Trump Kills Dreams

Tuesday, September 5th, Donald Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, essentially murdering the dreams of approximately 800,000 children legally covered under this act. DACA allowed children of undocumented immigrants to live in the United States and essentially operate in between both statuses of documented and undocumented citizenship. With DACA, the children are able to grow in the United States, obtain legal documents such as driver’s licenses, and enroll in United States colleges. As the children also secured legally protected jobs, they were also required to pay income tax. During this time, the legally protected children were also able to have relatively adequate access to healthcare (in comparison to their undocumented parent counterparts). Now, with the repeal of DACA, the children are forced to live in the shadows again.

While it is true that the end of DACA hasn’t officially begun, Trump’s decision to endanger the existence of undocumented children here is literally killing the DREAMers. To a documented citizen, a trip to a health clinic or hospital is a human right, but to DREAMers, the same visit could mean deportation. One could say that legally, the DREAMers are still allowed to make those necessary trips to the doctor’s office, but the immigrants could pay a price that’s more than monetary value.

In “The Subject and Power”, Michael Foucalt writes about how surveillance is a tool of power and those who are subjected to it are forced to abide by the desires of those keeping watch. A day in the life of a DREAMer is a great example of this. The undocumented immigrants don’t know who’s watching and they don’t know when they’re being watched. Additionally, it is difficult for the undocumented children to trust any information or any institution because with a single misstep, the children who grew up in this country will be deported to a strange new country that they know very little about. When I think about how cautious the undocumented children have to be, I think about the word “Panopticon” a common example of which is found in prisons and has been integrated into society as a method of keeping discipline. For example, in the prison system, the people subjected to the power of surveillance (the prisoners) are forced to abide by the rules because they never know when the eyes are turned on them. The only people who break the rules are not seen because they spend their entire time in the shadows, somewhere where (they think) the surveillance can’t reach. Similarly, society functions civilly thanks to early propaganda slogans such as “Big Brother is Watching”. This catchphrase was meant to be used as a deterrence to any mal-intentioned citizens. Not only did it keep the citizens at bay, but it maintains the power structure that keeps the surveyors in the place of power and the surveyed being constantly maintained and suppressed under a watchful eye. Now, DREAMers are feeling the effects of the power, or rather suppression, of the Panopticon because in order to not be kicked out from the only country they’ve ever known, they must rely on trusting only the closest people and simply can’t afford the danger that going to a hospital would bring them. In the United States, health disparities already exist and plague our public healthcare system. Now think about what would happen if DACA were actually to be rescinded. For fear of losing the lives they have here, many immigrants who were once legally protected are no longer going to be able to access the human right that is basic healthcare. Donald’s refusal to accept the intersectionality of the situations of many of these DREAMers and insist that he is doing so is because “we are a nation of laws” is simply arrogant (Romo, 2017). His irresponsibility when it comes to protecting all people of America has failed in this regard which is why I see his cancellation of DACA as a social and ethical injustice to the people of the United States that came about because he is drunk on his own power.

 

Articles of Reference:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/daca-dreamers-immigration-program/index.html

http://americasvoice.org/tag/daca-stories/

http://americasvoice.org/blog/got-daca-wasnt-afraid-five-dreamers-share-daca-means/

http://www.npr.org/2017/09/05/546423550/trump-signals-end-to-daca-calls-on-congress-to-act

 

 

 

 

The Epistemology of Ignorance: Lena Dunham’s White Feminism

As we have all seen, Hollywood is experiencing the biggest whirlwind of all Hollywood scandals ever. That is also probably because Hollywood is experiencing its biggest scandal ever. From left and right, scoping all the way from Hollywood’s hot shots to its rookies, the silver screen scandal is turning into an painful sliver in the hands of many men who have been accused of sexual assault in Hollywood. Harvey Weinstein’s first accuser stepped forward and since then, 80 women alone have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, while many more have accused people both in and out of the  film industry. Women across the country and world are banding together — celebrities and athletes alike. Since the recent allegations, athletes have also felt the need to speak and take a stand against their attackers. Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney have both spoken up about Larry Nassar, the team doctor who is currently in custody for inappropriate “physical examinations” of the girls in his hotel room. For these two gymnasts, the assaults began at a young age and went on “for years” Aly’s attacks beginning when she was 16, and Makayla’s when she was just 13 years old (Park, 2017). Today, Aly Raisman is 23 years old and Makayla Maroney is 21. These two women have kept quiet about their assault for several years — nearly a decade in Makayla’s case. Unfortunately, the silence isn’t rare. Many women — especially in high profile environments — are afraid of backlash, safety threats, and unwelcome attention they will receive from finally naming their attacker, so many rape and sexual assault incidents go unreported. So, how does our lovely ‘Girls’ star Lena Dunham fit into all of this? Lena Dunham accused Aurora Perrineau, her colleague, of lying about the identity of Perrineau’s rapist, Murray Miller. Interestingly enough, Murray Miller also happens to be the writer for the very TV show that Lena Dunham stars in. Although Lena’s denial of a rape charge is problematic enough, she had to make this worse by posting her denial of her costar’s rape accusation along with a statement that read ‘I believe in a lot of things but the first tenet of my politics is to hold up the people who have held me up, who have filled my world with love’ (Perez, 2017). Soon after, Dunham received (accurate) backlash that she was more prejudicial than probative. Not only did she not know the full situation, she didn’t believe that her “white male friend raped her black female costar” (@kat_blaque). Twitter user @kat_blaque commented “color me shocked, almost like white feminism is really only about uplifting and supporting white women as they pursue their ultimate capitalistic goals of sharing the role with men as oppressors”. Honestly, @kat_blaque may have hit something major here. Lena Dunham — being a female celebrity supporting a male attacker especially when she does not know the full situation and can therefore have no legitimate input in this case — carries so much more weight especially with the recent Hollywood accusations. Since the fight for women’s respect in Hollywood has garnered so much attention recently, it’s even worse when a female celebrity (who already has enough attention) quite literally backstabs her colleague and fellow woman. This deals a serious blow to the fight for women against sexual assault in Hollywood and other industries. Rape charges are already hard to incriminate, and Lena Dunham and company (all those lovelies who decide to believe that rape charges aren’t believable) just made this a lot harder for sexually assaulted women to get the justice they deserve.

Part of the reason why the fight for women’s rights is so difficult to conquer is the stigma and dehumanization of women’s bodies that are so ingrained in society. According to Nancy Tuana’s “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistomology of Ignorance”, “bodies … have histories” (Tuana, 2004). It is the denial of this history that makes this so problematic. Recognition of the body  actually does a lot more than we think. It recognizes the body as an integral and necessary part of human life. This is the same for bodily autonomy. There is a clear divide between the recognition of male genitalia and female genitalia. “Both women and men alike typically know far more about the structures of the penis than they do about those of the clitoris” (Tuana, 2004). Herein lies a fundamental problem with the way we treat education and the distribution of knowledge about the female body and genitalia. The denial of education and therefore lack of knowledge in terms of the clitoris not only stigmatizes it, but also makes it secondary to the penis which people know much more about, making this almost like a high school popularity contest. However, this is much more sinister than a high school student government campaign. Tuana explains that while genitalia is one of the most stigmatized organs of the body, the recognition of a male’s genitals over a female’s serves as a barrier to the ultimate recognition of the woman’s body as equal to the man’s. Until very recently, “men’s bodies were believed to be the true form of human biology and the standard against which female structures … were to be compared” (Tuana, 2004). This image that women are deviation from the norm (if you will) is indicative of the fact that women’s rights begin with the recognition of their bodies, “bones, brains, and genitalia alike” (Tuana, 2004).

 

 

 

The fact that I, as someone who has lived with a clitoris for their entire life, do not know half of what is supposedly my anatomy that is labeled above is devastating. This highlights a bigger issue that we as a society aren’t setting up sex education correctly enough for our future generations to appropriately recognize female bodies and therefore recognize the history of the female body. Combine this with Lena Dunham’s blind loyalty to the writer who has ‘held [her] up’, and women of all color and creed will have a much more difficult time achieving justice for their attack (Perez, 2017). 80 women gathered courage to publicly name Harvey Weinstein as their attacker while hundreds others finally came into the light and announced theirs, and it only takes one Lena Dunham to bring the movement down.

 

Works Cited

http://www.newsweek.com/feminism-lena-dunham-defends-girls-writer-accused-rape-716043

http://time.com/5020885/aly-raisman-sexual-abuse-usa-gymnastics-doctor-larry-nassar/

Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance

Niche of Survival

To other countries, America may seem like the great melting pot of culture, ethnicity, race, etc — A country where everyone is given an equal opportunity to chase their dreams, and a country that treats everyone equally. The United States is famous for having some of the world’s best technology, food, pop culture, and sights. In fact, some of the world’s top doctors are known to be here in America… So, why don’t we also have the world’s best healthcare? Here’s the twist; Americans do get amazing healthcare. It provides the best services and the most immediate care when it is required. But of course, when I talk about “Americans” in this situation, I’m talking about the subpopulation of Americans who live in the top one percent or the upper middle class. While monetary value is a very important deciding factor when it comes to which type of healthcare an individual in America gets, what it ultimately comes down to is race.

The subpopulation and categorization of race leads to the subpopulation and categorization of class which then determines one’s accessibility to healthcare. So ultimately, for an individual to access the best healthcare, they need to fit every aspect of this “checklist” (if you will). The people with the privilege of access to healthcare all fall in a very specific, perfect societal niche. Most of these people are white and belong predominantly to the upper-class communities. Does this seem discriminatory? That’s because this blatant tool of racism is often times overshadowed and therefore overlooked as a byproduct of racism in the United States.

Essentially, health disparities work in the first place because accessibility is used as a weapon. The most important form(s) of healthcare, preventative healthcare (i.e. healthy foods, exercise rooms, clinics with qualified employees, and even schools with solid education) is made exclusively accessible to those in places of societal privilege – once again, it’s the perfect niche. This problem originally starts with the inaccessibility to preventative forms of healthcare for those people outside of this perfect niche. For example, the documentary we watched in class titled Unnatural Causes highlighted the concept of how race plays a crucial role in the development of one’s health over time and sets precedent for how an individual will be treated inside America’s discriminatory healthcare system. The documentary focused on one black lady who gave birth dangerously prematurely. While she was pregnant, she took good care of herself and the baby; she always the right food, never drank alcohol or smoked, and ate really healthily. However, because of all the stress factors she was going through not only at her job, but also in her everyday life as an oppressed person of color, her body was producing extra stress hormones which overwhelmed her body, increased her heartrate, and forced her baby out faster. This obviously led to health complications for the baby. Additionally, this mother had the money to access healthy foods that are sold for higher prices in today’s markets. However, some other people of color may not have access to the same healthy foods simply because they don’t have the money or time to go to high end grocery stores. People of color are born into a system that is essentially constructed by those in perceived power positions (i.e. rich, white, male, able-bodied, etc.) Therefore, they experience opportunities quite literally yanked out from under them all the while experiencing different stressors. So not only does this place people of color in lower economic classes, but it also provides them with constant stress. The two of these factors then work together to negatively impact the individual and push them further down into bad health. When I go to healthypeople.gov, I see a hopeful goal, but a supposedly short-term goal that was put in place nearly two decades ago. Here’s a timeline of the goal’s existence:

“In Healthy People 2000, it was to reduce health disparities among Americans. In Healthy People 2010, it was to eliminate, not just reduce, health disparities. In Healthy People 2020, that goal was expanded even further: to achieve health equity, eliminate disparities, and improve the health of all groups.”

While this goal is progressing and different things are being added onto it, we can all find one common phrase that is continuous through all three deadlines of the goal. That phrase is along the general lines of “eliminate [health] disparities”. This means that while health disparities were charted to be eliminated by 2010, it’s taking an additional decade to work on eliminating health disparities. The job of eliminating these disparities doesn’t fall on the oppressed or the people being oppressed by this discriminatory healthcare system. It doesn’t fall on them to prove that the system is inherently wrong. They are experiencing the injustice of the system, so they don’t need to prove anything. The job of eradication falls on the people of privilege and the people who have control over our healthcare system. Until they realize the rigged societal structure that has been built, there is no way that this goal will ever be accomplished. My only question is, can we realize this goal at 2020 and not have to once again rename the goal to something along the lines of Healthy People 2040?

Unnatural Causes, PBS

https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/foundation-health-measures/Disparities

 

 

 

 

The Ugly Exception

The Boston Marathon is a popular long distance running competition for all runner enthusiasts alike. As of 2017, the event hosted 30,074 runners, 55 wheelchair runners, 30 hand cyclists, and one bombing. To the world, this bombing was broadcast and will be forever known as a terrorist attack. The two men who set up the bombing plot ultimately killed three people, injured at least 264, and caused the amputation of 16 people’s limbs.  This past week, Steven Paddock, began a shooting spree directed towards concert-goers in Las Vegas, Nevada. He killed 59 people and injured 527 more. His attack was known as the worst mass shooting in United States history. However, the man who this infamous title belongs to was broadcast as “potentially mentally ill” with not even one reference to him being a “terrorist”. This blog post will essentially identify and attempt to address two questions. One, why was the Las Vegas shooter not publicized as — well, exactly what he is — a terrorist? And two, where exactly can we draw the line between mental illness and terrorism?

There is no mistaking why the white man gets away with what the brown men don’t. This is what Michael Foucault calls a “political exploitation of vague fears” (204). Islamphobia is what triggers many misconceptions about the religion and leads to stereotyping at the most unfortunate moments for people of the Islamic faith. Here’s how Islamophobia sets a dangerous precedent for hatred. In her book, The Rejected Body , Susan Wendell describes the act of facial scarring. While this is only a physical, skin deep disfigurement, most of society will treat the different face as something malignant and horrific while not even taking into account personality or otherwise. This social ostracizing is due to “stigma and cultural meanings” (45). Similarly, the infamous 9/11 terrorist attack facially scared Islam in the sense that Islamophobia took over the country. Since then, this irrational fear has directed all attention of any semblance of terrorism towards Islam and away from any other religion or race. In fact, the word “Jihad” in Islam means “to strive, to apply oneself, to struggle, to persevere”. However, the word here in America has become a symbol of terrorism. These misconceptions and scapegoating of Islam only leads to stigma and endless accusation for the religion and the people who practice it.

While mental illness and terrorism may appear to be at two different poles in terms of societal recognition, they are functionally relatively similar. First, let’s identify the differences between how exactly the two are recognized differently in society. While mental illness is seen as something that is out of someone’s scope of control, terrorism is seen as something that is tied to one’s personality. While it is true that with many crimes, the criminal decidedly attacked or perpetrated the crime, they are often mentally ill or suffer from early trauma in their life. This is why people who are released from psychiatric wards are not always as stigmatized as those who are released from prison wards. For another example, consider two people. Everyone knows person A takes medication for his mental illness. Everyone also knows that Person B wears a tracker on his ankle, issued by the state. Person B is decidedly more stigmatized and avoided than person A. It doesn’t matter if Person B has a mental illness (potentially even the same illness as person A) or not. Michael Foucault makes this same distinction in “Madness and Civilization”. He writes, “We leave it to medical archaeology to determine whether or not a man was sick, criminal, or insane” (65). Notice how Foucault separates sick, insane, and criminal from each other. This is interesting because Foucault is essentially separating the three when they often belong together. Foucault brings up another interesting point which is that we leave our diagnosis to “medical archaeology” to determine if the person is criminal or not. This supports my point that we often think the distinction between criminal and “respectful civilian”–so to speak–is black and white but mental health adds a whole new aspect of intersectionality to it.

It might not be wrong to say that Steven Paddock is mentally ill. But the caveat I find is that while the Boston Marathon bombers (who were Muslim) were quickly identified as terrorists, Steven Paddock is only given a less stigmatized term through society and is under investigation for possible mental illness. Is something missing here?

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/10/02/worst-mass-shootings-u-s-history/722254001/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-f-mcnamara/nine-common-misconception_b_8148946.html

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/03/us/boston-marathon-terror-attack-fast-facts/index.html

http://raceday.baa.org/statistics.html

Madness and Civilization, the Insane, The Great Fear: Michael Foucault

The Rejected Body: Susan Wendell

 

 

Playboy is Fucking America

For several decades, Hugh Hefner has been known to much of the western world as a man to be admired – a man who really knew what he wanted both in the public and private spheres of his life and went out to achieve that. To some others, he was a walking germ, a disgusting embodiment of a human being. As for me, I never really thought much of him until nearly every social media outlet started publishing articles after his death on September 27^th. This is when I saw exactly how most media glorified a man who objectified women all his life.

Allow me to elaborate: Hugh Hefner is nothing short of a pedophile fed by patriarchy and the poison of structural violence. In “An Anthropology of Structural Violence” Paul Farmer defines structural violence as a malicious tool of power that is “exerted systematically [or] indirectly—by everyone who belongs to a certain social order” (pg. 307). Structural violence in relevance to Hugh Hefner’s passing is seen a lot with how his death was reported. Many wrote of how they are saddened by the loss of a legend… I would rather say his passing was equivalent to the cleansing of a speck of dirt.

Harsh? Maybe. Sorry not sorry. I say this because after all his publicity in the past few days, I decided to look into exactly what his business is and what his life looked like. I saw pictures and heard stories that were almost too disturbing to read and/or look at.* One of the playmates (one of Hefner’s girls/bunnies) recounted what it was like to live in the mansion. In an interview, she recalls that while she had nothing more than approximately “15 minutes” of sexual interaction with Hugh Hefner, he still set a curfew for her and other playmates, didn’t allow them into the mansion’s kitchen, and essentially controlled every part of their lives–including requiring the playmates to live with him in the Playboy Mansion. Hugh Hefner was no stranger to scandals, at one point allegedly ‘conspiring’ with his friend, Bill Cosby, in the rape of another woman who lived in the mansion. Additionally, nude pictures of Brooke Shields, a former child prostitute for Playboy, were photographed with the consent of her mother while she was only thirteen years old and published. Embarrassed, Brooke Shields later attempted to take back these photos from publication albeit, unsuccessfully.

Even with all the trauma and hardships that other women and children have experienced with Hefner and his company, media platforms don’t hesitate to remember him kindly. They posthumously stroke Hefner’s ego while his son takes over a business founded on capitalistic greed and masturbation. Hugh Hefner objectified women and essentially dehumanized women by only seeing them as economic profit, but most media chose to remember him only for his booming economic success. This is how structural violence turned a pedophilic rapist who objectified and violated women’s human rights into a martyr of our time, an “entrepreneurial mastermind”, “cultural icon”, and “legend”.

 

References

http://www.rogerebert.com/chazs-blog/hugh-hefner-memories_of-a-legend

https://iconicphotos.org/tag/brooke-shields/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5972961/Bunny-Tales-Behind-Closed-Doors-at-the-Playboy-Mansion-by-Izabella-St-James-review.html

An Anthropology of Structural Violence, Paul Farmer

https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/bjvyvw/dont-mourn-for-hugh-hefner

 

*I considered accompanying this post with a really disturbing picture that I found of Brooke Shields who Playboy legally photographed naked at age 13, but I thought I’d spare you all the trauma. However, if you’re really curious, https://iconicphotos.org/tag/brooke-shields/