Feminist critique of consensus-based decision making

I've written a little about my own struggles with the participatory consensus model (PCM) of decision making, with a specific view to the inclusivity for women and disabled people. The PCM is common in lefty activist circles, especially anarchist-leaning circles.

Stavvers of Another Angry Woman presents a very thorough and thoughtful two-part critique of PCM (hat tip: Flaming Culture). Stavvers raises some really good points, and I really like the way the issues are discussed, and some possible alternatives, so be sure to check it out. The two pieces are:

Part one: The trouble with the consensus model

Part two: We still need to talk about consensus

In the first part, "The trouble with the consensus model", Stavvers discusses the ways tht PCM tends to privilege "insiders" who tend to be people with more social privilege -- people who are non-disabled cis men, etc. Stavvers also presents a few potential alternatives that could help with the problem, and discusses the use of anonymisation, giving priority to those who have not yet spoken, and talking to those outside the group. I've certainly been involved in groups that prioritise of people who have not yet spoken or who have spoken less (and where this is uncontroversial), and while I think it's a good idea, I don't think it's a solution on its own (in fairness to Stavvers, it's presented as a partial fix, not a full solution). My experience is that self-censorship is a major issue, and newcomers or people who feel themselves to be "outsiders" don't always volunteer to speak, so prioritising them makes little difference; additionally implicit bias may significantly affect the threshholds we use to consider what counts as "speaking less". I'd be interested to know more about anonymisation, and experiences of how that works out in practice, especially for time-sensitive decision-making.

In the second part, "We still need to talk about consensus", Stavvers talks about applying the principles of enthusiastic sexual consent to PCM, and minority influence. For what it's worth, I'm not sure that minority influence is always a bad thing. We want to make sure that, or example, if even a tiny minority of a group a single parents, their concerns still get air time, for example. However, Stavvers is right to point out that this is a two-edged sword, and we also need to be concerned about whether single parents have access to these spaces, and are able to speak and be listened to.

All in all, a very interesting and thought provoking read, and I highly recommend it. As activists we need to make sure that our spaces are not perpetuating the same kinds of hierarchies we're trying to break down.

--IP

California: US history no longer consists entirely of dead white dudes

A new California law (PDF) requires that California public (=state-funded) schools include (PDF):

(a) The contributions of both men and women in all types of roles, including professional, vocational, and executive roles.
(b) The role and contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, persons with disabilities, and members of other ethnic and cultural groups to the total development of California and the United States.

Curiously, the NPR coverage has reported this as: "California Brings Gay History Into The Classroom" and reporting on all the usual suspects are saying all the usual things.

But I find the headline curious.

Ok, so there are good reasons we might consider history lessons featuring or emphasising LGBT people, or comflicts over LGBT rights issues and prejudice to be "gay history", but it's a problematic label, and it's strange that that's what is being picked up by the media.

A good reason to consider such history lessons to be "gay history" is that it might have particular importance to LGBT students by reducing stereotype threat. It can also be descriptive of the particular political focus of a course, in the way of "women's history" courses, where the purpose is to understand overall trends in political and historical trajectories for a particular group.

But there are other important ways in which this is US history, and the change in emphasis from straight white non-disabled men to ... um, more people, is one that is important for all students. Making history more representative can improve the welfare of individuals of any demographic by reducing bias in the classroom. It might help, in the long run, to challenge widespread prejudices.

But there's another point, that I have written before, and it's that many of the major confrontations between oppressed people and privileged people are ones everyone should learn about. When I was at school, we were taught that segregation was "black history", as if no White people were involved in that at all, as if Jim Crow laws dreamed themselves up all by themselves, and crosses burned themselves onto lawns, and Black people lynched themselves. But that's not how it happened, and kids need to know that. Even, and maybe especially, when the history that they're taught is one we're not proud of. How else will they learn?

--IP

Just stuff

I never meant to become such an unreliable blogger. But the offline stuff that I would usually be using to feed the blog has, of late, been stuff I can't talk about publicly. I hate that, but there it is. The offline stuff is also sapping my energy at a truly alarming rate, hence less of my output here.

There's so much I have meant to write about. The privatisation of things that matter. Ken Clarke. Healthcare. Some stuff from my own life. SlutWalk. Political policing.

Oh well. Instead I refer you to an excellent post by the Goldfish, on Looking After Yourself As Radical Political Activism. Sounds like just my sort of gig. A taster:

It's radical because this is a message you are unlikely to receive anywhere in the media or from culture. You may receive messages advocating material self-interest. You may receive messages advocating a healthy lifestyle, but very often these messages come with a dose of shame and angst for your inevitable failure to follow all available advice. If you watch television, read the news or step outside in a built-up area today, you will receive lots and lots of messages. None of them will tell you that you matter and you need to look after yourself. Many of them will suggest reasons why you don't really matter.

Rush, don't walk.

--IP

Sunday papers: Pronouns

So, inspired by Resonance, here's some alternative Easter Sunday papers. On Friday I was misgendered and publicly wrong-pronoun'd, in what was described as a queer space, and so I've been thinking about pronoun etiquette. I make just a many assumptions as everyone else and 'he' and 'she' people all the time based on their appearance, so I'm interested in working out what to do to make things better. Here's some readings on that topic.

• Getting Pronouns Right - Why Pronouns are Important - a pretty good explanation of why they're important
• The Pronoun Question - why asking the question about pronouns is important
• Some briefer guidelines: from Sylvia Rivera Law Project and IAmTrangendered.com (the latter seems to have some problematic stuff)
• Making Classrooms Welcoming for Trans Students

A lot of this is centred around trans people, but it's not just trans people this is for. This is for everyone, because you actually just can't tell what gender or pronoun people prefer from looking at them. You might think you can. And if you assume, you might get it right 90-99% of the time. Liberation isn't about 99% of people though, it's about everyone.

If we want to be inclusive, we need to work out new social etiquette and practice it. So, homework for this week: start a conversation with someone about pronouns. What should we do differently? Where do we start? Hand in your answers in the comments below.

Why I love

Via Richard Jeffrey Newman comes this really moving post called "Why I love my straight boyfriend":

So what exactly does a contemporary relationship between a gay man and a straight man look like? I don’t know. This is a love affair and it looks like this. Every day we email and text back and forth about who we’re sleeping with, how we’re sleeping with them, and if we should continue to do so (in his case it’s just one girl in Paris who he’s in love with). We email poems to one another (this is less gay than it sounds since we’re both poets, which is more gay than it sounds), we have event nights, non-event nights, and date nights where we get together for really expensive drinks we can’t afford and remix Chrissie Hynde with Camus and (oh my god) our feelings.

[...]

I kind of knew things were serious with D when he sent me a love poem he wrote for me some months ago. I think it may have originally been a kind of, I wrote this for you what do you think of it thing, but I wasn’t about to give him any edits. Please. Send that shit to The New Yorker stat. I can’t remember a time when a man wrote a poem for me and called it a Love poem, capital L. And it better be capitalized twice because I like those kind of typos. Give it all or don’t give it at all. I hope all the gay men I’ve slept with are reading this.

It's just beautiful, and powerful. Lots of politics, lots of love. Do yourself a favour and read the whole thing.

This is something we don't talk about enough -- love between men. Well, love between anybody that doesn't fit a "there's a mommy and a daddy and then they love each other very much" kind of pattern. But perhaps especially love between men, and the heteronormative requirement that men shut down so much of their psychoemotional lives seems such a terrible price to pay.

--IP

Decisions, decisions

In the last few weeks, the press has been abuzz with talk of this consensus decision-making that all the kool kids in lefty activist communities use. Although it's a little unpopular in many lefty activist communities to admit, I personally have mixed feelings about consensus decision-making.

The participatory consensus model (PCM) is a system for groups to make decisions. The idea is that everyone should work to find a mutually acceptable solution to a given problem, not settle on something which is acceptable to majority. The reasoning for this is that a majoritarian view can alienate minorities, and a group decisions should be one that the whole group can feel part of and ownership of (so "alienate" here means not only "exclude", but also the Marxist sense of "alienation"). A consensus is reached when everyone in the group agrees on a decision.

The PCM makes some basic assumptions about participants, and the decision-making context. It assumes people are willing to accommodate to each other's points of view, that everyone actively wants to find a solution that works for everyone and resolve any problems that might be standing in the way of that. It assumes that everyone has an equal right to participate, and that everyone is committed to learning from each other. In a lot of ways, it's very much like the consciousness-raising model -- consciousness-raising for decision-making. Typically, PCM discussions are facilitated, to make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak and speaking turns are allocated fairly. However, PCM is generally used in non-hierarchical settings.

On a more fundamental level: PCM assumes everyone has an equal ability to participate, and there is a very real sense in which PCM is relies on the idea that "decisions are made by those who turn up". PCM is not a representative democracy.

"Don't let it get to you"

I know it's well-meant. I know people say it to help. But I hate hearing it.

People usually say this to me not when some little thing has happened. Little is when someone parks over the dropped kerb and I have to go a block out of my way to the next dropped kerb. Little is when someone wolf whistles in the street. Little is when there's a problem, but I can deal with it.

Big deals are the ones I can't get round, because it's not dependent on my effort, or because it would take so much effort it would cut short my working day. Big is when there are no toilets in the building I can use (eg, because none are accessible), and I have to just go home. Big is when I have nowhere accessible to work in my workplace. Big is when the pharmacist says "it'll only be a minute" and they have no chairs, and 20 "just one minute"s later you don't know whether you should keep standing with pain shooting up through your tired swollen feet, or should just leave, without your painkillers. Big is when people don't give priority to the wheelchair user, the person with the walking stick, the person carrying a toddler, in lifts and on the bus, and they can't get to where they need. Big is when stuff is scheduled in places without child licenses and wheelchair access and people then shrug and say "some people just never come to these things".

Big is when people talk to me like other people's bigotry is something I "let" happen, or allow to affect me, as if I enjoy these limitations on my life. As if I don't spend hours out of each day trying to find a way around the little things, trying to keep them from becoming big things. As if I don't spend hours out of each day trying to live my life. Also? Having to categorise the shitty behaviour I encounter into "big" and "little", so that other people won't be made uncomfortable hearing me talk about a problem I encountered and how I dealt with it? Is crap.

I know it's well meant, and I am grateful for the people who mean well, and the people who listen when I'm tired and worn. But sometimes, I just wish I didn't have to be grateful for the little cruelties that are packed into the well-meaning words.

--IP

Race Revolt

I've been reading bits of Race Revolt, a zine about race and queerness. Their articles are online, too, go check them out.

good one.

The ballgame

(Well it has been a wee while. Sorry about that. Offline stuff has kept me busy.)

I came across Microaggressions, and now cannot recall where (so hat tips generally). It's a Tublr with a Hollaback-ish feel to it, and the tagline is "Power, privilege, and oppression in everyday life". Anyone can submit a microaggression story.

Example 1:

"Men can’t be raped. If you’re a man you consent by default."

Made me feel isolated.

Example 2:

"Oh, you mean you’re Chinese, right?"

Almost every time someone asks me “What are you?” and I respond “Taiwanese American,” they feel the need to correct my response. Yes, I’m aware of the controversy. But I also know who I am better than you do, so at least give me the right to decide what I am for myself.

Example 3:

“They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.”

New York Times about the gang-rape of an 11-year-old girl.

Challenging these "small" things is the ballgame. This is how violence and oppression happen on a day to day level. And campaigns like Microaggression and Hollaback provide an amazing way of talking back to those people, and of drawing attention to them as the the ballgame. Go forth, and read.

--IP

Deconstruction is...

by Cristy C. Road

Well, I think it's true. Discuss?

Trans Post Statements

I've loved PostSecret for a while. A couple of times I've seen a post which has made me think "oh! I never knew anyone else thought/felt that!" While I think it's important to remember that even if no-one else thinks/feels something it's still ok, sometimes it's nice to feel less alone.

Today, I discovered Trans Post Statements. It's inspired by PostSecret, but its even better because it's about gender, and it's aimed at a queer community. I like that even though I'm much more likely to find posts that make me go "yes, me too!", the posts that don't still make me feel good about being queer.

I'm going to make one when this round of uni work is done. Maybe you'll get to see it here on queergeeks :)

Is this really the revolution?

In a nutshell, fat-acceptance is the idea that shaming people for the size or shape they are is Not Ok. And not going to make anyone any healthier or thinner. And also that size isn't the same as health. Fat-acceptance is closely connected to the idea of "Health At Every Size", which is the claim that health is best promoted not by pursuing a particular body size or shape, but rather by promoting healthy eating habits (not diets), regular exercise, etc, in a size-neutral manner. For more information on these ideas, check out the Shapely Prose Archive.

In this society we're brought up with massive pressures to be a certain size and shape, and for many people the psychological and medical consequences of that pressure are extremely serious. As well as shaming people for their bodies, it's not unreasonable to suggest that these pressures may contribute to eating disorders and other mental health issues and low self-esteem, as well as a number of physical health issues associated with dieting, or sudden weight gain/loss. As many people have remarked, this pressure is gendered. That's not to say that men do not experience body image issues -- of course they do. But rather that the standards to which women are held are often much more stringent, and more rigidly policed.

How to challenge these pressures is a difficult issue. But something I doubt very much will ever present an effective challenge is the practice of companies to who make a profit off of women's insecurities about their bodies. They may claim to care about self-esteem, but present no real challenge to the dominant narrative that causes those insecurities.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is important that companies have a sense of corporate responsibility. But The Body Shop's well-being campaign video explicitly holds that self esteem well-being is about "looking good" (sorry, no transcript because I can't work out how to replay bits of the video while transcribing). The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty shows a bunch of women in bras and underpants, because, um, apparently real beauty means being able to be objectified in order to sell more soap? Or something.

Feminist blogger Hugo Schwyzer has recently been promoting the Healthy is the New Skinny project, in which he is a participant. It's a project that aims to change the fashion industry to promote better self esteem and healthier body image in young women. Which sounds great, right? ...At least until you read the posts about why you should try eyelash extensions, some diet tips, and how fat is inherently bad. What part of telling women their bodies need improvement, need to be skinnier and prettier, is promoting healthy body image? What part of this is challenging the dominant pressures on women to be a particular size and shape?

There's a lot of room for feminists to disagree about what our response should be to these projects. Should we be involved in them, as Hugo Schwyzer is, trying to change them for the better? Should we condemn the projects and have nothing to do with them? Should we try to work on genuinely new projects that really do promote health at every size and fat-acceptance? Are there other options? Maybe it's not so straightforward -- I still remember Ruby, the "rubenesque" Barbie, made by The Body Shop, and how much people talked about the effect of Barbie on girls' body image when presented with Ruby's image.

But still, my own view is that as long as "body acceptance" campaigns are driven by the message that women should want to make themselves thinner, prettier, sexier, what we'll get is not self-esteem, but the same harmful messages that tell women that they are not good enough. That their bodies are not good enough. When those approaches are tied to commercial interests -- specifically, encouraging women to buy more fashion products in order to become skinnier, prettier, etc, then we run the risk of exploiting body image worries for profit. That's no revolution. A strong campaign for health at every size and fat-acceptance, though, I would like to see.

Thoughts?

--IP

Caregiving in the Big Society

I've recently taken on some caregiving responsibilities for a friend. I find it difficult to understand the reaction of people around me to this information. There are a number of puzzling points.

Several people have said things like "Can't someone else do that? It's not your responsibility." And I think, well, it's someone's responsibility, and I happen to be here. It seems to be regarded as some kind of optional extra, instead of a community responsibility for people to pitch in a little and make sure that this person has, say, clean socks.

It's hard to explain to people how this fits into my life. I'd like to be able to explain better what taking on this responsibility requires from me. The strongly negative words that many people seem to use to report their own experiences of caregiving doesn't seem appropriate for me in this situation.

A while back I wrote about being both a caregiver and a receiver of care, and re-reading it now, I note that I said very little about communities, except in terms of community attitudes.

The Tory party's "Big Society" policy is focused on scaling back national government in favour of local power, and volunteerism. For many people, volunteering time in their community is just part of being a person. My caregiving is "voluntary" in the sense that no money is involved (it's less clear that it's an "optional extra", for the reasons above). But this person needs more than just the support I can provide as a friend -- they need trained medical support too. The need more support than I alone can provide.

I wonder what would happen to someone who needed similar support if they were very isolated (as disabled people can easily become, because of mobility difficulties, communication difficulties, mental health, or other issues), or lived in a remote place, or lived in the sort of urban place where people don't talk to each other much. What good would volunteerism be if people cannot access support?

How would a volunteerist approach to caregiving provide the support for caregiving that caregivers need? Without appropriate support, caregivers can't provide the support that is needed, and then everyone loses out.

The Tory move to localism isn't intended to resource communities better -- it's a move to decrease funding, and decrease our notion of society as a nationally-constituted community. I am reminded of Thatcher's infamous claim that society doesn't exist. And this is why it matters. Our communities, whether locally or nationally conceived, have a responsibility to support those who need support.

And now that Margaret Thatcher is herself dependent, we might ponder at the irony of her entitlement to medical care that is paid for by tax, collected by the society she thought doesn't exist. The truth is this: everyone gets old and disabled unless they die first. We don't always get to plan the way things happen, so the next best thing is to preserve communities, and community support.

--IP

where is neutral?

This is a bit of a stream of thoughts that has come out of a series of ...”heated discussions”… with someone close to me, perhaps someone could offer some insight?

After a fairly prolonged period of preferring to dress more androgynously - kind of a mixture between a little bit baby-dykey and scabby-student, i started to have a bit of a longing to dig out all my old corsets, netting skirts and punk-rock buresque clothes that had been residing in the back of my cuboard for the most part of a year. For the ‘female’ bodied, or those that are usually read as female by the outside gaze – the queer negotiation of femininities can be a bit of a minefield in the juncture between public sex/gender discourse and queer identities and politics. I’ve been having a bit of a problem with this recently, I never really thought about it before – I just dressed how I wanted to dress, played with my look and thought ‘fuck it’, but recently the critiques of certain parts of my gender expression have meant I’ve had to confront the politics of my ‘femme’ side, or as I refer to it, my ‘drag-queen’ side. I go through phases, my gender identity is pretty fluid and I don’t really feel like I do – or should- have to - settle in one place in particular, but traversing the arenas between androgyny, trying to ‘pass’ as a guy and being exaggerated-ly female has brought up some pretty problematic ideas about female-body-female-identity-performance is still read, even in some places within the queer community (to homogenise a bit :o)…).

Femininity is problematic. Decades of feminist deconstruction makes that blindingly obvious. However, focusing only of the socialisation of females makes embodying femininity in a political manner rather difficult. Femininity is often conceived of as the embodiment of ‘false’ (im not talking from academia now here, but from experience of the conversations I’ve had), the embodiment of things learned, socialised, performed. In order to perform femininity we take on actions, we limit our behaviours, we control and regulate, we add – we adorn, decorate, paint and manipulate our bodies. If we state this, we fall prey to seeing masculinity as neutral, and as somehow more ‘natural’, and again, somehow ‘better’ that femininity. If we do this we lose sight of how masculinity is as much of a construction as femininity, as in need of adornments, corporeal manipulation and regulation as femininity – but importantly, in ways that appear in our culturally conditioned consciousness’ as more respectable, less fake. If we make these assumptions, we still find ourselves thinking in binary terms, and still positioning femininity as lesser in that binary.

Negotiating queer femininities is in no way an easy ride. Even when you see both binary sections as intrinsically constructed, as performed as each other – it doesn’t end there. Negotiating femininities is fraught with all the stuff that comes with it. How do you embody something about the fun of femininity - perhaps in an extravagant way – that is sex positive, and can openly display signs or an ironic subversion of traditional aspects of feminine sexuality in a positive light- without stumbling into that quagmire of being overly-sexualised and positioning yourself into that heteronormative fantasy of female-object, sexually available FOR consumption by the masculine patriarchal gaze. There is a thin line between being able to play with overt sexuality and exaggerated femininity, and the self-sexualisation (however non-intentional) that places you in the public view as right up there with burlesque style playboy models and the mannequins in the front window of Ann Summers. Mostly, the line can only be drawn in our own heads and in the heads of those who know us, our identities, our genders and our politics. Overt female sexuality still has a long way to go before we can be comfortable that our expressions won’t be re-appropriated into mainstream meta-narratives of female objectification. And for me, and I’m sure I’m not alone, it’s an uncomfortable place to stand. If you decide to brave on through it, it quickly becomes tiring to keep having to patiently explain/argue/shake someone and scream ‘no – it’s not meant like that’.

To return to taking about what it takes to negotiate “femininities”, I don’t see why make-up, corsets, hold-ups, glitter (with of course, for me, a good measure of doc martins, dread Mohawk and an abundance of body hair) should be read as anything but fun. I’ve fought for a long time to shake off my hang ups about my body, and I don’t see why showing parts of my body should be sexualised – to me my thighs and breasts are no more sexual than my arms and feet (and of course once, these too were considered highly sexual to show), but I know that they still are, and if I go around with my thighs and tits out, for whatever personal/political reason – it will still be read in that oh-so-pervasive particiarchal sexualising manner. Unfortunately I have no answers, I hope some of you will have some insights… I wish we lived in a world when queer could truly be what you want it to be, where FtF (or Queer-to-F?) personas could be taken as seriously as taking on aspects of masculinity, and where it all could be seen as a part of the same deal. What I don’t want for myself is to abandon femininity – despite it’s history and continuation of association with repression, sexualisation and a lack of agency. I don’t want to have to negotiate my femininity in a way that is more masculine in order to have myself taken seriously – that seems to defeat the object for me. To me, we are not better feminists for abandoning what has been typically resigned to the female in favour of a ‘better’ masculine model. But what is neutral if it is not the “female” embodying “more masculine” traits – and what appears as neutral (i.e. what doesn’t have some symbol of feminine identification) tends to get read as masculine anyway… where does neutral lie if not within masculinity? If it does lie within masculinity, then there is something here we have to address… How do we stop people reading things as “masculine” or “feminine” anyway? In my particular gender identity it’s all kind of like playing dress-up anyway, no matter what I put on. How do people embody queer femininities that could sideline the risk of being objectified and sexualised without your consent – or in a way that you didn’t consent to? That tricky negotiation of how you’re going to be read, because we can never escape being read – and appropriated, is one that has be accounted for, especially (but not only) when we leave the safety of our queer bubbles.

Let them eat mahimahi fillets

Further to my last post on food and intersectionality, I did some googling for cookbooks, just to double check if I had to eat my words. Alas, no, although Kate's recipes will definitely go into my recipe notebook. Here's what I found in cookbook searches.

The overwhelming majority of cookbooks aimed at people with a specific named long-term condition (eg, arthritis, fatigue, fibromyalgia, autism) are not books that explain how to make cooking a simpler task, nor are they intended to expand your cooking repertoire in an easy no-fuss kind of way, but rather are intended to promote a particular kind of diet. They have titles with the word "cure" in them.

Look, I know that some elimination diets help some people manage their conditions. That's great, and I'm happy for you. What's much less cool is promoting the diet that helps you as a "cure" for everyone, unless you have a bunch of thorough double-blind studies to back you up. Plus, if we could actually cure autism, etc, with goji berries, I'm pretty sure there would be, you know, science about that.

So to the authors of these books let me say the following: thanks for playing, and I'm glad your diet helps you, but it's actually hard enough to feed myself already what with the whole frequently-feeling-too-shit-to-cook thing, without trying to cut whole food groups out of the equation.

Ok, I hear you cry, surely you could make some of these recipes even without sticking to the diet? Well maybe I could, but why should I help people who write these books to profit from promoting these diets? And anyway, the books seem to contain a number of recipes that are completely impractical in the context of my life. Here are some of the things I will not be cooking:

• Stuffed fennel. SpoonShortageFail. Life'sTooShortFail.


• Fresh salmon steaks. CostFail.


• Wild rice. CostFail.


• Escargot. CostFail.


• Fresh mahimahi fillets. CostFail. WhereDoPeopleEvenBuyThatFail.


• Shiitake mushrooms. CostFail.


• Flavoured oils. CostFail.


• Flounder. CostFail.


• Acai berries. IDon'tEvenKnowHowToPronounceItFail.


• Assorted SpoonsShortageFails caused by recipes that take ages and need multiple pots and lots of chopping.

Kaz and I spent an amused afternoon reading samples of these books out loud to each other. Kaz suggested that the SpoonFails may be caused by the assumption that everyone has someone to cook for them. If that's the case, it's a dramatic departure from the norms of cookbook-writing (which are general assumed to be helping you cook food yourself), but would be in keeping with the idea of disabled people as helpless and unable to do anything themselves. It would also be in keeping with the assumption that everyone is middle-class, and all middle-class people have A Woman to do stuff for them -- either in the form of a wife, or in the form of waged domestic help.

In other words, here's a memo someone didn't get: not everyone has personal servants, and some people might object to the keeping of women as personal servants. Disabled people are disproportionately poor and are disproportionately unable to do complicated cooking. Cooking is disproportionately allocated to women, who are also disproportionately poor.

Is the assumption that poor people with fatigue and mobility issues are going to be trailing round their local health food shops for mahimahi fillets and truffle oil? And since my local health food shop is not wheelchair accessible, am I supposed to believe that the truffle oil will cause me to throw my mobility scooter over one shoulder while I walk around the shop? Ahahahahahaha don't make me laugh so much, it hurts my costochondritic ribs.

Seriously though, why is eating food a luxury?

[Edited to add: Kaz has more on this topic.]

--IP