In Theaters: Late Bloomer

Late Bloomer (Osoi Hito) chronicles the life of Sumida, a disabled man in Japan, who is played by disabled actor Masayiko Sumida. Midnight Eye provides an extensive and informative review. Here is a short excerpt:

“Late Bloomer is the story of Sumida-san, a severely handicapped man, and his downward spiral into hell. When we’re first introduced to him we find that despite his physical limitations - and contrary to cultural misconceptions about the handicap - he has all of the desires and personality traits of a physically normal man. Specifically: he loves to party, eat good food, and ‘rock out’ to his caregiver Take’s hardcore band. However, Sumida-san’s life begins falling apart when he develops a crush on his new occasional caregiver, Nobuko. Needless to say, the feelings are not reciprocated and when Nobuko starts spending her free time with Take, Sumida-san is driven mad with desire and frustration and things take a turn for the worse…

China’s one child policy, a generation on

Those interested in issues pertaining to population control and family planning might like to listen to this Australian Radio National podcast, which charts the history of the one child policy in China: it’s making, and its effects.

Normalizing Gender for Olympians

An opinion piece in the New York Times by Jennifer Finney Boylan, “The XY Games”, explores the practice of gender testing in the Olympics to determine that female athletes are in fact female. The author discusses the history of this testing, its faults, and the ambiguity of sex and gender. Amongst some of the things that one might want to discuss is the following:

“So what makes someone female then? If it’s not chromosomes, or a uterus, or the ability to get pregnant, or femininity, or being attracted to men, then what is it, and how can you possibly test for it?

Beauty through the eye of a camera

Isabelle Caro, a 27-year-old French woman, has battled anorexia for 15 years. (image courtesy Nolita)

In April, Paris drafted a voluntary charter encouraging advertisers to promote a wider range of body types in an effort to curb the spread of eating disorders among teenagers. Soon, Quebec may be following suit. Although some countries have made weight ranges mandatory, such as Spain, this voluntary measure is a first step that does not preclude the possibility of legislation passing in the future. See the full story here.

Here in Canada we’ve already seen some advertisers looking to promote a wider range body types. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a conspicuous one that has received much attention. Largely, I think, this is due to the shock value that half-naked non-models on billboards will inevitably provide in a culture where images of bodies in public are edited beyond recognition.

Deathmaking by medical neglect

When my nine-year-old daughter, Daisy, died, a doctor at the hospital said to me: “It’s almost like losing a child.” What did he think my beautiful daughter was?

What’s in a Name? Well, Everything.

The Wall Street Journal has an article this week on a regulation being drafted by the Bush Administration regarding pregnancy, stating that the

proposed definition of pregnancy that has the effect of classifying some of the most widely used methods of contraception as abortion.

A draft regulation, still being revised and debated, treats most birth-control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion because they can work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. The regulation considers that destroying ‘the life of a human being.’

What Sorts of Families?

According to John McCain, “two parent families the traditional family represents.”

A recent Huffington Post article by Edward Stein draws attention to McCain’s cant about wanting to preserve family value–unless, of course, those family values are being instantiated by gay couples fostering or adopting children. Stein highlights McCain’s in-artful refusal to answer straight questions about gay adoption, presumably in an attempt to keep both the religious right and gay Republicans happy.

See for yourself. The video below the fold [no captioning, sorry] shows McCain’s responses to questions posed in an interview with George Stephanopoulos.

Women and Botox

Botox has been a hot topic in the news for the last few years as one of a string of new less-invasive cosmetic surgery routines. For those unfamiliar with the procedure, it involves injecting a strain of botulin toxin (hence the name Bo-tox) into facial muscles in order to paralyze them, decreasing the user’s ability to wrinkle their face, but also their ability to make certain expressions, particularly the microgestures essential to meaning.

There is evidence that women are the main targets of the Botox revolution. Part of this may be a systemic preference for younger people. A recent Wallstreet Journal article details the pressure women feel to look physically younger for the advancement of their careers.

Making babies: the next 30 years

Published online 16 July 2008 | Nature 454, 260-262 (200 | doi:10.1038/454260a Helen Pearson

and on this blog you find a write up about what is in the Nature article

of cause artificial womb and gene therapy are part of the list
The hotlink titled ‘medical advances’ is not linking to the Nature article but to another

Memory, trauma, and morality

Cover from Jeffrey Blustein's The Moral Demands of Memory.

Supersonic Sue Campbell has just posted a detailed review of Jeff Blustein’s recent book The Moral Demands of Memory over at NDPR. Blustein’s book is focused on collective memory, trauma, responsibility, and identity, and has a sweep that few books in the field have. Sue draws on her knowledge of collective memory in the context of the residential schools commission in Canada in writing the review, as well as other concrete contexts (e.g., post-Holocaust studies). Check out the whole shebang if you’re interested; here’s a tease. Campbell says, in summary, that Blustein’s book:

is deeply indebted to a range of diverse literatures, carefully and extensively footnoted, and though the book is fairly long, it sustains an impressive momentum. Indeed the last two chapters — on remembrance and rituals of memorializing as love, care, and respect for the dead, and on the nature and importance of bearing witness —

Anthropological Interventions in Transhumanism

Chris Kelty over at the excellent anthropological blog Savage Minds has written a thought provoking piece on why and how anthropologists should engage with transhumanism. He notes that current critiques may be sound but may be missing the boat not only when it comes to some broader ethical questions but when it comes to even identifying the locus and importance of transhumanism. I have provided a short snippet below:

Most of the critiques of transhumanism center around its more speculative aspects, like the notion of the singularity, the emergence of artificial intelligence etc. But I think there is increasingly an opening here for thinking about what we do and what we do not have control over as humanity evolves.

John Mark Stallings

Book Cover Another Season

John Mark Stallings: 11 June 1962 - 2 August 2008

Johnny Stallings died yesterday in Paris, Texas.

The Power of Language new column from me out

Most people exhibit numerous biases some without even realizing that they have them and others they use for certain ends. What is needed is a tool that facilitates the identification of biases so that people can become more aware of them. The column highlights such a tool

read here

What’s Hot at What Sorts? Ten Videos

Here at What Sort’s, we like flashy things that involve fun pictures or sounds or interactive bits. Some of us like them more than others. Here’s some of the fun stuff that you can catch at What Sorts- keep it coming! [Apologies in advance for not having figured out yet how to go back and caption or subtitle these videos ... we'll get there.]

Fun Stuff:

1. New Richard Dawkins Vid Reveals Intelligent Design! Spirit of the Time
2. “Britain’s Missing Top Model” a Media Hit D. Sobsey
3. Coming Out by See Hear Spirit of the Time
4. Podcast of Talks on Eugenic Sterilization in Alberta Spirit of the Time
5. Oscar Pistorius: Liberite, Fraternite, Egalite Spirit of the Time
6. Jack McCann Mika Bodet
7. Canadian Prim Minister’s apology on residential schools VirtualJess
8. Farlow Lecture: 11 June 2008 D. Sobsey
9. The Best of Ideas Mark Workman
10. Advertising Autism Spirit of the Time

Ever wondered how you can make a video accessible for the deaf or hard of hearing? About.com has a great synopsis about how to closed caption using various readily available resources, with videos to explain how it’s done in nice and simple terms. These earlier posts have not been closed captioned, but it is our hope that whenever possible in future posts be chosen and edited with accessibility in mind.

Imaginary Beauty

Musician, dancer, and British TV personality Alesha Dixon has recently spoken out against the practice of creating unrealistic and homogenized images of women in the media. Alesha experiences these practices personally as someone who frequently appears on magazine covers. Her BBC3 documentary on the subject, Look But Don’t Touch, goes behind the scenes on this issue, following Alesha in her quest to get a magazine to put her on the cover without photoshopping.

[this video contains auditory language and no subtitles, sign interpretation, or other captioning]

Knowing Thine Enemy?: a book to look out for

cover image for Enhancing Human Capacities by Julian Savulescu et. al

Some of you — and especially philosophers on the ‘what sorts’ team — will know of a controversial Australian ex-pat ethicist who likes to provoke debate about what sorts of people there should be … No,this time it’s not Peter Singer (although Singer was his PhD supervisor), but rather Julian Savulescu of The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Savulescu’s chief interest is the use of biotechnology for what he presumptively calls ‘human enhancement.’

When he worked for the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute Savulescu wrote a piece called “In Defense of Selection for Nondisease Genes”.* As this community knows well, others have argued that it is defensible to engage in postconception selection against diseased genes, where the term diseased genes refers to:

a gene that causes a genetic disorder (e.g. cystic fibrosis) or predisposes to the development of a disease (e.g. the genetic contribution to cancer or dementia)

This argument in itself is highly contestable, given that it is reasonable to feel that a ‘diseased’ life of one with, say, cystic fibrosis — let alone one that down the line ends with cancer or dementia — is worth living… and more pertinently, that there are grave social consequences when that decision is made on others’ behalf as a matter of course. Savulescu, however, offers a far more radical thesis than this.

G.I.M.P. Boot Camp: TONIGHT

GIMP Boot Camp

Sorry for the very, very short notice, but this just in on my email moments ago:

You are cordially invited to the first screening of Danielle and Melisa’s first film: “G.I.M.P. Boot Camp”.

The film was made over the last 2 weeks during a course Melisa took at FAVA (Edmonton’s Film and Video Arts Society) called Doc Shop Intensive. We had two weeks to write the script, learn to use the camera, shoot footage, learn to edit, and edit. It was fun and exhausting!

Fatal Misconception: Family Planning and Population Control

Last week I read Matthew Connelly’s Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Harvard UP, 2008). It’s a critical look at the population control movement focussed largely on the second half of the 20th-century, and discusses some of the early heroines of that movement, such as Margaret Sanger, as well as the role of major Western-led organizations, such as the UN. It’s well worth a read, even though it gets more bogged down in conferences, meetings, and deals than many will have time for. You can read Nicholas Kristof’s review of it from the New York Times Sunday Book Review right here, which I’ll turn to in a minute.

To many, the term “family planning” will call to mind individual choice and rational decision-making about when to have children, as well as how many to have. To perhaps others, “population control” will send a shudder down their spines as they recall forced sterilization and even extermination, and the control of their lives by others. The “many” referred to above are, by and large, the affluent, the white, the Western (or all three), while the “others” are the poor, the not-so-white, and the non-Western (and often all three). In the course of the 20th-century, family planning and population control became two-sides of a perceived crisis in the growth of population, a putative crisis especially for The West as they saw themselves usurped by The Rest.

Creature DIScomforts

Creature Discomforts is an offshoot of Creature Comforts that is intended to reshape people’s perceptions about disability. It presents a series of animated TV commercials that combine claymation (from the creators of Wallace & Grommit) combined with the voices of people with disabilities. Here is one example:

What sorts of walks in our pageant?

As “Britain’s Missing Top Model” continues to whittle down the competitors with disabilities as they compete against each other on the BBC, it is interesting to compare this competition to the Miss Iowa and Miss USA contests in which at least one woman with a disability competed against women without disabilities.