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I enjoyed today's discussion and activity about class markers. I didn't feel like I was being called out when asked to write about my own life in a public setting, until I actually was called out. It will make it easier to tell you all that I am the one whose house has themed rooms. I can definitely see how that could be perceived as a class marker. However, in many cases, I don't believe it is. For example, I never expressed how many rooms my house is, which could also be an indicator of class. If I had said that while each room in my home is themed, I live in a two bedroom apartment, could that have changed things? Now I wonder, do people assume that I am from the higher class because my roommate and I have extensively decorated our room? Do decorations have to be expensive? or even cost anything? Personally, I didn't buy any of our decorations: I snipped from the NYT, printed my own photos and made coffee filter flowers. This is why I think that the idea that BMC's Project Dorm Room was classist isn't necessarily true, and also why I think today's activity was inevitably flawed. It's impossible to make class assumptions based on things like decoration, when there are so many other aspects at play that we aren't aware of. 

I stumbled upon this video today on the feminist site Jezebel...

What do y'all think? One thing that interests me about this documentary is that I find it very difficult to visualize a conmparative one about disabled women and a male sex worker, or about LGBTQ disabled individuals and sex workers (this is also a concern brought up in the comments on Jezebel). Of course, this documentary doesn't need to address the whole, multifaceted issue of disability and sexuality... but I think that the documentary, as previewed through the trailer, shatters some conceptions of sexuality (like the supposed asexuality of disabled people) while implicitly upholding others (like heteronormativity, or the greater male desire for sex). 

There was a Rent-A-Text copy of Little Bee left in the classroom last night.  It's now in my office.  Would someone like to claim it?

A student in my Bodies of Injustice class introduced me to a wonderful Canadian resource, HealthJusticeRadio.  Yesterday, they posted a new program about the limited education that medical students receive about LGBT health:

"This week on HJRC we talk gender identity, stigma, “passing” and pronouns with Dr. Carys Massarella. Dr. Massarella is President of the Medical Staff Association at St. Joseph’s hospital. She is a Assistant Clinical Professor in the emergency division at McMaster Medical school. She teaches transgender primary healthcare to students, residents, and family doctors. Dr. Massarella is an outspoken advocate for accessible, and accepting, trans healthcare."

It also includes a link to a recent article published in JAMA.

Here's my little run-in with class issues over Turkey Day:

My aunt works as a server at a fancy restaurant. Catering to the non-culinary types, this restaurant was open on Thanksgiving, and thinking that the tips would be awesome on such a holiday, my aunt decided to work a double shift. When my aunt called us later that night, however, she reported a not-so-pleasant customer experience. Apparently, the tips were stingy, the customers rude and the overall demeanor depressing. I definitely thought that the atmosphere would be very festive and family-like because of the holiday, but it seemed to be just the opposite. It got me thinking: did people look down upon my aunt even more so that night because they assumed that if she was working on Thanksgiving, she obviously needed the money and that she was likely from the lower class. Or possibly that she didn't have a family or friends to go home to so that meant that she didn't need as much tip or to be treated civilly? Waitressing is such a classed occupation as it is, and it was interesting to me to see how the time/season (Thanksgiving) made it even more so. Any thoughts on why her customers acted like this? Is it just the nature of a bunch of grumpy people who don't have a homemade turkey dinner to look forward to? Or is there a stigma associated with those of us who have to OR CHOOSE to work on a holiday?

A couple of us were going to continue the conversation about the group work for our last class here... I don't think we agreed who would start the thread... so here it is!

A number of us talked after class tonight as doing some kind of litany for our final performance.  Just wanted to make a post for us to throw up our ideas, so we can form into groups or come to consensus on one joint project.

I'll start.  I was thinking about reworking Eve Ensler's "I'm Over It" piece, since we as a class o[pointed out so many weaknesses and assumptions in the work.  I thought it might be cool to create our own list of "Over-its", about sexual assault or another issue (although I envisioned sexual assault myself.)  These would strive to address previously posed critiques, and any new ones we might have.  I thought it would be neat to once again have everyone read aloud the piece (yay class participation.)  If this were the case, I think we should post a trigger warning on Serendip/ make explicit what we are going to do before we start.  Maybe we could be right after break to allow for more a more graceful exit of anyone who doesn't want to participate (more snacks for them!)

Anyhoo, that's my two cents.

In preparation for our final class/performances/"teach-in," you may want to explore the workshop material made available by Theater of the Oppressed and Theater of Witness.

By Friday morning, Dec. 2, please post (as comments here) a list of the group members you'll be working with (the brainstorming, so far, looks pretty fun!)

My thanksgiving had its high and low points. High point: Seeing my family and calling my grandmama. Low point: the parental nagging. One point of contention was with my father, who thinks that being a student, all I should do is do my class work. He wonderfully suggested that I quit my job just for finals and studied the rest of the semester. I tried to convince him that I really didn't work that much and that I could handle it but he insisted that work does not mesh with student life. I deduced that with his savings, he could take off and focus on his research versus myself who needs to work in order to fund my life. Is the role of a student solely in the classroom or is it outside as well? Or is it a "stage of life" kind of thing?

http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cdd/announcement/view/89

Call for Papers: Volume 4 Critical Disability Discourse (CDD)

York University’s Critical Disability Studies Graduate Student Program launched an academic journal in November 2009. Critical Disability Discourse is a bilingual, interdisciplinary journal, publishing articles that focus on experiences of disability from a critical perspective. The journal considers articles from graduate scholars in a variety of academic fields, but undergraduate students, activists, and community members/organizers are also invited to contribute. Critical Disability Discourse's goals are to provide emerging scholars an opportunity to contribute to the expanding field of critical disability studies and to gain exposure for their work in the public sphere.

Possible topics can include but are not limited to the following:

• Critical theory and disability: feminism, post-modernism, postcolonial theory, transnational analysis, Marxism, etc.
• History of disability: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Victorian Age, Industrial Age, etc.
• Law and public policy, and disability
• Qualitative and quantitative research pertaining to disability
• Education and disability
• Culture: disability-related popular culture, television, videos, blogs, arts, literature and film analysis