The Rude Pundit is going to play his professor card, something that he reserves for special occasions, to talk about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a man who looks like what you get when a prairie vole fucks a water shrew. The probable 2016 Republican presidential candidate never finished college at Marquette University, and right-wingers have rushed to defend him, despite the fact that he's had a government job since 1993, when he was elected to his first office. Walker has been living off Wisconsin's tax dollars for over 20 years.
From saggy-titted Rush Limbaugh to purposeless Breitbart to whoever the fuck is pretending to be a writer at the National Review, conservatives want you to know that, holy cow, you don't need a college degree to be president. And they're right. You don't. Like him or not, Walker has a shit-ton of experience in politics since it's the only thing he's really done in his adult life. That kind of thing used to drive conservatives bonkers but obviously not anymore.
But where all of these assaults on the academy go wrong is in assuming that there is only one type of college experience. The most egregious of these comes from an actual professor, Glenn Reynolds, he of Instapundit bloggery and a law prof at the University of Tennessee (which is where the Rude Pundit got his big ol' doctorate). Writing in USA Today, Reynolds, hyping his own book, mostly, tells us that leftist elitists from the Ivy League have fucked us over. See, all of us with degrees are just snobs: "Over the past few years in America, a college degree has become something valued more as a class signifier than as a source of useful knowledge." Then Reynolds goes totally dickish, adding, "When Democratic spokesman Howard Dean (who himself was born into wealth) suggested that Walker's lack of a degree made him unsuitable for the White House, what he really meant was that Walker is 'not our kind, dear' — lacking the credential that many elite Americans today regard as essential to respectable status."
See, to conservatives, "college" is itself a signifier of "indoctrinated into leftist beliefs." And, of course, "college" only means the Ivy League. Says Reynolds, after listing the Harvard, Yale, et al credentials of President Obama and the Supreme Court, "All this credentialism means that we should have the best, most efficiently and intelligently run government ever, right? Well, just look around. Anyone who has ever attended a faculty meeting should recognize that more education doesn't produce better decision makers, and our educated mandarinate doesn't seem to have done much for the country." Serious question: Is Reynolds a total cock at his own faculty meetings? And the Rude Pundit has long believed that Ivy League incest has harmed the nation. But the solution is not to say, "Well, obviously, college makes people dumb." It's to say, "Hey, how about some leaders who came from state schools?"
Reynolds so devalues the college experience that, after informing us that most people don't have degrees, he scoffs, "But where 50 years or 100 years ago they might not have cared, many now feel inferior to those who possess a degree. But without much reason, as many college degrees don't signify much besides a limited ability to show up on time most of the time, and avoid getting so falling-down-drunk that you flunk out."
And this is where the Rude Pundit would like to address Reynolds directly, professor to professor:
"Motherfucker, I teach at a school where many of the students are the first in their family to go to college. Their parents want their kids to get a degree so they can have more comfortable lives. The students come to classes ready to learn, open-minded, and, far more often than not, conscientious and prepared. The hardest part is having to compensate for the shitty education system created by politicians and business people that has dicked over students for knowing anything beyond what was on a goddamned test. You know what's elitist? Pretending that college doesn't matter. Pretending that all schools are like Harvard or even fuckin' UTK, where, yeah, the drunk thing is a factor. But that's not the vast majority of colleges and universities. It ain't the vast majority of students. Mine work full time, take classes full time, and sometimes have kids to take care of. Many of them know what the world is like for people without degrees. You know what the diploma indicates, asshole? That you stuck with something and succeeded. That you spent time with people who are different than you. That you learned some things that you perhaps wouldn't have learned. And, despite the bullshit you cite, study after study proves that you earn more with a college education than without. I've been wanting to say this to your worthless ass for years: Fuck you, man. Grow the fuck up."
Damn, that felt good. One other note here: As the Rude Pundit has said before, if you believe that colleges are merely bastions of bolshevik liberalism, spend some time with professors in the business majors or, really, the STEM profs. Oh, wait. They believe in science, so maybe not.
As for Scott Walker, let's dismiss his inability to answer a question about evolution as craven political expedience. What does matter is, as governor, he has bought into the right-wing attack on higher education and he wants to fuck the universities of his state with huge budget cuts, just like Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. That shit looks sketchy, especially when you don't have a degree.
If you can be successful at something without a diploma, good on you, future Bill Gates or Louis CK or Oprah. Obviously, people can be just like you. Except for the almost everyone who can't.
First, go read this. This is only one dude, to be clear, but his defensive, angry and utterly terrified lament is part and parcel with a chunk of science fiction and fantasy fandom and authors who want to position themselves as a last redoubt against… well, something, anyway. It essentially boils down to “The wrong people are in control of things! We must take it back! Attaaaaaaaack!” It’s almost endearing in its foot-stompy-ness; I’d love to give this fellow a hug and tell him everything will be all right, but I’m sure that would be an affront to his concept of What Is Allowed, so I won’t.
1. The fellow above asserts that fans of his particular ilk must “take back” conventions and awards from all the awful, nasty people who currently infest them, as if this requires some great, heroic effort. In fact “taking back” a convention goes a little something like this:
Scene: CONVENTION REGISTRATION. ANGRY DUDE goes up to CON STAFFER at the registration desk.
Angry Dude: I AM HERE TO TAKE BACK THIS CONVENTION AND THE CULTURE THAT SO DESPERATELY CRIES OUT FOR MY INTERVENTION
Con Staffer: Okay, that’ll be $50 for the convention membership.
(Angry Dude pays his money)
Con Staffer: Great, here’s your program and badge. Have a great con!
Angry Dude: …
I mean, everyone gets this, right? That conventions, generally speaking, are open to anyone who pays to attend? That the convention will be delighted to take your money? And that so long as one does not go out of one’s way to be a complete assbag to other convention goers, the convention staff or the hotel employees, one will be completely welcome as part of the convention membership? That being the case, it’s difficult to see why conventions need to be “taken back” — they were never actually taken away.
But the conventions are run by awful, nasty people! Well, no, the small local conventions (and some of the midsized ones, like Worldcon) are run by volunteers, i.e., people willing to show up on a regular basis and do the work of running a convention, in participation with others. These volunteers, at least in my experience, which at this point is considerable, are not awful, nasty people — they’re regular folks who enjoy putting on a convention. The thing is, it’s work; people who are into conrunning to make, say, a political statement, won’t last long, because their political points are swamped by practical considerations like, oh, arguing with a hotel about room blocks and whether or not any other groups will be taking up meeting rooms.
(Larger cons, like Comic-cons, are increasingly run by professional organizations, which are another kettle of fish — but even at that level there are volunteers, and they are also not awful, nasty people. They’re people who like participating.)
But the participants are awful, nasty people with agendas! That “problem” is solved by going to the convention programming people and both volunteering to be on panels and offering suggestions for programming topics. Hard as it may be to believe, programming staffers actually do want a range of topics that will appeal to a diverse audience, so that everyone who attends has something they’d be interested in. Try it!
Speaking as someone who once was in charge of a small convention open to the public, i.e., the Nebula Awards Weekend (I would note I was only nominally in charge — in fact the convention was run and staffed by super-competent volunteers), my position to anyone who wanted to come and experience our convention was: Awesome! See you there. Because why wouldn’t it be?
Again, science fiction and fantasy conventions can’t be “taken back” — they were, and are, open to everyone. I understand the “take back” rhetoric appeals to the “Aaaaugh! Our way of life is under attack” crowd, but the separation between the rhetoric and reality of things is pretty wide. Anyone who really believes conventions will be shocked and dismayed to get more paying members and attendees fundamentally does not grasp how conventions, you know, actually work.
2. Likewise, the “taking back” of awards, which in this case is understood to mean the Hugo Awards almost exclusively — I don’t often hear of anyone complaining that, say, the Prometheus Award has been hijacked by awful, nasty people, despite the fact that this most libertarian of all science fiction and fantasy awards is regularly won by people who are not even remotely libertarian; shit, Cory Doctorow’s won it three times and he’s as pinko as they come.
But yet again, you can’t “take back” the Hugos because they were never taken away. If you pay your membership fee to the Worldcon, you can nominate for the award and vote for which works and people you want to see recognized. All it takes is money and an interest; if you follow the rules for nominating and voting, then everything is fine and dandy. Thus voting for the Hugo is neither complicated, nor a revolutionary act.
Bear in mind that the Hugo voting set-up is fairly robust; the preferential ballot means it’s difficult for something that’s been nominated for reasons other than actual admiration of the work (including to stick a thumb into the eyes of people you don’t like) to then walk away with an award. People have tested this principle over the years; they tended to come away from the process with their work listed below “no award.” Which is as it should be. This also makes the Hugos hard to “take back.” It doesn’t matter how well a work (or its author) conforms to one’s political inclinations; if the work itself simply isn’t that good, the award will go to a different nominee that is better, at least in the minds of the majority of those who are voting.
The fellow above says if his little partisan group can’t “take back” the awards, then they should destroy them. Well, certainly there is a way to do that, and indeed here’s the only way to do that: by nominating, and then somehow forcing a win by, works that are manifestly sub-par, simply to make a political (or whatever) point. This is the suicide bomber approach: You’re willing to go up in flames as long as you get to do a bit of collateral damage as you go. The problem with this approach is that, one, it shows that you’re actually just an asshole, and two, it doesn’t actively improve the position of your little partisan group, vis a vis recognition other than the very limited “oh, those are the childish foot-stompers who had a temper tantrum over the Hugos.” Which is a dubious distinction.
With that said: Providing reading lists of excellent works with a particular social or political slant? Sure, why not? Speaking as someone who has been both a nominee and a winner of various genre awards, I am utterly unafraid of the competition for eyeballs and votes — which is why, moons ago, I created the modern version of the Hugo Voter’s Packet, so that there would be a better chance of voters making an informed choice. Speaking as someone who nominates and votes for awards, I’m happy to be pointed in the direction of works I might not otherwise have known about. So this is all good, in my view. And should a worthy work by someone whose personal politics are not mine win a Hugo? Groovy by me. It’s happened before. It’s likely to happen again. I may have even nominated or voted for the work.
But to repeat: None of this contitutes “taking back” anything — it merely means you are participating in a process that was always open to you. And, I don’t know. Do you want a participation medal or something? A pat on the head? It seems to me that most of the people nominating and voting for the Hugos are doing it with a minimum of fuss. If it makes you feel important by making a big deal out of doing a thing you’ve always been able to do — and that anyone with an interest and $50 has been able to do — then shine on, you crazy diamonds. But don’t be surprised if no one else is really that impressed. Seriously: join the club, we’ve been doing this for a while now.
3. Also a bit of paranoid fantasy: The idea that because the wrong people are somehow in charge of publishing and the avenues of distribution, this is keeping authors (and fans, I suppose) of a certain political inclination down. This has always been a bit of a confusing point to me — how this little partisan group can both claim to be victimized by the publishing machine and yet still crow incessantly about the bestsellers in their midst. Pick a narrative, dudes, internal consistency is a thing.
Better yet, clue into reality, which is: The marketplace is diverse and can (and does!) support all sorts of flavors of science fiction and fantasy. In this (actually real) narrative, authors of all political and social stripes are bestsellers, because they are addressing slightly different (and possibly overlapping) audience sets. Likewise, there are authors of all politicial and social stripes who sell less well, or not at all. Because in the real world, the politics and social positions of an author don’t correlate to units sold.
With the exception of publishing houses that specifically have a political/cultural slant baked into their mission statements, publishing houses are pretty damn agnostic about the politics of their authors. The same publishing house that publishes me publishes John C. Wright; the same publishing house that publishes John Ringo publishes Eric Flint. What do publishing houses like? Authors who sell. Because selling is the name of the game.
Here’s a true fact for you: When I turn in The End of All Things, I will be out of contract with Tor Books; I owe them no more books at this point. What do you think would happen if I walked over to Baen Books and said, hey, I wanna work with you? Here’s what would happen: The sound of a flurry of contract pages being shipped overnight to my agent. And do you know what would happen if John Ringo went out of contract with Baen and decided to take a walk to Tor? The same damn noise. And in both cases, who would argue, financially, with the publishers’ actions? John Ringo would make a nice chunk of change for Tor; I’m pretty sure I could do the same for Baen. Don’t kid yourself; this is not an ideologically pure business we’re in.
(And yes, in fact, I would entertain an offer from Baen, if it came. It would need many zeros in it, mind you. But that would be the case with any publisher at this point.)
Likewise, I don’t care how supposedly ideologically in sync you are with your publisher; if you’re not selling, sooner or later, out you go. These are businesses, not charities.
But let’s say, just for shits and giggles, that one ideologically pure faction somehow seized control of all the traditional means of publishing science fiction and fantasy, freezing out everyone they deemed impure. What then? One, some other traditional publisher, not previously into science fiction, would see all the money left on the table and start up a science fiction line to address the unsated audience. Two, you would see the emergence of at least a couple of smaller publishing houses to fill the market. Three, some of the more successful writers who were frozen out, the ones with established fan bases, could very easily set up shop on their own and self-publish, either permanently or until the traditional publishing situation got itself sorted out.
All of which is to say: Yeah, the paranoid fantasy of awful, nasty people controlling the genre is just that: Paranoid fantasy. Now, I understand that if you’re an author of a certain politicial stripe who is not selling well, or a fan who doesn’t like the types of science fiction and fantasy that other people who are not you seem to like, this paranoid fantasy has its appeal, especially if you’re feeling beset politically/socially in other areas of your life as well. And that’s too bad for you, and maybe you’d like a hearty fist-bump and an assurance that all will be well. But it doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, no matter who you are, there will always be the sort of science fiction and fantasy you like available to you. Because — no offense — you are not unique. What you like is probably liked by other people, too. There are enough of you to make a market. That market will be addressed.
Again, I am genuinely flummoxed why so many people who are ostensibly so in love with the concept of free markets appear to have a genuinely difficult time with this. It’s not all illuminati, people. It never was.
4. And this is why, fundamentally, the whole “take back the genre” bit is just complete nonsense. It can never be “taken back,” it will never be “taken back,” and it’s doubtful there was ever a “back” to go to. The genre product market is resistant to ideological culling, and the social fabric of science fiction fandom is designed at its root to accomodate rather than exclude. No one can exclude anyone else from science fiction and fantasy fandom when the entrance requirement is, literally, an interest in the genre, or some particular aspect of it. You can’t exclude people from conventions that require only a membership fee to attend. Even SFWA has opened up to self-publishing professional authors now, because it recognized that the professional market has changed. To suggest that the genre contract to fit the demands of any one segment of it doesn’t make sense, commercially or socially. It won’t be done. It would be foolish to do so.
The most this little partisan group (or those who identify with it) can do is assert that they are the true fans of the genre, not anyone else. To which the best and most correct response is: Whatever, dude. Shout it all you like. But you’re wrong, and at the end of the day, you’re not even a side of the genre, you’re just a part. And either you’re participating with everyone else in what the genre is today, or you’re off to the side wailing like a toddler who has been told he can’t have a lollipop. If you want to participate, come on in. If you think you’re going to swamp the conversation, you’re likely in for a surprise. But if you want to be part of it, then be a part of it. The secret is, you already are, and always have been.
If you don’t want to participate, well. Wail for your lolly all you like, then, if it makes you happy. The rest of us can get along without you just fine.
Andrea Polli, “Particle Falls,” installed at Utah State University (photograph by Mikey Kettinger)
While we can see the rhythm of traffic or the churning clouds from factory smokestacks, the actual levels of pollution in our daily air are less visible. In an ongoing public art project by artist Andrea Polli called “Particle Falls,” a waterfall of light changes colors from blue to flaming reds and yellows based on real time air quality data.
“Particle Falls” projected in Detroit (gif by the author via Vimeo)
Polli, an associate professor of art and ecology at the University of New Mexico, debuted this digital art installation in San Jose, California, in 2010. Now after cascading through Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, “Particle Falls” is now in Logan, Utah. “Particle Falls” is controlled with a nephelometer, which shoots a light beam into the air to measure the concentration of fine particulate matter, particularly the smallest particle, PM2.5. “Presenting ‘Particle Falls’ in several different places has been an eye-opening experience, highlighting how important context is to air quality,” Polli told Hyperallergic.
“In Detroit and Philadelphia, for example, the particulate monitor [nephelometer] was placed on a busy street near a stoplight,” she explained. “We were able to see the effects of various kinds of buses, seeing real improvement from cleaner air buses for example, and how much more particulate is created by diesel vehicles and idling. However, in Pittsburgh and Logan, Utah, the context was very different.” She noted that the persistence of the high levels in these two cities was due to an inversion effect in winter in Utah, and the presence of industry in urban Pittsburgh.
Now part of the newly launched ARTsySTEM project at Utah State University, which brings together art, science, and math, the tumult of blue light on campus is part of Polli’s work to visualize the daily impact of air pollution. Her previous projects include “Cloud Car” in New York, which was parked at various spots in the city shrouded in mist symbolizing emissions, and “Breather” in Delhi, which consists of an automobile trapped in a bubble surrounded by its own suffocating fumes. A more collaborative project, “Hello, Weather!,” involved five semi-professional weather stations in international community centers that shared data online.
Now through April, the data visualization of the temporary Utah waterfall will be responding to the fluctuating levels of pollution in the surrounding area and representing them with differing concentrations of blue, red, and yellow. It is a strangely beautiful digital stream that is forcing people to confront what they might not want to see.
“Particle Falls” will next go on view February 19, 20, March 19, and April 16 on the side of the Caine Performance Hall at Utah State University (1100 East & 700 North, Logan, Utah).
I wrote the other day about how most parents that are not vaccinating are not senseless or stupid; They are just parents who have anxieties around vaccines and are not sure of whether it is the best choice for their child. Sure, some of their beliefs about vaccines may be unfounded in science, but they are trying to do what is best for their children even though they may actually be putting their children in more danger as a result.
Although this does describe most parents that are afraid of vaccinating, there is a small yet vocal organized anti-vaccine movement who go way beyond just questioning vaccine safety. I became interested in the anti-vaccine movement a couple years ago after I became so curious about what exactly anti-vaxxers were doing and saying that I went to one of their rallies. Since then I have been following their organizations and blogs and went to their big conference a couple years ago (where I was subsequently recognized and kicked out despite following all rules and being nothing but respectful). From years of following the anti-vaccine movement closely, I’ve learned that whatever you think about anti-vaxxers, you are probably underestimated the utter absurdity of their beliefs. For the purposes of this post, when I use terms like “anti-vaxxers,” I am talking specifically about the extremist anti-vaccine proponents that are part of the organized movement. I should also point out that, as anyone who themselves are part of any movement know, factions exist within the movement. People are not homogenous and even if they all agree that vaccines are bad they may not agree on all the details. Not all anti-vaxxers will believe all of the things mentioned here but these are all things that I have seen mentioned often by anti-vaxxers and published on their websites and blogs.
Anti-vaxxers believe that people who promote vaccines are the equivalent of Nazis and rapists.
When I say that “anti-vaxxers believe vaccine-proponents are equivalent to Nazis,” I don’t mean it as an exaggerated metaphor. They literally believe that organizations like the CDC are the same as Nazi Germany. Back in 2010 when I went to an anti-vaccine rally, a band called the Refusers played a song entitled “Vaccine Gestapo” with lyrics such as
They’re a medical military priesthood
Just like Adolf they preach the greater good
Conscientious objectors are just little snot
Why don’t you quit complaining and go get your shots
In addition to accusing the CDC of being the Gestapo, they often will play the victim card, such as suggesting that antivaccinationists are treated like Jews were in Hitler’s Germany. That’s right, because we all know that anti-vaxxers are being rounded up and gassed. Vaccine mandates are totally equivalent to that. That must be why they are such a fan of comparing themselves to Anne Frank.
Although anti-vaxxers are quite the fans of holocaust metaphors, it’s not the only horrible thing in the world that vaccine proponents could be compared to. Just this month at Age of Autism (AoA), a popular anti-vaccine blog, they published a post comparing vaccine mandates for public schools to human trafficking. I’m not kidding. They call vaccine mandates Vaccine Trafficking, writing that “Vaccine trafficking is a form of modern forced medical experimentation where people profit from the control and exploitation of others.”
They even got in a Nazi reference in the following description of why vaccine mandates are equivalent to human trafficking.
Although forced medical experimentation is commonly thought to be a thing of the past, dealt with and eliminated by The Nuremberg Code after WWII, vaccine trafficking still exists today throughout the United States and globally when traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to control other people for the purpose of increasing international vaccine sales by forcing them to be injected with scores of dangerous, ineffective, “unavoidably unsafe”, potentially-fatal vaccines against their will.
This is completely bananas and yet this is the type of fear-mongering language often used by the anti-vaccine movement when communicating to their followers the dangers of vaccines.
Oh, and of course I can’t forget about the vaccine rape metaphors. Anti-vaxxers are constantly comparing giving a child a vaccine to raping them, because in their minds it’s the same thing. Memes like this one, which accuse doctors and nurses of being child rapists, are shared by anti-vaxxers on social media.
Just in case you’re inclined to believe this is just a one-time thing, over at Respectful Insolence, David Gorski has compiled a whole bunch of instances of anti-vaxxers writing articles where they compare the act of vaccinating to rape.
The anti-vaccine movement has ties to the tea party.
Although anti-vaxxers are often seen as liberal whole-foods shopping types, in fact the organized anti-vax movement consists of right-wing extremists and has ties to the tea party. Anti-vaxxers have actually formed their own political party called the Canary Party which lobbies for removal of vaccine mandates. They often will partner with tea party groups in order to protest tough vaccine mandates for public schools and other pro-vaccine measures. They borrow much of the “freedom” language that is popular with the tea party and other right wing and libertarian groups when pushing for laws that make it easier to opt-out of vaccines.
Anti-vaxxers are shockingly ableist.
Most anti-vaccine organizations masquerade as organizations helping parents who are raising children with autism. However, despite saying they are helping families deal with autism, they way they treat people with autism and other mental disabilities is appallingly ableist.
When Jenny McCarthy made her now infamous appearance on Oprah where she first said that she believed vaccines were responsible for her son’s autism, she said that when she first got her son’s diagnosis it made her feel “like death.” She said that soon after her son got the MMR vaccine “boom—the soul’s gone from his eyes.” In other words, people with autism are people who have lost their souls.
Speaking at the anti-vax con AutismOne, RFK Jr. said that children getting autism from vaccines is like the “Nazi death camps.” Not only do we have another holocaust metaphor here, but I don’t think I need to explain why a person having autism is not equivalent to being imprisoned in a Nazi death camp.
In general, the anti-vaccine movement often treats autism like a fate worse than death. It’s why they are so vehement that if vaccines cause autism than vaccines must be far worse than all the diseases that they are meant to protect from. They do not seem to realize that many people with autism and other mental illnesses live rich, full lives.
The Feminist Skeptic explains why the anti-vax view that says that autism is the worst thing that could possibly happen to your child is so problematic:
it leads to the idea that risking preventable diseases (that can totally kill your kid!), autism biomed, chelation therapy, Lupron therapy, and even outright murder is totally justifiable, because hey, your kid wasn’t “normal” (whatever that means), and you just wanted to make them better, even if it means causing them further suffering in the process.
Oh, and speaking of anti-vaxxers defending the murder of mentally ill children…
Anti-vaxxers defend parents who murder their mentally ill children.
Back in 2013, a Chicago mother planned and carried out the murder of her son Alex Spourdalakis. Alex was 14 years old and severely autistic. His mother first gave him an overdose of his medication, but when he didn’t succumb she stabbed him multiple times and cut his wrists. This was big news in Chicago, but prior to the murder I had already heard of Alex Spourdalakis because over at Age of Autism they had been talking about him and his mother for months, offering both emotional support and financial in the form of a fundraiser. Andrew Wakefield himself filmed a video of him sitting at the bedside of Alex in a Chicago hospital. They claimed the hospital was illegally preventing Alex’s mother from taking him home and were abusing him and keeping him restrained. The entire anti-vaccine movement rallied around the Spourdalakis family, vilified the hospital, and eventually got Alex discharged so that he could continue to get alternative medicine treatments at home rather than the science-based psychiatric care that the hospital provided. David Gorski describes the entire horrific story in an incredibly detailed post at Respectful Insolence.
The anti-vaxxers were supporting the Spourdalakis family prior to the gruesome murder of Alex. You would then expect that after the murder they would walk back their support or perhaps even admit they were wrong. Instead, over a year later they have only dug in their heels. In fact, they have actually created a documentary entitled “Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis?” where they claim that it wasn’t his mother who murdered him, but the medical community and of course the vaccines which made him sick in the first place. They strongly imply that the murder was regrettable yet understandable in the face of a medical community that refused to allow the mother to treat her child using only unproven alternative medicine. The fact that they find the tragic murder of an autistic child even remotely understandable and defend the murderer is ableism at its most extreme.
Anti-vaxxers don’t believe vaccines protect you against disease.
This point is one of the more controversial even within the anti-vaccine movement. Most of the leaders of the movement will say that they believe vaccines do prevent against diseases, though they will often then give reasons why vaccines aren’t actually very effective or no longer needed since the diseases they protect against are so rare. However, the anti-vaccine movement is rife with those who believe that the disease-preventing power of vaccines is a myth or conspiracy.
Just this month Melanie Mallon used Skepchick’s Bad Chart Thursday to feature and consequently destroy an article from VaccineImpact.com on how measles has magically been reduced to the low levels we have today with no help from the vaccine. Measles just naturally decided it didn’t really like humans as much as it used to and went away on its own. The fact that measles saw sharp decreases in the U.S. following the introduction of the measles vaccine is just coincidence. This argument, that vaccines are not at all effective, is a popular one among anti-vaxxers.
Anti-vaxxers subscribe to dangerous alternative medicine for treating the mentally ill.
As I mentioned earlier, many autism organizations are actually anti-vaccine organizations in disguise. As such, they often will promote various alternative medicine treatments for children with autism. Katie and Ashley from Mad Art Labwent to the anti-vaccine con AutismOne in 2012 and reported back that the con was a cornucopia of alternative medicine, with “biomedical treatments, like supplements, special diet items (gluten-free and casein-free, of course), and, oh yeah, hyperbaric oxygen chambers.”
Although some of these treatments may not be harmful, many of them require strict diets or expensive medication and therapies that have no evidence of effectiveness and may even cause harm. Anti-vaxxers also will often discourage traditional medical treatments in favor of alternatives and in some cases, the treatments they encourage are incredibly harmful. Dr. Mark Geier, who has a ton of support from the anti-vax movement had his medical license suspended in 2011 for chemically castrating autistic children. This wasn’t something he was doing unbeknownst to his anti-vax supporters. In fact, anti-vaxxers supported him and continue to support him in using chemical castration to “treat” autistic children. Since losing his medical license, they have treated him like a martyr.
Anti-vaxxers believe that the government is knowingly and purposefully poisoning children
I already mentioned a lot of conspiracy theories that anti-vaxxers believe, but one of the most prominent is that the government and pharmaceutical companies know vaccines are ineffective and highly dangerous but promote them via propaganda and pass laws mandating them for children going to public school in order to make all that sweet, sweet vaccine money.
There are two primary factors driving the spread of vaccine trafficking: high profits and low risk. Actually, since 1986, it’s no risk, with a captive and guaranteed market, mostly paid for by taxpayer dollars and cash-strapped parents. Like other prescription-drug trafficking, vaccine trafficking is a pharma-driven criminal industry that is based on the principle of “poison to profit”, with the goal being to ensure that every American is somewhere between sick and dead, for as long as possible. Every year, vaccine traffickers generate billions of dollars in profits by victimizing millions of people around the world, including here in the United States.
This type of extremist fear-mongering stating that the government and pharmaceutical companies are knowingly poisoning children is standard fare on anti-vaccine websites. The thing that’s always got me about this conspiracy is that if the government and pharmaceutical companies did come up with fake vaccines to make money, why would they inject children with poison? Why not inject them with saline instead or something else non-harmful? The only explanation is that anti-vaxxers believe that the government and pharmaceutical companies are cartoonish villains who poison children for fun.
Don’t worry though, the anti-vaxxers have a response to this. According to them, the reason the big pharma uses poison rather than placebo to sell their fake vaccines is because they are secretly eugenicists. Seriously.
I want to reiterate as I did at the start of this piece that these are not things that the average parent who is opting out of vaccines believe. These are the fringe extremists who produce literature vilifying vaccines, run anti-vaccine blogs, events and conferences, and promote laws making opting out of vaccines easier. Though they are small in number, they are almost exclusively holding up the entire myth of the dangerous vaccine that is creating fear and anxiety among parents and leading to lower vaccine rates and outbreaks of diseases like measles. They run organizations purporting to help families with autistic children while actually just using that as cover to lobby against vaccinations. I think it’s important to emphasize just how utterly ridiculous their true beliefs really are. They go way, way beyond just “vaccines cause autism” or “vaccines contain dangerous toxins” to levels that include vast conspiracy theories and ableism.
Special thanks to David Gorski who helped me track down many of the examples of the horrific things that anti-vaxxers have published.
Featured image is a tinted screen shot of the front page of Age of Autism.
It’s no secret that the queer and LGBT community often only speaks trans women of color’s names after our sisters are long gone. Often times, we know nothing about these women, holding them up as martyrs/symbols to fight for stronger hate crime legislation (although most TWoC murders are unsolved, from Marsha P. Johnson and Brandy Martell to Lorena Escalera) and gain empathy, resources and fundraising that’s funneled into the further mainstreaming of this movement.
When I walk into queer and gender studies spaces on campuses across the country, I’ve witnessed people theorize about these women’s lives. But we often know nothing about their lived experiences, about how these women survived and loved and gave and fought this racist, classist, misogynistic and femme-phobic world.
We need to begin giving these women the space and resources during their survival, during their active lives, to tell their stories, to share their insights, to speak up for themselves. Reading their names once a year is not enough.
I’ve been putting off writing about this for some time because I’ve been so sick, and I’ve been telling myself that my mental acuity will come back any day now, and bloody hell if I don’t want to be Witty, damn it. As the days creep on and my medical problems continue to cascade into a tangled heap that a naughty kitten would be proud of, there comes a time when you just have to suck it up and do your best.
Hospital Glam: many months ago a wonderful friend in my very close-knit support group started putting a name to something that I had naturally developed a habit of myself. That friend is karolynprg and you can see her very own hospitalglam blog.
As a retired professional photographer (and an on again/off again self portraiteur), it was natural for me to turn to a camera as I found myself spending more and more time in hospitals and doctors offices. Without knowing it I was taking back some of the autonomy that you lose very quickly as a patient.
It became a habit, something that I couldn’t resist… Finding a mirror or some other way to snap a quick selfie. This developed into dressing well; trying to have fashion sense again. As someone who has had many periods of debilitating illness, and varying degrees of disability throughout my life, plus a weight that has fluctuated 50lbs or more because of said illness, the clothes I wore often became last priority during these times. At other times, when I was feeling less sick or in pain*, I would pride myself on having a very particular aesthetic; I would find joy in trying to find a balance in all of my interests and reflecting that in my clothing. (*with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome you are never pain or symptom free, our normal is just less-so).
I don’t remember when the actual turning point was. Maybe it was after my 50th physiotherapy session and I was sick of being stuck at home the rest of the time and only ever leaving the house in workout clothing, that I started experimenting with said clothing to see if I could make it more ME (I am NOT an athletic gear type of person). No offence to those of you who love your yoga pants or your jogging bottoms, but it just doesn’t really fit into my self image of a dystopian, but feminine android, displaced from the future!
The change in myself and how I handled my medical appointments was apparent: I had so much more confidence and I no longer felt like it was fair or right for doctors or other medical professionals to treat me like a child; like a subordinate. It was around this time that I started to think more actively about healthcare. I no longer wanted to wallow in the fact that the modern healthcare system is cack-handedly retrofitted into a much older system where patients weren’t allowed any voice whatsoever; I wanted to do something about it.
The prospect of changing an enormous bureaucratic system from the point of view of the individual is impossible. But the whole point of self-advocacy is that despite this impossibility it is up to us to do it anyway. And the one thing that no one tells you is: you can only be an active participant in your own healthcare, and more importantly, an advocate for yourself, if you have enormous reserves of self confidence.
This is what Hospital Glam does for me. Historically I’ve had tremendously low self esteem. Yes, even for a dystopian android from the future this is possible! There’s nothing that depletes those already low reserves faster than when your body is ravaged by disease and you are forced to face a medical system that is wrought with even more prejudice than general society.
Karolyn has done some interviews recently and says many of her own very eloquent things about why she does Hospital Glam. Do a Google search and I’m sure the many articles will pop up! For me, at least, since Karolyn gave us the name, my own ritual has had even more purpose. It’s now an essential part of my hospital visits, medical tests and other healthcare appointments. I now try to err on the side of deliberate thought, framing and act of self portraiture rather than the quick selfie. In doing so, I consider my entire surroundings and how I fit within them. In this act I find my sense of space and ownership and autonomy. I gain the confidence to force my doctors to see me as more of an equal; as an intelligent adult that deserves their respect and compassion, even if I cry during our appointment. And despite my protests, I am in fact a human being after all… my self portraiture serves as a reminder to myself, as well as the world I choose to share it with afterwards.
This post has two aims: to tell show you a couple of my latest pieces and to let you know that I’m not a hypocrite–I stand by what I say, even when doing so makes me uncomfortable.
Weirdgirl
In my last post I asked if any of you liked problematic art/entertainment. Most of you said “yes.” One poster even mentioned my art and said s/he (I don’t like to assume gender based on names) found it problematic. Do I find my art problematic? No, not particularly, but you know what? Thinking my art is problematic is PERFECTLY VALID. It is not insane. It is not silly. It is perfectly reasonable. You know what else is valid and reasonable? Finding my art banal or bad or ugly or weird or creepy. (I mean for my art to be weird and creepy, not so much banal and bad.) It is also perfectly reasonable to scream “I HATE BSPENCER’S ART!” and to not buy my art because you find it crappy or problematic. (If you hate my art, please don’t tell me to my face. It’ll hurt my feelings and I’m already filled with self-loathing, so you’ll just be beating a dead horse and everyone knows that’s Erik’s beat.)
ANYWAY, IN SUMMATION: I HAVE NOT BEEN CENSORED. Please, everyone…I’m begging you: learn what “censorship” means.
"You know what I hate the most? I’m 13. I know exactly what’s happening with catcalling, and it’s happened before to me once or twice. I hate the most that my friends have no idea what catcalling even is, and I’ve had to explain it to them, and they still don’t get it. And, the first time men try and treat them like an object, I’m afraid they might actually be flattered because they don’t understand it."
Anonymous submission
"But What Was She Wearing?" is a project documenting what street harassment really looks like. Submit your own to stopthecatcall@gmail.com or via tumblr.
Yeah, yeah, Abraham Lincoln wasn't really thinking about immigrants from Mexico when he talked up the good of diversifying our population through an influx of newbies. But considering that whole freeing-the-slaves thing, there's a good chance he wouldn't have cared where the immigrants came from. In fact, regarding freeing slaves, during a speech in Chicago on July 10, 1858, he responded to his opponent for the Senate, Stephen Douglas, by kicking him in the taint with those long legs: "I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I did not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I need not have her for either, but, as, God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby." This is followed by some uncomfortable talk about mixed-race marriages, but at least Lincoln put himself and the "negro woman" on equal footing.
In that same speech, given as part of 4th of July celebrations, in a section that is often cited by conservatives for its affirmation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln lays down some logs of truth about the necessity of immigrants to the still-growing country:
"We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us.
"We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors—among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things.
"If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."
A little later, after saying that he disagreed with the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln added, "I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it, and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true let us tear it out! (The audience yelled, 'No') Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it, then." Lincoln believed, and he expressed it often, that you either mean "equal" or you don't and can go fuck yourself.
But the tall man with squeaky voice didn't just talk the talk. As president, he called on Congress to pass legislation to encourage immigration. When he was nominated for reelection in 1864, the Republican Party platform contained this resolution: "That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy." The act was passed, which allowed Lincoln to appoint a Commissioner of Immigration.
And in his final annual message to Congress, Lincoln wrote, "The act passed at the last session for the encouragement of immigration has so far as was possible been put into operation. It seems to need amendment which will enable the officers of the Government to prevent the practice of frauds against the immigrants while on their way and on their arrival in the ports, so as to secure them here a free choice of avocations and places of settlement. A liberal disposition toward this great national policy is manifested by most of the European States, and ought to be reciprocated on our part by giving the immigrants effective national protection. I regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war and its wastes of national strength and health. All that is necessary is to secure the flow of that stream in its present fullness, and to that end the Government must in every way make it manifest that it neither needs nor designs to impose involuntary military service upon those who come from other lands to cast their lot in our country."
Now, you can also argue that Lincoln was talking about legal immigration, but, actually, he was for creating a system to make immigration easier and to treat those who came here with dignity. Republicans, of course, won't talk about that Lincoln.
Reading is awesome, but we all have to put down our books from time to time in order to do other things. Bored Panda assembled an wonderful collection of creative bookmark designs that make saving your place an entertaining and aesthetically pleasing occurrence. Our favorites of the bunch are the wading Hippopotamus bookmark by Peleg Design [Buy on Amazon], the playful dust jacket + bookmark pairings by Moldovan designer Igor Udushlivy, green page markers that look like blade of grass growing up out of your book by Yuluriku, and Olena Mysnyk's delightfully macabre Wizard of Oz-inspired bookmark that looks like the legs of the Wicked Witch of the East sticking out between the pages.
Head over to Bored Panda for even more creative bookmark designs.
A “book picker” retrieving a volume from the shelves of the Harvard Depository in the “Cold Storage” documentary (all screenshots by the author for Hyperallergic)
Up on a hill in a guarded compound, not far from where Harvard University keeps its primate labs, a 127,000-square-foot structure holds the heart of the institution’s library. With its concrete exterior lined with utility tubes, the Harvard Depository may not look like much, but inside are “nine million items and counting,” as narrator Jeffrey Schnapp explains in the new short documentary “Cold Storage.”
Still from “Cold Storage” (click to enlarge)
Schnapp produced the film, which is hosted on an interactive website embedded with mapped features like soundscapes, with Matthew Battles. Both work at the Harvard metaLAB, where Schnapp is founder and director and Battles is senior researcher. They collaborated on the 2014 publication The Library Beyond the Book, and the film is a continuation of their focus on the future of the library. “Cold Storage” had its premiere this month in conjunction with the opening of Icons of Knowledge, an exhibition on the architecture and symbolism of national libraries, in the school’s Loeb Library.
Floor plan of the Harvard Depository
The Harvard Depository opened in 1986 and has expanded almost continuously since, with seven modules constructed and room for eight more. Even back in 1902, Harvard’s then president Charles William Eliot saw the need for an offsite storage facility, not “a crematorium for dead books, but only a receiving tomb.” As is the case with libraries everywhere, the amount of printed material produced and collected was far too cumbersome to keep on-site without creating Collyer brothers–level clutter. So now, about 25 miles from the Harvard campus, human “book pickers” rise on machine lifts among the 30-foot-high shelves to retrieve books and other media organized by size in acid-neutral boxes. These are then brought to the campus library about four times a day by truck.
In its 24 minutes, “Cold Storage” borrows from and responds to Alain Resnais’s 1956 Toute la mémoire du monde (All the World’s Memories), an expedition to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Over 50 years later, the modern library is much more about machine organization and retrieval, although human hands still manage each book request in the depository. However, as Matthew Sheehy, head of access services at Harvard Libraries, points out in the film, “because of the trend towards electronic books and electronic journals, the percentage of the collection that gets used is declining, but the collection continues to grow.” While library research might rely increasingly on digital platforms, these growing repositories of knowledge remain, climate-controlled and managed in colossal facilities, the real world of the online catalogue.
View the “Cold Storage” documentary and interactive site online.
![[photo of man grabbing a woman with his hand over her mouth and a distressed look on her face] “FORCED PENETRATION: I’m going to stick this in you. But it’s a vaccination, so shut the fuck up and enjoy it, bitch.”](http://skepchick.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/vaxasrape.png)
Super Opinionated.
