Peace Prize Problems vs. Malala

***UPDATE***

The West has embraced Malala for the same reasons it embraced pacifist civil rights activists: IT IS EXPLOITING HER AND PERVERTING HER MESSAGE.

So while I was writing about Malala, I took a quote from her interview with John Stewart—an interview which troubled me because Stewart asked, jokingly, if he could adopt her. It felt colonialist, but I allowed myself to be gaslighted by colonialist, patriarchal society.

Shortly after I posted about Malala, a friend hit the nail on the head in posting a Huffington Post article about Malala and the white messiah complex. A few poignant exerpts:

This is a story of a native girl being saved by the white man. Flown to the UK, the Western world can feel good about itself as they save the native woman from the savage men of her home nation. It is a historic racist narrative that has been institutionalised.
...
The Western savior complex has hijacked Malala's message. The West has killed more girls than the Taliban have. The West has denied more girls an education via their missiles than the Taliban has by their bullets. The West has done more against education around the world than extremists could ever dream of. 

I should've known. Any time a woman of color is enthusiastically embraced for her social justice work by the predominantly white public, I should get suspicious. But I just couldn't put my finger on it.

Baig of HuffPost, and my friend, are both right. There are a thousand Malalas killed by drone strikes, not the Taliban, who didn't survive to tell her story, who didn't get flown out to a Western country to get intensive medical care. They are not pacifist Dr. Kings—they know that sometimes it's the ballot or the bullet (or in this case, women's education or the bullet). I see pacifism and civil disobedience as debatable means of social change simply because the way oppressors seem to love it makes me uneasy. But even if we agree that pacifism good, that does not equal approval of Western protogenocidal military choices.

Truth is, I'm fundamentally uncomfortable with the notion of a Peace Prize administered by westerners. Isn't it just a means to dictate which types of revolutions are okay?

Malala is wonderful, and so are the non-pacifists in her situation, and so are the thousands of kids killed at the hands of the U.S. government.
***

This is just me nominating Malala Yousafzai for the Nobel Peace Prize. They're announcing it tomorrow and she is the definition of an awesome pacifist.

I can't know the other potential nominees for sure because the Nobel people don't disclose, and while other shoe-in candidates (Denis Mukwege is an incredible human being, about whom I read in Eve Ensler's memoir, In the Body of the World) appeal to me, I can't help but empathize with her as a young person passionate about change. Malala was targeted by the Taliban and ultimately shot in the head at the age of 14, just for being an advocate for womens' education and trying to go to school. She made a miraculous recovery and is now a prominent young feminist pacifist advocate for education. Malala represents, to me, an innate goodness and resistance to oppression in the human soul. In her words...

Influential AND fabulous

"If he comes, what will you do, Malala? Then I replied to myself, 'Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.' But then I said, if you hit a Talib with a shoe, then there will be no difference between you and the Talib—you must not treat others with cruelty and harshness, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education."

So yeah, if Obama and Al Gore can win it, Malala certainly deserves to. 

Purse Classism vs. Fair Trade

None a dis pls

Image: A really ugly purse with that appropriative fringe design that's supposed to be generically American Indian, a huge peace sign on the front with a rainbow design, and some braided rainbow handles. There's a huge tag on the top that makes it look like it's from a gift shop, and it probably is.

So I guess the whole point of pseudo-VEDA is that I blog even when I'm not feelin' it. And today all I really have to say is that I need a new purse.

I've had Coach purses since the 8th grade which sounds like a lot of fun except that there's no reason for me to have such an expensive purse. Like, yes, I do use my purse a lot, but I also do things like spill nail polish and vitamin C tablets inside, and it also creates this weird cognitive dissonance for me where I'm a social justice activist who carries around this brand-name overpriced probably-not-fair-trade-or-cruelty-free thing.

So in addition to getting these weird stares from kids who are like a) why is she carrying a purse with her backpack and b) why is her purse Coach is she a rich kid (and while I have class privilege, I am not a rich kid), maintenance of said purses also requires a trip out to the Albertville, Minnesota Coach outlet store, which is really far, with my grandma, who is the driver of my serial-purchasing of Coach purses, and also the driver of the car, because I cannot drive.

And I am sick of it and would rather have an activist-purse.

So does anybody know where I could find a purse that is neither exorbitantly expensive nor laden with conflict minerals?

Seriously though, I need a fair-trade, cruelty-free, environmentally responsible dream-tote that zips shut and has both handles and a shoulder strap.

And then I can carry my hippie power everywhere I go!

UR DOIN IT 4 ATTENTIOOONNN!!!!11!!!!1!!

Bigotry's never a cute look.

Image: A 'yahoo answers' response.
"Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
They're weirdos, let them slice themselves lol
9 months ago
100% 1 Vote

So I googled "self harm for attention" to kick off this post because the internet is always an infinite fountain of wonderful things and offensive things.

I googled it because the rebuttal is always, "NO, it's NEVER for attention!" And I feel like there are lots of variations on this for all kinds of oppression. "Being gay is NEVER a choice!" "I'm not a feminist JUST because I'm a woman!"

I just don't get it?? I do things for attention all the time. When I talk about mental illness, it is FOR ATTENTION, to eliminate stigma and communicate to other mental illness kids that they are not alone. When I tell satirical stories about misogynoir*, I do it for attention, because it's funny, and I am coping.

We've created this weird formula as a society: if someone is acting in their own self-interest, it is okay to treat them ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLY. You're just ___ because you're ___. So what?!

Maybe sometimes people do choose to be gay (like Cynthia Nixon), and that's fine, and maybe sometimes people are feminists because they aren't cis-hetero-men, which is cool, and maybe, JUST MAYBE, the kid who is self harming for attention DESERVES ATTENTION, just like he deserves a therapist to help him find better ways to get attention.

You know what's worse than being "self-centered"? BEING UNKIND.

JUST LOVE EACH OTHER GOSHHHH

*misogynoir: a term the internet made up for oppression of Black women

BEDO + Michael Jackson Chamber

Summary of current life feelings:

The Struggle Boat
Image: A group of white people with a dark-skinned tour guide (lol—didn't even notice this until I did the image description) in one of those blow-up-looking water rafts with a bunch of plastic oars, braving some vicious-looking rapids that they shouldn't have even attempted to cross in the first place and looking generally like n00bs.

The plan is to use my blog to ameliorate the afloat-ness. It is COLLEGE APP TIME. Is this blog an asset or a detriment to me for college apps? What if I delete the videos where I talk about White people?

So I'm going to BEDO, which is my version of VEDA. I was going to VEDA and then I lost my "motivaish," in the words of a great Blake math teacher. So BEDO is Blog Every Day in October. Because, you know, October also starts with a vowel.

Naturally, I am already two days behind.

***

THAT BEING SAID, I was wallowing a yester-fortnight and just watching infinite TED talks. And I found one on depression.

Embedding this was hard work and you should praise me for it - the youtube search engine through blogger SUCKS.

A summary of my takeaway from this video would approximately amount to:

1. Something is wrong with the way we treat depression currently.
2. Anti-depressants are great, sometimes, but other times they just uselessly (or harmfully) flood the brain with serotonin or norepinephrine or dopamine and it's a bad, expensive thing. Especially when a placebo works almost as well.

Full disclosure: I've experienced my fair share of negative psychiatric medication side effects.

3. There's this clinical trial in Arizona (where I can't go because I might be mistaken for Latina and racially profiled #4thamendmentfail) where they're putting patients, off their meds, with major depressive disorder, in 145ºF hyperthermia chambers for a series of 2 hour sessions. AND IT'S WORKING. It's working better than the antidepressant and the placebo.

I am having a (hypomanic) hunch about this. I think this is a breakthrough, guys. Especially as Minnesotan, we have heightened rates of depression and suicide, and just from my life experience, this makes so much sense. I know that pathos isn't logos, but the fact that the temperature linkage to depression is even stronger than PROZAC's linkage to depression is huge.

I am convinced that three years from now, there will be a new class of temperature-regulating drugs, and all the naysayers will look back on this TED talk as a piece of history.

So spread the word. 

Dory > Current Events

I've tried so hard to keep up with current events and stick to them so that I can get blog views. Because if on the night of the Trayvon Martin decision, I post about Trayvon, I get blog traffic, and then that's good because I've made an impact! But that depresses me because current events are depressing, and the stuff that makes the news is dictated by the White supremacist power structure and stuff anyways.

*Laughs a little* *Cries a little*

I'm still gonna talk about Trayvon, obviously. But I can't do it now. I'm still processing. I know it's been awhile... But I'd rather write a good post than a relevant one.

So let's talk about Dory.

Image: Dory from "Finding Nemo". She's bugging out her eyes, pursing her lips, and raising a fin to her mouth, as if in awe, or asking a question. She's in the ocean.

Dory is a fish voiced by the glorious and social-justice-y Ellen DeGeneres. I was very confused and irrationally irritated with her when I watched Finding Nemo as a child because I did not understand what about her made her deserved to be loved (read: any more than I do). I had this weird jealousy that indicated, "I'M a better fish than HER! Why is SHE a protagonist?" She was annoying and forgetful. I thought there had to be something "wonderful and special" about people who get to be in movies—but nothing about Dory made me want to BE her. What I did not realize is that Dory is a champion.

Today, the most important part of Finding Nemo to me is Dory's bildungsroman. She experiences a mental disability—which I identify with because I have a mental illness—but remains positive despite trials, and has little victories (P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney) that can be attributed to her friendship with Marlin. And regardless of whether you buy into the conspiracy theory that she and Marlin later get married, she deserved to be loved because everyone does.

Dory taught me that what matters about us is how we grow, and what matters about relationships is how our growths are compatible.

Dory is now a mascot for me who helps me analyze and eliminate the internalized ableism I had towards myself as a child. As someone who has had an invisible disability for most of my sentient life, I have always thought that what makes me "strong" is leaving my disability—a part of me—behind, instead of living with it. So I harbored a terrible prejudice towards Dory for having small victories instead of undergoing total disability erasure. I did not see her strength.

The moral of the story is that you are not strong just because you overcame an obstacle, any more than Dory would be strong for suddenly having a miraculous recovery from short-term memory loss. You are strong for experiencing growth, and putting in the effort.

I'm looking forward to Finding Dory, needless to say :)

***

A transcript of the article I based this off of is below with a link to the site. (It's reformatted without huge pictures.)

Have you ever seen Finding Nemo? You know – that Pixar animated film that made you sob into the collar of your coat for 45 straight minutes in a darkened theater after the credits finished rolling?

If you haven’t seen it, Finding Nemo tells the tale of a father and son clownfish duo who become separated from each other and learn all sorts of life lessons on the journey to (SPOILER ALERT--but come on, it’s Pixar) their eventual reunion. As he ventures far out of his comfort zone to locate his son, Marlin, the neurotic fish father, struggles with one the most painful parts of parenting: learning to let go.

Early on in his journey, Marlin pairs up with Dory, a cheerful and well-meaning surgeon fish (voiced by Ellen Degeneres) who is happy to keep Marlin company, even though she struggles with serious short-term memory loss that often leaves her overwhelmingly anxious and disoriented if she’s left to fend for herself. Dory is persistent, devoted, and skilled, though (she can read English and speak a little whale), and Marlin finds her company useful…if not a little challenging. But Dory was an audience favorite when Nemo was released in 2003, and the film’s fans were thrilled this week when Pixar announced that Finding Dory will be released in 2015.

Amidst the flurry of social media shares and visions of Dory merch that surrounded the announcement, there was also speculation about how Pixar—a name synonymous with beautiful (and beautifully heartbreaking) storytelling—will approach having a main character whose sunny disposition is offset by some pretty serious cognitive and mental disabilities. As Michael Arbeiter of Hollywood.com asks in his article, will Finding Dory be Pixar’s first attempt to embrace and explore the topic of mental illness?

HOLD UP, you might be saying: Dory isn’t mentally ill, she’s just quirky! Well, sure, you can certainly see it that way. And Pixar can choose to see it that way too…or they can decide to take it a little further. As Arbeiter points out, Marlin and Dory’s relationship mirrors that of other famous film couples, namely Charlie and Ray in Rain Man (refer directly to Arbeiter for a full explanation), and it’s not unreasonable to expect the film to at least touch on Dory’s differences.  Finding Dory could easily incorporate Dory’s struggles in living with her mental disability as an allegory for the millions of people who fight a similar battle, many of whom will undoubtedly be sitting in the audience on opening day with their children (or their parents). Dory is already a beloved character; wouldn’t it be an interesting and valuable experience to see someone we know and love handle the challenges of less-than-ideal mental health?

I believe Arbeiter puts it best: “Sounds like a silly venture for a Pixar movie, maybe, but just think of the Toy Story franchise: a trilogy that expanded from ‘What if toys came alive when we left the room?’ to a heartrending allegory about self-preservation, loss, and identity.”

—"WILL PIXAR ADDRESS MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE UPCOMING SEQUEL ‘FINDING DORY’?" by Gayle of artwithimpact.org, artwithimpact.org//node/1201.

Am Terrible Blogger

Hi :)

I'm still freaking out and formulating my thoughts on Trayvon...

Sorry I abandoned you all for a month - I was out of town!

New bloggity soon! Possibly even a vloggity. Or both.

—AKB

Image: A cartoony narwhal making a kind of silly-angry face and holding a green light saber with it's fins. It's horn is inexplicably red against the black, starry night background. In the same font as the Star Wars movie title, it reads above the narwhal's face:
Nar
Whals
It then reads, "Cyanide and Happiness © Explosm.net" at the bottom. 

Party Like A Rock Star – A New Positivity – Scalia You Crazy – Haters Get Off Me

Let us all celebrate the strides I've made in improving my video quality.

O hai thur – ahm bahk – + FREEE READS

DISCOVERED MENTAL ILLNESS TUMBLRS YUSSSSSS

Disclaimer: Not all of these (or necessarily any of these) pertain to my life experiences.

When you meet someone with the same mental illness

Trying to see who the new patient is

When people don't believe I have an eating disorder

When your new meds start to work

The cleaners in treatment

When asked about my hobbies

When I forget to take my medication

Mad props to "Beauty in the Bell Jar" and "Those Mental Health Things"

P.S. Also just wanted to make "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" available for general FREE consumption! I'm fairly sure this is legal.

CLIK 4 READS

Steubenville and Rape Culture

Why I talk about what I talk about

I get a lot of criticism for "complaining." But I reserve the right to complain. Because complaining seems to have come to mean objecting to things that affect you, and I'm personally of the opinion that we as individuals should talk about issues that we're familiar with in terms of identity, that is, what we identify with. For example, I am a Black woman, so I should feel free to talk about Blackness and feminism and Black feminism.

Fight the power

The objector might say, but wait! You're excluding people! No, I'm inviting people. In being a Black feminist, I'm representing my own group(s). I would encourage someone who is differently able to talk about ableism, should they choose to, for example. And I firmly believe that groups should be represented by their members, and dialogue about groups should be primarily controlled by people who have experience as a part of that group. Otherwise, you're Tim Wise-ing. Or Emineming. Or whatever you want to call it. 

He a master at race talk.

But he White.

I'm not saying we should never talk about issues regarding which we are dominant or privileged, but there's a fine line between intersectionality and Emineming. I'd say Tim Wise actually walks that line fairly well (but not quite well enough—go ahead, argue with me). But we have to be careful not to co-opt others' speech. Because, like Eminem has gentrified a music genre that was born as the voice of Black youth, or like the commercial I watched just now consisted of straight people endorsing gay marriage, standing alongside their silent gay friends and family, we need to let groups speak for themselves.

That's not to discourage the intersectionality-lover though. It's also important that we use our privilege for good. Sometimes, the public will only listen to a light-skinned girl preaching about colorism, or a man talking about sexism. In that case, keep co-optin'. 

Political Correctness Part Two: The Other Side of the Argument

1. Don't be a jerk

2. Don't be a hypocrite

3. Don't be a bad activist

Re: Re: Damsels in Distress

Microaggressions

Microaggressions I heard either in songs or real life.

Oppression Olympics

VAWA and the Privilege to Vote Republican

So there's this bill called VAWA or the Violence Against Women Act, and it's an act that essentially increases protection for women who are victims of domestic abuse (it could be broader than that – I'm not sure). Now according to ncdsv.org, VAWA is a misnomer, because the most liberal version of the act protects people of all genders and sexual orientations. So naturally, in January of 2012 the Republicans were all into killing the parts of the bill that protects people who are of non-hetero sexual orientations, AS WELL AS the parts that protect American Indian women living in sovereign Indian Country, and my school sponsored my going to the capitol (with a few classmates) to lobby for the full version of the bill. Now it's February of 2013 and their attempts have made headlines.

And I must say, this cannot possibly be reflective of the views of the people. Most of us are for marriage equality, so I can assume a bigger chunk of us want to protect our peers, Queer or not, from violence. And it occurs to me that the Republicans are allowed to do this simply because of privilege and apathy. In fact, generally, they are allowed to swing so far to the right socially because of privilege and apathy. And of course, the reluctance to protect Indian women frankly blows my mind and reinforces that premise. 

"Don't vote on 'hot-button' social issues," cry the fiscal conservatives, and thus, bills like VAWA get gutted and the congresspeople who approve such gutting get reelected because of their supposed fiscal prudence. Yeah, well, that's real easy to say when VAWA already protects you. Hard to say when you're trans* or Indian. 

So yeah. I'm just here to say, vote on social issues. Vote vote vote on them. We MUST draw the line somewhere on human rights abuses. 

Here's the link – Republicans, I'm disappointed. 

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/02/23/house-gop-strips-lgbt-native-american-provisions-in-vawa/

Knock knock. Who's there? Interrupting White guy.

Black people get interrupted sometimes.

Mark Lamont-Hill is a demigod

I think it's no secret that we see Black people as aggressive. And it's really frustrating when people tell me that I'm wrong in an argument simply because they perceive me as angry. Similarly, we perceive women as emotional. Thus, "you're upset" becomes a weapon of argumentation against me.

I also observe White people putting words in my mouth, i.e. misconstruing the narratives I present in a way that suits them, or, rewriting history the White way. I see this as microcosmic of colonialism. Now, bear with me. But, you know how Whites write the history books? That's colonialism. And when my speech gets co-opted, I see that as a similar practice. Not to conflate interruption and colonialism, obviously, because one is a much more serious problem than the other (take a guess).

Before you object to this, consider an extreme example of a Black narrative being misconstrued the White way. The amount of misinformation about Barack Obama is unprecedented—1/4 people don't even know what his religion is. The degree to which the Republican party has been allowed to write his story is unique and honestly hilarious. 

What other president has been called a Muslim Atheist Socialist Communist Arab Kenyan Tyrant?

This is why I don't believe in ethos as a legitimate aspect of argumentation. Ethos involves what you bring to a debate and thus, the preconceived notions about who you are. Black people have less ethos, and so do women. So does anyone in a non-dominant social group. Dominant groups are too often allowed to co-opt the speech of those who belong to oppressed groups. 

I urge you to think about the ethos that your privilege affords you, and how durable your privilege makes that ethos. That doesn't only mean to question credibility for a White man, it also means that I should question my credibility as straight and upper-middle class. Who has to have manners and conduct themselves respectfully? And who can take more liberties and condescend their peers a little more?

Just think about it, ok? I know it sounds out there, but think about it. 

Affirmative Action

SCOTUS has deemed affirmative action illegal unless it’s integrated into a holistic approach to college admissions, that is, considered a “factor” but not a quota. This is largely due to Justices Roberts and Kennedy, in their swing-vote-y swinginess, Alito in his Scalia-bandwagoniness, Thomas in his frustrating silence and Scalia himself, in his full diversity-denying form.  

What? I just don't care about Brown people!

(IT'S A JOKE GOSH) 

But I am an affirmative action believer. According to Jeremy Pienik’s paper Race, Social Class, and Parental Involvement with Children’s Cognitive Development, Lareau and Horvat in 1999 indicated that Black students are less likely to do well in school independent of social class. According to Sean F. Reardon’s paper, The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations, the class gap is twice as wide as the race gap. And other factors, such as gender, ability, orientation and mental illness all affect school performance and individually provide potential for the marginalization of students. So why shouldn’t college admissions boards be able to know these facets of identity in students?

There are a number of advantages to affirmative action. The first is empirical: Affirmative action for women has already been practiced in the U.S. (and with protest that pales in comparison to the protest that’s come from race-based affirmative action). And today, women actually surpass men in graduation (perhaps we overdid it), and we’ve closed the achievement gap, at least at face-value. But because we can whitewash feminism but not racism, we’re uncomfortable with race-based affirmative action. “But class is a real difference,” proponents of class- but not race- based affirmative action cry. And now people call for class-based affirmative action in lieu of race, because class is now considered somehow more real than race. But that isn’t true. It’s not only necessary that we give the poor equal access to education, but that we ensure the number of poor Blacks is at some point equal to the number of poor Whites.

Thus, I propose that affirmative action should apply to all facets of identity. That is, gender, ability, class, orientation, race/ethnicity, nationality/immigration status, mental health—everything. Because why shouldn’t college admissions boards know everything identity-wise about their potential students? There’s value in a diverse student body. There’s value in it because a breadth of perspectives in a classroom is most educational and because it’s also least marginalizing for a classroom to be segregated. It’s also most valuable to the entirety of the community if a classroom is diverse and available for all of its members.