my worry: foreign aid goes to pay for particular services like HIV/AIDS treatment and education, and other medical care. It goes to pay for sustainable development. And when I read Peter Tatchell saying this:

We must urge the US State Department to make foreign aid and trade conditional on the recipient countries agreeing to respect human rights, including the human rights of LGBT people. Tyrannies should not be rewarded: No US aid for anti-gay regimes


I wonder what he means by "human rights". Undoubtedly the human rights of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga were violated. Undoubtedly, it is a human right not to be a prisoner of conscience.

Is it not also a human right to have, among other things, enough food to eat, drinking water, access to adequate healthcare, and education? If we remove foreign aid from countries who need them, are we making a bad situation any better? The persecution of queer people undoubtedly makes it harder to deliver HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention services. But so does not having money with which to do so.

Call me naive. Tell me there's no other way to persuade a government not to practice cruel punishments on people who are queer than to threaten the withdrawal of foreign aid. Because if there is, and we're jumping straight to "we'll take away the money that allows the purchase of life-saving medication and sandwiches", well, that's imperialist and it's racist. And if there isn't...well, that's still imperialist. It's not like we get to abdicate responsibility for a history of colonialism and economic exploitation.

And as Renee Martin of Womanist Musings points out, why aren't we asking queer rights advocates in Malawi what sort of international solidarity would be helpful? Why do high-profile (and for the most part, socially privileged) Westerners think they can decide what would be most helpful in a situation they have no experience of?

I know it seems like a novel idea, but how about asking the TLBG community in Malawi what form of support they would like? I am most certain that they would not support an action that would lead to further impoverishment and death. It is not the government of Malawi that will suffer, it is the people.


(NB, some blogs are reporting that Tiwonge Chimbalanga is trans, and the couple is correctly described as a straight couple. I have been unable to find any mention of this in the mainstream news, and I am reluctant to use Western gender or orientation frameworks like "gay" or "trans" or "LGBT" in any case. For that reason, I have not labeled the couple's orientation or gender, and used the term "queer", except where I am quoting other people. If you hear more on this point, please shout in the comments or by email, and I will happily correct my post. I certainly don't want to erase people's self-descriptions.)

--IP

[Crossposted at Modus Dopens]