Red Light Politics
Welcome to my short form Tumblr blog. My name is Flavia Tamara Dzodan, I am a business developer, writer, public speaker, ideas instigator, content creator, media facilitator and trend watcher living in Amsterdam.
This Tumblr is about the spaces and intersections between politics, culture, race and gender matters with some humor and pop culture thrown in the mix.
My long reads blog is Red Light Politics.
I also blog at Tiger Beatdown.
If you would like to know more about me, visit this page .
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The person behind this blog
I am on Twitter, you can follow me
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Noted Elsewhere
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What did I miss?
I’ve decided that I am not even going to try to catch up on Tumblr since Friday. Nope. Not gonna do it.
So, did anything important...
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Interesting
Just got a job offer? I know the company, it has a good reputation. And awesome downtown offices.But it’s not quite my style - their...
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“The new rules, which were given the force of an executive order, are a clear improvement over a draft version. If monitored and enforced, they could...”
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Heroism in the Supermarket:
Vitamin Water wants me to believe that drinking their sugary concoction will help to make me a superhero rather than...
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…and The Onion for the win, forever.
Tl;dr: All 10 ways are “Revolutionary Terror.”
(via TheNoobYorker)
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Last night got the pleasure to met and chat with the German Tumblr team.
These women were totally awesome. Total girl crush!
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“The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as...”
Tag Results
14 posts tagged ableism
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Doctors at the Odense University Hospital refrained from operating a 65-year-old woman with pancreatic cancer, noting as a reason in her medical journal that she was ‘slightly retarded’.
Six months later, the woman was re-admitted to hospital in a serious condition, with her cancer having spread so much that it was not possible to operate. She died six months later.
”Denmark: No op for retarded patient - Politiken.dk
I don’t think I can add anything articulate to this. Words fail me.
(H/T inessita)
On co-dependency
(Promise it’s my last rage induced rant of the day)
Some people have mentioned that there is a “danger” that co-dependent relations eventually turn into abusive ones. That might be the case. However, if one suspects that a friend is in what one perceives to be a co-dependent relationship that is abusive, rather than centering the support and discussions on this supposed co-dependency (of which we, as friends, might have incomplete or even wrong information to derive our judgement from), one should center the support on the abusive side. If a person is involved in an abusive relationship, that’s the center of our support. Not in fauxchology definitions of co-dependency.
As I said before, what we, from the outside, are quick to label as “co-dependent” and BAD (because articles like this one, based on scientific data derived from Twilight tell us so), might be a healing space for others.
If someone is in an abusive relationship, that’s where the support should be centered. Concern trolling based on Dr. Phil is not really a healthy way of supporting the people we care about.
The idea that people cannot find (do not deserve) love, particularly true or perfect love, if they are ‘broken’ or ‘damaged’ is in fact quite common in this society. Many people happily parrot this idea along with self-helpy jargon like needing to love yourself before you seek love. Which is a reminder to broken people, to people who may hate themselves for whatever reason, that they don’t deserve love (we don’t deserve so many things…to live, to speak, to have opinions…).
It is also particularly common to claim that people with mental illness, some diagnoses in particular, are inherently bad and dangerous and harmful and shouldn’t be in relationships/don’t deserve love because they will just hurt people. People have told me to my face at feminist conferences that people with my diagnoses are damaging and dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed to have relationships. Human connections.
The idea of denying love to any human being repulses me. The idea of proudly crowing that you feel some human beings don’t deserve love, or friendship, can never find these things, because they are ‘sick’…it’s not particularly new or revolutionary.
BAM! All the truth is three paragraphs!!
Incidentally, if you are not following s.e., you should consider doing so. Their Tumblr comes with a daily dose of truth like the above on a variety of subjects. You know you want to! Because it’s nourishing!
librariesandlemonade replied to your quote: You found that paragraph hurtful? I’m truly sorry…
still seething.
I have thrown my 2 centavos as well.
The Power of Words or 1.3 million people like patronizing nonsense
I got this little video on my email earlier today. Oh, it has all the ingredients for a YouTube success. Blind, impoverished person begging for money while sitting on the ground, cold hearted strangers throwing coins at blind guy, white upper class girl who “teaches him a lesson”. Ah yes, what a beautiful enlightening moment!
Except no. It is disgusting. It is patronizing and alienating. Because it is abusive to write something on a sign that the blind man cannot see and “rescue him” through the power of your awesome words. Because, you see, all it takes is a wealthy, well dressed person to actually show a disabled, poor guy “how it is done” and to succeed!
I am not even posting the video because honestly, I feel dirty after watching it. And the thousands of positive comments along the lines of “this actually made me cry” made me want to cry. Because this is the kind of marketing I abhor.
In Which We Learn That Americans Are Just as Dumb as Ever
NEWSWEEK gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. citizenship test. 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. 73 percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. 44 percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights.
In all: 38 percent failed. Ouch.
In which I nitpick Newsweak’s (yes, it’s my new name for their Tumblr) poor journalistic standards.
Princeton’s dictionary defines dumb as:
- dense: slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity; “so dense he never understands anything I say to him”; “never met anyone quite so dim”; “although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick”- Thackeray; “dumb officials make some really dumb decisions”; “he …
- speechless: temporarily incapable of speaking; “struck dumb”; “speechless with shock”
- lacking the power of human speech; “dumb animals”
- unable to speak because of hereditary deafness
Newsweak, you are a multimillion dollar media corporation with a global reach of billions of readers. Please buy a dictionary. And stop saying “dumb” when you simply mean “uneducated”. They are not equivalent terms.
That pony tail makes you look bigoted
I see everyone is already on the “Retarded” pony tail post. I have already said everything I had to say on their use of ableist language, even if it is for comical purposes (and notice the post doesn’t say a word about the word “retarded” being an ableist slur). However, I also would like to shed light on the person who supposedly submitted the story:
The submitter had this to say:
I can’t exactly say how this would contribute in the true sense of the word, but I would love to hear what people make of it, given that in Romania, where I’m from, the theory tends to be scarily accurate.
Really, random person? You have been evaluating Romanian women through their pony tails?
Jezebel bingo! today’s trifecta: ableism, sexist stereotypes and xenophobia.
A progressive site’s dreams!
Pile ups
Regarding the criticism about the pile ups against Tracie: No.
Pile ups are an effective way of gathering crowd dissent. If they were a real physical threat (or a threat of taking things out in the physical sense), I would agree, they would be dangerous and an improper way of conducting criticism. But, a comment pile up? Yes, because it shows the amount of discontent. Because it is loud and because just like racist words should be exposed, loud disagreement also has a place.
Also, I disagree that “we should keep manners”. That’s a derailing argument. It’s akin to saying that the tone of the disagreement matters more than the racist, ableist, homophobic, bigoted bullshit being combated.
Motives, etc
Considering I got a question in my askhole as to the motives why I post about Tracie Egan’s racism and ableism, I expect they would be self evident. But, in case they are not, I’ll try to elaborate briefly (I have other things to do as well, so this post will be a bit rushed).
Media people have a responsibility. That responsibility goes beyond just informing or passing along data. It is also a responsibility of not making matters worse. Every time a popular media figure uses racist, ableist, transphobic, homophobic, whorephobic, etc language, they are, in fact, normalizing such words and attitudes. When said media figure, as is the case with Ms. Egan Morrisey is widely read by teenagers and young people, such responsibility is even increased. And if, again, as is the case with Tracie, the media figure in question is regarded as representative of a cause that is usually constructed as liberal or related to social justice (such is the case with Jezebel which is usually referred to as the biggest and most popular feminist site), then the scrutiny should be even more detailed. Because every time a person regarded as somehow representative of certain kind of politics misrepresents herself by contributing to oppression of minorities, we have the obligation to expose it.
You can pretend to be edgy and hip, but in fact, you are taking a dump on centuries of other people’s oppression by misusing words that do not belong to you or hurling them as insults because they are meaningless to you. And until you apologize and rectify the behavior, you deserve to be exposed on your disgraceful politics.
I think it’s pretty clear, after all, that Jon Stewart doesn’t think that mentally ill people are ruining our society any more than someone who criticizes a referee for blowing an obvious call thinks that blind people are somehow worse than sighted people.
This isn’t to say that we ought not to worry about causing offense, or that we ought to say things once we know they will offend; it is instead a plea for us all to think carefully about the things that cause us to feel offended, to demand apologies when people have clearly crossed a line (I’m thinking here about hate speech), and to take ourselves a little less seriously when it’s either less clear that a line’s been crossed or when we have a difficult time coming up with an alternative to the offensive word.
I am a bit disappointed in this post from Mr. Kohenari. I think it’s no secret to anyone that he is one of my favorite Tumblrs. What I found disappointing is that brushing off ableist language is just a lazy argument. The argument about thinking carefully about the things that offend people with disabilities is privileged. It is privileged because it is not up to us, able bodied people to determine what disabled people have a right to be offended about. Just think of other disenfranchised groups being told the same argument: Oh, come on, the N word was just meant in jest!; Oh, please, I didn’t mean fag like that!; Oh come on, you are not that kind of whore!
It is difficult to think of ableist language and the myriad ways it permeates our every day communications. However, we cannot (and I cannot stress this enough), tell people that they should “lighten up” just because we would prefer to avoid the semantic/ dialectic exercise of having to rethink the way in which we utilize language. If we had applied the same argument to every other social cause, we would still find many derogatory terms acceptable. Precisely because of our privilege is that we have the obligation to consider the implications in the way we use words.
(via kohenari)
Ableist Language redux
Earlier today I posted here about ableist language. I said in my post that we all have a “blind spot” (meaning there are things we are all ignorant about without realizing it). Lo and behold, someone left a comment in that entry:
56 minutes ago
I’m sure you didn’t mean it, but isn’t “blind spot” in itself ableist language?
And this is exactly ableist language! Because I equated blindness with ignorance/ lack of awareness/ lack of knowledge.
I really appreciate that someone took the time to point it out because yes, it is an ongoing process. We all make efforts but we are not born with infinite awareness. And I apologize for it and will continue paying attention not to fall into that trap again.
Language Matters
FWD/ Forward (Feminists with Disabilities) has been putting together a fantastic series of posts on ableist language.
From the introductory post Why I write about ableist language:
- Ableist Word Profile is an ongoing FWD/Forward series in which we explore ableism and the way it manifests in language usage.
- Here’s what this series is about: Examining word origins, the way in which ableism is unconsciously reinforced, the power that language has.
- Here’s what this series is not about: Telling people which words they can use to define their own experiences, rejecting reclamatory word usage, telling people which words they can and cannot use.
- You don’t necessarily have to agree that a particular profiled word or phrase is ableist; we ask you to think about the way in which the language that we use is influenced, both historically and currently, by ableist thought.
I try to be aware of ableist language as much as I can but, like everyone else, I also have blind spots (we all do in one area or another). This series has been an eye opener and I cannot recommend it enough for anyone who wants to be more alert and sensitive in the use of language.
Just a plug because, quite honestly, it’s the first time I’ve seen this with such dedication and concern. Lovely Little Radical is doing something novel: a Tumblr tailored and developed keeping the visually impaired in mind. I am going to go out in a limb and assume that probably more people than just the visually impaired would benefit from this approach (probably anyone who depends on text to speech software to access their content).
It’s something I hadn’t seen in Tumblr (or blogs in general for that matter before) and maybe it can be a good link to pass around, if anything else, to remind all of us how the way we access our content is not necessarily a reality for millions of people.
From their mission statement:
FWD/Forward is a group blog written by people with disabilities, some of whom are feminists and some of whom work in solidarity with feminists. It is a place to discuss disability issues from an intersectional approach and people do not need to identify as feminist to be welcome at FWD although antifeminists and MRAs are encouraged to get their jollies elsewhere. The content here ranges from basic information that is designed to introduce people who are new to disability issues, feminism, or social justice to some core concepts, to more advanced topics, with the goal of promoting discussion, conversation, fellowship, and education.
This site does not claim to speak for all feminists with disabilities or all people with disabilities. However, we are trying to cultivate a broad perspective which incorporates as many experiences and viewpoints as possible. We have attempted to assemble a diverse team of contributors with a broad spectrum of disabilities who come from different cultural, racial, religious, and class backgrounds, as well as age groups, and we welcome contributions such as guest posts, suggestions for article topics, and engagement in the comments from people interested in disability issues, disability feminism, and related topics, especially if those contributions will broaden our perspective.
We are very committed to accessibility; we want everyone to be able to enjoy our content. To that end, we commit to fully captioning and describing any images published here, transcribing text in images and audio content, and taking any other steps which can improve accessibility. We also welcome translation of our content into other languages. If you identify an accessibility issue here, we most definitely want to hear about it.
A topic that rarely gets mainstream coverage, I am sure many will be interested in this link. Their daily posts cover a variety of issues and certainly illuminate on matters from a non-ableist perspective.
