Dreamer Easy

Plagued by a scene from Neal Stephenson and George Jewbury's 1994 novel Interface, in which the character Eleanor Richmond delivers a stiff lecture over the phone to another Black woman who doesn't want to report her daughters' sexual assault to the police because their assailant has threatened to murder her if she does so. Furious, Eleanor tells her to call the police and buy a gun to protect herself. Her new employer, Senator Marshall, teases Eleanor that "you changed your position on gun control": "If that woman you were just talking to had to fill out a bunch of forms and get permission from the government to have a gun, she wouldn't be able to take the advice you just gave her, would she?"

We're supposed to give three cheers for Eleanor "pounding some common sense" into the other woman's head. After all, Eleanor is right: the other mother ought to stand up to her daughters' rapist and seek justice for them. But I can only give two cheers. Maybe only one.

Firstly, the anonymous woman on the phone is clearly trying to protect her daughters: the reason she rings the Senator's office is to find out if the rapist can be forced to take an HIV test. Secondly, when Eleanor asks if she has called the police, the woman responds, "Shit no. Why would I want to call them?... I called you for serious advice, girl." What has this woman's experience with the police been that calling them about a serious sexual assault seems pointless? Thirdly, Eleanor asks: "Ma'am, how could being killed possibly be any worse than having your daughters raped?" Orphaning them as well wouldn't be worse?

Violence against women is an overwhelming fact; why shouldn't women be able to use firearms to protect themselves from burglars, rapists, or violent boyfriends and husbands? As Eleanor reminds the Senator: "I have a gun, and I know how to use it."

In the US, in most states, a licence or permit is not necessary to buy a gun; that is, you don't have to know how to use a gun in order to own one. If the woman on the phone can afford a gun and ammunition, will she also be able to train in its basic use (and safety measures - remember, she has "little daughters")? How much will it cost, can she afford to take the time off work (if she is doing casual work this could be a serious issue), and how long will it take?

In short, is "just go and buy a gun" a sufficient response to a woman in a life-or-death situation? Would it make more sense to provide emergency permits, including free and immediate training, to women (or anyone) in danger of violence who choose firearms as a defence? Moreover, rapists routinely threaten their victims with murder if they report the crime. If the police aren't going to protect women who report men's violence, we're back at square one: why report it in the first place?

This has to be seen, of course, in the context of the gun control debate in the US, which is sometimes framed in feminist terms of women's self-defence - while at the same time the National Rifle Association has fought all the way to the Supreme Court for the right of convicted domestic violence offenders to own guns*.

I think the scene is meant to accomplish two things: show that both the "liberal Democrat" Eleanor and the conservative Senator have more in common than Eleanor realises (in fact, Mitchell dismisses liberal/conservative and even Democrat/Republican as meaningless distinctions). They are both "common sense" folks frustrated by people who won't fix their own problems**. And damned if they're going to give them the tools they need to fix those problems. Whether or not we think of the caller as negligent, she certainly sees herself as almost helpless: the HIV test is the only response she's been able to come up with (although how she thinks she can force "that G" to take the test without police intervention isn't clear). A trained advocate could have laid out all her options, legal and medical, and connected her with the support services that could help her and her family try to get justice - or at least survive. Instead, she receives a lecture from a well-meaning but clueless phone jockey.

ETA: Similarly, much later in the book, vice presidential candidates are interviewed about the education of "inner city blacks": "twenty-five years from now, what will life be like for these people, and what will you have done to make that life better?" Two candidates give vague responses, one has a plan for education via television, and Eleanor Richmond has this response:
Eleanor is, naturally, a shoe-in for the role of VP. If "inner-city blacks" have poor grades or drop out of school, it's their own fault, and nothing can be done about it; policy-makers are off the hook, and everyone else can stop worrying. Eleanor has given everyone what they want. Everyone, that is, for the parents and kids living in poverty and struggling in under-funded, unsafe schools, whom she has thrown under the big yellow bus.

I can't decide if the authors believe Eleanor's response is so obviously sensible that the reader will simply nod their approval, or if their whole point is that Eleanor has simply told everyone what they want to hear - which is, after all, the SFnal basis of the book.


* Partly because of legal loopholes, guns are a disaster for women in the US experiencing stalking, dating violence, and domestic violence.

** Cf the AI in the Hugo-nominated Cat Pictures Please. As secritcrush points out, Bethany doesn't respond to its clueless intervention because she is mentally ill.

The Hugos. Blog postings I've found particularly helpful in understanding what's going on:

The Psychology of Hugo Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies

Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and his Supporters by Phil Sandifer. Long, hard, and satisfying. I learned much.

Also see: the remarkable short-short story If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky. Brief, beautiful, beautifully structured. Hugo nominee last year. Loathed by Puppies, making it automatically worth a look. Not everyone's cup of tea, of course - but then, what is?

(There has, of course, always been a conspiracy to ruin art.)

Current events:

Mahatma Gandhi, Baltimore, and the Myth of Nonviolence: "What happens if 12.6% of the population, a disproportionate number of whom are unemployed or incarcerated or have minimum-wage jobs in which they're easily replaced, try to duplicate a tactic that worked for an overpowering majority? Not a great deal, unfortunately."

Police Killings Picked Up Where Lynching Left Off: "... it's estimated that two or three blacks were lynched each week in the American South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Compare that to conservative reports from the FBI that, in the seven years between 2005 and 2012, a white officer used deadly force against a black person almost two times every week."

ETA: Commentary from David Simon, police reporter and creator of Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show' and Baltimore's Anguish. See also this report from Marci Tarrant Johnson, a habeas corpus lawyer working to get arrested protesters out of Baltimore's jails.

This one connects to the Puppy psychology piece linked to above. In Ferguson and Beyond, Punishing Humanity: "... white men have experienced a relative loss of status. And they now have more rivals for desirable positions. Add to that the fact that they may find themselves surpassed by those they tacitly expected to be in social positions beneath them, and we have a recipe for resentment and the desire to regain dominance."

Whatever you thought of SBS presenter Scott McIntyre's angry Anzac Day tweets, I'm grateful to him for opening my eyes to an unhappy piece of Australian history: sexual assaults on Japanese women by the British Commonwealth Occupation Force.

Homeless Diggers reveal Australia's double standards

This is a series of comments I made recently on Facebook which I wanted to share (lucky old you!). The context is the Daily Telegraph's recent "Slouchhats and Slackers" front page regarding the Disability Support Pension.

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"Look, and I have to make this comparison - during World War II Australians actually fought against a regime that killed people with disabilities claiming they were useless people and a drain on the public purse and it is a great insult to Australia's veterans to be making those kinds of comparisons at this particular time." - Craig Wallace, President, People With Disabilities Australia

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An op-ed in today's SMH goes into more detail about what advocates say is the main reason disabled people go on the pension - the difficulty they have in finding employment.

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On a personal note, that opinion piece links to the original Daily Telegraph article and the attached editorials. The Tele claims, with no evidence, that people are faking mental illness so they can receive the disability pension, which is higher than the dole.

Half of disabled Australians live in poverty. If I didn't have the extraordinary good fortune of a supportive husband and family, I would probably be one of them, as my physical and mental illnesses make it difficult for me to work. We spend hundreds on my many medications, and next year meds, doctor visits, and medical tests will all cost more.

The Tele is basically saying that people like me deserve to starve. I felt a bit badly about posting that quote yesterday, reminding us of just who Australia's "slouchhats" fought during WWII, since it's pretty provocative, but tbh I am so furious at the attitude of the newspaper and the party they serve that I can barely express my rage. The quote will have to do it for me.

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Some other useful links which were posted during the discussion:

Just How Wrong Is Conventional Wisdom About Government Fraud?: "Entitlement programs, from food stamps to Medicare, don't see unusually high cheating rates -- and the culprits are usually managers and executives, not 'welfare queens.'"

"It is sometimes suggested that many people on the DSP [Disability Support Pension] do not have genuine disabilities... However, Centrelink [the government agency which handles welfare] has put in place increasingly sophisticated measures for detecting fraud and undisclosed changes of circumstances for all welfare benefits. There have been relatively few cases of convictions for fraud involving the DSP (though it is a difficult task if impairments have no easily observable physical manifestations)... It therefore appears that most people on DSP have significant impairments that genuinely affect their employment prospects." That comes from a 2011 inquiry by the Australian government's Productivity Commission (Appendix K).

I found a very interesting opinion piece which gives some of the reasons the number of disability pensioners (ie people on welfare for disability) has risen: our ageing population, plus "the inaccessibility of services for people with a disability; improved identification of disabilities such as mental illness; lower mortality rates after accidents; a decline in number of low-skilled jobs and a lack of employer support for people with disabilities."

The Australian Red Cross defines food security as "a human right and exists when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious, culturally appropriate food to maintain a healthy and active life." They estimate that 5-8% of Australians "commonly" have no food and no money to buy it. Lack of food security contributes to the very poor state of Indigenous health in Australia, particularly in remote areas, where fresh and healthy food can be far more expensive than junk food. Remote areas aside, healthy food adds thousands of dollars to the average family's yearly budget.

In Australia, women, Indigenous people, and people with chronic health problems are most likely to suffer poverty. (The Salvation Army reports that half of women seeking accomodation from them are experiencing family violence.) Catholic Health Australia states that doctors should screen patients for poverty to cut preventable disease. UNICEF and other advocate groups have called on the government to help the 600,000 Australian children who live in poverty.

49 million Americans similarly experience food insecurity. A thought-provoking posting from Cracked.com, of all places, attacks the stereotypes of those receiving welfare. Apple, McDonalds, and Walmart cost taxpayers the most in welfare by underpaying their employees.

A study has found that poverty inflicts a cognitive deficit equal to losing 13 IQ points. A 23-year study of "crack babies" found that "Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine."

ETA: 20 things the poor really do every day, including working harder and longer on less food and sleep than the rest of us.