A transwoman in Vancouver has just had a discrimination suit dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada. Heart actually has a detailed overview of the case posted at her place, but I refuse to link to it due to the disgustingly transphobic remarks she and her readers have made in the comments. (Yeah, um, don’t bother trying to argue about this. This is a queer blog. It won’t go over well.)

So instead, I’ll quote this article:

The Supreme Court will not hear arguments about whether a women’s service organization erred in excluding a trans person from working with the Vancouver-based group.

The Feb 1 decision denying “leave to appeal” to the Supreme Court Of Canada leaves Kimberly Nixon without further recourse for her exclusion from Vancouver Rape Relief.

The battle began a decade ago when Nixon filed a human rights complaint against the organization over her treatment.

The BC Human Rights Tribunal found that Nixon had been discriminated against on the basis of her trans identity and ordered Rape Relief to pay her $7,500 in damages.

But the victory was short-lived. Rape Relief appealed to the BC Supreme Court, where the tribunal’s decision was overturned. At that time, Rape Relief did not dispute the allegation that it rejected Nixon because she is trans, but argued it was allowed to do so. Nixon appealed to the BC Court Of Appeal, who upheld the province’s Supreme Court decision in 2005.

The argument here is that a woman raised with male privilege has such a different experience that she can’t relate to or counsel cisgendered women who’ve suffered violence. (Well, that’s the relatively benign argument. We won’t get into the paranoid “feminist” arguments about “appropriation” and “infiltration”, or the otherwise outright offensive arguments.) The reality is far from this simple.

The reality is that there is no universal, essential experience of womanhood. The mainstream American feminist movement has often and rightly been criticized for ignoring the experience of women of color, queer women, poor women. None of us have grown up or been raised the same way. None of our experiences have been exactly the same or meant the same thing to us, impacted us in the same ways.

My experience as a biracial, queer, ex-Mormon feminist can’t be compared to a straight, white, Christian woman. It can’t be compared to a woman who grew up in poverty, or another culture, or another part of the world. We are not the same. There is no unifying thread which connects us, nothing magical or spiritual binding us all in sisterhood with one another except those threads we weave ourselves, those bridges that we build, and our shared humanity, which, might I remind you, we also share with men.

What is this experience transwomen can never have or understand which makes them not “real” women in the social sense? We can’t argue it’s dependent on the presence or absence of female sex organs; there are women with birth defects and women without wombs. There are women who have been victims of Female Genital Mutilation. There can be women born with ambiguous genitalia. And, so, there can be women with male sex organs, too.

An appeal to blood is useless here for the reasons stated above: not all women, even cisgendered women, bleed. Some women have reproductive health issues. Some women have been through menopause. Not all of us bleed the same way. I can hardly relate to women for whom menstruation is a horrible, agonizing ordeal — for me, it is something I hardly even think about. Given the huge amount of physical variation, the ultimately subjective nature of our interactions with our own bodies, I hardly think a woman born with a penis can be much different from me than a woman with endometriosis. Both are foreign. Both are certainly women.

There is no biological congruence. There is no identical socialization. Even women who have endured the same event will process it differently, come to different conclusions. Nobody is an island, but neither are any of us the same. It’s been argued that no one can ever truly understand another person, and I agree. Given that, how can anyone really believe there’s anything essential that ties all women together? Even if we all emerged from the same common background, I don’t think that would be true.

Those who claim transwomen experience some overwhelming male privilege which makes them incapable of understanding women, empathizing with women, being part of women’s groups, I think are woefully ignorant of what it means to grow up gender-variant or queer.

Growing up queer means that you know from a very young age that you do not belong, that there is something wrong with the world or wrong with you. Girls who are tomboys are teased, discouraged from pursuing their interests, but in many ways are tolerated because it’s okay for a girl to want to be a like a boy, to be “better”, more “masculine”, as long as she understands that she can still never be as good as the genuine article. But effeminate boys? There’s nothing worse in the world; a boy acting like a girl? That’s a huge step down. Being “feminine” is wrong, bad, less. Women are flawed and men who resemble women in any small or superficial way are not treated kindly.

Male privilege looks very different when people think that you’re a fag (or, for that matter, a butch dyke). You’re a target, you are harassed and tormented, beat up, murdered, simply because you challenged some sociopath’s sense of propriety. Is that privilege? Is it a privilege to be gay-bashed? Certainly, most transwomen will have had some advantages in their upbringing, but I can hardly fault any woman who wasn’t raised thinking she was worthless, thinking she simply wasn’t as good, that she was dumber, more emotional, capable of less, an object for the pleasure of men. Any woman, trans or cisgendered, who has managed to escape these messages has nothing but my astonished pleasure for her good fortune (and it’s ignorant to assume that transwomen haven’t had some exposure at least by proxy before transition, and that they don’t experience life the same way any other woman does afterward, at least if they “pass” — if they don’t, I think their experience is much worse).

Kimberly Nixon is post-op. Any arguments revolving around the presence of a penis are at this point incorrect and irrelevant (although they’d be bigoted and wrong in any case). Any arguments about her experience as a woman, her ability to empathize with female victims of violence, are similarly flawed. Transwomen experience life as women, and are disproportionately victims of prejudice, discrimination, violence. This leaves only her experience growing up as justification for the actions of Vancouver Rape Relief.

None of us have had the same experience growing up. None. Most of us have trouble understanding the forces which formed other people, looking through that lens sympathetically to try to understand why people are the way that they are, or are not. Kimberly is no different from any other woman in that regard, and it is no excuse for this kind of shameful prejudice, especially at the hands of so-called feminists.

I have said it before and I hate that it’s necessary, but I will say it again, as often as I must: any feminist who does not fight for the rights of all women is no ally of mine.

From Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains:

An Abortion Ban Bill Comes to Colorado

Senate Bill 143 (Renfroe, Lambert), “End Freedom of Choice,” would ban all abortions in Colorado except those performed to save the life of the pregnant woman. There are no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest. [Emphasis mine.]

This unconstitutional measure forces women to carry a pregnancy to term as the consequence of rape or contraceptive failure.

Colorado does not need extremist bills like SB 143 to distract us from the real solutions. We know that only increased access to family planning and comprehensive sex ed can reduce abortion. Our representatives need to look forward and find commonsense answers, like SB 60 “EC in the ER”, not backward to the dark days when women’s bodies were governed by the state, not themselves.

If you’re in Colorado, send a message to your representatives! I know a lot of women here who will fight tooth and nail against this thing no matter what. If you’re in Colorado, PLEASE take any action possible to help fight this terrifying bill.

Blue has posted some good links to editorials about the Ashley Treatment. This article really struck me.

If you believe in basic human rights, you have to extend them to all humans. You can’t say that you believe in human rights, but not for people who can’t articulate their value. You can’t say that you believe in human rights but not for people who would be better off dead. If you’re able to tell yourself that in this one case, it was okay for parents to mutilate their daughter with absolutely no cause, and no medical argument, then you need to rethink your definition of basic human rights.

That’s why it’s important to talk about this. That’s why it’s important to condemn it.

People with disabilities are first and foremost people with rights. This includes a basic right to bodily integrity. It’s very sad to me that feminists can forget that so easily. You cannot work for equality if you do not work to uphold the rights of all people. (It seems self-evident. Like so many things, apparently, it is not.)

I think this post by Thirza is worth reading. She looks at the Ashley Treatment through the lens of her personal experience with a disabled sister.

Sour Duck has linked to some other posts about the subject. And here’s more at The Procrastinator’s Handbook.

I’m still disappointed that there’s not more outrage in the major feminist blogs. (Amanda at Pandagon’s response can only be described as completely bizarre. Piny hasn’t made a post yet but he’s been active on other threads so I expect to see something at Feministe soon. Feministing? Who the hell knows?) But if this whole matter has made one thing clear it’s that I need to have more disability rights bloggers besides the Gimp Parade in my regular reading list.

I wasn’t going to write about this because it upsets me too much, but it doesn’t seem like any of the major bloggers are exactly jumping on it (I lie–there was an Alas post eventually), which shocks and disturbs me. I expected this to be immediately addressed by at least a few people, but…the only person to do so was brownfemipower. (As usual.) So here I am, since no one else seems to actually care and I just can’t believe it.

I don’t even know what to say about this. There are just no words I can coherently string together well enough to express my total moral outrage.

Short version of events as told by the BBC (linked above):

Parents of a severely disabled girl in the US have revealed that they are keeping her child-sized in order to give her a better life.

The nine-year-old, named Ashley, has the mental ability of a three-month-old baby and cannot walk or talk.

Along with hormone doses to limit her growth, Ashley’s parents also opted for surgery to block breast growth and had her uterus and appendix removed.

They say the treatment will help to improve her quality of life.

I’d highly recommend looking at the parents’ blog since it’s a little more complex than that, but I really don’t want to spend a lot of time just regurgitating the details. You can read for yourself.

Here is what I think: No one should be subject to such drastic medical procedures if they are unable to consent and it’s not absolutely, demonstrably necessary. Period. It doesn’t matter what a person’s level of cognitive development is, everyone is deserving of basic human rights and that includes the right not to have organs removed unnecessarily. (More on that later.) Here’s a choice quote from the BBC article:

George Dvorsky, a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies said: “If the concern has something to do with the girl’s dignity being violated, then I have to protest by arguing that the girl lacks the cognitive capacity to experience any sense of indignity.”

It does not matter if she does not have the cognitive ability to protest or understand what is happening to her. That does not mean she is not deserving of the same basic rights as all other people. If anything, this means she is deserving of further protections than normal since she cannot advocate in her own self-interest.

Furthermore, the justifications her parents give are, frankly, BS. No matter how her growth might inconvenience them, I’m sure they could work around it. It might be more difficult to move her around but I’m sure they’re creative people and they could come up with a solution — after all, didn’t they have to figure out how to care for her to begin with, after realizing how severely disabled she is?

Arguing that preventing the development of her breasts is a preventive measure strikes me as wrong. Their (medical, we’ll get to the rest later) reasons are: “Avoiding the possibility of painful fibrocystic growth and future related surgeries. Women in Ashley’s lineage have a history of fibrocystic growth. … Avoiding the possibility of breast cancer. Ashley has breast cancer history in her family.” There are plenty of people at risk for different diseases and cancers; what is important is regular screening. It is not routine and does not make sense to simply remove body parts as a preventive measure just in case cancer develops.

The only preventive measure they are taking with which I can agree is the removal of her appendix. It might be difficult or impossible to tell if something went wrong until it was too late, so that procedure seems sensible to me.

The argument for the removal of her uterus is as such: “Ashley has no need for her uterus since she will not be bearing children. This procedure will avoid the menstrual cycle and all the bleeding/discomfort/pain/cramps that are so commonly associated with it.” There are treatments available such as certain kinds of birth control which could prevent her from menstruating without the need for such an invasive procedure. This is unnecessary in the extreme. (Although I am of the opinion that menstruation is a natural bodily function which should not be inhibited simply because it’s “gross”. If a person finds it extremely unpleasant or painful, that’s different and more than justified. That said, even if I don’t agree, people can certainly do what they want with their bodies–keyword: theirs.)

Then there is the justification that “she won’t need it”. Technically, I suppose, no. Just because she will not use her uterus for bearing children doesn’t mean she “doesn’t need” it. She probably will never walk, either; does that justify amputating her legs? Everyone has a right to basic bodily integrity. There is no reason to remove a healthy body part simply because it will never be, in the most basic utilitarian sense, “necessary”. This argument makes very little sense, and strikes me as extremely callous.

Then there are the other reasons. The frightening ones:

Additional and incidental benefits [of the hysterectomy] include avoiding any possibility of pregnancy, which to our astonishment does occur to disabled women who are abused…

Large breasts could “sexualize” Ashley towards her caregiver, especially when they are touched while she is being moved or handled, inviting the possibility of abuse.

This is, unfortunately, a very real concern. However, I think their approach is misguided. For one, pedophiles will readily abuse her even if she continues to look like a child when she’s older, and not only women with large breasts (or who are even conventionally attractive) are raped. If someone is sick enough to sexually abuse someone so severely disabled, I highly doubt the presence or absence of breasts will have much to do with it.

As for the hysterectomy: I see no reason why this matters. All this will do is prevent her from becoming pregnant should she be raped. That will not change the fact, in that eventuality, that she would already have been raped. That aside, there are plenty of other ways to prevent or end a pregnancy should one occur, none of which strike me really as more or less morally questionable than this course of action already is. This is another case where, as a preventive measure, I doubt it does much real good.

These justifications here deeply disturb me because of how they buy into common misconceptions about rape and rapists’ motivations, and they will do little to help any actual problems which could arise.

I think these procedures are medically unneeded and unethical. But…and this is important…I do not think the parents are bad people. I’m sure they love their child and are trying to do the best thing for her that they can, even though I believe their actions are wrong. It’s very clear that they think this is the best course of action available to them, and the fact that we live in a society where there are not many other readily available options is deeply unfortunate. I do not know that there are many practical solutions which this family can afford. I only know that this treatment is not an ethical solution — and as someone who is deeply concerned with the rights of all people (and other living things) I can do nothing else but condemn what has been done to this girl.

Ariel Levy will be on today’s Fresh Air. Catch it on NPR if you listen to it, or check back at the site tonight to listen online. Personally, I haven’t read Female Chauvinist Pigs and excerpts and columns written by Levy have failed to impress me, but Terry Gross always does thought-provoking interviews. It should be…interesting. If you’re into Levy you might want to hear, if you hate her, you might want to listen too.

I don’t normally post about science fiction related things here, since it’s not really the focus of the blog (although that will probably change since it’s pretty much my life right now), but it is something I’m really into. So, NPR had a story yesterday about James Tiptree, Jr., called The Secret Sci-Fi Life of Alice B. Sheldon. They interviewed the author of a new biography of Tiptree that came out earlier this year. This isn’t news to me, and won’t be to some of you, but I still thought it was really cool to hear something about such an influential female SF writer on a mainstream program.

For those of you who don’t know who she was and don’t want to have to follow the link, I’ll sum up with the written introduction on the NPR page:

Science fiction writer James Tiptree, Jr. earned the reputation of being a male author who understood women.

Tiptree’s stories often addressed gender issues — on Earth and in worlds beyond.

One story in particular involves a woman opting to live with an alien nation, for the sole reason of avoiding the feeling of confinement she has in her male-dominated society.

There was a deep secret behind Tiptree’s sensitivity: In reality, he was a she. Alice B. Sheldon (1915 - 1987) used the male pen name to write in a time when male authors could expect more success in the realm of science fiction.

Julie Phillips wrote James Tiptree, Jr., a biography subtitled: “The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon.” Phillips tells Andrea Seabrook why she was inspired to write the book, more about who Sheldon was and how the nom de plume changed Sheldon’s life.

Tiptree has really been an influence on my life and writing. Not because I’ve been influenced greatly by her style and subject matter, although I do think some of her writing is excellent, but more because her life and approach to it is so fascinating. I’ve always found the “feminine” gender role limiting. Until a few years ago, growing up, I felt I could solely identify with male role models, because I knew of few women who lived the sorts of lives men have always been allowed. It seemed that being female, feminine, limited you to a certain set of expectations, potentials, possibilities. Whereas being male or at least acting like it allowed anything to be possible. Men could do anything, be anyone. Women could be wives, mothers, and love interests. (Failing that, temptresses, witches, and Lady Macbeth. These have always been the feminine archetypes I preferred.)

I grew up in Utah, where gender roles and gendered expectations are alive and well and much more overt than in many other parts of the US, and this profoundly affected me. My mother was surprisingly feminist considering her background, and even though she was a stay at home mother of five (who now regrets her decision not to work), she always told me there was nothing wrong with being a girl and that I could do anything I wanted to do, anything a boy could. This was all well and good, but unfortunately, even if our parents are wonderful they are not the only influences on our life, and what I heard from my mother seemed to contradict the reality that assaulted me every day.

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I’ve been sitting on this post for awhile. I just didn’t have the heart to finish it or post it, but I need to. So, not quite as timely as it could have been since it’s been a little while since the events I address, but…still worth saying.

I’ve been too depressed by recent events in the news to even feel like writing about them — even though these are things which need to be talked about — but what is there to say? Between the recent violent attacks on young girls in my country (I refuse to call them “school shootings”; I’m from Colorado, and this is no Columbine) and our national legislature’s decision to legitimize the Bush administration’s war crimes, I feel too hopeless to even try. Why bother? No one seems to listen or care; things keep getting worse despite the work of all the amazing activists I know. But that’s just temporary burnout talking. Anyone who actually cares, anyone who actually tries to make the world slightly better, will feel like that sometimes. That doesn’t mean I can stop trying; of course, I can’t. Not standing up for what one believes is right makes one complicit in the whole mess.

If nothing else, here’s what I have to say: the fact that, in 2006, in the fucking United States of America, little girls are being killed by grown men simply for the crime of being born female, should tell us that feminism is still necessary. The fact that, in the US, religious conservatives keep pushing their agenda to prevent women from having any sort of control over their own bodies and health — and hey, people, you realize that women take hormones reasons other than the perverse joy they feel at preventing the implantation of possibly-fertilized eggs, right? to treat PCOS and endometriosis and such? and that by denying them their medication based on your moral principles you’re causing them extreme pain and agony for reasons which have nothing to do with your moral objections, not that your moral objections have any legitimacy anyway? — should tell us that feminism is still necessary.

And, of course, it’s not just here. The other day, I heard a report on the radio about how children in Afghanistan attending co-ed schools are receiving death threats, how little girls have been killed for going to school…go ahead, tell me feminism isn’t necessary. Just try to look at that and tell me that we can’t specifically promote the rights of women as human beings, that women and men are equal, that we should be “equalists” instead of “feminists”. Oh, but of course, I forget: we’re not like “them”. This is the US, not the Taliban, and anyway, we’ve liberated the people there, haven’t we…right?

But the people who would point to that as an example of a place where feminism is needed and then claim that US feminism is misguided, misplaced, useless… The way this place is headed, I can see that kind of future as a distinct possibility.* We’ve already fallen too close for comfort. And damned if I’m going to quietly allow myself to be put in a place where I can’t control whether I give birth or how many children I have, where I risk being killed on a daily basis simply for being born female (or not-white, or queer — but then, aren’t we there anyway?).

Those are only the worst extremes of what I’m afraid of. There’s smaller things, more insidious: I live in a place where girls being discouraged or prevented from developing their abilities in certain areas is said to reflect their inherent aptitude; where woman and girls are encouraged to endanger their health or kill themselves in pursuit of an impossible vision of ideal beauty (which seems, by all accounts, to consist of not-exisiting); where if women are not sex objects, they have no value, and if they are sex objects, they have no value. Where women and people of color and everyone who’s just not lucky enough to be born a straight, cisgendered, white male is considered by many to be responsible for their own oppression.

For all these reasons and many, many more: feminism is necessary.

1. I don’t mean this to come across in a “oh my god I don’t want to be like those poor brown women” kind of way, but in a “oh my that’s terrible, I want to help, and I also need to protect my own interests” kind of way. Just in case there’s any confusion.

Just saw this: Female Chat Names Generate More Threats

Next time you chat online, think twice about your screen name. A new study finds that using a female screen name like Cathy, Melissa or Stephanie is more likely to elicit threatening and sexually explicit messages.

In the study, automated chat-bots and human researchers logged on to chat rooms under female, male and ambiguous screen names, such as Nightwolf, Orgoth and Stargazer.

Bots using female names averaged 100 malicious messages a day, compared with about four for those using male names and about 25 for those with ambiguous names. Researchers logging on themselves produced similar results.

Michel Cukier, the study’s author and a professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Risk and Reliability, said the findings show the risks of placing personal information on the Internet, “even disclosing just your first name.”

Cukier said the difficulty of writing computer programs, or scripts, that can tell the difference between males and females online shows the menacing messages were not generated automatically.

“These are real users who seem to look for female names,” Cukier said.

The results are to be published in the proceedings of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers’ International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, which will be held in June.

Parry Aftab, an online-safety experrt, said she was not surprised.

“It’s sad that we have to say to men and women, but especially women, ‘Don’t give away too much information and that includes your gender,’” she said. “There’s no reason for people to have to know that you’re a woman.”

This is pretty messed up, but it’s something that most women online could have told you already. I’ve observed more than once the disturbing and sometimes hilarious difference in treatment I receive online when people don’t know my gender. People are more likely to listen to me and treat me with respect online when they think I’m man (and that’s assumed, since a surname like “Earlbecke” should pretty much be gender neutral yet somehow it’s not).

Anyway, I find it outrageous and sad that women are being told they have to hide their gender in order to be safer online. Gender should be a non-issue. The crime of simply being born female shouldn’t be enough to warrant harassment. But here you have it. Just one more example of how women are targeted for verbal abuse just on the basis of the gender alone and nothing more.

I really don’t feel like I have much commentary to add to this one.

Where I live, race and immigration issues seem much more pressing than anything else at the moment. So I apologize for my lack of things strictly related to feminism, because this is more immediately important to me.

I have been talking to people at work and apparently, Colorado police are randomly checking people on the highway near Denver to make sure they have proper documentation, etc. If they aren’t citizens or legal immigrants they’re being arrested. (I can’t find a news article to verify this, since supposedly the local media doesn’t want to talk about it. But since I know several different people who witnessed this I assume it’s in some way true.) Add this to the fact that the federal government has taken an interest in holding legally accountable the companies which hire undocumented workers, and all I can do is wonder why, if this is such a pressing issue, law enforcement has waited so long to actually do anything about it. I suspect pressure from the companies who benefit from cheap labor has kept the government complacent on the issue.

What’s going to happen to these people who have been arrested in Colorado? Allegedly, they’ll be held at the expense of the federal government until the state can convince it to ship them back over the border. Their property will be seized and auctioned off. They’ll be charged for forging documents and whatever else, and subject to harsher punishments if they come back — ever. They may no longer have a legal avenue to try to immigrate, either. And that’s harsh, but it isn’t my biggest worry. What concerns me most here is that they might not be given access to lawyers, etc., because the police see the issue as: they are not US citizens and not protected by the Bill of Rights. I think this is wrong. I also think it’s important to make it easier for these people to come to the US legally, or to work with the people who are already here rather than simply send them away.

I’m ambivalent even as I’m getting flashes of fascism. While this approach to make sure people are legally in the US may seem draconian and kind of scary, I understand the point and I think, all other concerns aside, that this is a perfectly rational legal approach. (Rational does not mean humane. Rational does not mean morally justifiable. Rational does not mean right.) I don’t think it will actually do anything to solve the problem, but I certainly think enforcing the law and just sending illegal immigrants home is preferable to the “Minuteman” approach where it’s somehow acceptable to shoot random people on sight to protect the purity of our Aryan nation or something. I think any attempt to resolve this issue through law enforcement is really the way to go — and to hear about it being handled from that perspective rather than the alternative is, sadly, a relief. From a legal perspective, I understand why the government doesn’t want undocumented people just wandering around, especially with fears of terrorism. (Is this attitude justified? I don’t know; I think it’s complicated. But I understand the argument.)

The legal issues surrounding illegal immigration which really concern me are thus:

Identity theft and fraud. When people are forced to immigrate without the proper legal channels some of them end up forging IDs and stealing social security numbers in order to work. Identity theft is a huge issue right now, and this makes it even worse. Some of these people are illegally buying houses and cars using other people’s information and while, yes, they’re certainly entitled to and require these things, they can’t do so at the expense of other people. I think this needs to be treated just as it would be if the people committing the crime were US citizens. Obviously, it needs to be addressed. There are already laws for this. We should enforce those instead of making more useless xenophobic legislation that doesn’t deal with the real issues.

Then there’s the issue of tax fraud — which some companies who knowingly hire undocumented workers are committing. (I don’t know that this is the majority of cases, but it does happen. More information and some numbers at The Tax Foundation Blog.) I believe that everyone deserves the work, has the right to work, but I understand why the government would not be pleased with this. Again, if the government cares about this issue, the law should to be enforced. For some reason, all of the sudden, that’s happening. Great. Law enforcement gets around to doing its job. I hear that the executives of these companies are being taken to court, which is good. I think that’s where the responsibility lies, not with the workers, but with upper management. Corporate corruption is an issue which extends even beyond this, but this is one part of it.

I think any excuse the government gives on why it needs to be able to constantly track everyone in the US at all times is total bull — so there goes any legal argument about strict documentation. But these others are, I think, legitimate concerns from a practical standpoint. These are also concerns which are not limited to immigrants — these are legal issues which need to be dealt with anyway, but sometimes the circumstances which make people desperate to enter this country also make them desperate enough to commit related crimes. These are the only legal issues which I can think of which are actually a justifiable concern instead of simply stereotyping or being blatantly xenophobic.

Of course, it’s technically illegal for them to be here and technically illegal to hire them, those who cry, “BUT THEY BROKE THE LAW!” are quick to remind us. Sometimes laws are good. Some laws protect our safety or property. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean by default that it’s good or bad. Laws are in themselves meaningless. So, yes, it’s breaking the law. Unless there’s other laws being broken which are more serious crimes I don’t understand why this law should be such a big deal.

The problem is that…well, the people making the legislation to deal with the issue aren’t thinking about it this way. They’re appealing instead to xenophobic nationalism. More than that, these are people who casually talk about murder and massive human rights violations as if they’re perfectly acceptable.

Entering the country illegally is a crime, but it is not a death sentence.

Should people be executed trespassing? Would anyone suggest that as an appropriate punishment for someone born in this country?

People should not be allowed to die in the desert. They should not be gunned down at the border. I can’t believe that some politicians approve of these ideas as if they’re good ones. (Well, I actually can believe it, and that’s where I despair.)

They shouldn’t be employed for below minimum wage slave labor, either.

We need to look at the real issues: why are people so desperate that they’re willing to risk death to get here, with only shitty jobs and a whole lot of resentment from the locals as their reward? This isn’t a decision anyone makes lightly. These people are desperate, and what they find here may help a little, but it doesn’t really improve that.

I think the only way to solve this, actually fix the problems at the root of the matter, is to allow more people to immigrate through the proper legal channels. How much would the US economy improve if we allowed more people to enter the country legally in order to work at safe, decently-paying jobs? What the employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers are doing is bad for everyone concerned. It’s bad for the US economy, the US government, and the Mexican workers.

But it’s so much easier to be reactionary. It’s so much easier to appeal to nationalism or racial prejudice than to actually look at these people as people and try to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, and plan accordingly. It’s going to happen anyway, and if we make it impossible, people will still die trying. What can we do to make it safe, economically beneficial, and legal?

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…wait, yes, they have, and it didn’t work then, either.

Discussions on race with most people tend to really, really disturb me. It’s creepy how little people seem to actually know about history — and if they do know about history, they seem incapable of making the connection to the present day. So that the rest of you thinking people can share in my total bewilderment, I present some brief examples of this thinking in action, courtesy of the scary people I’ve talked to on a perfectly average day at work:

Statement 1: Those damn Mexicans, taking our American jobs BLAH BLAH BLAH

My Reaction: Yeah! And don’t forget those filthy Irish immigrants, taking all the underpaid, unsafe factory jobs that Americans don’t want! This is just like the Industrial Revolution! We should send them all back to Ireland! Or Mexico! Wherever!

…yeah, whatever. Blame everything on the popular scapegoat at the time. Same old. This has only been happening in the US since the country was founded. Immigration happens. Get over it.

Statement 2: We ought to round up all those Muslims and lock them up! Damn terrorists.

My Reaction: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? World War II, anyone? Does ANYONE remember WWII? You know, that little part where Asian-American citizens were rounded up and put into internment camps and they lost their jobs and their rights and they were beaten and killed and malnourished, and it’s only, oh, recognized as one of the most horrible things that’s ever happened in this country, ever? Something that most people now universally recognize was evil and wrong and totally unwarranted?

WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS THE EXACT SAME THING. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU??

Statement 3: Racism would go away if people stopped making a big deal about it. OR, racism doesn’t exist anymore.

My Reaction: See statements 1 & 2 and then shut the hell up.

Statement 4: Damn Mexicans! We need to build a wall across the border so that they can’t sneak in!

My Reaction: Great idea. That’ll totally work. And we totally have the money to spend on that, too, since our government isn’t, like, bankrupt or anything. Why don’t you go quit your job and do that? And then, why don’t you go toil in a field somewhere for pennies an hour since we won’t have anyone else willing to do it? HAVE FUN. Or, alternately, why don’t you go buy free trade organic whatever and complain about how much stuff costs when people actually get paid for their work. Oh, but you don’t want to spend more? Thought not.

Statement 5: Those people in the Middle East are filthy and uncivilized pigs and BLAH BLAH BLAH

My Reaction: The savages! We’d better invade and civilize them with our Christianity! That’s totally worked throughout history!

Oh, wait, you think we just ought to nuke all them? BRILLIANT IDEA! Nuclear winter ROCKS!

…no, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you that you’d make that kind of statement?

Oh, and one final note: Just because you think I look white doesn’t mean I am, and it doesn’t mean I’m not going to call you on your racist bullshit. Just, yanno, saying.