Let’s Talk Pre-existing

Stephanie Zvan15 Comments

I’m grumpy today because I’m not feeling well and haven’t been for…well, far too long. The migraines are getting more frequent again, and more of them hurt instead of just making me stupid (thinking through sand) and hypersensitive. The allergies are taking a different tack this summer. I can breathe through my nose, and I’m content to leave my eyeballs where they are, but I feel as though I’ve been wandering around with about an extra twenty pounds of weight strapped to each ankle. I am so tired it hurts to have to stay awake sometimes, like after taking a shower in the morning. I’ve been working from home more so I can nap. And now my temperature is going wonky. To be fair, it does that whenever I’m tired or slightly sunburnt or….

It’s time to do something, which means going to the doctor. The old OTC antihistamine is no longer doing what it must. The class of antihistamines that works best for me isn’t available OTC in a 24-hour form. The migraines have been successfully treated in the past, but only with drugs that are only available by prescription for a very good reason.

On top of that, it’s time for another MRI of my heart. Oh, yes, and a new antibiotic prescription so I can go to the dentist without pushing myself another step closer to a valve replacement. Time is already doing that for me, but no need to hurry things along. I’m hoping the original will last until Medicare kicks in.

Thing is, there’s nothing acute wrong with me (as far as I know; the static can get pretty loud sometimes). Everything I have is a pre-existing condition. Everything but the allergies dates back at least to my teens. Arthritis included.

This is kind of a big deal. HIPAA’s got me covered somewhat, but needing to maintain constant coverage limits what I can do. My husband and I can’t start a business together without being absolutely certain that we can afford the exorbitant prices of individual coverage, assuming a carrier will cover us. I can’t pursue writing full time, or him photography, without being sure we can afford COBRA if something happens to the other’s job. We also have to be prepared for something happening to both our jobs, even if we don’t take any entrepreneurial risks.

I can’t experience a gap in coverage (neither can he), which means we are hostage to the highest priced insurance plans in the U.S. If I do, if I can’t afford that insurance, none of the crap I have to deal with will be covered for a year. Any treatment I might need, including open heart surgery, would be mine to pay for, even while I was paying for insurance.

And after all this, I’m relatively well off. I just hurt every day. I have a flexible job, so my health doesn’t keep me from being a good employee most of the time. Other people lose jobs because their health makes them not unemployable, which would give them access to Medicare, but undependable, which gives them access to nothing.

Like me, a lot of these people have little or no control over their conditions. They didn’t ask to be ill and marginally employable and uninsurable. Anyplace civilized, they wouldn’t be punished for the accident of their health while insurance companies rake in profits.

This is why we need health care reform and, more specifically, health insurance reform.

Let’s Talk Pre-existing
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Elite Bastardry at Quiche Moraine

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

Don’t ask me how a decidedly landlocked blog, in name and location, will manage to host the decidedly nautical Carnival of the Elitist Bastards this weekend, but it will. Actually, you can ask, and I even have something cool planned. I’m just not going to tell you what it is.

To quote the admiral:

Aye, it be that time again! Extract yerselves from the dens o’ iniquity (where ye’ve been discussing philosophy o’er the finest wine, right? Right?). Send me a link to yer finest Elitist Bastardry no later than Friday, August 28th. We be sailin’ wi’ Captain Stephanie from Quiche Moraine, and she be intendin’ to sail wi’ a full crew.

For those o’ ye who’ve watched the Bastards sail and think ye might be o’ proper caliber for such an illustrious crew, here be the requirements:

1. Pick a blog post o’ yours that hits the stupid where it hurts.

2. Send us the link.

That be it.

See ye aboard!

Or somewhere thereabouts.

Still don’t know what we’re looking for? Try here. And remember, the more you submit, the more you make me work. How’s that for motivation?

Elite Bastardry at Quiche Moraine

What’s Wrong with the U.S.?

Stephanie Zvan10 Comments

Charlie Stross hits where it hurts:

I’ve been suppressing the urge to explode angrily ever since Thursday, when Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was officially released from prison and flown home to Libya. His release — on compassionate grounds, as he is suffering from terminal cancer and has weeks to live. Mr Al Megrahi was serving a life sentence, handed down by a rather oddly constituted Scottish court for his part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 — the biggest aviation disaster ever in British airspace, and one of the biggest acts of terrorism of that decade.

What am I angry about?

Go read. He got it in one, I think.

What’s Wrong with the U.S.?

District 9

Stephanie Zvan7 Comments

Why are you reading this? Go see District 9 instead. Then come back and we can talk.

You want a review? Fine. This movie does what more science fiction should do. It educates you in science. Social science. History, politics, sociology, psychology–they’re all in here. They are aggressively, in-your-face in there.

This is the best science fiction movie since Serenity.

Like Serenity, District 9 is brutal. Unlike most films, science fiction or otherwise, District 9 uses its brutality to good effect. When violence shocks you, you know you’re not supposed to be taking it for granted. When you see a moment of casual evil, you know you’re not supposed to look away, that it’s meant to be there, that you’re watching it for a reason. Still, if you think the messages of the movie are delivered with 2x4s, you’re not catching them all. Nor is it all about its messages.

The film does have its flaws, of course. You’re supposed to be unsettled, but unless you bring Dramamine, your stomach may take the brunt of it. There are plot holes centered around the alien tech, some of them large.

Ultimately, however, the tech isn’t what the movie is about. It’s about all the different ways we generate excuses to treat each other like crap and the consequences we don’t consider when we do that. In short, it’s right up my alley. It’s bracing and thought-provoking and, frankly, all I really want to talk about right now. I want to dive into how it was constructed and compare notes on what people caught and what they didn’t. I want to see the movie reflected in the minds of the people around me.

So go on. Go see it. Then come back. I’ll be waiting.

Still waiting.

Go.

Update: Don’t go into the comments if you want to avoid spoilers.

District 9

Reorganization

Stephanie Zvan

This is actually a tougher fight than the election was. Corporations far and away recognized that four more years of rule by the monster that the Republican Party had become would be as disastrous for them as it would be for all of us. They were pragmatic in their understand that business cannot flourish anywhere the government doesn’t meet at least its minimal obligations in law and the maintenance of infrastructure, so they supported Obama.

They are not supporting health care reform, which means we need to do more. Their disproportionate influence isn’t all arrayed against us, but neither is it on our side. We’re much more alone this time.

Find out what we need to do at Quiche Moraine.

Reorganization

The Issue Isn’t….

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

This is the full video of the couple who are alleging discrimination. Regardless of gender or sexual orientation, one would expect folks to not be that intimate in a restaurant. When asked to tone it down a bit (it being lots of body contact and burying a face in the other’s breasts), the couple responded angrily and was then asked to leave. The main thing here is… it isn’t about sexual orientation, but rather, its about behavior, because what the manager saw wasn’t just a hug or an embrace as some of the news outlets are describing in their headlines.

So says the text that accompanies this video. See for yourself.

I’m not sure how that’s different from what the couple was claiming all along. You?

Of course, there were large breasts involved, which makes it obscene, because anybody can just tuck those away out of sight…or something.

The Issue Isn’t….

Required Reading

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

A few items worthy of some serious thought.

This one is older, but I’ve been thinking about it since it was posted, so it’s definitely worth sharing. The Gates arrest and the chatter afterward prompted my friend Naomi to some serious comparison of policing styles and outcomes.

Even at the time, even as a snotty teenager, I had to respect the way the police handled this. This is what I’m talking about when I say Couper used Judo principles. This approach will not work in every situation, but running in and cracking heads rarely defuses things either. In Minneapolis, years ago, PETA ran a protest where they sent attractive young women to strip naked and lock themselves to public signs while chanting “I’d rather go naked than wear fur!” In January. Minneapolis dealt with this by sending about two dozen officers to cut the locks, rough up the protestors, and arrest them. I thought, “It’s January in the upper midwest. Isn’t this likely to be self-limiting behavior?” It would have worked just as well to send a couple of cops to direct traffic and wait until they got bored. And cold. Nudity is not a major public menace, you know? (They may have done just that in Madison. I can’t remember for sure.)

Instead of just focusing on what might or might not be in a future health care bill, Mike is talking about the current health care situation with the help of the experts.

After two years with the smaller employer, the private insurer boosted the premiums by a factor of two. The premiums doubled because in the prior coverage year, one employee’s spouse was treated for an advanced cancer. We didn’t get any raises from our employer, and my own take home dropped because of the increase in my coverage. I guess I could have raged that it “Wasn’t fair! It isn’t my fault she had cancer!” The thing is I knew that it could have been me or my kids who had been sick or needed treatment for an expensive medical condition. Sure enough, my daughter in the next year needed expensive brain surgery and new meds; none of which her mother nor I could have paid out of pocket.

Sara Robinson at AlterNet is taking a hard look at whether the U.S. is stepping away from fascism now that we’ve gotten rid of Bush–and not liking the answer. (via the Chimp Refuge)

In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History, Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn’t by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton’s stages, we weren’t there yet. There were certain signs — one in particular — we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren’t seeing it.

And now we are. In fact, if you know what you’re looking for, it’s suddenly everywhere.

And finally, Greg has had enough of the idea that pointing to obvious racism in politics is off-limits. The rant itself is tasty, but the comments on the original post and at ScienceBlogs are a stunning display of missing the point that really, really need to be read.

Join me, if you will, in a moment of utter, deep cynicism. That would mean you thinking, for just a moment, exactly like I think every second of the day. This will be painful for you, unless you are already where I am….

Required Reading

Quick and Easy Advocacy

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

Something happened today that was cool enough to share. It happened at work, so the details will be almost nonexistent, but I think the idea will come through.

We have periodic office-wide meetings in which we talk about the various things different parts of the company are doing for our clients. They’re about being able to cross-sell and about staying engaged in the business and the office despite being so busy we can go weeks without seeing even the people in our own line of business.

Given that, it wasn’t too surprising when an email came out saying we’d be doing something at the next meeting that would require some action on our part. In order to demonstrate the efficacy of a targeted communication strategy, we would take a little survey about where we stood on an issue. The survey would sort us into groups, and we’d put our group name on a tag when we got to the meeting and sit with others in our group while we learned about the strategy.

It felt like one of those games you play at a party where no one really knows anybody else, but whatever. I know not everybody is as weird about manufactured group cohesion as I am. I took the survey.

Then I looked at the questions that were being asked. Then I looked at the category it put me in (“there are no bad categories,” said the email). Then there was this little roaring in my ears. I didn’t disagree with the category, but what it said about where I stand was no one’s business but my own. No, I thought, you can’t make me reveal that.

I knew there was another person in the office who was going to end up in the same category and was going to be just as reluctant to talk about it. I could have gone to them and commiserated. It was tempting. A steam valve would have been useful. But this person wasn’t in a position to fix this any more than I was.

Instead, I wrote back to the person who sent the email. I didn’t tell them I was upset personally. That wasn’t any of their business either. I didn’t say, “You can’t do that.” It was true, but it wasn’t specific enough to point to the outcome I wanted.

Finally, I settled on, “What are you doing to protect the privacy of those people who don’t want to reveal information on this issue to their coworkers?”

The answer came back, rather quickly, “Oh, thank you. I wasn’t thinking about that, but I see how people could be concerned. I’ll make sure everyone knows they can opt out when I send out the reminder.”

Bingo.

Then I talked to the other person I knew would be upset at the idea of sharing and told them the second email would be coming. This person told me how they’d gone back into the survey and lied to see what other group they might end up in–and thanked me three or four times for doing something about it. Made me pretty happy for the rest of the day.

Turns out, sometimes all you need to do is know how to ask.

Quick and Easy Advocacy

This Is About Sex, Right?

Stephanie Zvan10 Comments

No, this isn’t a story about sex trafficking. This is a story about immigrant women working in factories in fields all across the country. And [Southern Poverty Law Center’s] response is not to criminalize their work, thus penalizing the victims, but rather to help them file lawsuits against their employers and attackers. You can read about one such case, U.S. EEOC, et al. vs. Tuscarora Yarns, here.

It struck me as a stark and important contrast to the antiprostitution activists who claim to be working to help victims of exploitation but who are really further victimizing them by criminalizing their livelihood instead of prosecuting abusers. SPLC’s strategy makes it clear that they understand the issues: All people have a right to earn a living. No person should be subject to abuse, violence, or exploitation at work. Workers in many industries put their bodies at risk to do their work, but those risks should be minimized and worker safety is everybody’s concern.

This is a lesson that feminists who claim they want to protect women in the sex industry ought to learn.

If you’re not already reading Sex in the Public Square, you really should, and articles like the one quoted above are why. In a society that can’t seem to refer to sex without heaping loads of shame, it’s good to have people who expose that shame to the bleaching power of a little sunlight. Even I–whose circle includes burlesque artists, former strippers, sex-shop owners, erotica writers, nude models and photographers, customers of all the above and prostitutes as well, and people who have engaged in sexual relationships that one would have to stretch to call something other than prostitution–even I find challenges to my understanding of sex work at SitPS.

Here’s a recent example: Did you know that “indoor” (non-street) prostitution is currently legal in Rhode Island? I had no idea until SitPS started covering efforts to make it illegal, efforts which in turn shed some light on the people who claimed they were trying to protect women from exploitation by making criminalizing their jobs. The longer this process goes on, the harder it is to believe the most vocal supporters of criminalization are anything but deeply disturbed by the very notion of sex.

In this piece on myths of the sex trade:

Despite what some activists claim, most of those working indoors in the U.S. have not been trafficked against their will.

Many indoor workers made conscious decisions to enter the trade, and a significant number actually like their work. A recent New York City study found that indoor workers expressed “a surprisingly high degree of enjoyment” of their work, and several other studies also find that indoor workers have fairly high job satisfaction and believe they provide a valuable service. This is not an exceptional finding; it is confirmed by a growing body of research. The media often ignore it, and prefer to do feature stories on the abused and exploited.

This is not to romanticize indoor prostitution. Some indoor workers work under oppressive conditions or dislike their work for other reasons. At the same time, there is plenty of evidence to challenge the myths that most prostitutes are coerced into the sex trade, experience frequent abuse and want to be rescued. This syndrome is more characteristic of street workers, but it’s important to point out that the vast majority of American sex providers work indoors.

SitPS included a link to an opinion piece by Donna Hughes of Citizens Against Trafficking, one of the main forces pushing for criminalization. She described the testimony of those who willingly work in the sex industry (i.e., those who would be made criminals under the new law) as “a sordid circus, with pimps and prostitutes coming forward to oppose the legislation.” She complained about hearing testimony from a smoker and from people who were camera-shy. And she used scare quotes wherever the topic of sex came up.

Then a man reeking of cigarette smoke and other odors came forward. He was identified to me by Hurley as a pimp. He claimed credit for the growth of the spa-brothels in Rhode Island for his now-deceased wife. Another Korean woman came forward and said she did “it” for depressed, shy guys who needed stress relief. She implicated construction workers, judges and lawyers. She proudly exclaimed that she does “it” to make money.

Then a tattooed woman, calling herself a “sexologist and sex educator,” spoke against the bill. She is also a reporter for a prostitutes’ magazine called $pread. (I couldn’t make this stuff up!)

But don’t forget, her goal is to help those in the industry. She isn’t doing this because talking about sex gives her the squeems. Not her. It’s everybody else who’s working from a place of irrationality.

The State Senate’s obstructionism has been aided by the silence of many who should be speaking out. Some local and national anti-trafficking organizations have actually worked behind the scenes to oppose the desperately needed reforms. They blame the lack of trafficking prosecutions on lack of political will and inadequate police training. In reality, trafficking laws work only where law enforcement is empowered to fight prostitution.

Other groups, such as the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU and Rhode Island NOW, have opposed passage of a prostitution law for ideological reasons. They support the decriminalization of prostitution and mistakenly believe that good trafficking laws make prostitution laws unnecessary. The Rhode Island experience demonstrates that it is long past time to lay that utopian hope aside. The truth is that these very groups are to blame for obstructing efforts to equip police to protect victims of trafficking.

But it’s Citizens Against Trafficking’s most recent salvo that really lays their anti-sex opinions wide open for everyone to see. It came in response to a letter signed by 50 academics don’t believe the evidence supports the assertion that criminalization of prostitution is a solution to the problem of human trafficking. Citizens Against Trafficking responded, not to the substance of the letter, but by, well, the title of their letter is “International Sex Radicals Campaign to Keep Prostitution Decriminalized in Rhode Island.” Some highlights:

Citizens Against Trafficking has learned that their letter is not an isolated action, but part of a larger “Rhode Island Campaign.” Citizens Against Trafficking is working on a multi-part analysis of the authors and signers of the letter, the statements they make in the letter, and their campaign methods.

Part 1 focuses on initial discoveries made by Citizens Against Trafficking researchers about some of the authors and signers of the letter. We found shocking information about what they stand for and the goals of their international campaign. We will describe how members of this group are using sophisticated communications technologies to rapidly mobilize other sex radicals from around the world and how they are targeting Rhode Island legislators and media.

Translation: We’re going after them personally, and not only are they sex-positive, but they blog. And Tweet!

The leading signers of the letter call
themselves “sex radicals,” meaning they oppose any limits on any sexual behavior as long as it has the superficial appearance of being consensual.

Translation: People don’t really know what kind(s) of sex they want to have.

For years, Wood has struggled with feeling “invisible.” During her sabbatical leave she started to feel “more like herself, more free,” which led her to start acting out her latent exhibitionism. “During my sabbatical I had some … exhibitionistic urges that I allowed myself to explore.” Earlier this summer, she stripped on a dock and swam naked in the Mystic River, within sight of a restaurant and boats passing by. She said she wanted to declare her independence from society’s rules, but she also wondered if anyone saw her and might complain.5 The exhibitionist’s intention is to shock and force unsuspecting people to view their nudity. Citizens Against Trafficking wonders if the administration at SUNY is aware that one of their faculty members is crossing the line into sex offender territory.

Translation: Eeeeek, skinny-dipping!!!! Lock her up!

The sex radicals have now moved on to the second phase of their campaign; they are organizing a second letter, written by the same people, but to be presented as coming from “sex workers.”

Translation: Prostitutes and strippers aren’t competent to decide which petitions to sign.

The sex radicals think their letter has had a persuasive impact on Rhode Islanders’ views. Citizens Against Trafficking thinks the letter has got an inordinate amount of attention considering what these sex radicals advocate and defend. Their supporters on the Mix Tapes for Hookers web site are planning a party in Providence for late September. They’re inviting “hookers, strippers, rentboys, sex educators, porn stars, burlesque performers, dominatrices, go-go boys, and more.”

Translation: They’re listening to those people?

If you want to help those in the sex industry, who else would you listen to? Well, besides the academics who have actually studied problems, solutions and the status quo? Answer: Not the people who are trying to turn all the “victims” into criminals.

Instead, I recommend the following reading:

Don’t let personal attacks distract us
Letter from Norma Jean Almodovar to RI Lawmakers
Finding common ground for rational discussion
Being a Powerful Advocate: The Rhode Island Case
Stop, Look, Listen – what is really being done to stop human trafficking? (petition)

This Is About Sex, Right?