bodies

Body(s) count(s)

I struggle to watch or read the news as it feels like our roads are a war zone. With every report of a serious accident, I hold my breath to see if they might be connected to communities I am part of. The last couple of weeks have been emotional, as I supported friends of a young person who died in an accident and have connections with the school community I work in. Another young life lost on our roads, and someone I know/knew well. While we all processed the shock and grief, I became aware and disturbed by the media’s approach to this particular accident. I need to say something because I am dismayed at the lack of awareness and compassion for those closest to these young people. The last straw was reading this in the NZ Herald.

All media reports follow a pattern of providing ‘factual information’. Facts are generally descriptions of things like number of vehicles, location and time of accident, number of people in the vehicle, age, ethnicity and gender. The last aspect of this description is where the media focussed its attention as the gender identities of the two young people killed were revealed over the week through a series of articles. As soon as someone is named their gender is assumed and both young people in this particular accident were known in various communities by different names and genders, yes, they were transgender but their relationships with family and friends occupy a landscape of complexity that should not be thrown open to the media in a time of trauma and grief.

These families should not have to deal with the loss of a child and have salivating journalists looking for a juicy ‘story’. It is hard enough for young trans people to negotiate how to ‘come out’ it’s usually something carefully considered and managed. Imagine how challenging this would be if the control was stolen, this is what happened to these two young people. The media managed to ‘dead name’ both and then amp up the sick objectification of their ‘bodies’ through photos which inevitably get people to ‘guess the gender’.

Did the media ever stop to consider that transitioning is a sensitive, personal process, and for young people this often means navigating family, culture and identity, deciding who to tell, when and how. In this case, THEY could not do this, they had no voice! And if they cannot tell their story, it is not YOURS TO TELL! Seriously, where are your ethics? Did the family give consent for this information to be made public? Why do the public need to know this information – who’s interests and needs are served? How does this help these families at a very difficult time? I’ll help you out…

IT DOESN’T!

It feeds the inevitable transphobia of social media trolls who can now comment and make sick jokes, all before another family get to bury their child. Good to know the New Zealand Herald has journalists with the ethical compass of a psychopath.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A mo(ve)ment in time

A man runs through a crowd

A vehicle in pursuit, chasing him down, looking behind

Bodies parting like a zip, closing behind in disbelief

Shattered bodies, desperate screams for help, adrenaline surging seeking a path through the chaos

Broken pieces of time and space

A man drives through a crowd bodies scatter, disbelief, a surreal juxtaposition

Two men in different places

Steal the attention they have split the masses

The man in yellow will share this day forever with another an entanglement of torment, of pain and of suffering

No celebration at the end

Time closes in on the other his race is over

It is not over…

(In memory of Bastille Day attack 2016 – with the Tour de France leg on the same day where Chris Froome had to run with his bike)

Feeling BADD ass

My friend Philip blogged today about Blogging Against Disablism Day – BADD (well worth reading) and I started to wonder a bit about the proliferation of events that try and raise consciousness through a catchy acronym and a single day focus. I worry sometimes that our year is too short to include all of the special days, maybe it’s time to move to Saturn (29:1 earth year – over 10 000 days should be about right). The feel good vibe runs hot and people love to get in on the action, hit ‘like’, have their thoughts challenged but if it is just through reading then I’m unsure about the actual engagement with the ‘real’ world (for want of a better word). Do people actually DO anything different? I’m skeptical.

Blogs also tend to reach those already interested or thinking about the same things, so sometimes it’s a case of ‘preaching to the converted’ or seeing your own thoughts rehashed through another lens but kind of the same ideas. Maybe that is the point of it, like Philip mentions ‘law of attraction’ perhaps that is how momentum is started, by sharing something, with a wider network of people.

Getting stories and voices ‘out there’ is not enough for change, and while consciousness might be raised for a moment the next click of the screen could be something that convinces you that there are more important things to worry about. That has been one of my frustrations recently – seeing the ‘transgender-bathroom’ debate be hijacked and minimised in the name of promoting bigger issues.

So my contribution to BADD day is this – you have a body – it has and always will be in a state of becoming differently functional ‘fluxtional’ is my new word. ‘Disability’ does not exist – complexity of functioning does. Therefore every day I am against the normative idea of ableism (again see Philips blog) because it denies the very real richness of diversity that infiltrates every level of connection we have to each other. Please let us see MORE body-function diversity in media, all forms. For a start can we please get someone signing the news? Because quite frankly I have one sign to give NZ television networks with their representation of diversity and it only needs one digit.