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vaginapagina2012-05-27 01:27 am
also-warriors.livejournal.com) wrote in vaginapagina2012-05-27 01:27 am
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Links Round-Up: Week ending 26 May 2012
As a reminder, in lieu of trigger warnings, I use keywords describing the themes of the piece. Please skim these before deciding to read the excerpt or click through for the full article. Outside sources are not safe spaces, and mainstream source's comments should almost always be avoided. The links I highlight don't necessarily reflect VP's views, or even my own, for that matter.
This week's round-up includes: Field tests of DSM-5 show low reliability for 2 major diagnoses; cis people telling trans* narratives; a gallery of fat people rocking bikinis!; why gay is not the new Black; the suspicion of Black Studies; "The Dictator" and Islamophobia; call for submissions: Outlaw Midwives
- Field Tests for Revised Psychiatric Guide Reveal Reliability Problems for 2 Major Diagnoses at Scientific American (Keywords: mental health, depression, anxiety, DSM-5, psychiatry)
The DSM not only defines mental illness, it often determines whether patients receive treatment—in many cases, insurance companies require an official DSM diagnosis before they subsidize medication or other therapies. ... the APA has a problem on its hands: its own data suggests that some of the updated definitions are so flawed that only a minority of psychiatrists reach the same conclusions when using them on the same patient. And the APA has limited time to do something about it.
- A tear for Chloe Sevigny at Teaching Trans (Keywords: trans*, Hollywood, media)
I'm starting to realize that widespread representation doesn't do any good at all if actual trans realities aren't represented in an accurate way. In fact, having cis actors portray trans characters seems like a recipe for utterly trans-ignorant people to think they know more than they do, and then get super defensive if anyone tries to imply that they're wrong. ... So, even if I think that Transamerica touched and taught a wider, more mainstream audience, I still need to ask: What exactly was it teaching that audience?
- FRESH FATKINI GALLERY: 31 HOT SEXY FAT GIRLS IN SKIMPY SWIMWEAR at xoJane (Keywords: fat, fashion)
Fat people rocking bikinis!
- Why Gay Is Not the New Black at Townhall.com (Keywords: queer, racism)
2. The very real hardships endured by many gays and lesbians cannot fairly be compared with the monstrous suffering endured by African Americans. Conservative gay journalist Charles Winecoff wrote, “Newsflash: blacks in America didn’t start out as hip-hop fashion designers; they were slaves. There’s a big difference between being able to enjoy a civil union with the same sex partner of your choice – and not being able to drink out of a water fountain, eat at a lunch counter, or use a rest room because you don’t have the right skin color.”
- On The Chronical of Higher Education's Reinforcement Of Suspicion Of Black Academia at Racialicious (Keywords: Black studies)
Without Black Studies, what would we know of black protest of Jim Crow, slave revolts (and white suppression of records of these revolts), or the medical exploitation of black and brown bodies? Who would chronicle not just the struggle, but the achievements, creativity, and joys of black lives and experiences? Do naysayers really imagine white scholarship, on its own, has given an honest account on these topics? Or are such accounts simply irrelevant to them?
- The Dictator and the Zionist at Bina Shah (Keywords: Palestine, Islamophobia, Zionism, racism, movies, The Dictator)
if you look carefully, each one of [Sacha Baron Cohen's] productions - from Ali G to Borat to Bruno to now, The Dictator, advances a certain element of Zionist propaganda against Muslims. Which is that Muslims are laughable, unintelligent, idiotic people with no intellect at best, and terrorists at worst. And Cohen uses buffoonery to do this.
How? By taking the stereotypes, derived both from Orientalism and from anti-Islamic Zionism, and playing them out to such ridiculous extremes, that his audiences laugh. And in laughing, they feel entertained. And in being entertained, they swallow the stereotypes and the racism whole, without pausing to critically analyze what they've been presented with. You could call this SBC's particular genius. Yes, it's pretty clever. But it's also dangerous. - call for submissions: things i desire from outlaw midwives at Outlaw Midwives (Keywords: midwifery, doulas, birth, parenting, bodies, economics, medicine)
and can we talk about gender and sexuality? race and class? nationality and anarchism? can we talk about art and anger? the practical and the poetic? the questions and the answers?
in other words: i want to talk about unassisted birth and economics. i want to talk about physiological birth and western medical hegemony. i want to talk about poetry and the ululations during second stage pushing. i want to talk about life. and death. and violence. and bliss. heaven and apocalypse.
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I also reviewed Cardio Burn Yoga (http://anytimeyoga.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/summer-dvd-review-cardio-burn-yoga/) as a body positive workout DVD for giveaway. (Contrary to what the title -- which was not the DVD's original title -- may suggest, there is no mention of calories or weight loss during the instruction itself.)
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Thanks for posting this...I love it, every week.
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This Colorlines article, Gay is the New Black? Heck No! (http://colorlines.com/archives/2009/03/gay_is_the_new_black_heck_no_i_1.html) and this blog post, Gay is Not the New Black (http://pittqueertheoryf11.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/gay-is-not-the-new-black/), IMO, do a better job of explaining this without invalidating queer identities. They mention how racism is not actually a thing of the past, and also how the idea of "gay as the new black" is divisive by implying that all gays are white and all Blacks are heterosexual.
I find the Town Hall article problematic because it places the focus on sexual orientation being about behavior, whereas many, if not most, queer folks do not automatically identify as heterosexual once they are celibate or not in a relationship.
On a completely different note, I LOVE those fatkinis.
And finally (I apparently have a lot to say this week), regarding the Chloe article, "Basically, what the public hears here is a gorgeous cisgender actor lamenting how awful it is to be forced into a gender and a body that doesn't suit her. But where is the tremendously important revelation that OMG THIS IS WHAT TRANS PEOPLE FEEL LIKE EVERY DAY, especially before transition? At the end of her work day, Chloe can wipe away her tears. (I'm wiping away a tear for her, too, right now.) She can take off the prosthesis," - this is exactly what I was thinking when I heard the story.
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I wish that article had done a better job though...as your other links point out, there are obviously problems with that framing of LGBT issues. AND, you don't have to be a jerk and dismiss the very real issues LGBT people face in order to point those out.
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I really like point two because it illuminates the divide between what queer people of color and white queer people often view as the current biggest goals for queer rights (for example: Huffington Post Poll What is the Most Pressing LGBT Issue (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/11/what-is-the-lgbt-community-pressing-issue_n_1507136.html)). That point falling within the article as a whole (which you rightly point out a lot of problems with) just further illustrated how hard it is for a lot of (white) people to hold the intersections of queerness and race in their minds at the same time.
On the Chloe article, I just had that same discussion I quoted with my roommate. I took a film class and they "made" me watch "Boys Don't Cry." I was telling my (straight, cis) roommate how much that movie messed me and a lot of trans guys up because it made us think that our identities were really dangerous, and it took a long time to understand that trans women of color are the ones suffering the overwhelming majority of transphobic violence (and probably getting a lot of the generalized transphobia that might be directed at people like us displaced onto them). It didn't feel real that I was actually, statistically, at an only barely-elevated risk-- probably in part because there are so few sympathetic, Academy Award Winning movies about trans women of color that have really taken hold in the cultural imagination. Her response was just what the article asks-- isn't something better than nothing? I'm not convinced it is.
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Making the DSM must be a weird process. I tend towards the belief that they are trying to put things in discrete categories that just simply are not discrete! So it's no wonder it's difficult. It's not like measuring the bacteria in someone's urine and saying they have a UTI, you know? So much more complex.
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Yep, so it's not surprising that there's so much debate/questions, since in the end we can't just do a quick blood test and determine someone's mental health.
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It's really alarming to me that the new revisions are apparently not allowing mental healthcare providers to diagnose depression and GAD correctly. According to the CDC, almost 1 in 10 adults in the US have depression at any one time. Almost 5% of all adults have "major" depression. It is one of the most common mental health diagnoses, with a high comorbidity, and the DSM-5 is not allowing MHCPs to diagnose it correctly. This is a Problem, and to me, it speaks to the potential for larger issues with the DSM-5. As that article points out, the DSM-5 was slated to go into use in about a year, so at this rate, it can either go forth mis-diagnosing 5-10% of US adults, or they can go back to the drawing board. I sort of suspect they are going to push forward. What issues have they not discovered yet?
As much as I have Feelings about the diagnosis/naming/categorization of mental health concerns, which are SO individual, you'd sort of hope the people in charge of doing that would be able to do it at a rate that they themselves have identified as acceptably reliable.
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I am always skeptical of those numbers on mental illness. I know that tons and tons of people struggle with their mental health at some point. I guess where I differ from the stats makers is that I see a difference between the majority of those people, and those who have very serious life long struggles (who I suppose they would call severely and chronically mentally ill). I just see it as way too easy to get a diagnosis though, in the sense that I don't think everyone who is diagnosable is necessarily "mentally ill" at all. Now, I don't think that's a bad thing, because it gets people access to services they wouldn't otherwise have, and that they may very well benefit from. At the same time, I wonder if when they say things like "x percentage of the population has a mental illness" if that's really reflective of wide spread mental illness in our society, or whether it just means that x percentage of people are having a hard time at any given moment, because we are human and sometimes have hard times. (Anyway, these are just my semi-related rambles, so perhaps I should stop.)
On another side note, I am not looking forward to having to learn the DSM V (as a MHP) and furthermore am severely confused about why the criteria for a major depressive episode require that there has never been a manic episode, but bipolar I requires that there has been a MDE, but how can there have been if bipolar I also requires a manic episode. Maybe I'm missing something...
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Also, did not know that olfactory reference syndrome was a thing. You learn something new every day!
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I'm incredibly bothered by this. The whole article has left me pretty pissed, actually. Quoting Camille Paglia?! Really asserting that people aren't born gay?! And the lynching comment to me, while I understand, comes off as "lol hate crimes!1!" as if they don't happen.
The whole article came off really poorly imo. Ia they the 2 struggles aren't the same, but going about pointing it out in this way is just going to further turn people off. I'm kind of sitting here fuming rn tbh. It was basically "gays are immoral and can never be hetero parents and our precious fragile society will need to accept gays as actual people so just calm the fuck down you whining homos"
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The whole thing went out the window when he went in for the "then we'll end up legalizing all those other kinds of unions too!" Just... Christ on a cracker...
On the plus side, that Trans article blog article was fantastic.