Oh, No, Minnesota Public Radio, No

[lydy]

So, I argue politics with Steven Brust a lot. It's entertaining, sometimes enlightening, usually well-fueled by whiskey, and great foreplay. One of the things we argue about a lot is "identity politics." He feels that it is fundamentally divisive, and its primary function is to prevent the working class from uniting. My perception and personal experience has been completely opposite from that. I find identity politics (feminism, etc.), especially coupled with the concept of intersectionality, to be unifying and clarifying. Understanding how women of color experience the dominant culture, for instance, helps highlight both the similarities and differences in my own life, which helps me understand both the privileges I get from being white, and the obstacles I face being female. But every now and then, things happen to make me wonder if he's right, after all.

And then there's MPR. If you read james_nicoll, you know that MPR stand for Mimetic Prophylactic Required, which tends to mean "you probably don't want to read this unless you really want to get your mad on." And, honestly, some days Minnesota Public Radio deserves that acronym.

I tend to listen to MPR in the car on the way to and from work. So, 5 - 15 minute stints. The other morning, on the way home, they were talking about working mothers, and the resentment that working parents can receive from other workers. The featured speaker was a woman who used to feel resentment towards the accommodations that other women got for being mothers until she, herself, became a mother. At least, I think that was the set up. I didn't hear all of it. And it was about that resentment, how to understand it, educate against it, manage it, etc. etc. etc. Le sigh. I am not a mother. No interest. I also don't particularly resent parents taking time off to be parents. I figure it's a good thing. But, whatever. Evidently, this is a thing. I'm driving, ok, fine.

And then the person being interviewed said something that I found weirdly shocking. She said (para-quoting), "And it makes me sick when maternity leave is equated with disability, as if being pregnant and giving birth was disabling!" And I was furious. Profoundly furious. In the first place, being pregnant is exactly like being temporarily disabled. Exactly. Much more importantly, though, the word sick was both aptly chosen, and incredibly disgusting. She didn't want to be classed with those...disabled people. Those broken people Those people not as good as she is. She's different. She's not, you know, disabled. She's just a person whose physical needs and personal choices require certain accommodations. She's better than they are. She's not, you know, physically broken. She's important. She's productive. She's...not one of them.

Never have I seen a balder or more disgusting grab for a bigger piece of pie. She wants an accommodation because she's, after all, raising the next generation. And Important Role. She's more entitled, more special, more something or other.

Here's the problem. The issue of how we accommodate disabled people, or how we accommodate pregnant people, or people who are caretaking other people, is fundamentally broken. It's systemically broken. As long as our society is structured around placing the primary value on people based on their ability to enrich their owners, this stuff happens. And it happens to pregnant women and disabled people and people of color exactly the same way and for exactly the same reason. Because the system is fundamentally fucked. It is fucked beyond all hope of repair. The capitalist system will, and must, consider the potential productivity of workers, and people who need more time off because of whatever the fuck it is, are probably less "productive" than other workers. There are a lot of studies about how diversity improves the productivity and profitability of a company, and I don't misdoubt me those studies. But it doesn't improve the productivity of those individual workers. The decisions that HR makes tend to be one applicant at a time. And so, this person has a kid and this person has a need for an expensive accommodation, and this person is unencumbered and so this last person will probably be more productive... The fundamental baseline is this: the value of people, at this point in time, is primarily measured in a theoretical "productivity". Moreover, there's also the simple truth that if someone else is taking on the more complicated employees, you can probably steal their innovations without having to pay the cost of having a diverse workforce yourself Externalizing costs is one of the foundations of the capitalist system. (It's also one of the reasons why government is so vital to the capitalist system. Somebody has to pay for your failures. Also, it's why running a government like a business is fucking insane.)

I don't know that it's the "working class" that needs to unite. I don't find the communist taxonomy of class particularly persuasive. But I do know that the value of a person is vastly more complex than that which can be captured by the current market. I know that so much of what we do which is not remunerated is vital to our community and so much of what we do that is remunerated is actually detrimental to our joy as humans and our survival as a species. And it makes me crazy when we fight over an ever-diminishing piece of remunerative pie, rather than looking at the larger issue, which is that we are all, every one of us, worth more than that.

Also, if it makes you sick to be equated with a disabled person, you make me sick.

Comments

[quility.livejournal.com]

I had a hard time making space to listen to your argument because i had such a different hearing of the quote: "And it makes me sick when maternity leave is equated with disability, as if being pregnant and giving birth was disabling!"

I didn't hear the context on the radio, but my experience with equating birth and illness is when it is used to justify over use of cesarean sections and medical interventions. I have listened to lots of arguments about how birth is natural and treating it like an illness makes things much worse for women.

So... since you actually heard the speaker. ..do you think she could have meant that? Rather than trying to distance herself from disability?

Either way - now that I've gotten that out of my system i will try to read your post again for what you were really saying. (when i get time later)

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I confess to only catching a snippet. But that was not what I thought was at the center of the issue. She was talking, specifically, about maternity leave, and how maternity leave is covered the same way that leave for a disability is covered. She didn't mention it, but I think she was referring to FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) which does, in fact, treat maternity leave, leave to care for a blood relative, and leave to care for a personal disability, exactly the same way. And the sense I got was that she was profoundly disgusted by the idea that she would be equated with someone who was disabled. There was a very strong us/them thing that I thought I heard.

The issues around medicalizing pregnancy and birth are real and problematic. The increase in C-sections is very upsetting. But the more radical positions about how pregnancy and birth are natural tend to ignore the real risks of pregnancy, and tend to elide or actually forget the levels of death both of infants and mothers before we started treating it like there was an actual, medical condition involved. Pregnancy and birth are, in fact, fucking risky. Pretending that they are not is one of those things that is easy to do in a first world country with a huge amount of medical resources to bring to bear when necessary. Treating every pregnancy as if it were a profound and scary aberration is also a very genuine problem which puts mothers and infants at risk. The numbers suggest that the latter risk is a lot less than the former risk, but that it is still a crappy way to treat people.

[quadong.livejournal.com]

I had the same reaction as GP. I didn't hear the piece either, but it is very possible that even though it was maternity leave being discussed, the feelings of the person were influenced by the intersecting issue of how birth is treated as a medical problem in many hospitals.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

It's possible. But, again, the conversation was centered around accommodations needed at work, and she appeared to think that her accommodations were somehow categorically different from those of someone who has a disability.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

I've enough past experience with this variety of special snowflake (as a parent) that my reading is close enough to yours. There are some women out there who carry babies easily and feel that their experience is the norm--ergo the revulsion at the concept of disability.

(quick apology to anyone with positive experiences with La Leche League, but it was my particular misfortune to fall in with a group of women in that organization who had similar attitudes. And later experiences as well...)

Meanwhile, I've always thought of maternity/family leave as being just that--time to focus on a particular family member who is temporarily disabled. I've had colleagues who have alternated their leaves so that their babies could be at home with a parent for their first six-nine months, and have used it myself when my son came home from Crohn's surgery. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that birth is any different.

[quility.livejournal.com]

Thanks for answering my question. I'm sorry i hijacked a bit of your comment thread. It really did help to have some more clarity on that.
I do agree that it's extremely frustrating that we are only valued for our market value by many.
i wish i had the solution.
Thank you for speaking about it and raising consciousness.

[quility.livejournal.com]

Thanks for answering my question. I'm sorry i hijacked a bit of your comment thread. It really did help to have some more clarity on that.
I do agree that it's extremely frustrating that we are only valued for our market value by many.
i wish i had the solution.
Thank you for speaking about it and raising consciousness.

[mplsfish.livejournal.com]

Lydy, I have VERY MANY THINGS to say about the medicalization of birth culture in america. Which I am happy to say in person rather than hijack your original post.

[naomikritzer]

Paid maternity leave is also frequently done through many employers as a short-term disability leave. My assumption was that this is what the woman was outraged about.

I would prefer to do paid parental leave as its own thing, in part because I think fathers and adoptive parents should qualify for paid time off, whether or not they pushed a baby out of their body.

I've seen some ire about this from the other direction -- generally focused on parking issues. There are pregnant women who will park in disabled spots because they are PREGNANT and therefore feel entitled. There are totally pregnant women who should totally qualify for a temporary hang tag because they can't walk without significant pain or are suffering from some truly grisly complication like hyperemesis; I think it should be easier to get short-term hang tags for temporary disabilities. But. The mere fact of being pregnant does not mean people are entitled to the disabled parking spots (and I've totally seen pregnant women online making that argument).

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I am always a bit croggled by the possibly uniquely American way that resentment towards other people, not worthy people, seems to come to a frothing head when it comes to parking. Why parking? What is it about being able to park your car closer to a store than someone else that takes on the color of civil rights for some people? And I'm not talking about cities where parking is actually hard, NYC or San Francisco. I'm talking about Minneapolis, where yep, there's a spot. It might be a bit back in the parking lot, but there it is. For fuck's sake, just park.

Most of my life, I've been on the bus. Owning a car was an expense I couldn't manage. So to some extent, I tend to view owning a car as a form of privilege. There are a bunch of ways where it isn't, I get that some very poor people do need to maintain a vehicle in order to remain employed. But owning a car, and being able to drive it where one likes, has always struck me as a marker of being better off than I am. And in this city, no matter how far away you have to park, it is usually closer to the store than the bus stop. You drivers! You're already better off than someone riding the bus. Someone who may very well be disabled, for heaven's sake.

Parking. Why is is parking?

[guppiecat]

Parking is a free perk that businesses can give to Important People. So, executives got the special spaces. Then, the really good sales people got to share a spot based on who has better numbers per month. This ran for a while and then they passed the ADA and the nasty government stole all the good parking spots.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

This explanation makes more sense than any of the ones that I've come up with. Mine mostly involved mythical goats or magical cats, or really weird sexual fetishes involving exhaust pipes. My mind, don't let me show it you.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Under FMLA, fathers at least can take a leave. I've worked with several fathers who did so.

[naomikritzer]

Yes, that's true. My husband used FMLA for a parental leave after each of our kids was born.

But, FMLA only mandates unpaid leave.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

FMLA. I'm glad it's there, but oh so very insufficient to the need.

[pameladean]

Seems to me that dividing people up by class ends up being as identitarian, in both good and bad ways, as anything else.

Anyway, I agree with you that the fundamental problem is the tendency of people to decide that some accommodations are more worthy than others, that some people deserve accommodations more than others. This is a really seriously evil idea. The obsession with making absolutely sure that nobody, anywhere, is getting a smidgeon more than they "deserve," by some incomplete and arbitrary set of assumptions, is one of the besetting horrors of our culture. I want to throw Hamlet at them, but they are too self-righteous to get it. "Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty." But people don't want to do that. They want to nitpick and judge and withhold necessary help because it is worse, in their view, if somebody undeserving gets even a scrap of it. As best I can tell, this disgusting view is often tied up with the person holding it's having had a difficult time and then having managed to stop having a difficult time, allegedly all on their own; and then, instead of feeling nobody else should have to do that, they feel everybody else should have to; and instead of acknowledging that they did get some help, which they almost always did, they insist they did not get ANY HELP and that this is virtuous and necessary and manly. Very often manly. I guess you could think of it as a kind of stress reaction, a form of psychological damage, but not everybody who has a hard time ends up holding such views. Somewhere, the psychological damage hardened into dogma.

Um. I guess I had an opinion.

P.

P.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

"Seems to me that dividing people up by class ends up being as identitarian, in both good and bad ways, as anything else."

This is me not answering because it isn't what the post is about. This is also me waving my arms furiously asking for it be recognized how virtuous I am. I'll just be over here waiting for that.

[pameladean]

You are TOTALLY VIRTUOUS. You are the most virtuous thing ever. Certainly more so than me, since I knew you would be reading this and should have restrained myself. It's not like I can't talk to Lydy in person.

P.

P.S. TOTALLY VIRTUOUS LIKE A VIRTUOUS THING.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

This is me feeling all validated and shit.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

You're very cute when you're validated and shit.

Also, Pamela wins an internet for the above exchange. You just get your parking validated.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

'the value of people, at this point in time, is primarily measured in a theoretical "productivity".' Yeah, that's what Marx meant he spoke about relationships between people being determined by relationships between things. It is not, in my opinion, the worst thing about capitalism, but it is pretty appalling to see it in action.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

What do you consider the worst thing about capitalism? You only get to choose one, by the way.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

I'd have to put the imperialist wars, starting with WWI, right up there at the top.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Well, it's hard to argue that WWI was anything but an unmitigated evil. I am less persuaded that most of our wars are in fact primarily built out of capitalist imperialism. If I grant that, then, yes, that is probably the worst thing about capitalism. War, however, significantly predates capitalism, and I feel that I genuinely do not understand it.

[huladav8usa.livejournal.com]

Can we get Steve Brust elected Pope?

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

I'm strangely comfortable with the idea.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I'd vote for you.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I understand and sympathize with your reaction to what you heard. It's possible that your interpretation of her comments has some basis in truth - I didn't hear the speaker but the vehemence of her language is a little startling. It might be that she has some unconscious issues along the lines of what you suspect. But I would guess that what she was objecting to was the bizarre and often demeaning zigzags in public policy regarding pregnancy and childbirth over the past 40 years or so.

There are two completely different things going on simultaneously with "baby leave." Pregnancy and childbirth are clearly medical events that require varying degrees of work accommodation and physical recovery: sometimes very minimal, sometimes a lot. And bringing home a child is a hugely unsettling and time-consuming event that also requires time and accommodation and physical recovery (sleep deprivation, y'know).

I'm in favor of treating the medical aspects like any other medical issue, and separating it from the Family Leave issue, which can apply equally to adoptive parents and fathers.

The history of how this has all been handled is so dismal and complicated that it is not surprising that people who care deeply about the subject get a little histrionic when discussing it. The over-medicalization of childbirth is a very real issue, but the reverse has also been a problem. In the mid-70's I had a miscarriage that required medical treatment. I had recently started my first good job with full medical benefits, so I expected the hospitalization to be covered. Guess what - it wasn't! Back in those days, any medical expense related to child-bearing was SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED from most medical insurance on the assumption that having children was a choice, so any medical expenses were the equivalent of elective cosmetic surgery! (There are no accidental pregnancies in this reality)

On the other hand, my two pregnancies that resulted in babies were pretty simple as far as medical events go. I had no difficulty working through my pregnancies and the deliveries were uncomplicated. Medically I could have gone back to work in a week if I hadn't had a baby to take care of. I did not regard myself as disabled by pregnancy or delivery, and I really don't think that makes me an ableist bigot.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I do have a very long rant on how the medical profession and the insurance industry treat girl-bits. Oh, gods, do I have passionate feelings about this. But my point remains: why the lack of solidarity? Why shy away from trying to make common cause? Why try to establish one's personal experience as more important and valid than someone elses? I don't _think_ Steven is right, I don't think this is the natural outcome of "identity politics" but I am hugely disturbed to see this example of same.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I think identity politics is part of the problem. It shouldn't be necessary to identify as "disabled" or "not disabled" in order to get necessary medical care or workplace accommodations. We're just wasting time fighting about which label defines us.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I wonder if "identity politics" is more a byproduct of the premise (that people are worthwhile only while they are whole, fully functional, able to work for money for someone else) than of the identifying parts. If we treat validity as a human being as sort of a competition (I'd say "zero sum" but that's not the right word, just the right attitude), then of course all sorts of marginalized people are going to spend time on competitive comparisons, oppression olympics, and other colossal wastes of time and energy. When we all could be pointing back to that assumption that only a very specific sort of behavior and ability has value....

BTW, thanks for the reminder about pregnancy and insurance coverage. I'd forgotten that part of the stupidity (which itself could take more than one different post).

[meistergedanken.livejournal.com]

It's entertaining to watch these special-needs/professional victims/leftist factions turn on each other - each wanting a bigger slice of a pie that has been long devoured. Now you are fighting over scraps. "You're not better than me, but I'm worse off then you!" But it ultimately is distilled to its essence: "GIMME DAT - and be mindful of my feelings while you do it!"

In the betting pool of identity politics, I'm putting my money on the Hispanics - they will totally trounce whatever forces the feminists, queers, cripples, blacks or whoever can muster. Because demographics is destiny.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Have you practiced all your life to be this much of an asshole, or does it come naturally to you?

[ctein3.livejournal.com]

Dear Lydy,

He must've practiced. Nobody could be that accomplished at it without a lot of work. Natural talent will only take you so far.

pax / Ctein

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Okay, spent a day thinking about this, and I now have a more serious answer than the one about me being pope--which still isn't all that bad an idea, except that I'd have to change hats.

The concept of "ill" vs "not ill" or "disabled" vs "not disabled" carries with it huge political baggage. Even on the Right, there are politically fueled arguments: "She is disabled, therefore she must be treated in certain special ways that deprive her of making any choices for herself," and, "she is perfectly healthy, doing is what is natural, so any interference with this natural and healthy process must be criminal." (These latter are especially fun, as we watch them twist themselves into knots trying to find ways to praise pregnancy while they justify denying services to pregnant working women.)

If you use the logic of the...um. Hard to find a term that doesn't come off as insulting. Uh, let's go with "certain academic Leftish". Using the logic of certain academic Leftish types, we would say this: "If you consider yourself disabled when you are pregnant, no one has the right to tell you otherwise; if you consider yourself healthy, that is your choice to make." This tells us nothing useful about how to treat and help pregnant working women, or the disabled, only what to call them. And it leaves them with their own knots: Does feminism mean support for women who choose to be pregnant, or does it mean you shouldn't take resources from other women just because some have chosen to become mothers? Let's you and her fight.

But the "taking resources from other women" is the key to whole thing--seeing society's resources as a finite, limited, is quite natural, when 1% of society controls pretty much everything. In reality, this "limitation" only exists in the most abstract and theoretical sense. Plenty of resources are available for all women, all disabled people, all human beings to have comfortable lives; the argument over who gets how much of the leftover crumbs is exactly what produces, as a sort of distorted reflection, arguments over whether pregnancy is a disability, and if "disabled" is an insult.

And so we get to NPR. NPR comes out the New York Times style liberal tradition, but, more and more, they are aiming their programming at their demographic: upper middle-class professionals who consider themselves to have a social conscience. What concerns these people, above all, is how to simultaneously feel good about themselves while protecting their stock portfolios and retirement plans; They believe in education as long as it has a good ROI. As a regular listener to NPR, I've watched this trend develop. This can sometimes leave them in an awfully uncomfortable position. Thus, the only coverage they gave the New York bus drivers' strike was to talk about how much it hurt people with disabilities, and their coverage of pregnancy of working women focuses, not on the what society can and should do to help them, but on the supposed conflict these women have with their co-workers.

Because actually providing people with disabilities with the services they need and deserve, and seeing child-bearing and child care as a social issue in which we should all be working together for our common good, is very threatening to one's stock portfolio--see the comment from meistergedanken. Those whose concern is, above all, "me me me," generally see the concern of others in those terms, because no other world view is open to them.

Is "disabled" a category worthy of scorn, so that one should be insulted if called disabled? Well, given how our society treats those whose disabilities are obvious, it would appear the answer is yes. And that is the problem. The entire question, "is pregnancy a disability" ought to be absurd, silly, not even worth discussing. The fact that this is such an emotionally fraught issue, tells us a great deal about a fundamental sickness in our own society--a sickness that has, at its root, exactly what you say: the viewing of human beings in terms of their market value.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Perhaps a longer reply when I've slept. Or possibly in person with much whiskey. However, I just want to put a place marker here: I think that we disagree about symptoms and causes, here. I think that the scrabbling that various oppressed groups do amongst each other is a symptom of a larger problem, and you probably agree, but I don't think that it is actually a cause of the division of what you would term the working class. While it makes me crazy when I see it, I don't think it actually contributes all that much to the problem, and I don't think it does nearly as much to perpetuate the problem as you do. Also, while I can see that it is used in bad ways, I think that identity politics also has transformative powers. And another place-keeper: I think that trying to force people into identifying with a class with which they have not emotional resonance, such as "working class" can be as divisive as any other identity. Which is me channelling what Pamela said, but not as entertainingly snarkily, I guess.

Must sleep RSN.