Gender and ableism

The person, the animal & the environment

Lecture 8
Monday February 28 2011

PEACE ST 2B03 / LABR ST 2W03 / WOMEN’S ST 2A03: Human Rights and Social Justice
Dr Colin Salter, Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University

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 Outline

• Gender differentiated exploitation

• What is ableism?

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 Reproductive freedom

• Planned Parenthood funding

• Miscarriage as murder?
• ‘justifiable homicide’

3
 The Accused

• Jonathan Kaplan (1988)

• Partly based on the brutal

1983 gang rape of Cheryl
Araujo

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5
"Every Friday and Saturday nights, there are lots of
women who will dress to go out and to party and
they're going to have alcohol, but when they do that
they're not saying, 'Oh, and please rape me.'"
Karen Busby, in unknown (2011)

6
 Precious

• Lee Daniels (2009)

• Sapphire (1996)

• Many challenging themes

and issues portrayed

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 Ableism

• Relationally (and socially) constructed

• -isms

8
 Examined Life

• Astra Taylor (2008)

• eight influential
contemporary philosophers
discussing the practical
application of their ideas in
modern culture.

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 Tony Porter

At TEDWomen, Tony Porter makes a call to men

everywhere: Don't "act like a man." Telling powerful
stories from his own life, he shows how this mentality,
drummed into so many men and boys, can lead men to
disrespect, mistreat and abuse women and each other.
His solution: Break free of the "man box."
Ted Talks — http://www.ted.com/talks/tony_porter_a_call_to_men.html

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 Aimee Mullins

Athlete, actor and activist Aimee Mullins talks about her

prosthetic legs -- she's got a dozen amazing pairs -- and
the superpowers they grant her: speed, beauty, an extra
6 inches of height ... Quite simply, she redefines what
the body can be.
Ted Talks — http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html

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 For Wednesday

• Are special provisions required in state and

international laws respective of gender? If so, what
should they cover?

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 For Thursday

• Reflect on the excerpts of Judith Butler and Sunny

Taylor in Examined Life. Why do you think physical
impairments are confronting?
• Reflect on how ableness is socially constituted and
permeates into the everyday (hegemonically).

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 Citations & further reading
unknown (2011) ‘Judge's sex assault comments wrong: professor’, CBC News, February 24.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2011/02/24/mb-professor-concerns-sex-assault-
sentence-manitoba.html

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 Image sources
Mike Konopacki. 2000. ‘If there was justice in the world‘, 2000 — http://www.veggies.org.uk/calendar/2000.htm

‘Human Rights Champions’, 2001 — http://invisiblecollege.weblog.leidenuniv.nl/2007/03/11/who-wants-to-be-the-

new-human-rights-cha

‘Which do you pet, which do you eat?‘ — http://www.meatout.org/action/outreach.htm

Shane T. McCoy, ‘Detainees at Camp X-Ray’, 11 January 2002. Image in the domain image — http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg

World Social Forum banner. ‘World Social Forum 2008: A Global Call for Action Another World Is (Still)
Possible’, Alliance 21 — http://www.alliance21.org/2003/article3291.html

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