Hello from Paris!
I’m pleased to report that jabs in France are finally going to be done en masse in things called vaccinodromes, with everybody from veterinarians to fire-fighters recruited to staff them. It’s not a day too soon because the hospitals are jammed and getting jammeder every day what with all the ultra-contagious variants in town, like for a film festival. Hell, we’re probably even developing some of our own. There’s an award for it, right?
Offices are one of the most promising incubators. A gainfully employed friend told me everyone at hers has abandoned mask-wearing even in large meetings.
Then there are the cafés on back streets which are technically open only for take-outs, except that the crowds who buy their to-go cups of beer in the increasingly balmy afternoons linger nose-to-nose like death-wish sardines on the nearby sidewalk chain-smoking and downing pints.
The owners encourage this. I passed one the other day that surely had old Che Guevara posters inside and little new ones outside encouraging the ultra-pale bobo Lefty population of the hood to fight the tyranny that is the State and the Covid restrictions. “Ménilmontant resists!” another said, heroically alluding to the 1871 Paris Commune whose 150 anniversary was marked last week. (Marx reported on this in luscious purple prose.) They don’t seem to notice, or care, that the facts on the ground makes them indistinguishable from the extreme Right, both proudly maskless and fodder for the ICU’s.
It’s increasingly tempting to join them.
It’s been a long year, and it’s nicer to pretend you’re a righteous radical than just severely depressed and somewhat masochistic in the face of your powerlessness against a teeny-weeny virus that doesn’t give a fuck how high you raise your fist and rage against the dying of the light.
All this is hard. Really hard.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the transcripts I did a while back of HIV+ women for my friend Harriet’s film, Nothing Without Us. Some talked about how hard it was to take their drugs day in and day out. How every pill felt like a reminder that they weren’t like everybody else, had this thing inside them, and that just a few days of slip-ups could fuck things up. And on bad days they figured it was probably inevitable, so why bother?
The gay men I know who ward off death by wearing a condom every time they have sex, at least get an orgasm out of it. A little positive reinforcement. Whereas taking a pill brings no joy, and often has side-effects. Wearing a mask and physically distance from everyone, just keeps you from getting sick. It doesn’t improve your life.
Control is taking your meds. Control is refusing to.
Instead of going maskless among the unmasked, I did something even more risky. I borrowed a bike and rode it.
Yep, I rode a bike for the first time since I was a day-dreamy fourteen or fifteen year-old and fell off three times— in one day—one of them in the middle of traffic, whereupon I narrowly escaped being crushed by a car. Which pretty much ended that. I went off to college a few years later, where there was no place to keep a bike even if I had wanted one.
I certainly wasn’t going to resume riding in New York which required far more concentration than the Louisville suburbs. Paris is almost as bad. The drivers here seem devoted to taking out pedestrians and grazing cyclists.
The thing is—I’m getting desperate. Public transport is germy, walking sucks since I sprained my ankle. And I need to MOOOVE!
So I did it. I borrowed a bike. I was too cowardly to ride it at first, so I walked it down crowded sidewalks. But then I hit a relatively calm and protected bike lane, put on the helmet, and pushed off with one foot. I wobbled like a drunk at first. But straightened out as I pedaled faster. And wow! Motion, speed, the illusion at least of freedom.
God knows what I’ll do next.
Art
I thought this was absolutely weird and beautiful.
And look what I found in my camera roll from the last time I was at the Pompidou Center, 14 months ago and counting. This 9-foot statue by self-taught artist Raymonde Arcier reminded me that the Seventies were da bomb. When we still understood that the system of Male Power was built on the exploitation of the female body: our reproduction, our sex, our labor, our service, even our sympathy reflecting them back to themselves at twice the size.
This is one of my favorite pieces of all time.
“My mother, deliverer of the father’s law, you left me a heart that swims in the 19th century, and a head that floats in the 20th. Now, I have to give birth alone to glue all the pieces back together.
"Ma mère, porteuse de la loi du père, tu m'as légué un coeur qui baigne dans le 19è siècle et une tête qui surnage dans le 20è, maintenant il me faut m'accoucher seule pour recoller les morceaux”.
From the Department of the More Things Change…
Apparently the Courts still hate women and blame us for being raped, not the men who raped us.
Science also still hates women. How else to explain this?
I meant to share this a week or two ago, about how the birth control pill creates higher risks of blood clots than the AstraZeneca vaccine. When this article came out, there had been 30 reports of blood clots across five million people in Europe leading to a suspension of the vaccine in Europe.
The FDA estimates that the risk of birth control users developing a serious blood clot is three to nine women out of 10,000, every year.
If governments are so worried about the AstraZeneca vaccine, shouldn’t they be concerned about the pill as well? Or are we only concerned when males might be taking the medication, too?
The Sandbox: Ideas for Activists
Is Shaming Really the Best Way to Win Change?
James Miller, a teacher working at an institution devoted to promoting equity, inclusion, and social justice, has some doubts about the means, not the end of the current U.S. movement to end racial inequality. His problem? Its focus on confession, guilt, and shaming, which anecdotally, anyway, can only be cultivated in a limited way before they backfire, sparking anger and resentment.
In her incisive study of Political Emotions, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum draws a useful conceptual distinction between guilt and shame, terms that [Peggy] McIntosh seems to use interchangeably. ‘In guilt’, Nussbaum writes, ‘one typically acknowledges that one has done (or intended) something wrong. In shame, one acknowledges that one is something inferior, falling short of some desired ideal’. A natural outcome of guilt, Nussbaum further suggests, ‘is apology and reparation; the natural reflex of shame is hiding’.
One Reason We Don’t Understand Each Other
Here is a really interesting piece from 2018, Conflict vs. Mistake, that was shared by Helen Lewis in her really great newsletter, The Bluestocking. It explains, at least in part, why we end up staring at each other like particularly dangerous aliens sometimes when we’re having political discussions.
I feel like I have a foot planted on each charging horse, which probably explains a lot.
Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many side effects.
Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Different blocs with different interests are forever fighting to determine whether the State exists to enrich the Elites or to help the People.
Mistake theorists view debate as essential. We all bring different forms of expertise to the table, and once we all understand the whole situation, we can use wisdom-of-crowds to converge on the treatment plan that best fits the need of our mutual patient, the State. Who wins on any particular issue is less important creating an environment where truth can generally prevail over the long term.
Conflict theorists view debate as having a minor clarifying role at best. You can “debate” with your boss over whether or not you get a raise, but only with the shared understanding that you’re naturally on opposite sides, and the “winner” will be based less on objective moral principles than on how much power each of you has. If your boss appeals too many times to objective moral principles, he’s probably offering you a crappy deal.
That’s it for this week.
I’m happy to take requests. If you want me to write about something in particular, drop me a line. And encouragement is always welcome. Especially in the form of a paid subscription.
Disgruntedly yours,
The unholy trinity of St. Blaise
Hey luv, so here’s my feeling about the shaming aspect of calling out white supremacy...to me shaming is a valid tool since white people have been resistant to facts, loyalty, reason and the law! Am I to beg for my rights and freedoms to a populace that has made a mockery of my vulnerability. Fuck no! The shame involves knowing that you have done wrong. There is a level of accountability that is just accurate. That’s just my penny’s worth.