[Linkspam] Monday, September 12

One Tweet Shows What Silicon Valley Really Thinks of the People It's Crushing, by Jack Smith IV for Mic (2015-08-03). "Washio doesn't create or provide goods — it's really just a middleman. It doesn't replace laundromats, it just takes your laundry to other laundry facilities and "third-party providers" and does it for you." (The free market doesn't work) "If we stop sharing risk and responsibility, only those who already hold wealth and privilege will benefit."

HSAs are the worst new hotness in healthcare, by Amy (2016-08-29). Health insurance sucks.

Trauma, Trigger Warnings, and Making a Little Space, by Emily C. Heath (2016-08-27). "But that’s not what trigger warnings are about. They’re not “get out of hard conversations free” cards. Rather, they are conscious ways of telling the people involved in a conversation what they are about to see and hear." If you're a hospital chaplain warning a family about what their loved one who's been in an accident might look like before they go in to see them, that's a form of trigger warning. When not contextualized as "trigger warnings", somehow a lot of people have an easier time understanding why they're needed.

Teaching with Trauma: Trigger Warnings, Feminism, and Disability Pedagogy, by Angela M. Carter (2015). Suggested by jesse_the_k. So many good quotes from this, including:

• "Whether or not we consider the affect and effects of trauma on pedagogy is a choice only for those whose lives are not already shaped by trauma. For us, there is no choice; our experiences of trauma shape how we move through the world. "
  
• "...experiences of re-traumatization or being triggered are not the same as being challenged outside of one's comfort zone, being reminded of a bad feeling, or having to sit with disturbing truths."
  'When this occurs, the triggered individuals often feel a complete loss of control and disassociation from the bodymind. This is not a state of injury, but rather a state of disability. Because others understand this lost of control and the other related affects as emotionally disproportionate, the traumatized individual is no longer seen as reliable, or as having the ability to "make sense."'
  
• "Throughout their report, the AAUP repeatedly equates trauma with being offended, made to feel uncomfortable, or responding negatively with a claim of injury. As noted above, being triggered or re-experiencing trauma entails a fully embodied shift in affect wherein any number of psychosomatic responses may occur without one's cognitive control. This is not the same thing as, for example, the discomfort that comes with confronting one's white privilege, or the feeling of personal injury that may come when someone challenges your belief system. With this fundamental misunderstanding grounding their response, it is no wonder the AAUP argues against trigger warnings."
  
• "Those in opposition to trigger warnings in classroom reinforce the individual model of disability, suggesting that the traumatized or triggered individual seek help on their own from the proper medical establishments. It is the responsibility of the traumatized to deal with their excessive bodymind, not the society that produces and then pathologizes it as such."
  
• 'Margaret Price argues there is a "popular conception that unsound minds have no place in the classroom" and that the academy is driven "to protect academic discourse as a 'rational' realm, a place where emotion does not intrude (except within carefully proscribed boundaries), where 'crazy' students are quickly referred out of the classroom to the school counseling center"'
  
• 'In the most basic sense, accommodations are not about "safety," but about access to opportunity for a more livable life.' [I'd note that this is a bit dismissive here of the concept of safe spaces, but it's true that safe spaces are a different different concept from TWs/CWs.]
  
• "...trigger warnings do not provide a way to "opt out" of anything, nor do they offer protection from the realities of the world. Trigger warnings provide a way to "opt in" by lessening the power of the shock and the unexpectedness, and granting the traumatized individual agency to attend to the affect and effects of their trauma. Traumatized individuals know that trigger warnings will not save us. Such warnings simply allow us to do the work we need to do so that we can participate in the conversation or activity. They allow us to enter the conversation, just like automatic doors allow people who use wheelchairs to more easily enter a building."
  
• "A college classroom, or campus, that adequately accounts for the material realities of diverse bodyminds is almost inconceivable within an institution built on awarding individual merit over acknowledging structural privileges and inequalities." [Emphasis added]
  
• 'nothing is "wrong" with person who is experiencing a moment of re-traumatization, or any other kind of disability-related affective experience.'
  

The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism, by Audre Lorde (1981). A classic.

I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.

The ignorance aimed at Caster Semenya flies in the face of the Olympic spirit, by Katrina Karzakis for the Guardian (2016-08-23). I get furious every time I think about it.

Two more posts on enabling narcissists and why we should stop doing that: The Blood-bag: Cutting the IV line (2016-08-23) and
The Blood-bag: Patterns of Blood-bags and Narcissists in Tech
(2016-08-24), by Marlena Compton and Valerie Aurora. "We learn all of our relationship patterns in our families of origin and bring them to work or to our chosen communities every day."

Those Trump Statues Aren’t Funny, And They Sure Aren’t Progressive, by Marissa Jenae Johnson for The Establishment (2016-08-19). Body-shaming isn't the way to fight fascism.

Stop Devaluing Black Women’s Labor, by Kronda Adair (2016-08-18). If you want something, it's worth paying for. Especially emotional labor.

The Comedy World Can’t Handle Rape Allegations, by Emily McComb for The Cut (2016-08-18).