Derailing tactic #87, debunked

It is often said -- for example, by people who think "South Park" is funny -- that racist, misogynistic, homophobic, sizeist, other "-ist" forms of humor are acceptable if "I make fun of everyone".

But when you make fun of everyone, different groups pay different amounts for your negative or stereotyped comments. If I make fun of my female friend when she talks about how she drove half of I-5 at 50mph by saying "you're such a typical female driver", and make fun of my male friend when he talks about his twelve speeding tickets in the past year by saying "you're such a typical male driver", these insults don't have equal weight, because it's worse to be considered a "typical female driver" (cautious, easily intimidated) than a "typical male driver" (bold, daring). If I throw around stereotypes of black people as crack-addicted welfare recipients and stereotypes of white people as uptight and soulless in the same sentence, I'm not "making fun of everybody equally" -- the effect of my remarks on any black people within earshot will be felt far more strongly than the comfortable in-group joking of me teasing other white people.

Saying that "making fun of everyone" is egalitarian is like saying that a flat tax is fair. Tax rates are based on income because $1000 is a different percentage of your livelihood if you make $5000 a year than if you make $500,000 a year. Likewise, what seems to be the same joke costs a group that's already hated and marginalized more than a group whose privileged status is secure.

Offering to include a naked picture of a guy in your next talk doesn't make including a naked picture of a woman in your software talk acceptable; making fun of your own privileged group doesn't buy you the right to reinforce oppressive discourse.

"Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar." -- Molly Ivins

Day 18

We have a new, lightning-fast Internet connection at the base (have you ever experienced a factor-of-300 decrease in latency within the space of 24 hours? Also, I'm now using an IP address with a whois record with a Haitian address, which is pretty exciting.) To celebrate, I'll write some more about what I've been doing in Haiti.

For the first two weeks, mostly I cleared rubble. I worked on two different sites, each of which took about a week, with rotating teams of about 12 people. Clearing rubble means hitting rocks with a sledgehammer until they break (very fun, but tiring, especially if you're in the sun and/or you're a weak little kitten like me); cutting rebar and pulling it out, once it's no longer covered in rubble; shovelling rubble into a wheelbarrow; and wheeling the rubble to... well, somewhere else. That's kind of the sticky bit. I think I read an estimate that there are about 26 million tons of rubble in Haiti right now. Where is it all going to go? IT IS A MYSTERY. For now, an answer along the lines of "in a pile next to the house" suffices, so that the homeowners can get to building temporary shelters on the foundation of their former houses and eventually do something more permanent with the space.

I wanted to try something different, so this week, I signed up to do concrete rendering instead. One of the things HODR is doing besides just moving rubble around (very important by itself!) is building schools. The school I'm working at is the third school HODR has built. I'd never worked with concrete before, but it's quite fun, using what my team leader described as the "monkey-flinging-poo-at-the-wall" method. That is, you get to fling poo (or rather, concrete) at the wall to do the first coat (the rough coat), then you apply a second, smooth coat with a trowel, smooth it around with a float, and -- the part that most appeals to the detail-oriented -- smooth out every last rough bit again with a trowel. It's less sweat-inducing than working rubble, but pretty challenging. Also challenging is keeping the swarm of kids who may or may not be wearing pants at a given moment away from the construction site. They like to hang around exactly as close as we'll allow them to hang around and stare at us all day. I'm not sure why we're so interesting.

Getting back and forth from the job sites is fun because we all get to ride in the back of a tap-tap, which is a hacked pickup truck, which means that 8 to 14 volunteers share the truck bed with several wheelbarrows, assorted shovels and other tools, and sometimes lumber or fencing. It's pretty great, especially when you're sitting high up on the railing that's been welded onto the top edge of the truck bed and you can catch a nice breeze (particularly during the 3 minutes of the ride that's actually on a paved road smooth enough to go fast. I'm guessing "fast" is about 25mph here).

I haven't been using my French much beyond the "Je m'appelle Tim. Comment vous appelez-vous?" level. Some of the local people speak it, but most speak Creole. The little kids would be the ones I'd be most likely to be talking to, and I think most only speak Creole. Which, by the way, sounds completely different from French and don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

Life aside from work is about as comfortable as you'd expect at a base equipped with bucket showers, bucket-flush toilets, electricity between the hours of 6-10 PM every day, and rice and beans for every other meal. But our Internet connection is now far, far modern than our plumbing! And that's what really counts.

Neither Internet nor rice and beans come free, and Project Leogane will be in full swing at least until the end of 2011, so you can donate to HODR and help keep me and the other 100 volunteers able to work effectively. Or something approximating such.