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Introducing a Series on LGBTQ+ Stereotypes

Sometimes, this blog is a smorgasbord of social justice issues, and I’m fine with that. However, given this time in history with LGBTQ+ issues, I want to spend a bit more time on LGBTQ+ issues, and particularly stereotypes that go with being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer,[1] intersex, and asexual. 

To elaborate on the time in history we are at right now (just to give a quick summary for those who aren’t fully aware), here are some important LGBTQ+ events going on, all at the same time:

  • The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots is coming up at the end of June. For those who don’t know about this piece of LGBTQ+ history, these riots were a series of violent confrontations between the police and gay people at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. To read more, read this Encyclopedia Britannica piece.
  • Numerous governments across the world, including the federal government and some state governments in the United States, have tried to undermine or take away LGBTQ+ rights.
  • Several religious institutions, most notably the Methodist Church, are grappling with LGBTQ+ issues.
  • The United States Supreme Court is considering a case on whether current federal law bans workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Given all these events, as well as the fact that so many of the bad things that happen are the result of some of these LGBTQ+ stereotypes, it’s important to address those stereotypes here and now.

So, my plan is to dedicate a post a month (or so) to stereotypes with regards to a major group in the LGBTQ+ community. Many of the stereotypes discussed will be ones I’m aware of, but I would definitely encourage my readers (and especially people with firsthand experience of being LGBTQ+) to let me know of stereotypes that I should cover, as well.

This way, by the time the series is done, probably around December by my calculations, we are hopefully all ready to confront some of those harmful stereotypes, both within ourselves and others.

[1] The “q” in LGBTQ could also stand for “questioning.”

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Mental Health and Listening to News

I used to be gung-ho about listening to the news and making sure that others listened to the news as well. That deep desire to listen to the news drove me toward a highly successful speech and debate career in high school,[1]  among other things.

However, in light of events in my life, I’ve needed to reevaluate my attitude towards listening to the news. You see, I’ve gone through some difficult things as well, and during these difficult times the last thing I wanted to hear was more bad news for half an hour every night.

So what is it? Should I (and we) avoid the news like I have sometimes done recently, or should I (and we) closely follow the news, no matter what?

I do think that it is still important to listen to the news; however, I do not think that news should be listened to at the expense of one’s own mental health.

It is important to listen to the news because we should know what is going on with our cities, states, countries, and the entire world. By listening to what is going on around us, we can (hopefully) make informed decisions in our own lives and in cases where the lives of others could be affected.[2] It can give us wise information on how we vote, on which parts of our cities and states are particularly rough, and on what the appropriate clothing is considering the weather outside. Clearly, we gain a great deal of value by listening to the news.

However, speaking from personal experience, that value of listening to the news is lost when we are mentally exhausted. Indeed, in my personal life last year, I’ve dealt with both of my dad’s parents being sick (one of them passed away); on a number of occasions during this time (especially when I spent a full day trying to help my grandparents), I would just tune out of the news on the television and not really absorb the information being given to me. And if I, a news nut, tune out when trying to listen to the news when I’m mentally exhausted, that’s a sign that we should all not invest much time in the news when we are mentally exhausted.

Furthermore, speaking from what I’ve seen friends and family experience, the value of listening to the news is also lost if a news story triggers emotions related to a past traumatic event in their lives.[3] When the emotions triggered by an event are so big that you struggle to listen to the news, then maybe that’s a sign to change the channel for the time being.

Yes, the news is valuable. But the news is not so valuable that we should ignore our own mental health. Especially considering the fact that you can read news stories two or three days after they appear on television, it’s more than okay to wait those few days and then read the news at that time.

[1] I qualified for a statewide speech and debate championship all four years of high school, and a nationwide speech and debate championship for three years of high school.
[2] I am talking about actual news journalism reporting, not the editorializing that we sometimes get on some of the cable news networks in the United States.
[3] This has especially been the case recently with various stories that have come out about sexual misconduct.

Note: This post was edited for Mental Health Awareness Month in 2019.

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Why the Reversal on Cuts to the Special Olympics is Not Enough

A few weeks ago, the Trump administration, under the leadership of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, proposed cutting funding for the Special Olympics. 

It created a huge uproar among Republicans and Democrats alike. Even allies of the president slammed the move.[1] Thankfully, activism worked, and Trump said that he will keep the Special Olympics funded.[2]

The temptation for some of us, since then, is to maybe do a victory lap because Special Olympics funding was kept. However, such cuts are not even close to enough reason for people to breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to this administration’s handling of issues with regard to people with disabilities. Here are a few reasons why I argue that:

  1. Various facets of special education funding have still been cut in the proposed Trump budget. Education Week, which is often considered to be an important source on the education system in America, argued that there was some misinformation regarding the proposed Trump budget, and mentioned the significant cuts of funding for special needs students—a $7 million cut (from $77 million to $70 million) for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a $13 million cut (from $134 million to $121 million) for Gallaudet University (a federally-chartered private university for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Washington, DC), and a $5 million cut to the American Printing House for the Blind (from $30 million to $25 million), among others.[3] Education Week offered the consolation that these cuts are unlikely to pass with Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, but it’s still a terrifying thought for advocates of people with disabilities that such deep cuts are even up for consideration in the first place.
  2. The entire Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the provision on preexisting conditions, continues to be a target for repeal among some. Regardless of whether you like the ACA or not, the provision within the act not to allow the denial of health care coverage based on a preexisting condition was important for people who may’ve been denied because of a condition in the past. While I understand the arguments for and against the ACA, removing the provision on preexisting conditions would be nothing short of catastrophic for people who have a disability, and for other people who have any other kind of preexisting condition.
  3. There is a very serious chance that a Republican House, Republican Senate, and Republican president would weaken the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While I will be the first to admit that the ADA hasn’t fixed everything (an issue I have previously written about on this blog), it has made a world of difference for so many people. And yet, members of the House passed a bill last year called the “ADA Education and Reform Act” on what was mostly a party-line vote. It was reform all right—reform that proposed making it harder for discrimination against people with disabilities to occur and easier for unscrupulous entities to get away with such discrimination.[4] Thankfully, the Senate didn’t pass it, but the support for this piece of legislation is a dangerous foreshadowing, if we’re not careful. 

So, should we be happy that there are no cuts to Special Olympics funding? Absolutely. But should we rest easy, given the other areas in which the lives of people with disabilities are going to potentially be harmed? Absolutely not.

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/436097-gop-senator-says-special-olympics-cuts-will-not-be-approved

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/28/president-trump-restoring-funding-special-olympics/3302983002/

[3] https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/speced/2019/03/what_are_the_real_special_education_cuts.html

[4] To learn more about the ADA Education and Reform Act, the AARP has some information: https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-2018/congress-weakens-ada-fd.html

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Earth Day 2019: Focusing on Policies that Don’t Intend to Hurt the Environment…But Hurt the Environment Anyway

Sometimes, it’s not easy being green. We are often required to drive to/from work, drive our kids to school, drive to get to other family members’ places, have a job that requires someone to drive…on and on it goes. The bottom line is that even if we don’t want to put more pollution in the air, our living habits are such that we often have no other choice.

And here’s the thing: so many of these things are the result of policies that don’t intend to hurt the environment per se, but do so nevertheless. 

But how? Here’s a list of several policies not intended to hurt the environment, but that hurt the environment anyway:

  1. Approaches to land use have often favored development of car-reliant suburbs over transit-reliant areas. For decades, the focus was (and still is) on building around the highway. One of the most famous examples in the post-World War II era was with parts of Long Island in New York being built around the Long Island Expressway, but there are many other examples of this. Policy that allows for the building of areas that are destined to be mass transit deserts leads to heavy use of the car and heavy pollution.
  2. Poor funding for mass transit means fewer mass transit options, and pushing people towards the car. If there’s no mass transit available to take because of a lack of funding for mass transit, what choice is there other than to drive a pollution-emitting car?
  3. School choice policies mean that kids have to be driven or bused to the schools of their choices. What I say here may be controversial, as school choice sounds great and is popular with many. However, one of the consequences of school choice is that, instead of having to walk to the neighborhood school (especially in urban areas), kids have to be driven to far-away places. No pun intended, but if governmental bureaucrats invested energy into making all schools good, there would be no need for kids to have to be driven for miles, while emitting pollutants into the air.
  4. Speaking of schools, many school districts have school lunches that prominently feature food that emits high levels of greenhouse gases. As things like red meats are a large part of the lunch fare at many schools, school districts are heavily using food that emits high amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Lean meats and vegetables are not only healthier for kids than red meats, but they are healthier for the environment.
  5. We’re not doing enough to make housing affordable. In places like New York City and Washington, DC, people often drive long distances to work because nearby areas are simply not affordable. In short, affordability crises are not just bad for people’s pocketbooks, but bad for the environment because people have to drive to work.
  6. Many municipalities recycle but don’t provide easy access for people who want to recycle certain kinds of items. That’s how you end up with copious amounts of e-waste inside a home (including my home)—sometimes a city, even one that purports to be environmental (such as New York City), doesn’t have easy access for people who want to recycle said e-waste (or other waste).

Obviously, this is a rather car-heavy list. Regardless of that, my point is that there are many governmental approaches and policies that are not malicious to the environment per se, but end up doing a great deal of harm to it. And, during this week of Earth Day, we should be aware of such policies.

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What Discussions on Joe Biden’s Unwanted Touching Need to Address

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you would know that likely candidate for President of the United States Joe Biden has been accused of unwanted touching, and has since then made jokes about consent and touching. As a result of these accusations, there has been conversation, but most of those conversations have surrounded the former Vice President of the United States himself: about whether accusations against him are true, whether his jokes about touching were in poor taste, and about whether these things should disqualify him from being a serious candidate for President of the United States.

While these are all valid and important conversations to have, I think we would be doing an injustice to ourselves, and to American society as a whole, if we do not have conversations that go beyond the purview of Biden himself—conversations like these:

  1. We need to have a conversation about the warped power dynamics of someone touching from behind. Yes, unwanted touching of any sort is a problem, and there should be a discussion about unwanted touching as a whole. However, with unwanted touching from the back, the nature of it is such that the victim does not have the opportunity to say “no” because the victim did not see the person moving toward them. That warped power dynamic, which comes with the inability to say no with a touch from behind, needs to be addressed.
  2. We need to have a discussion about the fact that “jokes” involving inappropriate behavior, of any kind, are not funny. Stalking “jokes” are not funny (which I wrote a whole post about). Rape “jokes” are not funny. Unwanted touching “jokes” are not funny. “Jokes” related to any form of wrongdoing need to be addressed, because while Biden’s jokes were inappropriate, there are many places where I’ve heard jokes about inappropriate behavior, and unless we address that fact, we will just see such jokes get told over and over and over again.
  3. We need to continue discussing consent. For the umpteenth time, if there is no confident “yes,” then the answer is “no”! How many of these stories is it going to take before that fact dawns on people who are most likely to be tempted to act badly and commit an act of unwanted touching, sexual harassment, or sexual assault? 

I am sure there are many other things that can and even should be discussed, given the recent stories on the former vice president (and if that is the case, please let me know in the comments below). That being said, we must at least start by expanding the discussion beyond Biden himself. After all, Biden may only be around for a couple more decades on this earth (if that), but issues regarding touching from behind, jokes about inappropriate behaviors, and issues about consent may last much longer than Biden himself.