New beginnings

Well gosh.  Were y’all waiting on me?

Since I last posted, I have finished a degree, scraped my life into boxes, moved to a new city, unpacked the boxes, and begun again.

And for the first time in a very long time, I feel productive, happy to be working where I am on the work I have, even on the days when words come slowly, when I’m stuck on problems, when I’m exhausted.  It had been time to move on.  There are ups and downs of course.  There always are.  They feel more manageable than they once did.

At the same time, I have felt swallowed up by the world — my work, the reforms, the protests, the riots, the endless petitions and confrontations.  Time to step back, think about the shape of what I’m doing.  Remember not to be too isolated from the world.  Work can be inward-looking, as can rest and reflection on the work, and you have to make time for the outward-looking too.

Hello world.  I’ve missed you.

–IP

Feminist critique of consensus-based decision making

I’ve written a little about my own struggles with the participatory consensus model (PCM) of decision making, with a specific view to the inclusivity for women and disabled people.  The PCM is common in lefty activist circles, especially anarchist-leaning circles.

Stavvers of Another Angry Woman presents a very thorough and thoughtful two-part critique of PCM (hat tip:  Flaming Culture).  Stavvers raises some really good points, and I really like the way the issues are discussed, and some possible alternatives, so be sure to check it out.  The two pieces are:

Part one:  The trouble with the consensus model

Part two:  We still need to talk about consensus

In the first part, “The trouble with the consensus model“, Stavvers discusses the ways tht PCM tends to privilege “insiders” who tend to be people with more social privilege — people who are non-disabled cis men, etc.  Stavvers also presents a few potential alternatives that could help with the problem, and discusses the use of anonymisation, giving priority to those who have not yet spoken, and talking to those outside the group.  I’ve certainly been involved in groups that prioritise of people who have not yet spoken or who have spoken less (and where this is uncontroversial), and while I think it’s a good idea, I don’t think it’s a solution on its own (in fairness to Stavvers, it’s presented as a partial fix, not a full solution).  My experience is that self-censorship is a major issue, and newcomers or people who feel themselves to be “outsiders” don’t always volunteer to speak, so prioritising them makes little difference; additionally implicit bias may significantly affect the threshholds we use to consider what counts as “speaking less”.  I’d be interested to know more about anonymisation, and experiences of how that works out in practice, especially for time-sensitive decision-making.

In the second part, “We still need to talk about consensus“, Stavvers talks about applying the principles of enthusiastic sexual consent to PCM, and minority influence.  For what it’s worth, I’m not sure that minority influence is always a bad thing.  We want to make sure that, or example, if even a tiny minority of a group a single parents, their concerns still get air time, for example.  However, Stavvers is right to point out that this is a two-edged sword, and we also need to be concerned about whether single parents have access to these spaces, and are able to speak and be listened to.

All in all, a very interesting and thought provoking read, and I highly recommend it.  As activists we need to make sure that our spaces are not perpetuating the same kinds of hierarchies we’re trying to break down.

–IP

[Crossposted at Queergeeks]

California: US history no longer consists entirely of dead white dudes

A new California law (PDF) requires that California public (=state-funded) schools include (PDF):

(a) The contributions of both men and women in all types of roles, including professional, vocational, and executive roles.
(b)    The role and contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, persons with disabilities, and members of other ethnic and cultural groups to the total development of California and the United States.

Curiously, the NPR coverage has reported this as:  “California Brings Gay History Into The Classroom” and reporting on all the usual suspects are saying all the usual things.

But I find the headline curious.

Ok, so there are good reasons we might consider history lessons featuring or emphasising LGBT people, or comflicts over LGBT rights issues and prejudice to be “gay history”, but it’s a problematic label, and it’s strange that that’s what is being picked up by the media.

A good reason to consider such history lessons to be “gay history” is that it might have particular importance to LGBT students by reducing stereotype threat.  It can also be descriptive of the particular political focus of a course, in the way of “women’s history” courses, where the purpose is to understand overall trends in political and historical trajectories for a particular group.

But there are other important ways in which this is US history, and the change in emphasis from straight white non-disabled men to … um, more people, is one that is important for all students.  Making history more representative can improve the welfare of individuals of any demographic by reducing bias in the classroom.  It might help, in the long run, to challenge widespread prejudices.

But there’s another point, that I have written before, and it’s that many of the major confrontations between oppressed people and privileged people are ones everyone should learn about.   When I was at school, we were taught that segregation was “black history”, as if no White people were involved in that at all, as if Jim Crow laws dreamed themselves up all by themselves, and crosses burned themselves onto lawns, and Black people lynched themselves.  But that’s not how it happened, and kids need to know that.  Even, and maybe especially, when the history that they’re taught is one we’re not proud of.  How else will they learn?

–IP

[Crossposted at Queergeeks]

Violence in California psychiatric care

Today’s NPR Morning Edition is reporting on high levels of violence in California state psychiatric hospitals, leading to hospital staff demonstrating for safer working conditions:

Last year, staff members were attacked by patients more than 1,300 times — nearly double the number of assaults from the year before. Meanwhile, patients assaulted other patients at a rate of almost seven times a day.

Curiously, the article contains no quotes from patients or their representatives, or patient advocacy groups.  The quotes in the article are from hospital staff, management, and assembly staff, and they emphasise primarily the importance of staff workplace safety, not patient healthcare safety, although it seems to me that both are equally important, and crucially interconnected.

Speaking in very general terms:  the research concensus is that people with mental health conditions are very unlikely to be violent, and where people with mental health conditions do engage in violence it tends to be associated with  alcohol and drug use.  However, people with mental health conditions, and disabilities more generally, are at very high risk of experiencing violence or harassment.

So when I hear a story like this one in the California psychiatric hospitals, I wonder what’s going on in that hospital, because I’m discinlined to believe the cultural stereotype of “crazy people do crazy violent stuff”.

Can anarchy be kind?

These days that much of my political life is taken up with campaigns against public sector cuts, it’s become clear to me that a great many of the people who power campaigns and activist projects are anarchist.  They often believe that decisions should be made by communities, not by the state.  By community participation, not by the career decision-makers who have the option of not living with the consequences of the decisions they make.

I’m not unsympathetic to those ideas.  I think many of the best MPs are the ones who share the concerns of their constituents by having lived them.  I think it’s easy to make decisions about other people’s livelihoods and opportunities when you know that your pension is safe, and your children will go to private school no matter what.  I think it’s easy not to appreciate how hard it is to save for a private pension until you’re working 60 hour weeks at minimum wage, and only just making the bills.  I think it’s easy to talk about “personal responsibility” and mean “you should be rich” if you’ve never not been rich.

So I have no problem saying this state is unkind, and in its current form it cannot be fair to the most vulnerable and underprivileged people in society.

What I have more trouble with is the idea that any state cannot be fair.  Or that a highly limited state is preferable to community-based organising.

Look, it’s not that community-based organising isn’t great.  I’ve seen a lot of community-based initiatives that are just fantastic — small community-based arts projects, or support for pensioners or disabled people, or creches, or support groups.  But they rely on the free work of a few individuals, the rota systems and goodwill of a small community.  Usually a people that can afford to give away their time, who are mobile and energetic, who are communicative and social and dynamic and confident that their project can succeed.  Not that those aren’t good things, but there are reasons that not everyone fits that description.  The very poorest people, or people who are housebound or isolated through health or accessibility difficulties, or people who work all waking hours, are often left out of such projects.  Not through ill-will, but through structural limits on their ability to participate.

So unless we’re addressing the structures of society as a whole, we can’t do anything for the least privileged people.  That means there has to be a level of activism to “join up” the stuff happening at the community level.  Not to mention that the justification for much of this activism is that everyone has a right to certain kinds of provision — to healthcare, to education, etc.  So someone has to make sure that these are being provided in every community, not just the ones with active volunteers.

The other problem with a system based on volunteerism is that people’s knowledge and energy is not infinite.  Even with the best of intention, some things get left behind, and typically they’re the things that are most associated with the people who get underrepresented.  In my experience, access issues is a major point of underrepresentation.  Again, not through ill will, but because someone will say “ok, who can offer to work on [access issue]?”  and the people who experience the issue and therefore know most about it tend to be busy dealing with the issue, and can’t always become full-time campaigners on that issue.  We can inform or advise, perhaps, but not always take on the full-time responsibility.  And for perfectly understandable reasons, people are often reluctant to take on the responsibility if they don’t have an advanced level of knowledge about it.  And if nobody takes on the full-time responsibility, the issue gets left behind.

Worse still, there’s generally very little accountability with volunteerism.  There can sometimes be a sense that everything and anything you do is over and above the bare minimum required of you.  Sometimes this is countered by people’s sense of moral responsibility to engage with these issues, but sometimes the volunteerism takes over.  And with some issues, this can tend to approach the Charity Model, and then become subject to the problems of gratitude.

So sometimes I wonder if it’s possible for anarchy to be kind.  If “the system” is the problem, can “a system” be a solution?  Is it always a matter of consciousness raising, whatever the system?  Or are some systems inherently to blame?

–IP

Gratitude sucks

Gratitude sucks.

Especially if you’re being asked to be grateful for something that is not so much some optional extra, like a double chocolate cake handcrafted by elves, delivered to you every day at exactly 30 minutes and 15 seconds after the strike of 4pm, so that you don’t have a diva tantrum.

No no, I mean basic things.  You know, like being able to get out of your house, and take my wheelchair into work, and not have people say things to you like “you should be more accommodating of how hard it is for us to do disability adjustments, and you should be grateful we’ve done it at all”, conveniently forgetting that reasonable adjustments for a disabled person is the law, and no, I do not have to be grateful that you have chosen not to break the law, and I do not have to accommodate you on the occasions that you do break the law.

What would be grateful for those things mean, anyway?  Don’t you find it insulting to have the standard for your behaviour set so low that I have to specially thank you for not being a useless ineffective law-breaking ignorant oppressive bully?  Really?  Does Hallmark do a card for that?

Worse still are the times that adjustments are done badly or not done at all, and I am still required to be grateful for them.  And then I’d be having to say something like “thank you for only sometimes being a useless ineffective law-breaking ignorant oppressive bully”.

Of course, the problem isn’t saying it, it’s internalising the message. It’s believing you genuinely should be grateful for being treated badly, because you genuinely believe you don’t deserve basic human empathy.

–IP

Political add-ons

Over the last several weeks and months I’ve been part of a number of conversations about how to do activism against public service cuts in such a way that ensures the access to the campaigns themselves by less privileged folks.  I touched on some of the issues involved in accounting for privilege here, in my post on concensus-based decision making, but these issues now have renewed relevance in light of the fact that many of the campaigns that sprang up a year ago are now establishing more formalised structures for deciding policy, now that they have become larger groups, in it for the long haul, who can no longer viably decide how to run their campaign by meeting with mates over a pint.

Many of these groups are student groups.  The campaign structures they are intimately familiar with are those of their student unions and the National Union of Students.  This is no accident, but I also don’t think it’s a strength to the student movement against the attack on public services.

The NUS has a set of “liberation campaigns” — these are autonomous campaigns, run by a committee of officers, whose head also sits on the NUS’s executive committee.  the liberation campaigns have their own budget and annual conference, and may decide various policy issues at their conference, and run their own priority campaigns.  There are liberation campaigns for women students, disabled students, LGBT students, Black students, etc.

But basically, the liberation campaigns are “add-ons” to what the NUS sees as its “main” campaigns, and I would hate to see this happening with anti-cuts protests.

One of the main arguments against the privatisation or cutting of public services is that it disadvantages the people who were most disadvantaged to begin with. Seen from this point of view, liberation campaigns as “add-ons” to a “main” campaign isn’t going to work in terms of making the case for progressive politics. And we should be in no doubt that that is precisely the case that the campaigning groups have to make now — it’s not enough to be arguing against tuition fees because education has was free in the past, or some other wishy washy crap. We need to make the case that these public services are good for the whole of society, that they make society fairer and healthier, and they make our economy stronger. If our argument against privatisation and cuts is to say that it disproportionately affects the most disadvantaged and most vulnerable members of society, then those disadvantaged and vulnerable people need to be front and center of our campaign against cuts and privatisation.

And that means we need some way to make sure that we are integrating gender justice, racial justice, disability access, etc and similar concerns into the very heart of all our campaigning. We need to make sure that all of our campaigns are accessible (in the broad sense of “accessible” — that people are unhindered in accessing them, not just that you can get a wheelchair into the building), and that issues of privilege and disadvantage are being made in comprehensible ways in every aspect of our arguments and campaign. Basically: we ourselves need to be challenging the marginalisation of women, of Black people, of disabled people, of queer people, etc, in progressive spaces and campaigning, if we have any hope of convincing anyone who doesn’t already agree with us.

Oh, and for the record, NUS? The whole quotas thing for caucuses? Is not going to work. I mean, yes, we need to make sure that women and Black people and trans people are participating in the LGBT caucus, but maybe you could consider whether the lack of participation is maybe something to do with you lack of focus on intersectionality, and your “add-on” approach to politics, not to mention the frankly boggling amount of energy that goes into keeping anyone who doesn’t fit a very narrow definition of “LGBT”. Trying to address the “liberation” of queer people, without engaging with gender or race or even sexuality, is doomed to fail.

Not to end on a downer, but there it is. That’s what I think about “add-on” politics, and, basically, anything involving the words “liberation caucuses”. It’s like, try not to shoot yourselves in the foot while you’re patronising queers and women.

–IP

Just stuff

I never meant to become such an unreliable blogger.  But the offline stuff that I would usually be using to feed the blog has, of late, been stuff I can’t talk about publicly.  I hate that, but there it is.  The offline stuff is also sapping my energy at a truly alarming rate, hence less output here in the form of general nonsense.

There’s so much I have meant to write about.  The privatisation of things that matter.  Ken Clarke.  The attack on the humanities.  Healthcare.  Some stuff from my own life.  SlutWalk.  Political policing.

Oh well.  Instead I refer you to an excellent post by the Goldfish, on Looking After Yourself As Radical Political Activism.  Sounds like just my sort of gig.  A taster:

It’s radical because this is a message you are unlikely to receive anywhere in the media or from culture. You may receive messages advocating material self-interest. You may receive messages advocating a healthy lifestyle, but very often these messages come with a dose of shame and angst for your inevitable failure to follow all available advice. If you watch television, read the news or step outside in a built-up area today, you will receive lots and lots of messages. None of them will tell you that you matter and you need to look after yourself. Many of them will suggest reasons why you don’t really matter.

Rush, don’t walk.

–IP

[Crossposted at Queergeeks]

An open letter

Dear person who says “oh but disabled people never come here” or one of its many variants, like “but there are very few disabled people anyway” or “we have to be utilitarian about our resources since there are hardly any disabled people here”,

Did you never stop and ask yourself why you believe there are few disabled people here?

No, it’s not rhetorical actually.

And I wouldn’t usually bother contradicting you, since you obviously know so much more than I could ever hope to about this institution’s resources, but let’s talk about this question, ok, you and me, person to person, without worrying about your official role in the institution for a few minutes.  Is that ok with you?

When you take a tally of disabled people, how do you do it?  Do you count the people you see in wheelchairs?  Or do you have some system for people to self-declare themselves as disabled?  Or do people have to “prove” their disabilities, by providing a medical certificate?  See, if you look for the wheelchair users, you’ll dramatically underestimate.  Most disabled people are invisibly disabled.  Yes, I said “most”.  In universities, more than 50% of the disabled population have learning difficulties like dyslexia which are totally invisible.  If you’re waiting for people to prove their disabilities, well that’s not totally unreasonable to access certain kinds of support and funding, but you should know that medical referrals can take a really long time — several months if not years — and some conditions (notably conditions involving fatigue) are diagnosed by a process of elimination so it can take several more months if not years to get a diagnosis.  That’s assuming you know to ask for an assessment in the first place, and are able to access the relevant resources.  Many people never get as far as the referral — this is known to be a particular problem with people who have depression and similar conditions.  And if peopel self-disclose, you might also get a disproportionately low number of disclosures if people were worried about the stigma they faced.  Or because many people see it as a private thing, they don’t want to tell unless it’s relevant to them getting a particular kind of support.  So if they’re not getting support, for whatever reason, they don’t tell.

So maybe, just maybe, you might be wrong about how many of us disabled folks there are.  I mean, I’m sure you’re not.  I’m sure you’d know better than me.  I wouldn’t want to contradict you.  I’m just putting it out there.  Someone else might be wrong.

Even if there are very few disabled people here, maybe there’s a reason for that.  I mean, I’m sure you’d know about it if there was, but again, I’m just putting it out there.  Maybe the reason is something like…these listed buildings are really hard to get into for people with particular kinds of disabilities.  Did I say hard?  I meant impossible.  There’s no ramp, or the ramp is hidden away around the back with no signage.  There’s no high-contrast notice stating the name of the building in such a way as to be legible for a visually impaired person.  There’s disabled parking and a dropped kerb, but people who don’t have Blue Badges keep parking over them.  The accessible toilets are locked and you have to asked special permission to use them, and it makes you feel like you’re three years old.  The lift is out of order.

I’m sure you know all this stuff.  I don’t know why I’m telling you.  I’m sure you know, and I’m sure you’re right.

It’s just that when you say you have to be utilitarian, I don’t know what you mean.  Well, I do actually.  I know you mean that because there are very few disabled people here, the resources should be spent on things for non-disabled people.  Utilitarianism is the principle that says we should try to produce the best result for the most people.  And I’m sure you’re right about how to do that.  I wouldn’t want to contradict you.

It’s just, well, I can’t stop thinking.  I’m sure it’s a silly idea.  But wouldn’t the best way to try to produce the best result for the most people be to make sure that everyone can get in the door and use the building in the first place?

Love,

IP

I am tired of the whole thing

As more coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death is uncovered, all I can say is, I am underwhelmed.

I did not dance in the street.  I did not cheer.  I did not drink.  I did not want to.

I can just about get my head around why people might do those things.  Just about.  But not really.  We’ve all been told for so long that this man wanted to destroy us, and he became the bogeyman of international politics, and I can see why some people found his death a relief.

As the story changed — first that he died in a shoot-out, then that he was unarmed — I became increasingly dissatisfied with the Washington press releases.

I believe that justice is due process.  Even, or perhaps especially when it is a deeply emotive issue.  I believe that justice is not when a hit squad is sent to shoot someone on the government’s say-so, but rather when someone is charged, arrested, and evidence is presented.  If the person violently resists arrests and there’s a shoot-or-be-shot situation, then that is regretable and under certain circumstances it may be inevitable (although I believe it is often abused to allow police brutality with impunity, but that’s a whole ‘nother post).  If someone is shot when they could have been arrested non-violently or non-fatally to stand trial, that’s certainly not justice.

Either way, I’m not celebrating, and I think this is a dangerous precedent, especially in the context of the Guantanamo detentions.  Are we to accept that governments may now order a person to be shot or detained indefinitely without evidence?

Other things I am tired of:  people planning Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and death parties.  Folks, she’s still alive.

–IP

A follow-up on incapacity benefits

The other day, I posted about David Cameron’s remarks on incapacity benefits, and his specific targeting to claimants with alcoholism, drug addictions, and obesity, why his remarks were really messed up (that’s a technical term).

Now that I’ve had a chance to actually go through the numbers that were released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), I get to post about a few more ways in which the remarks were messed up, and, for that matter, ways in which the BBC’s coverage was totally irresponsible.  So, without further ado:

Let’s start with some simple maths.  The BBC said:

According to figures released by the DWP [NB:  Excel file] on Thursday, in August 2010 there were 42,360 claimants with alcohol addiction, 37,480 with drug dependency and 1,800 who were obese.

What neither the BBC nor the Prime Minister quoted was the total number of recipients of incapacity benefits (IB).  If you download and open the linked spreadsheet, as I did, you’ll see that the grand total of claimants is 2,082,570 (rounded to the nearest 10).  So the claimants who were targeted by Cameron actually represent a very small percentage of the total number of claimants.  To put things into perspective:

Claimants by condition (raw numbers to nearest 10, and percentage to 2 decimal places)
Alcohol addiction, 42,360 (2.03%)
Drug addiction, 37,480 (1.80%)
Obesity, 1,800 (0.09%)

Total claimants:  2,082,570

Now let’s take a look at statistics for the UK general population:

Alcohol addiction: 1 in 13 are dependent on alcohol (source: Alcohol Concern, cited in the BBC)
Drug addiction: 1 in 26 (source: Alcohol Concern, cited in the BBC)
Obesity: nearly 1 in 4 adults in England are obese (source: Health Survey for England, cited by the Department of Health).  Other estimates say 1 in 5 adults in England (source:  DWP)

These fractions are clearly rounded, but 1 in 13 is 7.69% (to 2 decimal places), 1 in 26 is 3.85% (to 2 decimal places), and 1 in 4 is 25%. So another thing we can observe is that the prevalence of alcohol and drug addiction, and obesity is actually lower among the benefit claimant population than among the general UK population. However we should note that the thresholds for considering someone to be, eg, obese will be lower for the general population statistics, so a straightforward comparison isn’t easy. Nevertheless, I have included these numbers because it’s worth thinking about why David Cameron lumped these three issues together. It’s not that I advocate treating them differently in terms of benefit allocation, but it’s worth thinking about why Cameron picked these three issues in the first place, and discussed them together — he gets political mileage out of doing so.

In the UK we have a cultural stereotype about benefit claimants. The stereotype is that many people could work if they made an effort, but they can’t be bothered. Instead they sit around watching the telly, getting fat, and getting drunk and stoned at the taxpayer’s expense. They’re just lazy, says the stereotype.

But the numbers show that that’s just not true. Very few claimants have substance addictions, and very few claimants are unable to work because of obesity. And as I discussed in my last post, the “fault” discourse is not appropriate for this situation.

So why did Cameron lump these issues together?

Alcohol addiction and drug addiction share a kind of family resemblance in the sense that they both involve a physiological dependence on a substance, and the forms of support that are appropriate for these might be similar. They also have some differences — for example, one of the barriers to support with addictions to illegal drugs (but generally not with alcohol) is the fact that the drugs are illegal, and telling anyone you have the addiction involves admitting you have engaged in illegal activity, therefore making yourself vulnerable to prosecution (that isn’t going to help you with rehabilitation). So maybe it’s not totally unreasonable to look at the numbers for alcohol and drug addiction together, although we should note that this is serving a particular political role — of reinforcing a particular stereotype.

But why discuss obesity with addictions? It makes no sense medically (they have completely different medical definitions, for example), and it makes no sense statistically (there are more than 20 times as many people with either of the addictions as there are claiming under obesity). Again, my cynical half suspects this is about political mileage. It’s about reinforcing a stereotype about obesity: that’s there is some sense in which it is like an addiction. (It’s not.)

So, the shorter David Cameron is basically: “OMFG! Less than one tenth of one percent of all benefit claimants are fat!!!11!!!!!  And substance addiction is less prevalent among benefits claimants than among the general population!  OH NOES!!!”

Dude, get a grip.

(For the record, in case you were uncertain, that’s not what’s causing the national deficit.  And cutting it?  Won’t save money.)

–IP

“Through no fault of their own”

Some news stories are written in such a way that you know you’re supposed to read them and automatically go “That’s outrageous!” and not think critically about what has been reported and why that state of affairs is as it is. So it is with this news story. The Department for Work and Pensions has released statistics showing that roughly 80,000 people claiming incapacity benefits have difficulties related to alcoholism, substance addictions, and obesity. The Prime Minister announced that there would be “tough action” to get such people into jobs, and that he believed that voters and taxpayers did not want public funds to go to supporting such people, but rather, to supporting “people who are incapacitated through no fault of their own”.

For those unfamiliar with the UK incapacity benefits (IB) system, it’s worth noting briefly that “fault” is not a part of the applications process. Benefits are allocated to those who are unable to work for a serious and documented medical reason which persists of a long period of time. The application requires extensive medical documentation of the impact of the medical condition on the claimant’s daily life and ability to do paid work. So the idea that only those whose medical reasons are “faultless” should be supported is a curious one indeed. I have touched on this idea before, and it seems to me that some of the things that are said to be “lifestyle choices” or “matters of personal responsibility” are in reality matters over which people have very little control through no fault of their own, and even if they did have a choice, it’s unclear to me that there is anything to gain by the proposed Government policy of removing IB entitlement for those people.

(But, as others have written, the narrative of the Good Cripple is that they behave as if they are suffering bravely.  They do not do things that can be seen to be their fault.  This is part of the Tragedy or Charity Model of disability.)

Obesity

The first thing we should note is that people on incapacity benefits are a very specific demographic group. Because of the restrictions on how incapacity benefits are administered, they are, by definition, people with severe long-term medical conditions, and they tend to be people who rely on benefits/welfare payments as their sole sources of income, which means they live on or below the breadline. We also know, because it is very well documented, that disabled people disproportionately live in poverty.

As I have written before, and as has been extensively documented by others, poverty correlates with lack of access to certain kinds of food. Why? Because beans on toast is cheaper by a very large margin than a large wholesome salad. Or because they cannot afford the cooking facilities, equipment, or fuel with which to cook. Or because they are too ill to cook for themselves and must rely on food someone else cooks or food that is pre-prepared. So one reason people may become obese is because they are priced out of healthier eating, or they are dependent on the cooking choices other people make.

We also know that obesity can be caused by a number of medical conditions; and that many obese people receive poor medical treatment because their doctors incorrectly assume that any health complaint is due to their obesity — this makes it harder for long-term ill people to get the treatment they need to manage their long-term health conditions.

Additionally, many disabled people become isolated in their homes and unable to go out much because of access barriers to people with mobility impairments, fatigue, or other disability-related issues. Without appropriate support (which costs money, and remember we’re talking about people in poverty), people’s ability to go out can become severely limited, and that can quickly impact on people’s ability to get exercise. Another huge barrier to getting exercise can be cost. How many times have I heard a medical professional tell me I should try a gentle yoga or pilates class (because I need low-impact exercise because of my disability), and thought “well, that’ll be the cost of the class, plus a taxi there and back, and who’s going to pay for all that?” So exercising while poor and disabled is not easy.

So there are a number of factors, none of which involve individual “fault”, that can combine to make it likely that many IB claimants will be obese. And perhaps our answer to the report that some long-term-ill people are obese should not be “that’s outrageous!” but “no shit, Sherlock!”

Alcoholism and substance addiction

This case is a little more complicated. Yes, people make a choice when they first decide to drink alcohol or take drugs. But by definition, addiction is a situation in which people are physiologically dependent on alcohol or drugs. That is what it means to be addicted. To suggest that what is required to stop being addicted is an effort of will is to miss the point of what addiction means. Moreover, it is to underestimate how serious addictions can be. For many people, addictions can be so severe that if someone were to simply stop drinking or stop taking the drug suddenly, without medical supervision, they might experience seizures and other dangerous withdrawal symptoms. So in a very serious case of addiction, withdrawal must be undertaken in an inpatient rehabilitation setting.  And even if things haven’t quite reach that point, we’re almost certainly talking about professional support of some kind, which means waiting lists.

And here again it is useful to consider how IB is administrated. To suppose that people can claim benefits by saying that they quite like a pint and a spliff on a Saturday night is to dramatically underestimate the difficulty of benefits applications. In order to qualify for IB, one must prove inability to work due to a medical condition, with documentation from your own and independent doctors. That is, the addiction must be extremely severe for a claimant with addiction issues to qualify.  So basically, by definition, we’re talking about the people who would major medical support, and possibly have already tried various kinds of medical support.

It’s also worth noting that alcoholism and substance addiction often co-occur with other severe medical conditions, especially mental health conditions. But it is also common for mental health services in the UK to consider alcoholism or drug use a “barrier” to mental health treatment, and therefore either focus exclusively on the drinking/drug taking, or for some practitioners to refuse to see patient until they are sober. So, not exactly conducive to helping people manage the co-occurring conditions. Where the co-occurring condition is a mental health condition, people often face waiting lists of nearly a year just to be told “come back when you are sober”. So, I’m sure a long wait for healthcare that never materialises will cheer a depressed person right up and not make any co-occurring issues any worse, she says, with dripping sarcasm.

Will “tough action” work?

Let’s suppose, as the David Cameron has, that for some claimants, it is a lifestyle choice, to be obese and not be dependent on drugs and alcohol, to the point that they are unable to work. Does it then follow that IB payments should be cut?

I think it highly unlikely that such an approach will be effective in getting people back in stable paid employment. Remember, in order to qualify for IB, they had to have extensive documentation of their inability to work. What the Government is proposing is to move a number of IB claimants onto Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA) instead. In order to qualify for JSA, one must show evidence of actively seeking work, and be willing to take any job that one is offered. If you fail to fulfill these requirements, your benefit payments are cut off. Many disabled people are disproportionately like to be unable to meet these requirements for perfectly legitimate reasons, like: they are unable to do the job they are offered because of their disability, or they lack the adequate support to do the job they were offered, or they are unable to make the required number of job-seeking moves each week, or are unable to make the required number of job-seeking moves without adequate support.

In other words, this is a hidden way of cutting the benefits people receive, without making it any easier for people to apply for, get, or keep stable paid jobs.

Worse still, it does nothing to address the genuine difficulties that keep people sicker than they might be otherwise, and therefore keep people out of work. It does not make healthy food more affordable or easier to prepare. It does not provide better healthcare. It does not make mental health services better funded, better staffed, better resourced, or better equipped to deal with co-occurring conditions. It does not provide the home care, mobility support, or other support that people might need to meet their basic needs. It does not make exercise more affordable or accessible. It does not provide residential rehab programs, or shorten the waiting lists for those that already exist. It does not provide outpatient rehab programs, or preventative public education and support programs. It does not make any other aspect of social participation and integration any more accessible either. It does not challenge discrimination against disabled people in hiring and workplace practices. And it does not end the high rates of unemployment.

Basically, benefits cuts means that people will go from being able to get by on benefits, to not being able to get by, but also not being able to support themselves. Dire need and deprivation will make people ill, and eventually they will almost certainly end up in hospital, which costs the taxpayer a lot more than IB does. So it’s cruel, it’s pointless, and it’s a false economy. And dressing things up as benefits claimants just being “deliberately” disabled is particularly cruel.

And that really is outrageous.

–IP

Why I love

Via Richard Jeffrey Newman comes this really moving post called “Why I love my straight boyfriend“:

So what exactly does a contemporary relationship between a gay man and a straight man look like? I don’t know. This is a love affair and it looks like this. Every day we email and text back and forth about who we’re sleeping with, how we’re sleeping with them, and if we should continue to do so (in his case it’s just one girl in Paris who he’s in love with). We email poems to one another (this is less gay than it sounds since we’re both poets, which is more gay than it sounds), we have event nights, non-event nights, and date nights where we get together for really expensive drinks we can’t afford and remix Chrissie Hynde with Camus and (oh my god) our feelings.

[...]

I kind of knew things were serious with D when he sent me a love poem he wrote for me some months ago. I think it may have originally been a kind of, I wrote this for you what do you think of it thing, but I wasn’t about to give him any edits. Please. Send that shit to The New Yorker stat. I can’t remember a time when a man wrote a poem for me and called it a Love poem, capital L. And it better be capitalized twice because I like those kind of typos. Give it all or don’t give it at all. I hope all the gay men I’ve slept with are reading this.

It’s just beautiful, and powerful. Lots of politics, lots of love. Do yourself a favour and read the whole thing.

This is something we don’t talk about enough — love between men. Well, love between anybody that doesn’t fit a “there’s a mommy and a daddy and then they love each other very much” kind of pattern. But perhaps especially love between men, and the heteronormative requirement that men shut down so much of their psychoemotional lives seems such a terrible price to pay.

–IP

[Crossposted at Queergeeks.]

Decisions, decisions

In the last few weeks, the press has been abuzz with talk of this consensus decision-making that all the kool kids in lefty activist communities use. Although it’s a little unpopular in many lefty activist communities to admit, I personally have mixed feelings about consensus decision-making.

The participatory consensus model (PCM) is a system for groups to make decisions. The idea is that everyone should work to find a mutually acceptable solution to a given problem, not settle on something which is acceptable to majority. The reasoning for this is that a majoritarian view can alienate minorities, and a group decisions should be one that the whole group can feel part of and ownership of (so “alienate” here means not only “exclude”, but also the Marxist sense of “alienation”). A consensus is reached when everyone in the group agrees on a decision.

The PCM makes some basic assumptions about participants, and the decision-making context. It assumes people are willing to accommodate to each other’s points of view, that everyone actively wants to find a solution that works for everyone and resolve any problems that might be standing in the way of that. It assumes that everyone has an equal right to participate, and that everyone is committed to learning from each other. In a lot of ways, it’s very much like the consciousness-raising model — consciousness-raising for decision-making. Typically, PCM discussions are facilitated, to make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak and speaking turns are allocated fairly. However, PCM is generally used in non-hierarchical settings.

On a more fundamental level: PCM assumes everyone has an equal ability to participate, and there is a very real sense in which PCM is relies on the idea that “decisions are made by those who turn up”. PCM is not a representative democracy.

“Don’t let it get to you”

I know it’s well-meant. I know people say it to help. But I hate hearing it.

People usually say this to me not when some little thing has happened. Little is when someone parks over the dropped kerb and I have to go a block out of my way to the next dropped kerb. Little is when someone wolf whistles in the street. Little is when there’s a problem, but I can deal with it.

Big deals are the ones I can’t get round, because it’s not dependent on my effort, or because it would take so much effort it would cut short my working day. Big is when there are no toilets in the building I can use (eg, because none are accessible), and I have to just go home. Big is when I have nowhere accessible to work in my workplace. Big is when the pharmacist says “it’ll only be a minute” and they have no chairs, and 20 “just one minute”s later you don’t know whether you should keep standing with pain shooting up through your tired swollen feet, or should just leave, without your painkillers. Big is when people don’t give priority to the wheelchair user, the person with the walking stick, the person carrying a toddler, in lifts and on the bus, and they can’t get to where they need. Big is when stuff is scheduled in places without child licenses and wheelchair access and people then shrug and say “some people just never come to these things”.

Big is when people talk to me like other people’s bigotry is something I “let” happen, or allow to affect me, as if I enjoy these limitations on my life. As if I don’t spend hours out of each day trying to find a way around the little things, trying to keep them from becoming big things. As if I don’t spend hours out of each day trying to live my life. Also? Having to categorise the shitty behaviour I encounter into “big” and “little”, so that other people won’t be made uncomfortable hearing me talk about a problem I encountered and how I dealt with it? Is crap.

I know it’s well meant, and I am grateful for the people who mean well, and the people who listen when I’m tired and worn. But sometimes, I just wish I didn’t have to be grateful for the little cruelties that are packed into the well-meaning words.

–IP

[Cross-posted at Queergeeks]