Kiera Wilmot was arrested April 22 for two felonies after school administrators reported she combined toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a bottle, and the resulting gas blew the cap off the plastic bottle.

She was quoted as saying “she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” Whether or not she meant to hurt anyone is clearly beside the point: she should have been given better stewardship. The school should more clearly outline the rules of experiments:

• Wear safety goggles
• Know where the eyewash station, the fire extinguishers, the first aid kits are.
• Never start an experiment without a clear hypothesis.

When I was in 9th grade I had a crotchety old science teacher for my mentor. He said “cool beans” a lot, a habit I picked up and used for years. I used to wear long sleeve shirts under short sleeve shirts and when the schools “Dress Like a Weirdo” day came around, he called it “Dress like Garland Grey day.” He made a science seem like an adventure.

I wasn’t always the hardest worker — homework was my Achilles’ heel — but when I failed his class he told me I could do a report on sheep to make it up. He was a sheep rancher and the topic interested him, and thats why I know so much about the subject today.

Science has been one of the most powerful forces for good in my life, but it can’t flourish if the education system isn’t nurturing girls like Kiera. We need to find a way to make education come alive for kids, otherwise we’ll never be able to compete in a global economy.

She was my Mee Mee, I thought cooking for her would be impossible. She was the best cook in the world; that’s a tough act to follow.

So I made her breakfast that first day. The eggs ran, the potatoes were unyielding. I put the plate in front of her expecting the worst  – “Here Mee Mee, have a disaster.”

And she didn’t hate it. So I got back on the horse and tried again. Each time I did I learned a something new. Now, cooking brown rice isn’t simple, but it is same basic process. The easiest way to cook brown rice is with a rice cooker. I know, a rice cooker is expensive, food deserts exist, access is important. If you cannot buy a rice cooker, here is the basic starter recipe:

• The ratio of water to rice is 1 cup rice to 1.5 cups water
• Set your burner to medium, get the water to a boil. Add the rice. Let it simmer for 20 minutes. Put a lid on off-kilter so the steam can vent.
• What you are looking for is the point when the rice looks like it has absorbed all the water and there are holes spaced evenly around the pot.

Once you have the basic recipe down, then you experiment. Some things are going to be yucky, some will be delicious. Adding a pat of butter at the end makes it taste like something you’d get at a restaurant. There. You know how to cook brown rice.

Now the media attention around Sandberg’s book has passed I have had time to reflect on my short statement about “capitalist feminism” and I realize I was wrong in my assessment. This is probably the reason why I am not keen on reactive critique (meaning, writing about a topic right in the middle of the polemic instead of waiting for my ideas to simmer so that I can better identify my discomforts). The realization about my wrong approach came to me earlier this morning when I was already trying to draft a post about this topic; it happened when I read Kelly Exeter’s post at Women’s Agenda “’Feminism’: Why it might be time for a rebrand”. Exeter’s premise is that feminism is failing to attract women into its core because the values of feminism are “ill defined”. In her piece, she praises Sandberg’s book and she then quotes blogger Cate Pearce as the kind of feminism that we should be striving for:

Blogger Cate Pearce thinks it’s time to re-claim the word ‘feminism’ and attach it to the concept of choice: “The key to feminism, for me, is equal choices. If a female chooses to wear a business suit and carry a laptop, good for her. If a female chooses to wear an apron and carry a Household Hints handbook, good for her. If a female chooses to wear black leather and carry a whip, good for her. As long as it is her own choice.”

This is the ethos behind Sandberg (and Anne Marie Slaughter’s “Having it all”) kind of feminism: women should be able to chose a career and have the very same options as men. Here’s where I was wrong: this is not merely capitalist feminism. This is a neoliberal, libertarian articulation of feminism. It was John Stuart Mill who stated “that no one should be forcibly prevented from acting in any way he chooses provided his acts are not invasive of the free acts of others“. Or, should I say, it was Stuart Mill who set the foundations of contemporary libertarian politics. This idea of personal freedom is then presented to us as “neutral and universal”. We all have the same choices (or so we are told). However, I want to challenge this idea of freedom just by bringing out the fact that slavery was abolished in the US only 148 years ago; in the colonial territories of The Netherlands, it was abolished 150 years ago; France abolished slavery in its former colony of Anjouan in 1899 (to give a perspective of how contemporary this event is, there is a man in Japan who was already alive when this abolition took place). So, our ideas of freedom are not only not universal but they haven’t been universally granted and, moreover, the choices available to us as a result of this freedom (or lack of it) are not universally equal either. These choices come with a heavy legacy of racial, class, ability and gender normativity histories, both personal and affecting our families, communities and heritages.

In The Handbook of Social Geography, edited by Susan Smith and others, Clive Barnett spells out some principles of neoliberalism that I believe are useful to situate my statements further, specifically, he states that “Neoliberalism brings off various changes in subjectivity by normalizing individualistic self-interest, entrepreneurial values, and consumerism”. This neoliberalism is then normalized and presented as “a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power”.

Sandberg, Slaughter, choices… etc. Or quoting Catlin Moran’s How to be a woman “if we have fabulous underwear we’ll be somehow above the terrifying statistic that only one percent of the world’s wealth is owned by women.” This is the credo: we want a bigger share of the capitalist pie. We need to correct the market.

The result of this constitution of neoliberal feminism as “the neutral” or the default, has also led to a sense of “amplified agency”. We are told to “maximize our freedom”, we should “brand ourselves better”, we should “choose our choices” and demand a better distribution of the resources. In the process, we are left with a feminism that imposes on us the moral task of maximizing our own value. [1] This is a feminism of the individual with an inflated sense of the self that is devoted to the creation and administration of individual business opportunities in detriment of systemic change or, at the very least, in detriment of an analytical approach that examines our individual relations as part of a whole and our interactions and participation in a system of inequalities we cannot escape.

This hegemonic model of feminism based on a hyper-focused sense of self renders any notions of sisterhood moot. If all that matters is personal advancement in a neoliberal, capitalist context, then what room is there for ideas of solidarity or mutual support? These ideas begin and end with “those like us”, which is to say, a feminism that will stand only for certain values, class, gender normativity, racial contexts and abilities. To demand inclusivity in a feminism based on a model of exclusion is to meet accusations of bullying. Helen Lewis [2], editor of The New Statesman, with her assertion that “There’s no point in your language being “correct”, if only 12 of your friends can understand it” triggered a series of posts attempting to respond whether intersectional feminists are bullies for “demanding inclusion”. According to Lewis, “sexist, racist, homophobic language is bad. But who decides that? The affected groups themselves?” Of course not, in this hegemonic version of individualistic neoliberal feminism, we should surrender ourselves to “the market” (i.e. the dominant discourse, represented by none other than Lewis herself, in charge of one of the most read publications in the English language). Why would we leave the decision of what is and isn’t offensive to “the affected groups”? What Lewis forgets is that as someone with editorial control in The New Statesman, her words are not just scribblings on the walls of some adolescent blog exploring politics and gender but the words of “the media”. When (neoliberal, capitalist) feminism demands that women are represented fairly in media, it is valued as “working towards gender equality”. When women that are excluded demand from the same media (and the people representing it) that we are included, we are either erased or labeled as bullies.

In instances of cultural hegemony a ruling class imposes their beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, etc so that these values and beliefs become the cultural norm. In this cultural hegemony that has become neoliberal feminism, there is no place for diversity of representation, diversity of models of organization or acceptance of difference. In order to belong, we should be in the business of maximizing our own value instead of “bullying for inclusion”. After all, if we just re-brand ourselves, the market should take care of the rest. This is what Lean and Mean feminism looks like.

1. With thanks to Professors Judith Butler and Engin Isin who posited some of these ideas last week in Amsterdam, not in regards to feminism but to neoliberalism in general, in turn helping me rethink my discomforts further.
2. Ms. Lewis most likely doesn’t remember me but, last year she dismissed me when I complained that her publication was quoting me without attribution. It seems that when a for profit publication deems something as “widely used” there is no need to have accountability or responsibility towards the women who created it, especially if said material was created specifically as part of an anti racist feminist praxis. And alas, in the next link I am also quoted as “example” of intersectional bullying, but it seems naming me is not warranted in any of these cases. I suppose this is what “erasure in the name of feminism” looks like.

She’s antiabortion, and a photographer. He thinks flag burning is more offensive than book burning, but he would never date a law enforcement officer. He says jealousy is healthy in relationships. He ‘don’t got good pix right now’ and he’s just here for some casual sex. She’s got a warm smile and says she’ll fill this out ‘real soon.’ He writes that he’s caretaking a friend’s pot farm, and oh, by the way, do you have a car? He’s very horny. Always. She likes salsa dance and karoake.

I don’t know why I feel myself compelled, pulled back to these tiny, carefully-structured narratives day after day, fascinated by them. They are little biographies of the ordinary and the hungry, people looking for something many of them will never find, because it exists only in their minds. Sometimes I think about messaging them.

‘Why are you okay with book burning?’ I want to ask. ‘Can you explain the logic behind thinking that a girl having sex with more than 100 people is not okay, but it’s fine if it’s a guy?’ ‘Why do you think there are circumstances in which someone would be obligated to have sex with you?’

My hand hovers over the keyboard, but I wisely move away.

II. History

I knew OKCupid way back when it was The Spark, which goes to tell you something, though I’m not sure what. That I’ve been on the Internet a while? That I belong in the Hipsters of OKCupid category because I knew it before it was cool? That I used to spend a lot of time wandering across Internet humour sites, looking for some kind of answer to questions I didn’t even know I had and couldn’t even really define? That I, like a lot of other people of a certain age, filled out a gazillion personality quizzes and shared them with my classmates in a pre-Facebook era?

I’m still in touch with people I met on the original OKCupid, under user names long-gone.

At one of their weddings, a friend asks how I got to know the groom.

‘We, uh, met on OKCupid,’ he says.

Everyone laughs, but they don’t really know the whole story.

III. Crafting

As a dating site, OKCupid has become a sort of cultural touchstone, complete with its own special algorithm competing with every other dating site out there, and of course its famous blog based on stats from real users. Want to figure out how to craft the perfect dating profile? See what kinds of people are hooking up on OKCupid? The blog lays it all out, complete with charts, graphs, and more.

In a way it’s a perfect distillation of those microcosms, aggregating them into some more functional compilation of data that makes them understandable. In another, it’s like a cheater’s guide to creating the profile you want, rather than the profile of who you are, how to curate your appearance to attract the ‘right kind’ of people. It reminds me of media management, the artfully-constructed profiles people create and maintain on social media to project a certain image, a particular ideal.

Yet, OKCupid allows for cracks in the facade. While people can painstakingly select the best photos and write up the best descriptions for their profiles, it’s in the lengthy interview questions that they slip up, revealing bits and pieces of their true selves, conveniently sortable by acceptability, compatibility, and type. An entire contact, a relationship that could have been, may hinge upon the answer to a single question, or on the clarification of that answer.

IV. Worst-of

This, then, turns OKCupid into kind of a game, a worst-of with sinister real-world consequences as people track down the most revolting questions and their answers; Nice Guys of OKCupid, hastily removed from the Internet after outcry, chronicled some of the more outrageous offenders, but it wasn’t the only one. Chasing the worst of the worst throughout the Internet becomes almost a sport, but one with serious consequences: look, here, this is what rape culture looks like, this is what nice guys look like, this is why society is so fucked up and bullshit, these people, right here.

There’s even a browser app that will helpfully flag OKCupid user accounts (thanks for the link, D) for you if they’ve answered questions in rapey ways. A user safety measure, but also a stunt, a commentary, an act of rebellion. These questions are there for precisely this purpose, in a way, to let you get to know people, to let you screen out the ones who answer questions in ways you find repugnant or threatening (‘Do you ever get violent when angry?’), but do they tell the whole story?

The media have the vapors over the Craigslist killer but the OKCupid questions and the furore over them, in a way, act to conceal the predators amongst us, the people lurking on the site who are more cool and calculated in the way they answer these questions. What rapist seeking contacts on an online dating site is going to list ‘rape’ among his hobbies? When online dating is all about crafting and presenting the best version of yourself, hoping to capture the interest of another user just long enough, how many of these questions are answered with authenticity?

While they may reveal the extent of casual rape culture in terms of the scope of men who feel quite comfortable answering ‘yes’ to rapey questions and other sexist entries (‘Do women have an obligation to shave their legs?’), at the same time, they conceal the depths of this culture; we are seeing the tip of the iceberg, and while it is covered in dirty snow, it is what lies beneath the waterline that I fear.

V. Rape culture

There’s a lot of talk about rape culture, what it is, how to stop it, where it comes from. Rape comes most commonly from the people we know and the people we trust, not the people we meet online, though obviously predators are using online dating sites, like OKCupid, to identify their targets. The attention to online dating in the context of rape culture and prevention, though, misses a larger picture.

We are both on and offline. There are no predator alerts for people in the environment around us, save deeply flawed sex offender registries. You are not required to register as a sex offender if you’re not convicted of a crime, and people don’t walk around with shimmering bubbles over their heads.

‘Warning, this man may want to rape you.’

For lack of such helpful measures, we are forced to assume that everyone is a potential rapist, a fact which seems to bother some people when they are confronted with it. Yes, this is what society is: a place where rapists do not wear warning labels, where for our own safety, we must assess every person for the potential for violence. Where we know, too, that speaking out could put us in danger of censure.

What the OKCupid questions highlight is not just the prevalence of potential rapists on online dating sites, but the fact that many of these people may be in your life, as well. You may be surprised and horrified by the number of people you know who would say they’ve coerced someone into sex or been coerced, but they won’t call it rape. They might call it bad sex, or a bad idea, but not rape. The repeat offenders among them won’t consider it a systemic problem, evidence of something deeper and more complex going on.

What do we talk about when we talk about rape culture? We talk about these overt expressions of sexism, about the treatment of women as objects to be used and discarded at will, but what about the covert? What about the silence? What about what lies behind bedroom doors and in backseats of cars? The overt may support the covert, but when the covert is never discussed, it is tacitly condoned.

The representations of sexuality we see around us don’t take us into that grey area, the murky waters that so many people inhabit or have inhabited. Rape culture is not just the comedian on stage in front of a large audience. It is also the woman sitting in her office right who wonders if her boyfriend will be forcing her to have sex tonight.

In a nutshell, the series tells listeners that the number of people on disability in the United States are skyrocketing, and that this is due to some sort of stealthy scheme to work the system.

And people on all sides of the political divide, but especially the right, are eating it up, despite the flood of stories attempting to counter the numerous factual, ethical, journalistic, and social problems with this story, how it’s reported, and how Chana Joffe-Walt chose to interpret the data available to her. It’s quite clear that she went looking for a particular story and conclusion, and she got exactly what she wanted. In the process, she contributed to familiar hateful rhetoric about disability in the United States, and what it means to be disabled. 

Scroungers. Sucking off the government teat. Fakers. Lazy. Slackers.

The fact: Yes, more people are on disability than ever before. That’s absolutely true, but there are a lot of reasons for that, and they aren’t as simplistic as what Joffe-Walt seems to want us to think. She suggests that states and low-income people are in collusion to get people enlisted on the disability rolls, that disabled people don’t work, that disability has essentially become a replacement for other benefits programmes, that changes in disability guidelines have resulted in more lax standards. While she doesn’t come out and say it, the subtext is crystal clear: There are fakers on the rolls.

But let’s take a look at some demographics here, because, as the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities point out in their response to the piece, demographics account for the changes in disability benefits enrollment, rather decisively. For starters, 20% of the US population is disabled, and an estimated 10% have ‘severe’ disabilities, like those that might make someone unable to work at all, or able to work only in a limited capacity. Given the overall distribution of people on disability benefits (less than 5% of the US population) in the US, it’s clear that there are some people who aren’t on the rolls who probably should be, rather than the other way around. That number is indeed shifting over time, but not for the reasons cited; it’s not that standards are relaxed and people are faking.

The boomer generation is aging, for one thing, which means more and more people are entering old age, and they’re starting to experience the disabling conditions that can come with aging for many older adults. Advances in medicine have also, of course, improved survival rates for older adults, which means more people are living after major medical events, and more people are requiring more advanced care. For younger disabled people, the same medical advances have improved lifespans and quality of life for people with conditions once deemed fatal at an early age; it’s a good thing that more people are living, and living well, not evidence of a bad thing.

And this is a country in the grip of an economic downturn. An analysis at the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes that, yes, the cost for Social Security Disability has in fact exploded, in correlation with the economy. Projections from the trustees’ reports also indicate that once the employment rate stabilizes, these rates should go back down. With a shrinking safety net, people are turning to whatever support they can find to survive.

People who would have otherwise been employed find themselves desperate for any means of support due to the inept economic policy that sank the economy. This is a simple explanation that doesn’t require examining the moral turpitude of beneficiaries or evidence of corrupt or negligent administrators. Fix the economy and you would remove much of the burden on the program.

Notably, this doesn’t mean the increasing rolls equate to a bunch of fakers. Disabled people work, and many (like myself) actually prefer to work; but when we’re squeezed out of jobs due to a poor economy and the pressure of employment discrimination (which employees do you think companies drop first?), we’re forced onto disability benefits if no other options are available. Which brings me to Disability Insurance (DI), another programme discussed in the report. One of the reasons claims on DI are rising? Because there are more women in the workforce, which, yes, means the pool of potential claimants is larger. Again, women in the work force is a good thing.

Furthermore, the distribution of disabled people in the US is actually quite variable, and dependent on a lot of factors. In rural communities, access to health care is limited, and people are more likely to acquire serious disabilities as a result of having to wait for treatment, having difficulty with access to preventative care, and working in potentially dangerous occupations like farming and logging. Meanwhile, industrial areas come with numerous dangerous jobs, along with pollution that exposes neighbouring communities to further dangers. It should come to no surprise to learn that these communities also tend to be low-income, and many of them are also heavily populated by people of colour.

Education also has a profound effect on whether people are able to work, and keep working, after disability. Those with higher levels of educational attainment can obtain desk jobs and other work that’s not as taxing, making it possible for them to work while disabled or to return to work after accidents and injuries. For those who haven’t graduated high school or who have barely achieved high school qualifications, though, the options are thinner; working with your body is often the only option, and it’s difficult to return to work on a factory line or in a harsh environment with back pain, joint damage, and other physical disabilities.

This makes it unsurprising that ‘one in four’ people in the single county Jaffe-Walt used as the basis for her story were on the rolls. In fact, I would have been more surprised if her results had come up with a substantially lower number; demographically, I would expect that number to pop up, because all the indicators for that region point towards a higher incidence of disability than the US average.

As John Bouman pointed out in his critique of the series: ‘Joffe-Walt never examines the issues through what should be an obvious lens — what if virtually all of the people receiving disability benefits are actually disabled or medically unable to work? The real problem is not why so many people get disability benefits, but why so many people are disabled.’

He cuts to the heart of the problem with a lot of assumptions in media about disability. The media assume that disability is exaggerated and people seize on excuses to lie back and enjoy the pleasures of government benefits, despite the fact that disability benefits create a state of enforced poverty, about which more in a moment, and that many people are denied repeatedly, and have trouble navigating the system on their own, making it functionally impossible to get the benefits they’re entitled to. The United States is facing a crisis of health care, especially when it comes to preventative care, early identification and treatment, and followthrough after major medical events.

It’s no wonder that this country has a high disability rate overall; and people should indeed be asking why this is instead of fingering disabled people as leeches on the system, draining benefits funds dry. Paralyzed Veterans of America noted that this report, like others on disabled people, also contributed to the significant stigma against people with non-evident disabilities, like mental health conditions, autoimmune disorders, cognitive and intellectual disabilities, brain injuries, and other disabilities that are not necessarily immediate recognisable to the untrained eye.

NPR’s logic on this issue dismisses the millions of Americans who may look healthy but have severe disabilities, including disabled veterans.

People with non-evident disabilities are accustomed to being mocked, belittled, and swept under the carpet by the media, but reports like these are a sharp reminder that the media are extremely uneducated when it comes to disability issues (Jaffe-Walt is not a disability expert, nor were any interviewed for this series), and has little interest in self-education. Consequently, harmful messages about the nature of non-evident disabilities are perpetuated in stories like these, leaving listeners, viewers, and readers with the perception that ‘disability’ fits within a very narrow and easily-understood definition, and everyone else must be faking for those sweet benefits.

About which. It’s extremely difficult to get disability benefits in the United States (many people need the assistance of an attorney), and when you do get them, there are significant restrictions on your way of life. Typically work can force you to be dropped from benefits (if you make more than a certain amount, for example), and the amount of the payments doesn’t keep pace with the cost of living; a $700 monthly check is hardly princely. Disabled people can struggle to stay alive in an expensive world while the government denies claims for things needed for basic quality of life; the structure of the disability benefits systems in the United States tends to keep people trapped in their homes, prefers institutionalisation over community-based living (even though community-based living is actually less expensive), and further marginalises disabled people.

This is not a lifestyle choice. It’s something you do because you have no other options. And, contrary to Jaffe-Walt’s claims, 21% of disabled people in the US, including people receiving benefits, work. That number could be a lot higher without rampant disability discrimination making it difficult to find and keep work.

This was brought up in sharp criticisms of the story after Ira Glass hotly defended the fact checking. Shawn Fremstad pointed out that fundamental journalistic errors in the piece were not only factually incorrect, but also socially irresponsible because of the messages they conveyed. Depicting disabled people as unemployed scroungers, for example, and radically misreading statistical analysis, resulted in a very negatively skewed picture of disability. Hannah Groch-Begley at Media Matters for America also took a close look at the story, debunking the section on children and disability.

The reporting in that segment was actually bitterly reminiscent of an absolutely horrific Nicholas Kristof column that ran in the New York Times last year, portraying parents in one of the poorest and hardest-hit regions of the country as monsters exploiting their children for disability benefits. In addition to being riddled with errors, the piece also sent some extremely dangerous messages about disability benefits for children (something which, incidentally, play a major role in pulling US children out of poverty).

After the tide of negative commentary about the piece, including detailed debunking of the errors, one by one, while Ira Glass continued to stand proud behind his fact checking, NPR actually stealthily revised sections of the story. This certainly speaks to an admission of wrongdoing, although the minimal publicity around the changes shows that NPR had no interest in publicly apologising for the harm done by the bad journalism. While the changes might look minor, and NPR claims they were made ‘for clarity,’ they’re actually major, and they significantly change the style and tone of the piece.

There’s a big difference between ‘People on federal disability do not work’ and ‘The vast majority of people receiving federal disability benefits do not work’ (gee, maybe because…they’re disabled?), for example. These subtle and important distinctions shift the presentation of the story dramatically, and definitely undermine the scaremongering Jaffe-Walt was going for in the original script.

This is the state of disability journalism in the US. Harmful, error-riddled stories that propagate false mythologies about disability, don’t acknowledge the complexity of disability, fail to account for the multitude of factors involved, and don’t consult a single disability expert. This is lazy, bad journalism and I would expect better of a national-level organisation that happens to be highly renowned for the quality, breadth, and detail of its coverage. The fact that right-wing media are jumping on this report and heaping it with praise is an indicator of how skewed and dangerous it is: it provides an ideal argument for dismantling the social safety net, and no actual information about disability in the United States and the health and disability crisis that is gripping this country.

Which is a pity, because we could use some good, solid disability journalism right about now.

Shame on you, NPR.

getting underneath me

All I dream of lately

is how to get you underneath me

Tegan & Sara, “Closer”

This could be any love song, but it’s our love song.

Tegan and Sara, “Closer” (lyrics in video)

How does that happen?  How does any product of a mass culture begin to feel private and intimate, the exclusive property of lovers?  Where does the “ourness” come from?

 Sara Ahmed in The Cultural Politics of Emotions talks about how emotions flow, they circulate, moving between people and the objects we invest with emotional resonance.  She says that sometimes emotions “stick” to certain objects, like the nation, like whiteness and straightness, like bodies, places, texts.  And yes, like a song.

So why this song?

It came out in November, when we began our relationship, accompanied us in the car as we drove around the city in the hot summer heat.  Sticking to us like sweat.

Two feminists, female artists? Check. Lesbian relationship, lesbian artists? Check. Electropop loving nerd, sudden artist turn towards electro pop? Check.  Seems obvious why.

Sometimes pop music translates the highly specific into the universal, as when Morrissey took his queer teen years on The Smith’s “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” and made it ambiguous enough for it to feel like the specific angst of almost every teen of a certain time period in the UK.

But as often as that, pop music’s sloganeering, its broad universal statements, feel like they encapsulate something private, something specific to the listener.

I can’t tell if “Closer” is one or the other for us; there is something elusive, still, a je nais se quoi lurking in its dreamy 80s new wave chords.

It’s that couplet, that I tweeted to you, that you sing to me as we dance in the kitchen, that I whisper as you lay down on our bed.  Dissect it like a kabbalist, each syllable fraught with meaning.  Lately.  Underneath me.

The baroque swirl of that chorus:

It’s not just all physical,

I’m the type who won’t get oh so critical

so let’s make things physical

I won’t treat you like you’re oh so typical

It’s not all physical, so let’s make things physical.  For it to be all physical would mean there was nothing else but the sex.  Nothing wrong with that, but that’s not what this is.

The philosopher Alain Badiou in In Praise of Love says that:

Love proves itself by permeating desire.  The ritual of bodies is then the material expression of the word, it communicates the idea that the promise to re-invent life will be fulfilled, initially in terms of the body.  But even in their wildest delirium, lovers know that love is there, like their bodies’ guardian angel, when they wake up in the morning, when peace descends over the proof that their bodies have grasped that love has been declared.

Here Badiou is talking about love as an event, one which changes (or promises to change) the co-ordinates of a life, and one which is founded initially between bodies.  Your skin against mine. Here comes the rush before we touch…

Badiou imagines the euphoria of new love, new desire, as a promise.  Here come the dreams of you and me, here come the dreams.

We need dreams just as surely as we need material sustenance.  There’s a reason why the American Dream keeps recurring as an idea, why “Hope” was the slogan that elected the first black president in the United States.  We need to dream, at every level from micro to macro.  As feminists we dream of a better world, contemplating the changing of the inequalities of everything from who does the dishes to who runs the world.

Feminists have always known what goes on in bedrooms is political, that what happens when lovers dream together is political.  Ahmed talks about the dreams of heteronormativity, of how when we call children “a little [parent]” what we express is our wish for a heterosexual future, a child that mirrors their parents’ lives.

But it need not be so.  We can dream for ourselves, dream of something better than the political status quo.  We can dream of different family, a more equitable and fulfilling distribution of power and responsibility.  New and beautiful dreams of a better world.

But that is for later, for when we have begun to build something together that looks to the future.  First, first, I need you, your skin against mine, your body underneath mine and mine underneath yours, a dance, a song, a line.

All I want to know is, can you come a little closer?

It so happens that said penis is also attached to a human being: a cisgender, white, heterosexual, conventionally handsome, successful man. Namely, the penis belongs to Jon Hamm. And Jon Hamm is not happy with all the attention his genitalia is getting. Anna Klassen, at the Daily Beast, reports:

Jon Hamm would like you to focus on his face please and stop thinking those dirty thoughts. In a Rolling Stone interview posted online Wednesday, the actor asked everyone please to stop talking about his penis. A New York Daily News report claimed that the producers of Mad Men asked Hamm to start wearing underwear because his “impressive anatomy is so distracting” in the season’s tight pants. Hamm acknowledged that “most” of the comments about his package are “tongue-in-cheek,” but called them “a little rude.” “But when people feel the freedom to create Tumblr accounts about my cock, I feel that wasn’t part of the deal … but whatever.”

And on the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, Amberly Mcateer, writes:

But here’s the thing: When asked for comment, Hamm’s rep asked the Post to “take the high road,” adding that the non-story is “ridiculous and not really funny at all.”

And perhaps most disturbing? The ridiculous objectification of a serious actor’s genitalia. Sure, there’s no denying the carnal appeal of a dark, rugged man in a skinny tie – and sure, every single time Hamm is ever on my TV screen, I lose my breath.

and:

Imagine the gender reversal. If some magical mystery source said, “Christina Hendricks was asked to wear a girdle for her overwhelming vagina presence.” Baffling, idiotic, and incredibly misogynistic – right? No newspaper would go near it. […] Have we stepped back in time, reverting to the 1960s era, with a bizarro gender twist? Wherein instead of treating women like meat (a la Mad Men), we’re treating the show’s lead male role as, um, ham?

Sorry but I cannot imagine this utopian “gender reversal” because this request would imply that the gender reversal is not the norm, the accepted convention, the way women’s bodies are treated and have been treated for the entirety of recorded Western history (and no, this is not universal; the objectification of women’s bodies is not the same across the world historically, but more of a legacy of Western civilizations; for other legacies/ narratives/ views of female sexuality, see, for instance, the Andean festivities of Pachamama). So, the cult of Jon Hamm’s penis is not unacceptable because if the roles were reversed gender wise, it’d be unacceptable. It’s unacceptable because it perpetuates the desirability of penis as a white, heterocentric, heteronormative instrument of satisfying women’s sexuality.

The cult of Jon Hamm’s penis does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a historical context where penis jokes are OK while Anne Hathaway’s flashing incident is commented with horror, shocked bloggers pointing fingers at her faux pas, her “decency” called into question. The cult of this specific white, cisgender, heterosexual penis, also happens to exist in the same context where a Black woman resisting penis jokes can not only lose her job but also receive gruesome rape and death threats. The mere resistance to the outspoken presence of penis is met with extreme disciplining and grave danger for one’s life. The cult of Jon Hamm’s penis exists in a context where “corrective rape” is still systematically applied because “penis is supposed to cure women’s rebelliousness”. This cult exists in the same context where comments such as this, are the norm:

I used to think I was a feminist, I was always ranting and raving but it turns out I was just cranky from lack of good dick.

or

all you need is to be spermjacked a few times

The cult of Jon Hamm’s penis also forces us to look at the way that non White penises have been historically depicted, as threats, as the very root of white panic. In Sex, Drugs and race-to-castrate, Marques P. Richeson writes:

As the rightful “owners” of white women, white men ascertained a need to protect white women from savage and rapacious black men who would attempt to “steal” them. Earl Hutchinson, author of The Assassination of the Black Male Image, defined the “Big Black Scare” as the societal perception of a widespread black male conspiracy to acquire land, power, and white women. This fear was, in part, reinforced by the purported sexual prowess of black men – the Mandingo Theory.

In 1944, in Sex and Race, Henry Havelock Ellis, a sexual psychologist, noted:

I am informed that the sexual power of Negroes are the cause of the favor with which they are viewed by some white women of strong sexual passions in America and by many prostitutes. At one time there was a special house in New York City to which white women resorted for these “buck lovers.” The women came heavily veiled and would inspect the penises of the men before making the selection.

When I have written about the penis centric nature of so much of our media (even porn and erotica), I’ve been told to shut up with statements such as “BUT I LIKE PENIS!”. I won’t argue with that. However, it should be noted that such statements and preferences, the worship like elevation of penis (attached to a cisgender, white man, that is) as the only way to achieve sexual satisfaction for women has been peddled, for centuries, as the only way to exercise one’s sexuality. These ideas being at the very root of compulsory heterosexuality, with severe punishments for those that deviated. Just like nothing in our lives is devoid of context, neither is desire. So while it is true, some heterosexual women might like cisgender, heterosexual penis, I have to wonder how we would feel about food if the only thing on our plates, for the entirety of our lives and for the entirety of recorded history, had been spam with potatoes. The problem is not that we like penis, the problem is that in women’s metaphorical food plate of sexuality, penis has been the only available dish, the only dish it has been historically acceptable to eat at all.

When less than 100 years ago, women could be committed to psychiatric institutions and subjected to cruel medical practices for merely rejecting penis, for being “hysterical”, we are not exactly being revolutionary when we gaze at Jon Hamm’s penis. We are simply acknowledging the extent of patriarchy approved desire and, unintendedly , perpetuating said patriarchy by “choosing” to love penis rather than understanding how yes, we might love penis, but perhaps, we also love penis because it’s been sold to us as the only acceptable way to achieve orgasm.

EDIT: As it’s been noted, the two comments above come from ShitRedditSays. Sorry for the confusion, it wasn’t meant to imply that the editors condoned or supported the comments in question which were included for illustration purposes only.

“It is completely irrational,” says Pierre Desrochers, who teaches food-policy courses at the University of Toronto, when I phone to ask him about the origins of culinary taboos. Prof. Desrochers grew up eating horse in Quebec, and it was quite nice. “What’s the difference between a horse and a goat?”

Europeans commenting on internet sites (from Gawker to local news sources) are similarly nonplused, their responses best summed as “who cares? horse is delicious anyway! I eat horse” etc

The issue, however, isn’t about “enjoying” horse meat or merely about being fed a type of meat without one’s knowledge. This is also about food sovereignty and our right to decide for ourselves and our families what we consume. This is, undisputedly, a feminist issue.

Women are disproportionately in charge of food preparations, food production, nutrition and planning of meals for their families. “Feeding” is still coded as a woman’s task, even in Europe, where gender equality is pretty much at the forefront of political agendas (though certainly not achieved by a long shot). Child care and child nutrition are still very much a feminized realm, with most women bearing the grunt of their children’s (and pretty much their entire household’s) nutrition. Women are disproportionately affected when corporations deceive consumers, removing their autonomy while treating a basic human right (access to food) as a second thought. Even more so, when the people buying the contaminated pre-prepared meals are working class women who juggle home care and work. This is when food sovereignty becomes a working class women issue, a matter of gender and politics.

A brief (and incomplete) timeline of the food production scandal in Europe so far:

• It started on January 15th, when the Irish food authority found horse DNA in beef burgers
• On January 17th, retailer Makro found horse (check the impressive list of affected products)
• January 19th: Asda, Sainsbury, Lidl, Coop: horse, horse galore
• On January 24th, Burger King UK reveals that on the tested beef burgers, at least 29% was horse meat (and they promise to drop the supplier)
• On the first week of February, Swedish retailer Findus recalls products from their shelves because horse meat was found in their lasagna.

Lest anyone thinks dodgy food scandals are somewhat rare in Sweden:

• in the beginning of January, right before the horse debacle started, it was reported that Swedes had eaten 70 tons of “fake beef” in the previous year
• in October 2012 it was reported that “dyed pork” was being sold as cow beef
• in June 2012, it was reported that “19-year-old rotten meat sold in Swedish shops” (TL;DR version: Canned meat from 1993 has been relabeled and resold in Swedish shops despite being rotten and severely lacking in nutritional value, according to a report in newspaper Svenska Dagbladet)

But back to 2013, our very own “Equine Year”,

• on February 7th, the British Foods Standards Agency announced that they had found horse meat in lasagna produced by Findus
• On February 7th, German supermarket chain Aldi recalled their lasagna and spaghetti bolognese because, you guessed it, they were made with horse meat
• February 10th, you thought being fed horse was bad? LOL we lied, it wasn’t horse, it was actually donkey.
• On February 11th, supermarket chain Tesco recalled several meals from their shelves because… HORSE MEAT
• On February 13th, ‘Pork’ meatballs withdrawn by Waitrose made in Glasgow factory
• On February 13th, a key figure in the adulteration of beef is named: Jan Fasen, who had already been sentenced to jail in January 2012 for selling horse meat as “halal beef” to Islamic shops in The Netherlands
• February 14th, France, Horse, etc…
• More February: all those boxes of beef lasagna bolognese? 100% horse, 0% beef 
• February 14th, largest Dutch supermarket chain, Albert Heijn, withdraws horse lasagna.  Also, Plus Supermarket chain
• February 15th Amsterdam steakhouse boss admits selling horse (when his menu stated he was selling beef and charging accordingly) for 63 years. Simultaneously, the most popular restaurant review site in The Netherlands, Iens, removes all criticism of the steakhouse’s deception, raising questions of corporate complicity in the widespread food fraud.
• February 19th, Nestle recalls pasta from Spanish and Italian supermarkets due to more horse meat
• February 25th, Ikea Recalls Meatballs in 23 European Countries After Detection of Horse Meat (and on March 5th, this “You thought the horse meatballs were bad… Ikea withdraws cakes over ‘faecal matter’)
• On February 28th, in a “surprising twist in the horse meat scandal”, Iceland’s meat pies are found to contain… no meat at all.
• On March 8th, a journalist uncovers more food fraud: Meat returned with green mould is cleaned, dried and resold in a Polish plant to make sausages and ham then exported to UK, Ireland, Germany and Lithuania. Also, horse meat

Bonus not horse related, on February 25th: those organic, free range eggs? Neither organic, nor free range, just your run of the mill “chixploitation”

Overwhelmed? You should be, because food is something that affects us all. We have a right to make informed choices in what we eat and what we feed our families. Those choices should not be left in the hands of corrupt businesses that feed us “soylenthorse” to increase their profits at the expense of our autonomy.

Meanwhile, the response from European authorities has ranged from outrage to downright disdain for consumers. David Heath, the UK’s Minister of State for Agriculture and Food advised people not to throw away frozen meat products in the wake of further revelations in the scandal. He also insisted consumers should carry on eating meat unless told otherwise. British Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said he would eat withdrawn meat products because “they pose no threat to human health“.

Two German politicians have proposed that horse meat products pulled from grocery store shelves due to false branding should be redistributed to the poor. Deutsche Welle reports:

Hartwig Fischer, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, made his point on Saturday to the daily Bild newspaper, saying he believed the horsemeat products should not be thrown away. He went so far as to be photographed and videoed eating a horsemeat lasagna by the newspaper. “This is good. I cannot tell the difference from other lasagnas,” Fischer said. [He] has suggested that the products screened and found to contain horsemeat be provided to aid organizations rather than destroyed.

German Development Minister Dirk Niebel chimed in to support Fischer’s proposal, pointing to the practicality of using the mislabeled products to help the needy. “More than 800 million people in the world are starving. Even in Germany, there are unfortunately people who are financially strapped, even for food … I think we cannot throw away good food here in Germany,” said Niebel.

(Incidentally, one third of American respondents to a survey suggested giving the horse meat to the poor as well)

For some politicians and many in the general public alike, in this brave new world, if you are poor, you should be stripped of your food consumption agency and fed the discarded products of dishonest corporations. We often speak of “choice” within feminism but what choice is left when you are hungry and politicians, the people who are supposed to have society’s best interests in mind, think the alternative to going hungry is to be fed foodstuffs deemed “unfit for human consumption”?

We, as consumers, are being alienated from our nutrition and that of our families. This isn’t about one’s preference for a certain type of meat. This is about being denied the legal protections of food safety. So far, the agencies and ministries in charge of this overview have failed us. I don’t know what’s next but of this I am certain: something is rotten in the European Union.

I take a breath and I type.

I was once an illegal alien in The Netherlands. I was once pregnant. I was once reported to immigration services by a Dutch woman who knew I was both illegal and pregnant. I was once detained. I was once denied medical care while in a deportation center. I was once deported. I had a miscarriage (the baby was dead, I had a botched clean up procedure in an understaffed and badly maintained hospital in a suburb of Buenos Aires). I am now sterile.

That was fifteen years ago and this is now.

There, I typed it. That’s my story in a nutshell. And it’s the most difficult thing I ever typed in my life.

That was fifteen years ago and now I sit comfortably in my home in Amsterdam. I am no longer illegal. In fact, I haven’t been for over a decade. I hate the word illegal when applied to human beings. Yet, it’s a word that defines me. My incapability to bear children is illegal. It was brought upon me by the State. Illegal immigrant, illegal mother, illegal woman, illegal alien (I think of the alien abduction stories and ugly laugh, still, fifteen years later I sometimes cannot sleep when I get flashbacks of being taken away/ abducted by the State from my home, the home I shared with my then boyfriend, too poor to even consider applying for a residence card we could neither afford nor fit in the requierements that the State demanded, which have only gotten worse throughout the years; – European poverty, lest anyone thinks I am misrepresenting my poverty which was very different from my poverty “back home” that elicits oohs and aahs of sympathy from Westerners).

It is now October 2012. I sit in a waiting room surrounded by strangers at a fertility treatment center in Spain. My husband wanted to give me this. He thought it would help heal me. It would heal us. I could have a second chance. I would never have the baby that died while I was held in detention, (I knew it was a girl) but at least I would have a chance. Yeah, irrational, I know, but my life has been one hoop of irrationality after another so I am done giving fucks about that one little detail of knowing I was going to have a girl. I had named her. When I started bleeding I begged. I cried. I asked. I told the guards at the detention center I was pregnant. They said it was not important because I was going to be deported anyway. I was left to bleed and cry. And I sat in that waiting room at the fertility treatment center, terrified, the flashbacks coming at me, the lights in the detention cell on 24/7. I have read so much about detention of undocumented immigrants and no reports mention this detail. The fluorescent tubes always on. (I begged them to turn them off because I couldn’t sleep; I insisted I was pregnant; it didn’t matter, I was going to be deported anyway).

Later on, I lay down in the gynecological chair. A polished and friendly-professional doctor (in the way well paid professionals can be friendly to their customers) prods inside my vagina with “stuff”. An ultrasound wand, some instruments, more “stuff”. It’s cold. I am in pain. I have flashbacks of the botched surgery that possibly rendered me sterile. (Some stranger coming into the examination room while I was laying with another ultrasound wand inside my vagina; staring at a dead fetus/ baby in a screen; the stranger staring at my genitals, he was, apparently, in the wrong room; nobody thought to apologize). But that was then and this is now. Now I am in a shiny and friendly room with a shiny and friendly doctor and his nurses. They tell me how they remove the eggs, how they (scrap/ scrap/ scrap/ screech) check for “stuff” in my uterus. I am in a haze. It hurts. I lie, say it doesn’t. I doubt they can actually stop the kind of hurt I feel. “You can afford this now”, I tell myself, “now you pay thousands to try to fix what was broken”.

I have the list in my phone. I can access it anytime I need a reminder of who I am. Almost seventeen thousand dead in European detention centers since the mid 90’s. I have always added my own dead to the list. My dead wasn’t counted because it wasn’t official. I had never reported it to the NGO that keeps track of the corpses. And yet, since the day that I knew I was carrying a dead baby (an illegal immigrant dead baby), I have done nothing but honor her memory.

It is now November 2012. I am pumped full of hormones. For fifteen years I have struggled with flashbacks and memories but now I feel overwhelmed. I start to have suicide ideations. I want to cut myself and I don’t even know why. I tell myself repeatedly “You brought this upon yourself, you were an illegal immigrant, you broke the law, you had it coming”. It’s like every internet comment in stories about undocumented immigrants is now coming at me, alive, to remind me of my poor life choices. Every day, for ten days, my husband gives me a shot on my belly. Pump the hormones, the paradox of wanting to bring life into the world is that I want to kill myself as an unintended consequence of the medicine that is supposed to heal my sterility. I look at myself in the mirror, naked. I hate everything about my body. Crying in front of the mirror, I tell myself “this is what a broken person looks like”. I have never been pretty (not in the Western sense of beauty ideals) but I have never felt uglier. Every day, twelve pills with more hormones that will remind me that I am worthless. I couldn’t fulfill the very basic thing I was biologically designed to do, carry a child.

It is now mid november 2012. My husband jerks off in a sterile cup. I am not allowed to go into the room with him. Afterwards I ask him “did you remember that you love me?”. I don’t tell him this but I want to think that our fetus should know it is loved. I remember every trite self help advice “you can only love others if you love yourself first”. I sneer. That has to be one of the most inane legacies of the Judeo Christian tradition. I am very well capable of loving others in spite of the fact that I hate myself.

We picked this fertility treatment center because they speak my language. My husband somewhat anticipated this would be a “bumpy ride” and he wanted to make it slightly easier for me. We are not eligible for fertility treatments back home because our insurance doesn’t cover them. I am reminded of everything written in feminist blogs about reproductive justice. I am reminded that fertility treatments remain prohibitively expensive for the majority of people. “Only the rich can afford them to be able to reproduce, but Western feminism will only focus on the fact that the poor should always have access to abortions”, I tell myself and promise that I will write about it later, when I can have words back again. I struggle with yet another paradox, and realize how strange and uncommon this is: once an undocumented immigrant rendered sterile now wealthy enough to pay thousands to try to fix what was broken. The list, I tell myself, the list with the names of everyone who never stood a chance. My name should have been in it (and I have dreams of drowning and suffocating and my cat fights snakes in my dreams while I stand helpless and unable to do anything, is it the hormones or am I effectively crazy?).

I am often accused of being “resentful” or “racist against white people” or “irrationally angry”. I pity those who have never experienced the pain of having the thing they wanted most taken away while they are capable of calling someone “resentful”. My husband often tells me “but they don’t know what drives you”. I contend that even if they knew, they would still demand more proof, more suffering, more pain in order to believe. And that’s the reason I never spoke publicly about my past an an undocumented immigrant before. I always thought some people would try and use it against me to invalidate everything I stand for. “oh, but you are emotionally involved!” “you cannot possibly be objective about it” “you are too subjective about this to have an impartial opinion”. So, I remained silent in spite of the fact that I wholeheartedly believe that the personal is indeed political. I didn’t speak because I was afraid to victimize myself and, in the process, render everything I write about European Union policies suspect. I was also ashamed. Undocumented immigrants are “the scourge of society”, “they broke the law”, “they are illegal”. But since I haven’t been able to write anything for the past four months anyway, I have nothing to lose. Now it’s time for this story, my story to come to light. I might not be impartial or objective or “uncompromised” but neither is a State that renders people sterile because of immigration status or a State that sees fit to allow seventeen thousand people to die for having the nerve to immigrate without the correct paperwork.

It is now end November 2012. I get a phone call from the fertility treatment center. They have three zygotes for me (for us). I need to be in Spain next week to have them implanted. I am filled with a sense of dread. They are only going to implant one and freeze the other two. I fantasize about babies and baby clothes and a future. I am bloated and fatter than I already was because of the pills and the shots and the pessaries I need to insert everyday into my vagina. For the first time in my life, I hate my vagina. Not that I am inconvenienced by it or bothered or annoyed. No, I legitimately hate it. It is a symbolic representation of everything that is wrong with me. I am a woman with a dry and useless vagina that strangers prod and stare at and is incapable of bearing life.

I am given a paper robe (technically not paper but some paper thin fabric). I am led towards a room and told to get naked from the waist down and put on the robe. My husband holds my hand. I am self aware enough to realize how difficult this must have been for him. Living with my crazy, living with the memory of a dead fetus that was also his and very much wanted by him, living with fifteen years of my anger and my politics. He holds my hand, he says he loves me, repeatedly. I know this because every day I see it in his eyes but I am grateful that he says it. I am taken to the surgery room where a bunch of doctors and a nurse receive me politely. I lay down in the gynecological surgical table and they bring in the zygote in some futuristic looking metal vial (or is it a metal syringe of sorts?). The prodding begins. I am scolded for having too much fat in my belly that makes the ultrasound difficult. I am scolded for not having enough pee in my bladder making the ultrasound even more difficult. The doctor prods and scratches and god knows what is going on down there. I quietly say my prayers not asking for anything from any divinity but trying to convey the fact that I love. I love life, I love my husband, I love this zygote and I quietly say this in my prayers because this is what I believe in. The doctor cracks a joke about the way I speak and I tell him not to make me laugh under any circumstance because I will end up coughing the zygote up and accidentally splatter it into his forehead. He has to stop for a second because now he is the one laughing hysterically. It wasn’t painful. Not physically painful at least. It’s soon over and I am handed an ultrasound photo of the zygote inside my uterus. This, here, the doctor says pointing to a light gray grain, is the lump of cells. I am taken to a room and told to rest. The doctor gives me the follow up instructions. I am to take more hormones and “take it easy”. After three weeks, I have to take a blood test to see if I am pregnant.

It is now the second week of december 2012. For the past two weeks I have been sick and nauseous and terrified. I have experienced more physical pain than in any of my periods or PMS. My uterus hurts, I only have gloomy thoughts with rare moments of hope. I take the pills and the pessaries religiously. I do exactly as I was told. One day I wake up and I know I am not pregnant. I just know it in the same way I once knew that the baby I was carrying was a girl. Which is to say, I don’t know it through any scientific method but I just know it. Two days later I have the blood test that confirmed it. Not pregnant. I cry with deep sadness and afterwards I am eerily relieved. I can finally stop with the hormones and perhaps no longer feel that I want to kill myself all the time. I can maybe go back to not hating my body all the time. I can, perhaps, finally accept that I am never going to have a child. I cry frequently, I evaluate my entire life through my failures: this you couldn’t do; this you failed at; this other thing you fucked up; you are now too old to do anything meaningful and you are responsible for the death of the child that was, indeed, growing inside you; your infertility is a punishment for it. The days pass but nothing gets better.

Christmas comes and I have the prettiest tree I have ever had. I am not Christian but I love the tree. I celebrate winter because it is my favorite season. I celebrate the cycles of life and the blessing that is being around those I love. I avoid contact with almost everyone because I don’t want to have to explain myself. I stop practically every social contact except those that I can keep at a professional distance and won’t ask personal questions. I lose a few friends, I feel deeply betrayed by a couple of others. Days go by and the idea of socializing gets more difficult. I do not want to talk to anyone or have to explain why I failed at this. I don’t want to witness anyone’s pity for me. I’d rather be on my own and face my shortcomings. This, I tell myself, is what I deserve. This, I repeat, is what happens when you don’t follow the rules. But then, with the snow, comes a sense of hope. I have no hope for myself, I consider my life rather wasted in more than one way, but I have hope that I can live. I can, at least, attempt to shout that some things are just wrong and that nobody (except from me, that is) deserves this. That the women in detention centers do not deserve to have medical attention denied to them, that the people who are deported do not deserve to commit suicide because of trauma (a sad reality hardly ever spoken about). I tell myself, if anything, you can be a cautionary tale.

Now it is February 2013 and I write this. If I am ever to going write again, I need to tell this story first. If I am ever going to be normal again, this needs to be said. Her name was going to be Francesca. It was a pretty name for what I hoped was going to be a pretty girl. She died while I was in a detention center waiting for deportation. She deserved better and, ever since, I have done nothing but try to honor the life she never had a chance to live.

I am told he was a hero to the disability community before his ‘fall from grace,’ as though shooting your girlfriend multiple times in the head and neck after a history of domestic violence with her and other women is a ‘fall,’ rather than a ghastly crime for which you should be severely punished. This presumes that the disability community is a collective entity that thinks and moves in lockstep, which isn’t the case; for some disabled people, Reeva Steenkamp’s boyfriend undoubtedly was a role model, but to others, he was just an athlete. A very talented athlete performing at the peak of his game, because very few people qualify for the Olympics and Paralympics, but just an athlete. Full social integration to me means that disabled people are measured by their accomplishments and deeds, not their disabilities.

I suspect that Reeva Steenkamp’s boyfriend was more of an icon for the nondisabled community than for the disabled community, because of what he represented. His very mainstream successes; adapting to prostheses, becoming an extremely talented and driven runner, working with custom ‘blades’ that were his distinctive trademark, were what made him appeal to nondisabled people. His success as an ‘inspirational’ or ‘heroic’ icon lay precisely in his ability to pass, to conform as closely as possible to nondisabled norms, to become, in essence, one of them. He was safe, comforting, and familiar, presenting a framework of disability that suggested all disabled people aspired to be like nondisabled people, and could if they just tried hard enough.

He modeled a specific bootstrapping presentation of disability, one in which people ‘overcome tremendous odds’ and ‘keep persevering’ to achieve greatness. A very specific kind of greatness, one mediated by what is ‘great’ in nondisabled terms. The accomplishments of people like Paul K. Longmore and Laura Hershey, two of my personal disabled icons, aren’t widely known or celebrated in the nondisabled mainstream precisely because their accomplishments were so rooted in disabled identity and politics. They fought to liberate people from nursing homes and stereotypes, to create a world where disabled people were an active component of society as they were. They were frightening to nondisabled people in their expressions of independence, of disability pride, of ferocity.

Reeva Steenkamp’s boyfriend attracted attention because he matched with nondisabled expectations of what disability can and should be. And he was used, ruthlessly, as a tool for beating disabled people; if he can do it, so can you. Go watch him and learn from his amazing feats. Revel in the fact that a man born with congenital disabilities can run on two legs ‘just like a normal person.’

Shocked by the revelation that disabled people can actually be abusive assholes too, the nondisabled community has lashed out in confusion and bitter outrage. Suddenly their poster child, their supercrip, has been turned into yet another athlete caught up in a sordid and unpleasant domestic violence scandal, with a side of murder; possibly cold-blooded murder, according to some accounts. This upends everything they think about athletes, and about disabled people.  They were the ones who put him on a pedestal, and they were the ones faced with figuring out how to take him off it again after learning who he truly was.

Intriguingly, their response has been to put him back in the corner with the other cripples. Rather than directly confronting domestic violence in athletics and the culture that obscured prior reports of violence involving Reeva Steenkamp’s boyfriend and other women, as well as Reeva herself, people chose to attack him on the grounds that he clearly wasn’t ‘one of them,’ because ‘they’ don’t do things like shooting their girlfriends. Abruptly, his honorary nondisabled person status had to be taken away.

Notably, the jokes that started flying around about him almost immediately focused heavily on his disability status; he ‘wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in court’ and ‘must have been legless at the time,’ commentators quipped on Twitter. Some argued that this was a case of resentment and jealousy: that an athlete at the peak of his career was bitter over his disability and took it out on his evidently nondisabled partner. This served dually to remind people both that he was disabled (as though they might have forgotten) and that inside every disabled person lurks a Bitter Cripple struggling to get out. Said Bitter Cripple, of course, can be violent and dangerous, angry at the world for not being nondisabled.

As more evidence and discussion rolled in, people turned to what they thought would be a fit punishment, and more than one person suggested that he should be ‘forced to go back in the chair,’ visualising this as the worst possible punishment for a man made famous by the prosthetic limbs he used to walk. As though there is something deeply wrong with using a chair for mobility. As though being a wheelchair user makes you less of a man; a common attitude held by nondisabled people, who view wheelchair users of all genders as desexualised and inanimate, objects rather than human beings. People turned vicious by the revelation that their icon was just another misogynistic athlete struck out in the way they thought would be most effective, by attempting to downgrade his status, visualising disability as The Worst Thing Ever, and suggesting that being forced to sit instead of walk would be a great comeuppance for their clay-footed hero.

At the same time the media linger over hero worship and elegies for Reeva Steenkamp’s boyfriend, Reeva herself is reduced to a background player; she is the one who died, yet she’s the one who’s usually not named until at least halfway down the page. She’s the one who died, yet the media focus on the fact that she was a model with, shockingly, modeling shots displaying her body. She’s the one who died, yet people are making her out to be a frivolous secondary story, rather than the core of the narrative: Reeva Steenkamp was in a relationship that may have been abusive, and no one talked about it because her boyfriend was an athlete, and Oscar Pistorius fired the gun that killed her.