On his blog, Clint Heine and his readers discuss Maia. Responding to Heine calling Maia a “parasite” and suggesting she’s mentally ill, “James” wrote:

Nothing a big black dildo won’t fix……

To which Heine responded,

James…..!!! Nice suggestion, go over there and tell her that :)

I’m not going to bother rebutting anything Heine and his cohorts wrote; they’re not human beings, they’re maggots and worms, and I don’t debate maggots and worms. And yes, I realize Heine and his maggoty friends doubtless consider such comments “jokes,” because they’re too stupid to know what an actual sense of humor looks like.

(I do wonder if James or Heine could look his mother, sister or girlfriend in the face and tell her “Today I said a woman on welfare whose politics I disagree with could be fixed by raping her with a big black dildo. Don’t you agree that’s how these women should be fixed, Mom?” Maybe if they imagined that they could begin to develop a vestigial, wormish understanding of what’s wrong with their “joke.” But maybe not.)

But it’s worth noting that Clint Heine (his real name) has been in a position of leadership in New Zealand politics (he used to head up the youth wing of the ACT party, which is the most right-wing party in NZ).

And it’s worth noting that there’s nothing unusual about James’ and Heine’s remarks. It’s not uncommon for female bloggers, especially feminist bloggers, to have to deal with such oh-so-hilarious rape threat jokes. The purpose of these “jokes” is to remind uppity women (especially poor women and women of color) of their place. (The pathetic nature of men who feel driven to put uppity women in their place is, I trust, obvious.)

James and Heine themselves are so meager and unimportant they barely exist. But they and their fellow maggots create an environment in the blogosphere that women have to deal with; that is important, and it’s unfair, and it’s bigoted, and it fucking sucks.

UPDATE: Maia comments.

On a pandagon thread about socialized medicine, a commenter called Catty writes, “I know 2 die-hard libertarians that are now universal health care supporters. Funny how problems like multiple sclerosis and cancer can change people’s minds.”

I have always supported universal health care, but jesus fuck she’s right.

A couple weeks ago, I started having some strange symptoms. Last week, I went to the ER to speak to a physician, and she said the things I didn’t want to hear — namely, that my symptoms were consonant with two bad diagnoses: diabetic neuropathy and multiple sclerosis.

I have since been to my regular physician who is not nearly so concerned. I am still being checked for diabetes, but she’s holding off on the MRI to diagnose for multiple sclerosis for now. We’re first looking into other possible causes which are much more benign, such as hypothyroidism, advanced anemia, migraine, and anxiety.

I am an incredibly privileged woman. I’ve never been without health care. My health insurance is incredibly good. I pay $5 for doctor visits, and $5 for medications. I’ve always known that my health insurance was great, but I don’t think it’s ever really hit home for me how much uninsured people have to pay for their health care — not just going into debt, but going bankrupt, becoming homeless, and sometimes having to make the difficult decision to let themselves or their loved ones die from treatable illnesses.

Another commenter called Jodie relates the following story, “My 27 year old brother in law developed an intense headache on a Thursday, dx’d as brain tumor after an MRI, had surgery, went to intensive care, had chemo, and died prior to the next Thursday. Cost after insurance: $280,000 (at last count, I don’t think all the bills are in yet)… That bill was amassed in less than a week.”

Note: After insurance.

Other commenters discuss surgery for marrow transplants coming in at $250,000, refills for cancer drugs being in the thousands of dollars, a course of treatment for a major illness costing hundreds of thousands. Canadian commenters relate how relieved they are to live in Canada, after considering the ramifications of the major illnesses in their lives should they happen to have been American and uninsured. When a parent, a sibling, and another close relative are sick, often the whole family can’t find enough money to fund health care for all of them, even when they go into debt. They must choose bankruptcy or death.

Treatment for uninsured people is abominable. Uninsured people often have no choice but to obtain their health care through emergency room visits, which are phenomenally expensive. Pandagon commenters report paying $300-1,200 for emergency room visits, for things as routine as obtaining antibiotics for a bladder infection. One commenter notes that his $320 physical meant that he had to put off paying his bills for a month.

Facing debt, uninsured people often put off going to the doctor until their dieases have progressed beyond treatment. Worse, if they do go, they may be ignored. Pandagon recently reported incidents of uninsured people being left to die in hospital emergency rooms.

In the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, Edith Isabel Rodriguez was seen as a complainer.

“Thanks a lot, officers,” an emergency room nurse told Los Angeles County police who brought in Rodriguez early May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital yelling for help. “This is her third time here.”

The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three days for abdominal pain. She’d been given prescription medication and a doctor’s appointment.

Turning to Rodriguez, the nurse said, “You have already been seen, and there is nothing we can do,” according to a report by the county office of public safety, which provides security at the hospital.

Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum, writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked at their desks and numerous patients looked on.

Aside from one patient who briefly checked on her condition, no one helped her. A janitor cleaned the floor around her as if she were a piece of furniture. A closed-circuit camera captured everyone’s apparent indifference.

Arriving to find Rodriguez on the floor, her boyfriend unsuccessfully tried to enlist help from the medical staff and county police — even a 911 dispatcher, who balked at sending rescuers to a hospital.

Alerted to the “disturbance” in the lobby, police stepped in — by running Rodriguez’s record. They found an outstanding warrant and prepared to take her to jail. She died before she could be put into a squad car.

At the same hospital, in 2003, “20-year-old Oluchi Oliver waited hours to be admitted to the hospital with crippling stomach pains, according to his family. After 10 hours, he collapsed dead on the floor. No one noticed, his father, Akilah Oliver, said.”

I had a brief hiccup with my insurance coverage the day I decided to go into the ER, and it looked like I might not be covered at all. (Now, I’m covered by two health care plans.) I almost didn’t go in. My mother told me I had to go in, that they’d find a way to fund it if I were sick. We are extremely well-off for the United States, but I doubt that even we could find a way to pay $250,000 if I didn’t have insurance and needed a marrow transplant.

I’m watching my reactions as I read this Pandagon thread. I am so scared. I probably don’t have MS. I’m repeating this to myself as a mantra. My other mantra involves facts about MS. If I do have MS, I have all the indicators of a good prognosis. I am young, white, and female. If I do have MS, it’s extremely likely that I have the type that remits, instead of the type that progresses until you die. Hell, 15% of people who have MS never suffer a second attack.

And there are drugs! One of my fiance’s professors told him about two people she knows with MS, who were diagnosed in their thirties, and who now, in their fifties, have been kept symptom-free with drugs. I called one of my friends who is in medical school, and he told me to remember that both MS and diabetic neuropathy require lifestyle changes, but may not affect life quality.

Even in the worst case scenario, I’ll be okay. That’s not enough to keep me from worrying or being depressed, but it’s good news. Nevertheless, I’m a basket case as I wait for my blood test results.

I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if I didn’t know how I was going to pay for the medical expenses of my doctor visits, my blood tests, my MRIs, my visits with the neurologist and/or dietician. Without insurance, would I be able to afford those drugs that could keep the multiple sclerosis in check, preventing me from losing the use of my limbs, my speech, and my brain?

I don’t understand how anyone can oppose universal health care. A libertarian in that thread is spouting off strange talking points. Some are demonstrably false. Countries with socialized health care do not have more bureacracy than we do; they have less, because hospitals don’t have to deal with insurance claims. They don’t have longer wait times than we do. They don’t force patients into predetermined courses of treatment. The cost in taxes is more, but studies have shown that while taxes are higher in many countries with socialized medicine, the American middle class ends up screwed with their lower tax rate — because we have pay not only our taxes, but we also have to pay through the nose to privately fund things that countries like Sweden provide for free. We end up paying a huge amount more, just so we can claim that we have lower taxes.

One of his talking points is that he doesn’t feel he should be forced to help people who are less fortunate. Does he understand that he’s talking about people who will die without his help? Help that he will benefit from, because he as a middle class American would pay less if taxes were higher but provided more services? Someday, he may have a medical emergency, and god forbid he should be denied his insurance. He may bankrupt himself and his whole family. If he chooses to finish treatment, he might lose his home. We might force him, as we force others, to choose between the basic necessity of shelter, and death.

Meanwhile, he can’t even imagine those scenarios. Over and over again, he talks about the undue burden that would be placed on him if he had to help other people. He can’t imagine himself in their shoes. If he can imagine their pain, he doesn’t care. What a strange, frightening lack of empathy. What a limited view of the world.

My empathy is heightened right now, because of course this medical issue has me sensitized to issues of my own mortality. It’s odd to move from the life in which I thought of myself as healthy, to the life a few days later when I realize that I could have a progressive and debilitating illness.

I don’t want to be going through this. I want to feel safe and well again. Hopefully, my diagnosis will be benign, and soon I will be feeling safe and well again. Even if I have MS, I am sure that eventually my sense of weakness, fear and vulnerability would dull, and my illness would become just another part of my life. That’s another thing I’ve been repeating to myself for the past couple weeks. Studies show that paraplegics are just as happy one year after their injury as they were before it occured. People are amazingly adaptive; anything can become ordinary. If they are equally happy after that, then I will surely be equally happy even if my diagnosis is MS.

I am so amazingly lucky to be worrying only about my health. If I were worried that I was about to bankrupt my loved ones, and that I wouldn’t be able to afford life-saving care, this painful experience would become a constant waking nightmare. Any person who would wish that on other people is both monstrous and lacking in empathy.

Three years ago Chris Hurley killed Mulrunji Doomadgee.

Chris Hurley is a police officer, who arrested Mulrunji Doomadgee for ‘Drunk and Disorderly Behaviour’ - the criminality of being drunk often depends on the colour of your skin. How you get treated when you get arrested also depends on the colour of your skin. There was Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, but 13 years later the recommendations had been ignored and Mulrunji Doomadgee died.

In police custody, he suffered four broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and a his liver was almost split in half.

Since his death, Mulrunji Doomadgee’s family has fought for justice. The first police investigation was done by police officers who had dinner with Chris Hurley while they were ‘investigating’ the case. Last year the coroner decided that the police were responsible for Mulrunji Doomadgee’s death.

On Wednesday the jury found Chris Hurley not guilty.

Mulrunji’s death is a horrific, but it’s just one of daily crimes against indigenous Australians. His arrest, his beating - they happen every day. The theft of land is what Australia is based on.

Then, yesterday, supposedly to protect children for sexual abuse the government announced a package of direct attacks on indigenous people. Most of which, like market rents, benefits, and land thefts - are simply neo-liberal attacks on people’s basic subsistence.

Josh’s older sister’s farvourite game was ‘Party Meeting’ she played it with her friend Simone. Vera and Simone were the party leaders, teddy bears and younger brothers were the rank and file:

“Tonight,” said Simone, “we will hear a report on the Negro Question from our junior member, who” - she scowled at me - “needs considerable education on the subject.” She tapped her slide rule of Vera’s desk and nodded at me to begin.

“The Negro Question’s getting a lot better,’ I said. “Because before they wouldn’t even let Jackie Robinson play in the majors. But now we’ve got five Negroes just in the Dodgers alone.” I counted them off on my fingers.

“There’s Jackie, and Campanella behind the plate, and Newcombe and Black on the mound, and this season Junior Guilliam at second base. And he might even win Rook of the Year.”

Vera and Simone looked at each other, shaking their heads and making tsk tsk sounds through their closed lips.

“I think we have to bring him up on charges,” Vera said.

“White Chauvinism if I ever heard it,” nodded Simone.

“Don’t you know that even if they let Negores play a stupid game and get traded for money like slaves, they’re still lynching them in the south?” Vera asked me. “Haven’t you read your own father’s articles on the Emmett Till case?”

“And what about Male Chauvanism?” said Simone, waving her ruler at me. “Did you ever stop to think that all your previous ballplayers are men? What about the plight of the colored woman?”

“He’s left deviationist and right opportunist both at the same time,” said Vera.

“Clear cause for explusion.” said Simone”

That is from one of the almost 50 accounts from the children of communistsin Red Diapers. Having so many short accounts, gives a real depth to the book. There’s a tapestry of experiences, with common threads, but also real differences.

I’m fascinated by the history of the Communist party of America, particularly in the 1950s, when the organisation was so persecuted. Partly because it is so foreign to the way I do politics, their way of organising wasn’t just not my cup of tea, it was clearly counter productive to growing. The party line was often ridiculous (particularly during the war, my grandfather left the British Communist Party over the Nazi-Soviet pact, and the pro-war line that followed wasn’t any better). Despite all these reservations, the Americans of the 1940s and 1950s I most admire were all in the Communist part. It was the only game in town - no one else was prepared to fight.

I loved these child eyes view of the fight. Both for the politics - in some tenements in New York everyone was either linke (Left) and Communist or rechte (right) Socialist - and for the common threads of childhood. Many of the children write about how terrified they were once Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed, they knew their parents were communists, would they be put to death too? Communist children didn’t just have common fears they developed their own sub-culture. rather than ‘pinky swears’ they’d say “By my Pioneer Honour, Touch Red” - and each child would touch something red.

There are some terrible parents, of course, and some awful hypocrisy. One girl’s father spent his time doing party work, and when his wife (who earnt all the money) was back late he asks his 11 year old daughter where the food is kept, and demands she makes his coffee. Mostly I think the communism and the parenting skills weren’t particularly related, the good parents would have always been good parents, the bad parents would always have been parents. Although I suspect for some children, the more their fathers (the most controlling, abusive behaviour in these accounts were always from the fathers) portrayed themselves as righteous, the harder it would have been for the child to understand their behaviour within the family.

There were some really sweet family moments as well. One of the writers came from a Finnish-American community, where the Party had run the annual Christmas Eve event. One year, the party leaders decided that the consumerism and Christianity of the ceremony was a problem, so instead there was a winter celebration without presents. When they got home their parents gave them presents, and told them not to tell anyone. Years later they learned that every single one of their friends’ parents had done the same thing.

The most heart-breaking memoir was from Bettina Aptheker. I’d heard of her, she was involved in the Berkley Free Speech Movement. When the right accused her of being a communist, she wrote a letter back saying “Yes, I am a communist, and I’m proud to be a communist.” She’s one of the many figures of the 1960s that I admired, without knowing too much about.

When I am in my late twenties an older comrade whom I dearly love confides in me. She tells me that in the early 1950s she had been instructed by the party leadership to question women in the Party about their sexuality. In particular she was to ask them if they’d ever had a homosexual liaison. If the answer was yes she was instructed to ask them to voluntarily resign from the Party of face expulsion. “Even if it was only once,” the comrade says to me. “Even if they had since married.” She goes on, explaining “It was to protect the Party from potential informers. If they were desperate enough to hide their sexual encounters, the FBI could force them into becoming informers.” There is a silence into which I say nothing. “I’m so ashamed of myself,” She tells me. “It was wrong.” Now as I remember this comrade’s confession I think that I must have known of this as a child. I must have heard these discussion around me known the consequences of my feelings for women as I reached adolescence: to be made an FBI informer or be expelled from the party/my family, to be cast out.

I am going to read her memoir, I want to know more about her story.

Bettina Aptheker, is not the exception, most of the contributors are still fighting for a better world, in their different ways. Communists have largely been written out of American history, and their legacy ignored. Few people mention that the almost all the young northern white people involved in the Civil Rights Movements were red diaper babies. Carl Bernstein, who contributed to the book, is rarely placed within his radical, fighting legacy. Many of the writers gain real strength from their heritage. The sense that we are all part of a long chain of resistance has particular meaning when the link is so intimate. It gives them direct access to the strength and hope we can all draw from the history of those who fought back.

From Scoop:

Top established Wellington fashion designers Robyn Mathieson, Ashley Fogel, and Voon will join some of the city’s most promising up-and-coming new design talent to raise money for Wellington Women’s Refuge, on Thursday June 7.

Fashion HQ will showcase Wellington fashion talent at an All-Star fashion auction on June 7. Organised by a team of Massey University public relations students, the auction will feature garments donated by deNada, Paris House and Haley Smith NZ, as well as renowned Wellington designers Fin, Robyn Mathieson, Ashley Fogel and Voon. All proceeds will be donated to Wellington Women’s Refuge.

The designers who are so generously donating their garments to a good cause, live off the labour of garment workers. In New Zealand those women would be paid near the minimum wage of $11.25 (that’s $6-8 in the US, depending on what the exchange rate is doing at the time), and when the garments are made off-shore, the women workers are paid much less than that. The people who made the clothes that were donated to Refuge wouldn’t be able to afford to leave an abusive relationship.

I don’t want to simplify the dynamics of violent relationships; I don’t think pay equity alone would end abuse, but it would make it easier for women to leave. So until they pay the women who make their clothes enough money so that the women would have no financial problems if they needed to leave a violent relationship, those designers are full of shit.

PS - I have lots more I want to write about, but am quite distracted, so I may not be posting much till the end of the week.

“Subprime mortgages.” Boy, I sure pick exciting topics, don’t I?

There’s a larger version of this cartoon on Znet.

The National Center for Children in Poverty has released a brief on how state policies affect low income children and children living in poverty. You can link to the entire report here.  Here are the states with the highest and lowest percentages of children who are poor or low income.

10 States With the Highest % Low Income Children (low income is defined as income at or below 200% of the poverty level; this would be under $40,000 for a family of 4 in 2006)

1. New Mexico 58% 
2. Arizona 55%
3. Mississippi 55% 
4. Montana 55% 
5. Louisiana 53%
6. Texas 53%
7. West Virginia 50%
8. Oklahoma 49%
9. Arkansas 49%
10. Kentucky 48% (tie)
11. Washington, DC 48% (tie)

10 States With the Highest % Children in Poverty (poverty would be below $20,000 for a family of 4 in 2006)

1. Washington, DC 30%
2. Alabama 29%
3. Louisiana 29%
4. New Mexico 28%
5. Arkansas 26%
6. Mississippi 26%
7. Texas 26%
8. Arizona 25% 
9. Montana 24%
10. Kentucky 24%

10 States With the Lowest % of Low Income Children

1. New Hampshire 21% 
2. Minnesota 26% 
3. Massachusetts 27%
4. Connecticut 28%
5. New Jersey 29%
6. Hawaii 32%
7. Maryland 32%
8. Colorado 35%
9. Delaware 35%
10. Virginia 35%

10 States With the Lowest % of Children in Poverty

1. New Hampshire 8%
2. Minnesota 10%
3. Massachusetts 12%
4. Hawaii 12%
5. Alaska 13%
6. Colorado 13%
7. Maryland 13%
8. Nevada 14%
9. Vermont 14%
10. Connecticut 14%

There are is a correlation between the level of poverty among children and the percentage of the population in each state that is Non-Hispanic White. I calculated the correlation between the number of low income children and the % of the population that is Non-Hispanic White.  The correlation is r=-.242.  Which basically means that there is a negative association between the percent white and the number of low income families, or plainly put–the number of low income families increases as the percentage of the Non-Hispanic white population decreases.

My friend Pip has a blog called Great Expectations. She’s only got a couple of posts up but she’s asking some really interesting questions:

Are there white middle-class butches? If so, where are they? I found Judith/Jack Halberstam’s book, Female Masculinities, particularly disappointing in this regard. It seems that J/J identifies as butch (??). But although she shows how butch history has been ignored by middle-class feminism, she doesn’t admit that being an academic means that working-class butch history doesn’t simply belong to her. She doesn’t use this opportunity to share her own experience of butchness, and instead uses the (often extremely personal) stories of others to illustrate this story. It’s this kind of behaviour that allows white middle class men/women/butches to claim a rich history and identity, while hiding our privilege over others of the same gender (just like white women using pictures of black mothers to symbolise the fertility or spirituality of all women).

You should go and check out her blog, leave some comments and encourage her to write more.

*******

Also check out Super Babymama who has been writing an excellent series of posts on the reality of life on food stamps. As a feminist I believe the right to have (and be able to raise) a child is as important as the right not to have a child. In both New Zealand and America that right is severely curtailed. Super Babymama explains exactly how little food you’re allowed if you’re raising children by yourself.

For some reason this post at Women of Color Blog and this post at the way here reminded me of my childhood, and the social class dynamics of growing up poor.  In her post on Women of Color blog BFP mentions working at McDonalds, which reminded me of my own food service experiences.  I worked in fast food, but my first actual food service experience was in elementary school.  This is where Monica’s post fits in.  Somehow in a very long comment thread the subject turned to government cheese (or in Rosyln’s words “gubmint cheese”), which they served in the cafeteria at my elementary school.¹

How do I know what was served in the cafeteria at my school?  Well, like all of the other kids in the 5th and 6th grade, I worked in the cafeteria.  I can imagine the middle class mostly white suburban readers gasping now because no “respectable” middle class school would ever make their students work in the cafeteria, but my school did. 

Here’s how it worked.  There were a total of two 5th grade and two 6th grade classes.  Each week one of those classes had cafeteria duty, and most of the students in the class would go down to the cafeteria around 10:30 and start helping the janitors and cafeteria workers serve lunch to the students.  There were different jobs, which were gendered and assigned base on skills.  The most prestigious job was selling ice cream since it involved actually having to count money, and the teacher picked the smartest kids.  It was also cooler out in that part of the cafeteria, and only people who had an extra 30 cents to spend on lunch could buy ice cream, so there wasn’t any deluge of kids running to the counter.  The rest of the student workers were in three groups, which were assigned by the cooks and janitors.  You had the lunch servers, who put food on trays.  This was mostly girls with a few boys mixed in, and it was the moderate prestige position.  Then, there were the lowest prestige positions: dish washers, (mostly girls), and tray dumpers, (mostly boys).  The tray dumpers had to empty the trays after the students were done eating, and take out garbage.  Oh and I almost forget, that there was a person who had to wash tables, which I believe was one of those mid-level prestige jobs.  Lunch generally ended around noon, and we had recess around that time period. 

The students were paid for their work in free meals, and of course this work was also considered valuable job training because it taught us about hard work and responsibility.  Moreover, in a low income school, this was one more way to save money.  I don’t know that they could afford to hire that many people to work at the school because the local tax base was very low.  The school also saved money by getting government subsidized food, such as government cheese. (Which in my opinion was pretty good, but that’s for another debate.)

I suspect lunch was very different than it would be in a middle class school for other reasons as well. 

The majority of the kids in my school were eligible for free lunches, and very few kids packed their lunches.  How do I know this?  Because we had to line up for lunch based on how we were paying–free lunch kids went first, then reduced lunch ($.45), and full price lunch was last ($.75).  Most of the kids lined up for free lunch.  I also remember when my mother finally got a full time job teaching special education at the school because I got to move to the back of the lunch line with Jason and Aaron, who were the “wealthier” kids in my class.  My Dad said we were probably still eligible for the reduced price lunch, but my mother’s pride was not going to allow her to have her kids on reduced lunch while she was teaching in the school. I also knew many of our kids were eligible for free lunch because I looked at data when I was in high school and we were campaigning for a school levy.  All of the people campaigning were given a sheet of paper that had data comparing our school to other schools in the state of Ohio based on test scores, per pupil spending, teacher pay, and other relevant socio-economic indicators.  As I looked through the sheet all of the numbers were very low, mostly in the bottom 20% or bottom 5%.  Finally, I got to the end of the chart, and I leaned over to my mother and said,

“Hey mom we’re really high in this one.  What does AFDC mean?”  My mom replied,

“That’s welfare.”

We both started laughing because it was the only figure where the school was actually in the top 5%. (I don’t think they had teen pregnancy or drop out rates because we would have been in the top on those, too.)  

In junior and high school things were a little different.  The kids still served lunches, but it was only the kids in special education who worked in the cafeteria, and they did so almost every day.  Those of us who were not in special education were weeded out of food service, and we spent our time in the classroom.

I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on social class over the last 5 or 6 years, especially as it relates to education.  I know my own children are not going to grow up like me, and I have mixed feelings about that.  As much as I know that many middle income people would find it offensive to have their kids work in the school cafeteria for free food, I have more mixed feelings.  Poor kids and working class kids seem to grow up quicker, and they are not coddled in the ways that middle and upper income kids are.  I suppose many people are going to say having kids serve in the cafeteria is child labor.  I guess it is, but I’m more ambivalent about it.  I’ve been doing this type of labor since the 5th grade. I stuffed envelopes for my dad in high school, and I worked as a Whopper flopper at Burger King.  I think work is valuable, and I think we shouldn’t shame people because their jobs are low paying or low prestige, but the other side of me knows that we are really funneling kids into the occupations that we expect for their social class.  Middle class kids don’t have to grow-up as fast, in part because they will be starting their labor force participation later and because their parents know their incomes are going to be directly linked to having a higher level and better quality education.

I know I’m the exception.  I’m the person who grew up in the very poor environment and “made it out” thanks to my mother’s college degree, my smarts, my determination, help from others, and lucky breaks (I’ve written a little about this before.).  There is a huge part of me that feels happy that I had the experience of being poor, of having an outhouse, and of having to working in the school cafeteria, but that is largely because that was temporary for me.  For a long time I didn’t regret these things because I didn’t really know exactly how middle class people really lived.  Of course, I knew that they had wealthier schools (and indoor plumbing) and more opportunities, but I couldn’t clarify what exactly those were.  I guess the one advantage I have at this point is that I am fairly able to go back and forth across class divides–I know about government cheese and I know what feta cheese is too. :)  I wouldn’t be able to do this had I not grown up poor, and I wouldn’t have know how hard working and determined poor people are.  I also wouldn’t recognize the advantages and privileges of my current class position, and I would treat them more as a given.

Congrats you made it to the end of this loooong piece!!!

1. I also remember my dad going down to the fire station and getting some government cheese to eat at home.  I would suspect that many people who have been poor and are over the age of 30 are familiar with government cheese, but if you are not, go check out the link. (back)

I didn’t link to brownfemipower’s amazing post about la familia and immigration, because I wanted to say something. I wanted to argue for open borders. Then I thought that when I get round to writing about open borders then those comments should stand alone.

brownfemipower covers so much in her post including transience:

In Michigan, it’s different. Detroit, Flint or Saginaw may have established Mexican communities–but in the community I grew up in, there wasn’t one single family that had grandparents or even parents who had been born there. All of us whose families had settled in the neighborhood had multiple friends that disappeared after a year–their families moved back to Mexico or Texas or over to other farming states for work. Two of my best friends as a child left Michigan in the second grade. Only one wound up coming back to Michigan–when we were both in high school.

And as somebody who worked in the fields–I can remember falling in love with a dark-skinned, lightly muscled boy who smiled at me every time I walked past. He was there for one season and I never saw him again. A common happening in migrant work.

These disappearances were very upsetting to me, but I lived–just like I know the people who disappeared lived as well. We’re all used to it, and we’ve learned to accommodate shadow figures, shadow relationships into our lives.

Go read brownfemipower now.

This is what happens when ‘your employer owns your body and soul’ cross-breeds with ‘nothing is more dangerous than fat.’ A treadmill desk designed by the Mayo clinic. Don’t mock because they were seriously scientific about their research:

“If obese individuals were to replace time spent sitting at the computer with walking computer time by 2 to 3 hours a day, and if other components of energy balance were constant, a weight loss of 20 to 30kg a year could occur,”

It’s none of our employer’s business whether or not we lose 20 to 30 kg, or gain 20 or 30 kg. Our bodies and our lives should belong to us, that’s the basic meaning of freedom.

A reader sent me a link from the local paper the heading said: Don’t want to be harassed? Stop acting like a man

The blurb said

Behaving like “one of the boys” to get ahead at work may not be the best strategy for women. A study had found that alpha-females are more likely to suffer sexual harassment.

The actual research said:

“The more women deviated from traditional gender roles - by occupying a ‘man’s’ job or having a ‘masculine’ personality - the more they were targeted,” Dr Berdahl said. “Although having a masculine personality would seem to help employees fit into male-dominated work environments, having such a personality appears to have hurt the women in this study.”

She said the study supported the theory that sexual harassment was motivated by a desire to punish “gender-role deviants” rather than by sexual desire.

I’ve only read Amazon’s extract of Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism. After I’d finished I had to remind myself that there are lots of different kinds of feminism, and the fact that the media picks and chooses who to focus on isn’t the fault of the chosen.

But I still wanted to respond to what frustrated me in the extract I read. I was once a middle-class girl who was too scared to call herself feminist, the audience of the book. But I didn’t change my mind because feminism seemed easy, but because I realised what how hard the women who had been before me had fought, and I wanted to honour that struggle. I wrote about it a year ago, but thought I’d repost it just to show that even middle-class white girls who say ‘I’m not a feminist but…’ aren’t a homogenous group.

In some ways I was extremely precocious feminist. I still have my copy of the Railway Children which says “Happy 7th Birthday on the inside” and in which I had writeen RUBBISH in black felt tip pen over the paragraph near the end when the Doctor tells Peter that he must be nice to girls because they’re soft and weak. I grew up in the 1980s and really believed Girls Can Do Anything, and was prepared to fight for it.

But something happened in my teens, my feminism faded. I know why, and I know I’m not alone. To middle-class girls in all-girls schools sexism and misogyny often seem far away. I was taught by some of the coolest feminists I’ve ever known. My school had a quilt hung in the hall that said “Me aro koe ki te hä o Hine-ahu-one. Pay heed to the dignity of Women”. But it was an all women world and so feminism seemed unnecessary.

It was ridiculous, because sexism and misogyny were all around us, all the time. We didn’t recognise them mostly because we were too busy using them to try and destroy each other.

So all through high school, and into my first year of university I didn’t call myself a feminist. I was 18 when this changed, and I remember the change as a revelation. it wasn’t of course, I must have forgotten all the small things that lead me there.

I was babysitting, I’d put the kids to bed and settled down to do the readings for one of my tutorials. I was reading women’s accounts of growing up in Germany towards the end of the 19th Century. One woman was from the aristocracy, one was middle class, and the others were all working class women.

Most of the women had become involved in left-wing politics later in their life and their stories were amazing. The best of the fathers in the narratives were completely hopeless, most weren’t that useful, but the women survived, and fought for their brothers and sisters. I was blown away by those women and their strength. They had all fought so hard for things that I saw as so basic.

But it was still school work, so as soon as I was finished being blown away I watched a movie the kids’ parents had left behind. It was called The Heidi Chronicles and I remember almost nothing about it except that it was about a woman who was involved in women’s liberation, and it showed how much she’d gained but how hard it was, and how it had cost her.

My response to the stories of women’s lives, both fictional and real was: “I have to call myself a feminist, I owe it to all these women who went before me, who fought so hard and gained so much to become part of that struggle.”

And that was the beginning.

I went to see Rosita in theHuman Rights Film Festival this weekend.

Rosita’s parents were from Nicaragua, but they moved to Costa Rica to find work. Her father worked as a itinerant coffee picker, her mother sometimes joined him in the fields. Rosita didn’t start school until she was seven, because the school was a long way away. When she was 8 a man, who lived on her way to school, occasionally offered her and her cousins fruit while they were walking past. One day, when she was walking home alone, he raped her.

Rosita’s mother realised something was wrong and took her to the doctor’s several times. Eventually the doctors told Rosita’s mother that Rosita was pregnant.

The documentary Rosita is her story.

Rosita is a very well-made documentary. Despite the fact that Rosita is not shown on film (her parents’ decisions - their reasons are obvious) the film-makers work hard to let her voice come through. The story is told from an oral history Rosita did with her mother, and illustrated with Rosita’s drawings, which are sometimes beautifully animated.

The story would have been worthless if they hadn’t worked to give Rosita a voice, because her story is one of people trying to take away her voice, her choices, and her right to self-determination.

By setting her story in its full context, by showing us the cotton plantations that her parents worked in and the effect this had on her, the film-makers show how connected our struggles for self-determination are. That freedom from sexual violence, and control of reproduction alone would not be enough for girls like Rosita.

The centre of the story is her family’s struggle to get an abortion in either Nicaragua or Costa Rica, even though she was just nine years old. The rapist fades out of the film when he is sentenced to 3 months jail - demonstrating the effect of the rape on her life is so much greater than the effect on his.

There were doctors, Bishops, even government departments, who were trying to stop Rosita from having an abortion. The family had to leave Costa Rica in the middle of the night, because they were worried they would be stopped from leaving. Then they had to run out of the hospital to avoid government officials who were trying to remove her from her parents custody. Usually a Nicaraguan abortion requires authorisation from 3 doctors, in this case the Health department wanted it signed off by a committee of 16.

The attitudes of these various men (and a couple of women) were summed up by one man who said: “I said all along that it would have been better if she had died that day.”

That’s what we’re fighting - so many of our struggles are against people, and power structures, that would rather see us dead than living our lives the way we want to.

The film had a happy ending, as much as it could have. Rosita got an abortion; her parents got some land and moved to the country. But as well as this happy ending it also offered some more hope. It ended with a conversation between the film-makers and a taxi-driver who was saying “I don’t believe they should have had the abortion, abortion was wrong.” The film-makers asked: “What if it was your daughter?” And the taxi-driver couldn’t answer - because the right of someone you love to decide their life (and live their life - pregnancy at 9 carries huge risks) is much harder to deny. I think that compassion and that love is where we can build and organise.

Note about this post Currently New Zealand parents have a defence from convictions of assault for hitting their children by arguing that they used force for correction and the force was reasonable under the circumstances. This defence Section 59 of the Crimes Act. Over the last couple of years a bill to repeal Section 59 has been winding its way to becoming a law. I’ve written about this on my blog a bit, but generally not cross-posted on Alas, because I think they’d require too much explaining. The law has now all but passed, and in a couple of months children will have almost the same protection from assault as everyone else (there were a couple of compromises along the way).

***********************

There was another letter in the paper today about Section 59 and education. I’ve noticed a few letters that argue what is needed along side the repeal of Section 59 is more parenting classes.

In objecting to these letters I’m want to make it clear that I do think learning how to be a parent is important. Learning how to parent is work, it’s devalued work, and it’s work women do. Either learning how to parent is completely ignored (there’s a lot of skill-sharing, and support within women’s networks, particularly mother’s networks) or there’s an idea that it’s unnecessary - neurotic.

But there’s a tone to these letters, a tone that says ‘the reason other people hit their kids is because they’re not educated enough.’ Leaving aside the patronising, offensive implications of that, I just don’t think it’s true.

I’m the oldest of four children and my parents were better at parenting by the time my little sisters came along. Partly that was about learning and experience, my parents had a much better idea of what they were doing third and forth time.¹ When my littlest sister hit adolescence and started slamming doors, my Mum would say “I don’t know what’s wrong with her” and whichever older sibling was at hand would say “Well she’s thirteen.” There was no-one to do that when I was thirteen; my Mum felt it was about her.

But there’s only half the reason. Just as important was that my parents were much more stressed when I was in adolescence. There were reasons for that stress that were specific to our family. But the stress could have been eased in so many ways if parenting was supported and if non-parenting work didn’t have to always be organised on what the employer wanted, rather than what you could give.

I said last year:

So while I do support the repeal of section 59, it’s ridiculous to look at that in isolation. Parenting will continue to be a job that is much more stressful than it needs to be when it is done in isolation, without adequate support or resources, and children will always be the ones that suffer when their parents are under stress. The law can’t change that.

I’m glad the bill is going to go through. Section 59 said kids didn’t matter when their parents hit them, and if all this law does is reassure one kid that they do matter, then that’s enough for me. But there was a missed opportunity here to talk about parents and what they need. If that had happened then at the very least people wouldn’t be writing to the paper suggesting that all we need is a few parenting classes and maybe we would be demanding a whole lot more.

1. According to my sister our family is Experiment (me), Boy (my brother), Perfection (her), and Overindulgence (our little sister), she calls me ’speri for short. (back)

The Subway handbook says that workers can have free soft-drinks while working. Jackie Lang shared a drink that she’d poured while on shift with a friend. Not only has she been fired, but Subway called the police. The police arrested her and charged her with theft, and she was in the cells for two hours.

That story was in the same paper as a story on mobile trucks in South Auckland,¹ that sell goods on credit at extortionate prices. This is perfectly legal, if being a parasite off the poor was illegal our entire economic system would collapse. But I would hope that taking money from people’s bank accounts wouldn’t be:

Customers were sometimes being asked to sign multiple, undated direct debit forms allowing the company open access to their accounts.

Many companies continued to take money after the debt was repaid and failed to advise customers when they have gone into credit.

I know there are people, who consider themselves progressive, and believe that the police are neutral, that their primary role isn’t to uphold the power system we have in place. I would ask those people why police care about a 19 year old who shares a soft-drink, but not companies who steal through direct debit.

1. a poor area of Auckland (back)

From Ruy Teixeira, via Ezra:

Given that virtually no important politician in America would dare support a guaranteed basic income in public, it’s interesting that most Americans favor a guaranteed basic income of some sort.

And let me add this chart:

Although liberals are more in favor of universal health care than conservatives, there’s significant support for universal health care even among Republicans. According to the Pew Research Center, 50% of Republicans favor repealing most of the recent tax cuts in exchange for universal health care, and 60% of Republicans say they’d support a tax increase in exchange for universal health care. What’s frustrating is that in both parties, the leadership is less in favor of universal health care than the base.

I think it’s really important to publicise what happened to the immigrant rights protest in Los Angeles. The police attacked protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets. ¹ You can read more.

I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner, I’ve been sick. Brownfemipower is on it. I particularly recommend State Violence is Not an Anomaly (if you’ve got a faster internet connection than I have). This is awful, but it’s also not the first time the police have acted like this, by any stretch of the imagination, and it won’t be the last, unless there’s some counter-organising.

Note about comments I don’t want this to become yet another debate about ‘illegal’ immigration, or who immigration policy should serve.

1. This protest was inter-generational, and included a lot of old people and children. I don’t want to emphasise that, because that implies that I might think it was OK if the police had just attacked people in their twenties, but I thought you should know. (back)

Fatal Accidents And Violence While At Work¹

In the United States, in 2005, men were 54% of the workforce but 93% of workers who died at work due to fatal accidents or violence (pdf link). (The raw numbers are 5300 men, 402 women).² For women at work, the most common cause of death was highway accidents, followed by homicide. For men at work, the most common cause of death was also highway accidents, followed by “contact with objects and equipment” and then by falls. Looking at risk ratios, the most likely workers to die of accident or violence at work are agricultural, fishing and lumber workers; in terms of raw numbers, however, construction workers are killed the most often.

There are a little over 200 workplace suicides each year, about 94% of which are men. (Interestingly, although in all other areas of workplace death non-whites — and especially non-white immigrants — are disproportionately likely to be the victims, a disproportionately high number of workplace suicides are committed by white workers.) The most likely occupations for workplace suicide are police, farmer, and soldier.

Death Due To Workplace-Related Disease

Workplace deaths due to accidents and violence tend to get a lot of attention, because they are dramatic and relatively simple to measure. But, in terms of total numbers, they’re a minor problem. Deaths due to workplace-related disease and toxic exposure are a far larger problem, killing over 100,000 Americans a year, according to the International Labor Organization’s estimates (pdf link).

I couldn’t find clear figures comparing female and male deaths due to work-related disease and exposure in the United States. But according to the ILO, in established market economies as a whole, 240,700 men and 46,298 women died in 2002 due to work-related disease; put another way, 84% of workers who die due to work-related disease are male. (These figures are estimates; workplace mortality due to disease is not possible to measure with pinpoint accuracy).

Occupational Segregation

What causes the discrepancy in workplace deaths? The main cause is “occupational segregation” - the tendency for some jobs to be mostly held by men, and others to be mostly held by women. The most hazardous jobs — whether due to exposure to dangerous substances, or to risk of falling or being in a highway accident — are disproportionately held by men. (Contrary to popular belief, people in risky jobs are not usually paid extra to compensate them for danger).

Occupation segregation, in turn, is caused in part by workplace discrimination, both in the form of employers preferring a particular sex, and in the form of on-the-job harassment and discrimination making blue-collar women, or a pink collar men, know that they’re unwelcome.

Occupational segregation is also caused by self-segregation, as many male workers feel uncomfortable applying for female-dominated jobs, and vice versa. There is, in my opinion, a vicious cycle functioning; the lack of pink-collar male, and blue-collar female, role models and mentors makes it less likely that future workers will cross the occupational gender line.

Conclusion

While we should fight occupational segregation, getting rid of occupational segregation won’t solve the tragedy of work-related deaths; more women and less men dying is less sexist, but still not a net improvement in terms of saving lives. What’s needed is more pro-active government intervention to make workplaces safer³ , along with a reform of tort laws to make it easier for workers and their survivors to successfully sue employers.

The problem with a dry term like “occupational segregation” is that, while it’s accurate, it also obscures how disproportionate male deaths in the workplace are caused by sexism. Nearly all of the causes of occupational segregation, in one way or another, are themselves caused in part by sexism. Workplace deaths are a clear example of how sexism harms men in the United States.

1. In this blog post, I’m concentrating on workplace deaths. But it’s also the case that men are more likely than women to be injured at work. (back)
2. This number does not include illegal jobs. My impression is that prostitution — a female-dominated job — and drug dealing — a male-dominated job — are both relatively high-mortality jobs. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that including illegal job mortality might reduce the male/female mortality discrepancy a bit, but it certainly wouldn’t eliminate it. (back)
3. There’s no reason that this has to consist solely of micro-management and regulations. For instance, the government could offer tax breaks for companies that can rigorously prove that they’ve reduced workplace accidents and fatalities by a substantial amount. (back)

(For a larger copy of the cartoon, click here.)