A Dyke A Broad #65
On how antivaxxers are redefining France. Plus, erasing girls from a suicide epidemic in the U.S.
Hello from Paris!
It’s Monday, the 10th of January, 2022. We’ve been living (and dying) with a pandemic for almost two years. Miraculously, we’ve had a life-saving vaccine available to the public for a little over 12 months, though not everybody wants one. There have been anti-vaxxers since there have been vaccines in this world. Some are afraid—often because of misinformation. Others are just bloody-minded.
They and their allies took to the streets this weekend in large demos all over France while I stayed at home watching TV. Their specific beef? The upcoming transition from a health pass (requiring either a recent negative test or a full complement of vaccines) to a vaccine-only pass which makes inoculations mandatory if you want to sit in a café or even at its terrace, go to a library, or concert or museum, or take long-distance trains.
They’re not required for work, for children sixteen and younger, political meetings or emergency rooms, though political groups or corporations themselves can require it if they want. You just have to have a a vaccine pass to participate in the optional frills of French public life.
Protesters were especially angry that French President Emmanuel Macron recently said what the vast majority is thinking. That he wanted to "emmerder les non-vaccinés" or “piss-off the non-vaccinated.” His prime minister doubled down at a later point, “Because they’ve been pissing us off long enough.”
(Check the link for a funny article about translating emmerder and also the upcoming election.)
A great many French people, especially embattled health care workers in overwhelmed hospitals, said, “Yay! Finally!” Macron’s opponents in the upcoming presidential election pursed their lips and said, “Dear me, what shameful language! How dare he alienate fellow citizens?” The anti-vaxxers just called him a “fascist”—although, ironically, one of their leaders is an extreme-right nationalist—and accused him of taking away their freedom and rights.
Which is interesting, because in the French integration course I did a few years ago as a requirement of my visa, one of the things they hammered in was that you had no rights without responsibilities. You, for instance, had a right to low-cost health care, but also the responsibility to pay your taxes which pay (kinda) for that health care, and that of others (who also pay for you). You had the right to drive, but had the responsibility to get a driver’s license which proves you know the rules of the road, so you don’t kill anybody. And as for freedom, yours ended where someone else’s began.
By that logic, if you want the right to sit in your precious café during a pandemic, it seems entirely reasonable that you have the responsibility to protect the other members of the still vulnerable body politic (not to mention the stretched national health care system) by first getting a couple of fucking jabs.
They piss me off. They make me sad.
There are 4.7 million unvaccinated people over 12 yrs old in France (pop. 66+ millions).
Vaccination rates are weaker in the south and in poor neighborhoods of big cities.
In some places, like Marseille, language has been one barrier to sharing information with a huge immigrant population, though the biggest may be the fear of sans papiers, (those without visas), of any contact with the authorities. One thing that works, according to a feature I saw on the news, is a door-to-door campaign explaining the vax, along with mobile vaccination units that allow people to get jabbed without crossing the worrying threshold of a hospital or clinic.
Watching the demos on TV, though, I didn’t see many scared immigrants. Or particularly poor people. I saw the usual suspects who like to burn things any chance they get. Besides them it was just mostly middle-class people smugly demanding rights while denouncing responsibilities, and redefining freedom as a limitless thing that allows them to trample all over their sheeple neighbors who dutifully lined up for their shots. Of course, when they do get sick (and they do) the nonvaxxers also demand preferential treatment at hospitals that other people pay for. Who cares about the many who have had their needed surgeries postponed 2 and even 3 times since last year, because hospitals prioritize Covid patients?
You have to wonder what kind of mental gymnastics they engage in to declare themselves the protectors of the French nation when in their mouths, “liberty, equality, and fraternity” sounds a lot like, “me, me, me.”
In other news…
Erasing Girls from a Suicide Epidemic in the U.S.
In December, CBS Chicago declared New Surgeon General Report Shows Increase In Attempted Suicide In Teens and focused on a story about a boy. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported Surgeon General Warns of Youth Mental Health Crisis and talked about generic children and teens.
Much to my surprise I learned that, in fact, it’s girls’ attempted suicides skyrocketing 51%, in comparison with boys’ whose are up 4% which is not great, but I think we should all be far more horrified about the girls.
I thought the report itself might have more to say, and found… zilch in the intro, and zilch in the conclusion. So I then searched the document for the word girl and only found it used four times in 53 pages, usually when boys were also mentioned.
The first time was when they said:
girls are much more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, depression, or an eating disorder, while boys are more likely to die by suicide or be diagnosed with a behavior disorder, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The second, when they reported what should have been the lead:
In early 2021, emergency department visits in the United States for suspected suicide attempts were 51% higher for adolescent girls and 4% higher for adolescent boys compared to the same time period in early 2019.4
The fourth appeared in a footnote reference to
107. Boys and Girls Club of America. (2020 March 19). Clubs Offer Critical Care During COVID-19. Accessed on November 10, 2021. Retrieved from https://www.bgca.org/news-stories/2020/ March/Clubs-Offer-Critical-Care-During-COVID-19
The third when they suggested:
There is a clear need to better understand the impact of technologies such as social media on different kinds of users, and to address the harms to users most at risk. We need more research using strong data and research methods, such as longitudinal and experimental designs, behavioral (as opposed to self-reported) measures of time spent online and types of content engaged with, as well as data on subgroups of users (e.g., boys vs. girls).
That single passing thought was the only time the CDC seemed to wonder why the suicide rate for girls shot up more than thirteen times (13X!) that of boys, even though they had a whole detailed list of “Groups at higher risk of mental health challenges during the pandemic” which included everything from race and ethnicity to income, mental ability, LGBTQness, region—themselves categories that should be broken down by sex.
Men are still pigs
The Guardian reports that:
The swapping, collating and posting of nude images of women without their consent is on the rise.
One general study of intimate image abuse across Australia, New Zealand and the UK suggests one in five men have been perpetrators, and during lockdown – when online activity replaced real-life interactions – calls to the RPH Revenge Porn Helpline doubled. (Its figures show that women are five times more likely than men to have their intimate images shared.)
Upgrade Your Language, Or Not.
Apparently the Human Rights Campaign, the United State’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, has suggestions.
Fun and Games in Ukraine
As Russia masses troops on Ukraine’s borders, the ineffectual U.S. is making twirpy noises at Russia to make them stop, but pretty much sidelining Europeans and completely ignoring Ukraine, who all have much more at stake geopolitically, so, um… yay?
Outsiders bring justice in Georgia murder…
The Arbery case echoes long historical themes. Arbery was a Black man, executed by white men who saw an unarmed jogger as a potential criminal and believed they had a right to arrest him. But it is also a story of local government and outsiders, and which are best suited to protect democracy.
The case for ... making low-tech 'dumb' cities instead of 'smart' ones
High-tech smart cities promise efficiency by monitoring everything from bins to bridges. But what if we ditched the data and embraced ancient technology instead?
And…
That’s it for this week.
Disgruntledly yours,