Links Round-Up: Week ending 26 May 2012

[also-warriors.livejournal.com]

Welcome to our weekly links round-up. This is a compilation of items from the past week that may be of interest to VPers and is intended to broaden the kinds of conversations we have here. To submit articles to the round-up, e-mail also_warriors@vaginapagina.com

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

1. 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.




2. 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?





3. FRESH FATKINI GALLERY: 31 HOT SEXY FAT GIRLS IN SKIMPY SWIMWEAR at xoJane (Keywords: fat, fashion)
   

   Fat people rocking bikinis!




4. 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.”





5. 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?





6. 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.





7. 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.

So, what have you been reading (or writing!) this week?

Comments

[frolicnaked.livejournal.com]

I collected some variations on low lunge (http://anytimeyoga.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/hip-yoga-variations-on-a-lunge/) for people who'd like to stretch their hip flexors (which can be useful in alleviating some types of pelvic pain).

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.)

[krepander.livejournal.com]

I read an article today named 'Vagina,' once unmentionable, has become a fashionable term (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-vagina-20120527,0,2322544.story). It amazed me that some of the major changes about which word to use happened in the last 5 years!

[atalanta0jess.livejournal.com]

"Why Gay is not the New Black" was a rough read for me. Such a fraught conversation I guess.

Thanks for posting this...I love it, every week.

[barrelofrain.livejournal.com]

I love the snippet from #2 in "Why Gay is not the New Black," but the other points in the article are kind of problematic to me.

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.

#1

[sweetchild92.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that 2 of the diagnoses that received such abysmal kappa scores were Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Depression.

[sweetchild92.livejournal.com]

"In contrast, romantic attractions and sexual behaviors often have moral (or immoral) qualities, and there is no constitutional “right” to fulfill one’s sexual and romantic desires."

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"

[elfinragdoll.livejournal.com]

The Town Hall article was very frustrating and problematic from about the middle on. Do I believe that people are born gay? No, but I don't believe people are born straight either because infants and children do not have concrete sexual identities, nor should they be thought of in terms of sexuality. The part that really sent me into a tizzy was that same harping on how allowing for interracial marriage didn't "redefine" marriage but same-sex unions will. Black people were brought to this country under the legal definition of "property" and treated a livestock. It was a myth that you could redefine a person as an object, and it's a myth that me marrying my fiancee will somehow corrode the institution that finally, eventually allowed full participation by people who were once legally considered objects.

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.