Free Speech v/s Fair Speech

I could not be more pleased that the pornography debate is happening at the University of New Hampshire. Although, I must clarify: I am pleased that Radical Feminists are making the debate happen, as the pseudo “pro-”pornography advocates just want to screen that we are anti-sex and proclaim freedom of speech as the solidifier of a profoundly violent, anti-woman, anti-queer, and anti-environmental industry. The “pro-pornography” scholarship, if that even exists, remains fundamentally uncritical.

A discussion of whether we should explore policy to regulate porn-access in the library is one current debate. The catalyst that led to the emergence of this conversation was the arrest of a fifty-seven year old man from Exeter, NH, who was caught viewing child pornography in the Dimond library this summer. My class became interested in people's reactions to this event and how they felt about regulating or completely denying access to pornography in the library.

As good-old-fashioned-Feminists, we hit the streets. (my class that is) We went around and asked the following questions: Did you hear about the summer incident in the library? What do you think about implementing policy to avoid this?

My group found answers within a diverse community -- an elected official, a philosophy professor, a leader of a multicultural movement on campus, and a business student. I was disappointed that all but one provides us with the same constitutional flattery, patriarchally commodified, essentialist and absolutist argument regarding free speech, “....if we start to mess with free speech, it is a slippery slope”

On the contrary, not messing with “free” speech has created an avalanche of oppression. Freedom of speech is not absolute, just like private property isn’t, there is law allowing for eminent domain, and just like liberty is not guaranteed if you provoke the law. Here is a kicker, how about fair speech. The man, yes, man editing “the money shot” on his Adobe is entitled to free speech and uses woman as the objects of his hypocritical application of freedom, not to mention that the children in the pornography that this man was consuming don’t have freedom of speech.

How this university can remain blind to these issues is beyond me. We need to understand that you can not act or say what ever you want. In addition, let’s not play “political theorist” and say that we don’t find a profound tension and oppressive nature to pornography; it is there. And then to say that people consuming pornography in a public library could be exercising scholarship or research -- bullshit

If this university is truly devoted to sustainability, as they market themselves, they would know that banning this toxic detriment from our public spaces is essential to sustain our community, what you do in your bedroom with your computer is your problem, but keep this filth out of our public spaces. I view a lot of pornography for my research, and I certainly don’t do it in the library. There is no argument here. And when you can’t defend your weak arguments, cite the “founders” and romanticize the discourse with some bizarre claim to freedom.

Give me a break.

Technology and Health: How the Media Romanticizes Illness

Eve Shapiro is a sociologist and social critic, her book Gender Circuits: Bodies and Identities in a Technological Age is a critical analysis that tries to answer why technology has affected our perception of reality and has redefined our bodies and identity. Although her argument is up for debate, I find her persuasion very compelling. I also find it impossible to not see the tech dependency we have developed, if we think about our daily lives, we can conclude that outside of sleep, we are constantly engaged with technology, particularly computers and cell phones. Through this technology we further engage with one of our favorite pleasures -- mass media.

In chapter one, Shapiro theorizes on medical technology in a section she calls,“ Biomedical Technology as Mediator between Physical and Mental Health” (p 30) Shapiro reports that we depend on medical technology to legitimize the status of our illness; she views this relationship as unfavorable. We may be inclined to dismiss her claim quickly. As products of a very flawed modernity, our connection to medical science has made us “better” people. I would have to argue that medical science has encouraged us to give up much of our agency when it comes to personal health. That is not say that we have not all benefited from medical science, but for our purposes in this blog, I want us to focus on the fundamental relationship between self and technology in the medical world, and I also wish to add the subject of mass media to Shapiro’s argument.

I am in agreement with Shapiro when she asks, do we acknowledge that we’re sick “.....because we feel sick or because technology tells us?”( p 31)

We have grown attached and dependent to medical verification, we have also institutionalized their validity, Shapiro discusses this when she explains that bureaucratic entities such as schools and employers demand doctor’s notes instead of trusting our own reporting of our illness, of-course this is putting a lot of faith in people, and we all know how irresponsible that can sometimes be. That being said, someone having to write a note to assure us of our illness is the easiest way to loose agency of our body and rely on outside sources to verify our internal conditions.

Now that we have identified the fundamental disconnection between bodily agency, mental perception and medical science, let’s add capitalism and mass media.

After people are properly detached from their agency, we can now rely on pharmaceutical corporations, medical lobbyists, and mass media campaigns to supply us with the solutions to our many illnesses. Capitalism begins to formulate a medical myth that is as American as the house on the hill: everyone has ADHD, everyone needs iron, everyone needs to loose weight, everyone is depressed, everyone has chronic-anxiety. And, guess what? We have a pill for everyone of those things, available to you for a ludicrous price.

We slowly become slaves to the promise of health.

But how can consumerism sell us this myth? This now brings me to the marketing apparatus that is all to common in selling us bullshit -- romantics. The Celebrex commercial of people running in fields, the memoirs of overcoming depression, the Oprah shows about how great it is to be thin, the multi-million dollar publications on how to help your child concentrate. I am in no way denying that depression and other illness are real and they affect many, but I refuse to acknowledge that we are all participants in the field.

Of-course, when capitalism romanticizes its product we need to expect the tokenism of minority groups, after all, white supremacy is an essential component of successful capitalism. Mass media then becomes an efficient way to market the product. This further problematizes an already loaded issue, as it promotes capital gains through the romanticizing of people’s realities, here -- illness. An appropriate example of this is a music-video clip put out by Human Music & Sound Design, they are a company that creates original commercials on pressing issues such as AIDS to build awareness. The one-minute clip shows a black woman with AIDS being filmed for ninety days in her bed, they show the women loosing weight and become more and more ill in fast-motion. It is very disturbing. At the end we find out that what we think was the 90th day, when she was the most ill, is actually the first. They then tell us that AIDS is treatable and that WE can help be getting involved and donating.

This motif of bleeding-heart liberal romantics is very common. I am interest in the internal politics of these “awareness commercials.”

The poor black women continues to be the token-poster child of what is wrong with the world, and we can make a trendy video on how to “fix” the problem, without first asking the question: why, in the year 2010, this woman is where she is. If the exploitation of this women wasn’t bad enough, we continue to have the audacity to considers our-selves the chosen ones to help.

White-Messiah Complex

Our political discourse is filled with it, and we refuse to acknowledge it. Should we help those in need? Yes. But we should not, as we do, commercialize people’s pain and illness, and sell a hollow product of “help.” Our ten dollars a month are not going to help, if we don’t first realize that this destructive consumer-based system allows us to think we are helping when we are in fact destroying. Our owners need to stop representing illness through black women and queers.

Most importantly, we must reclaim agency and sterilize the status of illness from capitalism.

Mark Bauerlein: "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future"

Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and the author of "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future" In this book, Bauerlein argues that we are in fact the dumbest generation. We don't read, we can't spell, we are easily distracted. And then, he outrageously claims that we are "young" and get ridiculed for original thought. Firstly, I wish to apologize to Bauerlein for critiquing his work, as I am nothing more than an ignorant incompetent. And, yes, I just took advantage of spell-check to spell "critiquing."

Although lucrative, we must first navigate away from Bauerlein's narcissism and overly essentialist attitude, and arrive to one of the fundamental flaws in his argument -- classism. I can only echo the words of bell hooks when she tells us that topics of justice cannot be discussed unless we deal with a literate community. Within the racially divisive arena of American public policy, people of color have systematically been disenfranchised from the world of academia, creating an elite class of academics. This class is subject to the same intersectionality of most oppressive systems, it is predominately racist, sexist, and sympathetic to learners of high-profile political affiliation and elite socioeconomic status.

While I can partially agree that our generation can be more focused, I refuse to admit that we are somehow dumb. Here is an example: The internet bomb in the early 90's allowed computers and the internet to enter the classroom setting. Information is now available to students who had been materially lacking. This especially had an affect on me as a Latino. My mother, like many first generation immigrants did not speak the language and was not at all familiar with American Culture. The internet allowed me to explore my curiosity, and help my family move forward. With no help from anyone, I was able, as a high school student, to apply to college. It is weak scholarship for Bauerlein not to realize the profound affect that technology has had on poor people, who use it, even at the public library for ten cents an hour, to access information that our immigrant parents can't give us, like the logistically knowledge of applying to college.

Another flaw in Bauerlein argument is that he assumes that all people need to assimilate to his archaic perception of academia. I have never read Hamlet, and I don't care to. More and more students and teachers find that articles and journals can be more effective in teaching because of the length. Not to mention that classroom practices are changing. I am sure he would think this blog entry is invalid because I have checked me email twice. Students today are involved in many things and sitting in a room for six hours and reading is not one them.

Bauerlein also makes a huge claim when he says we all don't read. I read a lot and, I value academics. He claims that we are ridiculed for original thought, I don't know if anyone in the class feels this way, but my thinking has been celebrated and embraced by friends and academics. We cannot allow this type of negativism in our academic discourse. We are already dealing with capitalist demands for people not to go to school, and now, we choose to claim that everyone is dumb anyway.

Bauerlein might be angry that I am able to criticize him after reading the summary of his book on bostom.com, but here we see the beuaty of summary, as now I am spared from reading his apocalyptic revaluation of our dumb future. We are finally moving as a community, here at UNH, to expand and diversify our education, to educate the people who value education. I don't believe that education is given, especially to people of color and queers. We must claim it, and not allow for anyone to take our knowledge, no matter how "unfocused and ignorant." I am claiming my education and telling this individual to buzz off. Allowing this conservative, simply angry rhetoric to affect our perception of ourselves as thinkers would make us stupid. I hope he doesn't call his students dumb, because if he does, he might find out he has a lot to learn from us. After all, we gave him the material to write his book, which has sold a lot of copies. And, which I am sure students use for firewood and don't read. Students also pay his salary at Emory University. I guess we really are useless.