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Recent reading
Moll by Elisabeth Rynell (only in Swedish)
Yay, new book by one of my favorite Swedish authors! The title is the main character's name, but it also means "minor key" in Swedish. This book turned out to be very relevant to the last book I read, about the city-countryside divide in Sweden. It's SF about a future where most of the countryside has been abandoned and the infrastructure isn't maintained. Most people live in the cities. It's not clear where they get their food, but I suppose agriculture might be concentrated to the most fertile regions. Anyway, we don't get a comprehensive view of of how society works--we follow an older woman who, along with other "useless" people, is going to be deported from Stockholm to a smaller town. But she escapes from the bus and walks out into the wilderness in what must be southern Norrland. Then she finds people living under the radar in the countryside and joins them. For a dystopia, it's a very cosy one, once she gets out there. But did it have to unnecessarily end in tragedy?? Couldn't she have just continued farming potatoes and making goat-cheese with her new friends, instead of falling victim to random male violence? Augh. : ( I did like how realistic it is about what would actually happen when countryside infrastructure is abandoned. People would return in the fall for the moose-hunt, and the forest would be even more mercilessly exploited now that no one is there to protest about it.
Reproductive Rights and Wrongs by Betsy Hartmann
I continue exploring the population issue. In this book I learned a lot more about contraceptives and their history than I knew before, and also how power and money and contempt for poor people can distort family planning into something coercive. Well worth reading; makes a lot of good points about how social and economic equality (along with access to good healthcare of all kinds) is the real answer to slowing population growth. Still not convinced overpopulation is not a potential problem, though--this book doesn't even mention possible consequences of climate change and other environmental problems on food supply.
Yay, new book by one of my favorite Swedish authors! The title is the main character's name, but it also means "minor key" in Swedish. This book turned out to be very relevant to the last book I read, about the city-countryside divide in Sweden. It's SF about a future where most of the countryside has been abandoned and the infrastructure isn't maintained. Most people live in the cities. It's not clear where they get their food, but I suppose agriculture might be concentrated to the most fertile regions. Anyway, we don't get a comprehensive view of of how society works--we follow an older woman who, along with other "useless" people, is going to be deported from Stockholm to a smaller town. But she escapes from the bus and walks out into the wilderness in what must be southern Norrland. Then she finds people living under the radar in the countryside and joins them. For a dystopia, it's a very cosy one, once she gets out there. But did it have to unnecessarily end in tragedy?? Couldn't she have just continued farming potatoes and making goat-cheese with her new friends, instead of falling victim to random male violence? Augh. : ( I did like how realistic it is about what would actually happen when countryside infrastructure is abandoned. People would return in the fall for the moose-hunt, and the forest would be even more mercilessly exploited now that no one is there to protest about it.
Reproductive Rights and Wrongs by Betsy Hartmann
I continue exploring the population issue. In this book I learned a lot more about contraceptives and their history than I knew before, and also how power and money and contempt for poor people can distort family planning into something coercive. Well worth reading; makes a lot of good points about how social and economic equality (along with access to good healthcare of all kinds) is the real answer to slowing population growth. Still not convinced overpopulation is not a potential problem, though--this book doesn't even mention possible consequences of climate change and other environmental problems on food supply.
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And disability commentary is all over the map, because like the rest of the universe, we've got lots of opinions. These resources span 30 years, because it's always on the agenda, and all espouse the "abortion should be available AND YET abortion because of disability is problematic" point-of-view
From an academic conference on feminism & reproductive technology:
http://www.gjga.org/conference.asp?action=item&source=documents&id=17
Disability Rights and Selective Abortion by Marsha Saxton
Excerpted from "Disability Rights and Selective Abortion," in Abortion Wars, A Half Century of Struggle: 1950 to 2000. Rickie Solinger (ed) Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.
from a mom with a DS baby, publishing in a disability rights magazine called The Ragged Edge (earlier, the Disability Rag), also 1998
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0798/a798ft4.htm
Websites on "pregnancy interruptions" are A Paean to Eugenics by Mary Wilt
Life as We Know It and Life As Jamie Knows It are memoirs with policy interruptions by Michael Bérubé, meditating on what it's like for high-power college profs to have a DS child, and what life is like as he grows into a teenager. I highly recommend them; the latter is blurbed here,
http://www.beacon.org/Life-as-Jamie-Knows-It-P1230.aspx
here's a 2008 convo between Michael and Peter Singer, a philosopher who has supported killing disabled babies.
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/more_on_peter_singer_and_jamie_berube/
from a a disabled person with major attitude,
http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/08/19/reproductive-justice-is-for-everyone-even-people-you-dont-like/
Reproductive Justice is for Everyone, Even People You Don’t Like by s.e.smith
and an update on the current situation from the same writer.
Are Abortion Bans on the Basis of Disability Really in the Interest of Disability Rights?
http://www.rootedinrights.org/are-abortion-bans-basis-disability-in-interest-of-disability-rights/
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I'd love to chat about these topics more if you're interested
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