While females have the potential to become pregnant as early as age 10, politically-driven regulations surrounding pregnancy prevention technologies set and affirm lines between adult and child which maintain practices denying those deemed "adults" rights, and further infantilizing them. This is the case with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's decision this week that maintains restrictions on young women's access to the Plan B.
The Washington Post writes that "Opponents of easier access, meanwhile, hailed the decision, saying relaxing the rules would have exposed girls and women to risks from taking high doses of a potent hormone and misusing the medication; interfered with parents’ ability to ...monitor their children; and made it easier for men to prey on vulnerable minors."
Oh, I get it.
Keeping these restrictions makes sense because unrestricted Plan B would surely encourage more men to prey on women. The only reason they don't now is because we have laws like these, which are also important because feeble-brained girls and women will, of course, misuse this medication. You know females and science! I mean, we regulate the shit out of aspirin and cold medicine and robotussin and other meds that can be riskily misused. Uh, wait, we don't? Neverthelesss, and most importantly, these regulations are important because unregulated Plan B could interfere with parents' ability to monitor their children. Their children who are already having unmonitored sex.
Young females participate in many of the same acts that older females considered adults participate in. This is the case with sex. It is not the act, itself, but the act tied to policies like these that influences the way females are able to exist in society. Policies can deny young people the ability to make decisions, to have control, to effectively address the unexpected results of the acts they take. These policies discourage adulthood. One such policy decision happened this week.
From The Washington Post:
Obama administration refuses to relax Plan B restrictions
By Rob Stein, Published: December 7
The Obama administration stunned women’s health advocates and abortion opponents alike Wednesday by rejecting a request to let anyone of any age buy the controversial morning-after pill Plan B directly off drugstore and supermarket shelves.
For what the Food and Drug Administration thinks is the first time, the Department of Health and Human Services overruled the agency, vetoing the FDA’s decision to make the contraceptive available without any restrictions. Revealing a rare public split, FDA Administrator Margaret A. Hamburg said her conclusion that the drug could be used safely by women of all ages was nullified by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
In a surprise move with election-year implications, the Obama administration's top health official overruled her own drug regulators and stopped the Plan B morning-after pill from moving onto drugstore shelves next to other contraceptives. (Dec. 7)
“There is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential,” Hamburg said in a statement.
“However, this morning I received a memorandum from the Secretary of Health and Human Services invoking her authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to execute its provisions and stating that she does not agree with the Agency’s decision.”
In a statement and separate letter to Hamburg, Sebelius said she reversed the FDA’s decision because she had concluded that data submitted by the drug’s maker did not “conclusively establish” that Plan B could be used safely by the youngest girls.
“About ten percent of girls are physically capable of bearing children by 11.1 years of age. It is common knowledge that there are significant cognitive and behavioral differences between older adolescent girls and the youngest girls of reproductive age,” Sebelius said.
Her action means that instead of being able to pick up Plan B off store shelves, like condoms and spermicides, girls 16 and younger still need a doctor’s prescription to obtain it. Women 17 and older can buy the pill without a prescription but must show proof of age to a pharmacist.
The decision shocked and angered the doctors, health advocates, family-planning activists, lawmakers and others who supported relaxing the restrictions to help women, including teenagers, prevent unwanted pregnancies.
“We are outraged that this administration has let politics trump science,” said Kirsten Moore of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, a Washington-based advocacy group. “This administration is unwilling to stand up to any controversy and do the right thing for women’s health. That’s shameful.”
Susan F. Wood of George Washington University, who resigned from the FDA in 2005 because of delays by the George W. Bush administration in relaxing restrictions on Plan B, said she was “beyond stunned” by the decision.
“There is no rationale that can justify HHS reaching in and overturning the FDA on the decision about this safe and effective contraception,” Wood said. “I never thought I’d see this happen again.”
Opponents of easier access, meanwhile, hailed the decision, saying relaxing the rules would have exposed girls and women to risks from taking high doses of a potent hormone and misusing the medication; interfered with parents’ ability to monitor their children; and made it easier for men to prey on vulnerable minors.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
On lifting identities online
New York Times reports that a lawyer's impersonation of a scholar through email correspondence led to his jail time.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/dispute-over-dead-sea-scrolls-leads-to-a-jail-sentence/
No one may know you're a dog online. But, if you claim to be someone living who you are not, and if you are found out, you'll be swapping your dog house for the big house.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/dispute-over-dead-sea-scrolls-leads-to-a-jail-sentence/
No one may know you're a dog online. But, if you claim to be someone living who you are not, and if you are found out, you'll be swapping your dog house for the big house.
Sock puppets and social media: Who's in your friend group?
The CIA has made a program that allows one user to create a number of "sock puppets," or social media personas, that can be used to participate in comment boards and shape the perception of "the people" on discussions related to the US.
The world is a stage. Read more about it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
The world is a stage. Read more about it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
Monday, November 7, 2011
Adolescence and Economics
NPR reports Pew Center findings that young Americans have been faring much less well than their parents and grandparents since 1984:
by Mark Memmott
There's been a huge increase in the wealth gap between older Americans and those just entering adulthood, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center.
According to Pew's study:
In 2009, "households headed by adults ages 65 and older ... had 47 times as much net wealth as the typical household headed by someone" under 35 years of age. Pew says that "back in 1984, this had been a less lopsided 10-to-1 ratio."
The median net worth of a household headed by someone 65 or older was $170,494 in 2009, Pew says. That was up 42 percent from 1984, when the median net worth for that group was $120,457.
Meanwhile, the median net worth of a household headed by someone younger than 35 was $3,662 in 2009 — down 68 percent from $11,521 in 1984.
What's behind the divergence? Housing. "Rising home equity has been the linchpin of the higher wealth of older households in 2009 compared with their counterparts in 1984," Pew says. "Declining home equity has been one factor in the lower wealth held by young households in 2009 compared with their counterparts in 1984." Key to the trend: Many in the older group bought their homes at "pre-bubble" prices and are still enjoying gains despite the real estate market's recent troubles.
As The Atlantic Wire says, this news will certainly add fire to the sense among many younger adults that times are tougher for them than they were for many of their parents and grandparents.
by Mark Memmott
There's been a huge increase in the wealth gap between older Americans and those just entering adulthood, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center.
According to Pew's study:
In 2009, "households headed by adults ages 65 and older ... had 47 times as much net wealth as the typical household headed by someone" under 35 years of age. Pew says that "back in 1984, this had been a less lopsided 10-to-1 ratio."
The median net worth of a household headed by someone 65 or older was $170,494 in 2009, Pew says. That was up 42 percent from 1984, when the median net worth for that group was $120,457.
Meanwhile, the median net worth of a household headed by someone younger than 35 was $3,662 in 2009 — down 68 percent from $11,521 in 1984.
What's behind the divergence? Housing. "Rising home equity has been the linchpin of the higher wealth of older households in 2009 compared with their counterparts in 1984," Pew says. "Declining home equity has been one factor in the lower wealth held by young households in 2009 compared with their counterparts in 1984." Key to the trend: Many in the older group bought their homes at "pre-bubble" prices and are still enjoying gains despite the real estate market's recent troubles.
As The Atlantic Wire says, this news will certainly add fire to the sense among many younger adults that times are tougher for them than they were for many of their parents and grandparents.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
What needs to work harder here?
We are always telling youth that they need to retool to move ahead. Flexibilization is key within neoliberalist Western society, which denies the existence of structure. It tells us to look away from society, from culture, from institutions. It tells us we need to work harder. It tells us that, if we fail, we are at fault. It tells us that when we are unfulfilled, unacknowledged, stagnant, failing, we are the problem. And we buy it. We believe these lies for ourselves and for others.
The poor are not working hard enough. The homeless are lazy. Youth in shitty jobs are not applying themselves well, not go-getter enough. We blame people for not thriving and not succeeding rather than looking at structures of capitalism and plutocracy that exist to ensure that the majority never access power.
And, more and more, we will be blaming youth for their extended powerlessness.
This is such a great commentary on the topic.
The poor are not working hard enough. The homeless are lazy. Youth in shitty jobs are not applying themselves well, not go-getter enough. We blame people for not thriving and not succeeding rather than looking at structures of capitalism and plutocracy that exist to ensure that the majority never access power.
And, more and more, we will be blaming youth for their extended powerlessness.
This is such a great commentary on the topic.
NYT terms todays young people as occupying "Generation Limbo"
Is it limbo or life? Nothing like a generational title to shape what our existence means.
Article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/fashion/recent-college-graduates-wait-for-their-real-careers-to-begin.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Published: August 31, 2011
WHEN Stephanie Kelly, a 2009 graduate of the University of Florida, looked for a job in her chosen field, advertising, she found few prospects and even fewer takers. So now she has two jobs: as a part-time “senior secretary” at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville and a freelance gig writing for Elfster.com, a “secret Santa” Web site.
Enlarge This Image
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
Stephanie Morales, a Dartmouth graduate, has taken a job as a paralegal.
Enlarge This Image
Matt Roth for The New York Times
Ben Shore, a University of Maryland business graduate, works at a call center.
Enlarge This Image
Ben Sklar for The New York Times
Sarah Weinstein had planned to pursue a career in advertising.
But is Ms. Kelly stressed out about the lack of a career path she spent four years preparing for? Not at all. Instead, she has come to appreciate her life. “I can cook and write at my own pace,” she said. “I kind of like that about my life.”
Likewise, Amy Klein, who graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a degree in English literature, couldn’t find a job in publishing. At one point, she had applied for an editorial-assistant job at Gourmet magazine. Less than two weeks later, Condé Nast shut down that 68- year-old magazine. “So much for that job application,” said Ms. Klein, now 26.
One night she bumped into a friend, who asked her to join a punk rock band, Titus Andronicus, as a guitarist. Once, that might have been considered professional suicide. But weighed against a dreary day job, music suddenly held considerable appeal. So last spring, she sublet her room in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn and toured the country in an old Chevy minivan.
“I’m fulfilling my artistic goals,” Ms. Klein said.
Meet the members of what might be called Generation Limbo: highly educated 20-somethings, whose careers are stuck in neutral, coping with dead-end jobs and listless prospects.
And so they wait: for the economy to turn, for good jobs to materialize, for their lucky break. Some do so bitterly, frustrated that their well-mapped careers have gone astray. Others do so anxiously, wondering how they are going to pay their rent, their school loans, their living expenses — sometimes resorting to once-unthinkable government handouts.
“We did everything we were supposed to,” said Stephanie Morales, 23, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 2009 with hopes of working in the arts. Instead she ended up waiting tables at a Chart House restaurant in Weehawken, N.J., earning $2.17 an hour plus tips, to pay off her student loans. “What was the point of working so hard for 22 years if there was nothing out there?” said Ms. Morales, who is now a paralegal and plans on attending law school.
Some of Ms. Morales’s classmates have found themselves on welfare. “You don’t expect someone who just spent four years in Ivy League schools to be on food stamps,” said Ms. Morales, who estimates that a half-dozen of her friends are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A few are even helping younger graduates figure out how to apply. “We are passing on these traditions on how to work in the adult world as working poor,” Ms. Morales said.
But then there are people like Ms. Kelly and Ms. Klein, who are more laissez-faire. With the job market still bleak, their motto might as well be: “No career? No prospects? No worries!” (Well, at least for the time being.)
After all, much of the situation is out of their control, as victims of bad timing. Ms. Klein contrasted her Harvard classmates with the ones of her older sister, who graduated from Harvard seven years earlier. Those graduates, she said, were career-obsessed and, helped along by a strong economy, aggressively pursued high-powered jobs right after graduation.
By comparison, Ms. Klein said her classmates seemed resigned to waiting for the economic tides to turn. “Plenty of people work in bookstores and work in low-end administrative jobs, even though they have a Harvard degree,” she said. “They are thinking more in terms of creating their own kinds of life that interests them, rather than following a conventional idea of success and job security.”
The numbers are not encouraging. About 14 percent of those who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010 are looking for full-time jobs, either because they are unemployed or have only part-time jobs, according to a survey of 571 recent college graduates released in May by the Heldrich Center at Rutgers.
And then there is the slice of graduates effectively underemployed, using a college degree for positions that don’t require one or barely scraping by, working in call centers, bars or art-supply stores.
“They are a postponed generation,” said Cliff Zukin, an author of the Heldrich Center study. He noted that recent graduates seemed to be living with parents longer and taking longer to become financially secure. The journey on the life path, for many, is essentially stalled.
The Heldrich survey also found that the portion of graduates who described their first job as a “career” fell from 30 percent, if they graduated before the 2008 economic downturn (in 2006 and 2007), to 22 percent, if they graduated after the downturn (in 2009 and 2010).
In an ominous sign, those figures didn’t change much for second jobs, Dr. Zukin added, suggesting that recent graduates were stumbling from field to field. Indeed, Till Marco von Wachter, an economics professor at Columbia University who has studied the impact of recessions on young workers, said the effect on earnings took about a decade to fade.
MEANWHILE, modest jobs mean modest lives. Benjamin Shore, 23, graduated from the University of Maryland last year with a business degree and planned to go into consulting. Instead, he moved back into his parents’ house in Cherry Hill, N.J., and spent his days browsing for jobs online.
But when his parents started charging him $500 a month for rent, he moved into a windowless room in a Baltimore row house and took a $12-an-hour job at a Baltimore call center, making calls for a university, encouraging prospects to go back to school. “There’s no point in being diplomatic: it is horrible,” Mr. Shore said.
“I have a college education that I feel like I am wasting by being there,” he added. “I am supposed to do something interesting, something with my brain.” For a while, Mr. Shore ran LongevityDrugstore.com, an online drug retailer that he started, but it went nowhere. To stretch his pay check, he made beans and rice at home and drove slowly to save gas. Eventually he quit, got work as a dock hand and is now thinking of becoming a doctor.
Perhaps not surprisingly, volunteering has become a popular outlet for a generation that seeks meaning in its work. Sarah Weinstein, 25, a 2008 graduate of Boston University, manages a bar in Austin because she couldn’t find an advertising job. In her spare time, she volunteers, doing media relations for Austin Pets Alive, an animal rescue shelter.
“It’d be nice to make more money,” Ms. Weinstein said, but “I prefer it this way so that I have the extra time to spend volunteering and pursuing other things.” Volunteering, however, goes only so far. After three years without an advertising job, she is now applying to graduate school to freshen up her résumé.
Meanwhile, people forced out of the rat race are re-evaluating their values and looking elsewhere for satisfaction. “They have to revise their ideas of what they are looking for,” said Kenneth Jedding, author of “Higher Education: On Life, Landing a Job, and Everything Else They Didn’t Teach You in College.”
For Geo Wyeth, 27, who graduated from Yale in 2007, that means adopting a do-it-yourself approach to his career. After college, he worked at an Apple Store in New York as a salesclerk and trainer, while furthering his music career in an experimental rock band. He has observed, he said, a shift among his peers away from the corporate track and toward a more artistic mentality.
“You have to make opportunities happen for yourself, and I think a lot of my classmates weren’t thinking in that way,” he said. “It’s the equivalent of setting up your own lemonade stand.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/fashion/recent-college-graduates-wait-for-their-real-careers-to-begin.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Published: August 31, 2011
WHEN Stephanie Kelly, a 2009 graduate of the University of Florida, looked for a job in her chosen field, advertising, she found few prospects and even fewer takers. So now she has two jobs: as a part-time “senior secretary” at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville and a freelance gig writing for Elfster.com, a “secret Santa” Web site.
Enlarge This Image
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
Stephanie Morales, a Dartmouth graduate, has taken a job as a paralegal.
Enlarge This Image
Matt Roth for The New York Times
Ben Shore, a University of Maryland business graduate, works at a call center.
Enlarge This Image
Ben Sklar for The New York Times
Sarah Weinstein had planned to pursue a career in advertising.
But is Ms. Kelly stressed out about the lack of a career path she spent four years preparing for? Not at all. Instead, she has come to appreciate her life. “I can cook and write at my own pace,” she said. “I kind of like that about my life.”
Likewise, Amy Klein, who graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a degree in English literature, couldn’t find a job in publishing. At one point, she had applied for an editorial-assistant job at Gourmet magazine. Less than two weeks later, Condé Nast shut down that 68- year-old magazine. “So much for that job application,” said Ms. Klein, now 26.
One night she bumped into a friend, who asked her to join a punk rock band, Titus Andronicus, as a guitarist. Once, that might have been considered professional suicide. But weighed against a dreary day job, music suddenly held considerable appeal. So last spring, she sublet her room in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn and toured the country in an old Chevy minivan.
“I’m fulfilling my artistic goals,” Ms. Klein said.
Meet the members of what might be called Generation Limbo: highly educated 20-somethings, whose careers are stuck in neutral, coping with dead-end jobs and listless prospects.
And so they wait: for the economy to turn, for good jobs to materialize, for their lucky break. Some do so bitterly, frustrated that their well-mapped careers have gone astray. Others do so anxiously, wondering how they are going to pay their rent, their school loans, their living expenses — sometimes resorting to once-unthinkable government handouts.
“We did everything we were supposed to,” said Stephanie Morales, 23, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 2009 with hopes of working in the arts. Instead she ended up waiting tables at a Chart House restaurant in Weehawken, N.J., earning $2.17 an hour plus tips, to pay off her student loans. “What was the point of working so hard for 22 years if there was nothing out there?” said Ms. Morales, who is now a paralegal and plans on attending law school.
Some of Ms. Morales’s classmates have found themselves on welfare. “You don’t expect someone who just spent four years in Ivy League schools to be on food stamps,” said Ms. Morales, who estimates that a half-dozen of her friends are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A few are even helping younger graduates figure out how to apply. “We are passing on these traditions on how to work in the adult world as working poor,” Ms. Morales said.
But then there are people like Ms. Kelly and Ms. Klein, who are more laissez-faire. With the job market still bleak, their motto might as well be: “No career? No prospects? No worries!” (Well, at least for the time being.)
After all, much of the situation is out of their control, as victims of bad timing. Ms. Klein contrasted her Harvard classmates with the ones of her older sister, who graduated from Harvard seven years earlier. Those graduates, she said, were career-obsessed and, helped along by a strong economy, aggressively pursued high-powered jobs right after graduation.
By comparison, Ms. Klein said her classmates seemed resigned to waiting for the economic tides to turn. “Plenty of people work in bookstores and work in low-end administrative jobs, even though they have a Harvard degree,” she said. “They are thinking more in terms of creating their own kinds of life that interests them, rather than following a conventional idea of success and job security.”
The numbers are not encouraging. About 14 percent of those who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010 are looking for full-time jobs, either because they are unemployed or have only part-time jobs, according to a survey of 571 recent college graduates released in May by the Heldrich Center at Rutgers.
And then there is the slice of graduates effectively underemployed, using a college degree for positions that don’t require one or barely scraping by, working in call centers, bars or art-supply stores.
“They are a postponed generation,” said Cliff Zukin, an author of the Heldrich Center study. He noted that recent graduates seemed to be living with parents longer and taking longer to become financially secure. The journey on the life path, for many, is essentially stalled.
The Heldrich survey also found that the portion of graduates who described their first job as a “career” fell from 30 percent, if they graduated before the 2008 economic downturn (in 2006 and 2007), to 22 percent, if they graduated after the downturn (in 2009 and 2010).
In an ominous sign, those figures didn’t change much for second jobs, Dr. Zukin added, suggesting that recent graduates were stumbling from field to field. Indeed, Till Marco von Wachter, an economics professor at Columbia University who has studied the impact of recessions on young workers, said the effect on earnings took about a decade to fade.
MEANWHILE, modest jobs mean modest lives. Benjamin Shore, 23, graduated from the University of Maryland last year with a business degree and planned to go into consulting. Instead, he moved back into his parents’ house in Cherry Hill, N.J., and spent his days browsing for jobs online.
But when his parents started charging him $500 a month for rent, he moved into a windowless room in a Baltimore row house and took a $12-an-hour job at a Baltimore call center, making calls for a university, encouraging prospects to go back to school. “There’s no point in being diplomatic: it is horrible,” Mr. Shore said.
“I have a college education that I feel like I am wasting by being there,” he added. “I am supposed to do something interesting, something with my brain.” For a while, Mr. Shore ran LongevityDrugstore.com, an online drug retailer that he started, but it went nowhere. To stretch his pay check, he made beans and rice at home and drove slowly to save gas. Eventually he quit, got work as a dock hand and is now thinking of becoming a doctor.
Perhaps not surprisingly, volunteering has become a popular outlet for a generation that seeks meaning in its work. Sarah Weinstein, 25, a 2008 graduate of Boston University, manages a bar in Austin because she couldn’t find an advertising job. In her spare time, she volunteers, doing media relations for Austin Pets Alive, an animal rescue shelter.
“It’d be nice to make more money,” Ms. Weinstein said, but “I prefer it this way so that I have the extra time to spend volunteering and pursuing other things.” Volunteering, however, goes only so far. After three years without an advertising job, she is now applying to graduate school to freshen up her résumé.
Meanwhile, people forced out of the rat race are re-evaluating their values and looking elsewhere for satisfaction. “They have to revise their ideas of what they are looking for,” said Kenneth Jedding, author of “Higher Education: On Life, Landing a Job, and Everything Else They Didn’t Teach You in College.”
For Geo Wyeth, 27, who graduated from Yale in 2007, that means adopting a do-it-yourself approach to his career. After college, he worked at an Apple Store in New York as a salesclerk and trainer, while furthering his music career in an experimental rock band. He has observed, he said, a shift among his peers away from the corporate track and toward a more artistic mentality.
“You have to make opportunities happen for yourself, and I think a lot of my classmates weren’t thinking in that way,” he said. “It’s the equivalent of setting up your own lemonade stand.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Social unrest and social media
London and Manchester are on fire, following police apprehension of a cab occupied by Mark Duggan, 29, and their subsequent shooting of him. Evidence has found that no bullets were fired by Duggan prior to his offing, as claimed by the British police.
Police harassment and assault of poor young men and women - particularly of poor Brits of African and West Indian descent - in London is known to be common. But, as in previous decades, this act moved young, poor Brits, long oppressed under the foot of neoliberal capitalism and rendered incomplete and
lacking through cultural fame and fortune hawking, from a state of everyday frustration to in-the-street insurrection. It moved them to lash out against the unjust and hostile treatment they and their neighbors regularly face as members of their society. It sparked them to resist.
Those resisting are termed "rioters" by the media. At this point, some seem to be. More importantly, though, while corrections were made recently in the media to change the M.O. of "rioters" from poor Brits of color to poor Brits, those in the street are named primarily as youth. And, as youth in the street, they are framed as “thugs.” These events have me wondering: when youth choose to rise up against the marginality they face due to their social conditions, what are their options? What control do they have over how their actions are framed once they are underway? With operations such as COINTELPRO ever present in social justice movements, what say do those who rise up to resist have in how this resistance becomes embodied and framed? Most importantly, maybe, why, within the current cultural context of decreased civil rights and protections in the interest of corporate profits and of lengthening marginalities within ever-lengthening adolescences, might youth resistance of this sort happen as rarely as it does?
The media points to social media as the key here. I remain unconvinced. On the other side of the technological utopianism cast upon the social media users leading “social media revolutions” in Egypt and Libya, British social media - now allegedly being used by some in England to announce looting sites and police arrival - is being charged with very distopian properties. As a result, pundits and editorials are calling for limiting social media privacies. While social media controls are far more tangible than social controls, this solution glosses right over the root causes of national social unrest in these recent cases. Here, the problem, the solution, hence, the issue is not the technology. At issue is the society that creates the technology along with the vast divides between the winners and the losers required by a system which present itself as a meritocracy but that operates through historical structural inequities. The issue is that youth and the poor will always fall on the loser side of this divide - a side no one wants to be on, a side that brands you a "have-not." The issue is also that under-30 population (read: poor, marginalized) amounts for the majority of the citizenry in a large number of countries with poor social supports now, and that the under-18 (read: poor, of color, marginalized) population is at historic highs within very inaccurately FOX News-termed and -defined "baby boomlets."
In fact, the birth booms of late surpass the baby boom, making them more aptly called "mega baby booms."
In the US, for example, the national birthrate has been on par with numbers seen during the 18 years of baby boom since 1987 - 23 years straight. At 4.3 million, the 2007 birthrate was as large as the most baby-producing year in the baby boom, 1957. A well-hyped "dive" and "plummeting" in the birth rate the next year brought the numbers down to 4.2 million, right in line with the top six years of the much-hyped baby boom.
Can social media address these issues? Perhaps, some might argue, by making people feel more or less socially or societally connected, by presenting certain perspectives of the world that shape understandings, and, through this by urging movement or quiescence.
But of particular interest to me is that these recent "mega baby boom" of youth representation in certain countries remain largely unpublicized. Why? I am not the only one who can read the Census or national demographic stats. In the US, perhaps this is unpublicized because time is needed to cover "news" such as sudden urgent debt, tea party rallies, and scandalously errant celebrities. Perhaps it is because news operations are poor tellers of history who are not interested in making themselves and their major donors feel less powerful. Perhaps it is because, if youth knew they were in the majority, they would not tolerate their marginality. Rather, they would organize and resist and take control of how their resistance was taken up and understood and portrayed.
Of course, resistance is not always a panacea. As we know from Willis, Bettie, Hedbige, Clark and others, resistance can further bind one to the shackles they act against. Still, those oppressed and critically aware within ignored power hierarchies will resent and challenge their society's preaching of meritocracy. They will seek ways to call out the system for its failures, for its inconsiderateness, for its partiality, for its racism, for its sexism, for its ageism, for its insults, for its lies.
Perhaps the mega baby booms of late remain unpublicized because youth knowing they are not marginal in numbers could lead to serious social unrest, and to acts that could challenge stability and question power, with or without social media.
Perhaps with social and critical awareness, social resistance might not be as easily framed as futile, as it now so plainly is.
While social media is not the issue here, it definitely plays a role. The cult of the individual so strong in neoliberal societies bereft of social supports has serious implications for both organizing and for social media use. Is social media involved in shaping social realities? Yes. Could this influence marginalized users' beliefs about themselves, about their world, and about resistance? Yes. Could this, in turn, shape the futility of resistance? Yes.
As simultaneously creative spaces promising wider-world connection, access, and community and owned spaces with interests in data and profits, social media can be understood to have seriously implications for youth social resistance.
At least I think so. What do you think? Comments or thoughts very welcome.
Police harassment and assault of poor young men and women - particularly of poor Brits of African and West Indian descent - in London is known to be common. But, as in previous decades, this act moved young, poor Brits, long oppressed under the foot of neoliberal capitalism and rendered incomplete and
lacking through cultural fame and fortune hawking, from a state of everyday frustration to in-the-street insurrection. It moved them to lash out against the unjust and hostile treatment they and their neighbors regularly face as members of their society. It sparked them to resist.
Those resisting are termed "rioters" by the media. At this point, some seem to be. More importantly, though, while corrections were made recently in the media to change the M.O. of "rioters" from poor Brits of color to poor Brits, those in the street are named primarily as youth. And, as youth in the street, they are framed as “thugs.” These events have me wondering: when youth choose to rise up against the marginality they face due to their social conditions, what are their options? What control do they have over how their actions are framed once they are underway? With operations such as COINTELPRO ever present in social justice movements, what say do those who rise up to resist have in how this resistance becomes embodied and framed? Most importantly, maybe, why, within the current cultural context of decreased civil rights and protections in the interest of corporate profits and of lengthening marginalities within ever-lengthening adolescences, might youth resistance of this sort happen as rarely as it does?
The media points to social media as the key here. I remain unconvinced. On the other side of the technological utopianism cast upon the social media users leading “social media revolutions” in Egypt and Libya, British social media - now allegedly being used by some in England to announce looting sites and police arrival - is being charged with very distopian properties. As a result, pundits and editorials are calling for limiting social media privacies. While social media controls are far more tangible than social controls, this solution glosses right over the root causes of national social unrest in these recent cases. Here, the problem, the solution, hence, the issue is not the technology. At issue is the society that creates the technology along with the vast divides between the winners and the losers required by a system which present itself as a meritocracy but that operates through historical structural inequities. The issue is that youth and the poor will always fall on the loser side of this divide - a side no one wants to be on, a side that brands you a "have-not." The issue is also that under-30 population (read: poor, marginalized) amounts for the majority of the citizenry in a large number of countries with poor social supports now, and that the under-18 (read: poor, of color, marginalized) population is at historic highs within very inaccurately FOX News-termed and -defined "baby boomlets."
In fact, the birth booms of late surpass the baby boom, making them more aptly called "mega baby booms."
In the US, for example, the national birthrate has been on par with numbers seen during the 18 years of baby boom since 1987 - 23 years straight. At 4.3 million, the 2007 birthrate was as large as the most baby-producing year in the baby boom, 1957. A well-hyped "dive" and "plummeting" in the birth rate the next year brought the numbers down to 4.2 million, right in line with the top six years of the much-hyped baby boom.
Can social media address these issues? Perhaps, some might argue, by making people feel more or less socially or societally connected, by presenting certain perspectives of the world that shape understandings, and, through this by urging movement or quiescence.
But of particular interest to me is that these recent "mega baby boom" of youth representation in certain countries remain largely unpublicized. Why? I am not the only one who can read the Census or national demographic stats. In the US, perhaps this is unpublicized because time is needed to cover "news" such as sudden urgent debt, tea party rallies, and scandalously errant celebrities. Perhaps it is because news operations are poor tellers of history who are not interested in making themselves and their major donors feel less powerful. Perhaps it is because, if youth knew they were in the majority, they would not tolerate their marginality. Rather, they would organize and resist and take control of how their resistance was taken up and understood and portrayed.
Of course, resistance is not always a panacea. As we know from Willis, Bettie, Hedbige, Clark and others, resistance can further bind one to the shackles they act against. Still, those oppressed and critically aware within ignored power hierarchies will resent and challenge their society's preaching of meritocracy. They will seek ways to call out the system for its failures, for its inconsiderateness, for its partiality, for its racism, for its sexism, for its ageism, for its insults, for its lies.
Perhaps the mega baby booms of late remain unpublicized because youth knowing they are not marginal in numbers could lead to serious social unrest, and to acts that could challenge stability and question power, with or without social media.
Perhaps with social and critical awareness, social resistance might not be as easily framed as futile, as it now so plainly is.
While social media is not the issue here, it definitely plays a role. The cult of the individual so strong in neoliberal societies bereft of social supports has serious implications for both organizing and for social media use. Is social media involved in shaping social realities? Yes. Could this influence marginalized users' beliefs about themselves, about their world, and about resistance? Yes. Could this, in turn, shape the futility of resistance? Yes.
As simultaneously creative spaces promising wider-world connection, access, and community and owned spaces with interests in data and profits, social media can be understood to have seriously implications for youth social resistance.
At least I think so. What do you think? Comments or thoughts very welcome.
Friday, July 22, 2011
"Child" soldiers
Child soldiers.
How interesting that, despite the fact that the US allows soldiers to join at 17, this phenomenon is commonly spoken in the US as an issue of the "other." How interesting that these discussions on the "crime" of using child soldiers normalizes the notion of adult soldiers, normalizes the notion of warfare, normalizes the idea of, not us, but the savage "other" being the true criminals in war.
How old is a child soldier? Where do they need to be based to be considered a "child" soldier rather than a soldier? How might the economic and social marginalization of youth related to young people signing up to go to fight, to go to war? How is the rhetoric of child protection used to affirm social injustices?
I called in to a NRP program this morning to ask child-soldier author and Canadian Senator Roméo Dallaire about only a couple of these things. You can listen in, if you'd like. I called in at 30:05.
How interesting that, despite the fact that the US allows soldiers to join at 17, this phenomenon is commonly spoken in the US as an issue of the "other." How interesting that these discussions on the "crime" of using child soldiers normalizes the notion of adult soldiers, normalizes the notion of warfare, normalizes the idea of, not us, but the savage "other" being the true criminals in war.
How old is a child soldier? Where do they need to be based to be considered a "child" soldier rather than a soldier? How might the economic and social marginalization of youth related to young people signing up to go to fight, to go to war? How is the rhetoric of child protection used to affirm social injustices?
I called in to a NRP program this morning to ask child-soldier author and Canadian Senator Roméo Dallaire about only a couple of these things. You can listen in, if you'd like. I called in at 30:05.
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