Marna Clarke
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-isms |
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Monday 28 October 2024
Time As We Know It. By Marna Clarke.
Marna Clarke
Sunday 27 October 2024
Drummies
London-based, South African photographer Alice Mann started her series "Drummies" after reading a newspaper article about drum majorettes in 2017. Mann photographed eleven teams (school teams and club teams) in two provinces in South Africa. Some of the girls are from underprivileged backgrounds. To them, being a drum majorett means a lot since, as Mann notices, it can open doors (via)
“As a young, white, South African photographer, I am very aware of my position when making photographic work, and I always try to let this awareness affect my process. The ways that images have been used in South Africa, as a tool of colonialism, as a tool of apartheid, has a very violent history. So it is important to me that I can create work that empowers and elevates the people I work with. Particularly as I am often working with women, and with younger people, I need to ensure that the resulting images are challenging the representation of these individuals as victims.”
Alice Mann
“I’m interested in examining the relationship between community versus individual identity; how does a sense of belonging affect the way we perceive ourselves? I think wanting to belong is something that everyone identifies with, and this is an idea I return to often in my work… I’m fascinated by the way that feeling a part of something can reinforce an individual’s sense of self.”
Alice Mann
“The sport is a very empowering one for young women to be involved in. You can see how being part of the team creates a powerful sense of belonging and is a safe female space where the girls are very supportive of each other. There are a lot of accolades associated with being a drum majorette, and the discipline and hard work required says a lot about the person who can commit and put in the hours. The girls feel very proud to be majorettes, and this pride is evident.”
Alice Mann
“Photographs are so ubiquitous, and these images have such a powerful role to play. As an image-maker, I wanted to contribute in a way that might prompt people to re-examine the set ideas we have, because of what we are used to seeing,”
Alice Mann
photographs by Alice Mann via
Saturday 26 October 2024
The Demolition of Ableism. By Linda Williams.
Friday 25 October 2024
The Holy Week Uprising
(Above: "A crowd described as "militant, dancing and chanting" takes part in a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. in Garfield Park on April 7, 1968. This photo was published in the April 8, 1968, Milwaukee Sentinel. The banner depicts black activist H. Rap Brown, who famously said the previous summer, "Violence is as American as apple pie.")
58,000 National Guardsmen and Army troops assisted law enforcement officers in handling the violence. 43 people were killed, around 3,500 were injured, 27,000 were arrested and 54 of the cities affected saw more than 100,000 dollars property damage, Washington D.C. experienced the most property damage. There, twelve days of unrest meant 1,200 fires and 24 million in insured property damage (174 million dollars in today's currency). It took decades for some neighbourhoods to fully recover. The fires had destroyed buildings, made thousands of people homeless and jobless, too many had died in burning buildings. In Baltimore, which came second to Washington in terms of damage, crowds first gathered peacefully to hold a memorial service. After a couple of small incidents, 6,000 National Guards arrived and protests erupted (via).
“If I were a kid in Harlem, I know what I’d be thinking right now. I’d be thinking that the whites have declared open season on my people, and they’re going to pick us off one by one unless I get a gun and pick them off first.”
President Johnson
"America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. (A riot) is the language of the unheard."
Martin Luther King
"For years, many white Americans mistakenly conceived of racism as a “Southern problem” and believed that Jim Crow only resided south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The racial violence of the 1960s throughout the country rudely awakened the nation to the speciousness of this belief.
Yet no sooner had that belief been discarded than it was immediately replaced with a new and equally false one: that America’s race problems extended only to our large cities and their inner-city ghettos, but not beyond that. The terms that we used — and still use — contributed to the misunderstanding of what was taking place. By using the term “riots,” we reinforce the notion that these acts of “collective violence” were spontaneous and apolitical and that they were disconnected to the protests for civil rights in the South. But a closer examination of them, individually and collectively, proves otherwise.
This flawed understanding had real consequences. Focused on large cities, the national media gave sparse coverage to the revolts in York and other midsize and small cities, despite the fact that the majority of them occurred in such places. In 1969 alone, revolts rocked midsized cities like Hartford, Conn., Harrisburg, Pa. and Fort Lauderdale, Fla."
Levy, Washington Post
Thursday 24 October 2024
Distraction
Wednesday 23 October 2024
Home for the Golden Gays
The Home for the Golden Gays is a Philippine non-profit organisation founded by lawyer and activist Justo Justo (1941-2012) in 1975. Justo envisioned "a care home for aging members of the outcasted gay community". After his death, the community were evicted and some members became homeless. Only in 2018, they started renting a house again (via and via and via). Its status, however is still precarious since the shelter depends on irregular and insufficient donations. The elderly residents continue working, giving performances or side gigs as street vendors or haircutters. It is no coincidence that the official slogan they chose is "Don't get sick" (via).
To be old and LGBT can be particularly difficult. Official statistics on the elder LGBT community remain scant, but a survey of LGBT-identifying Filipinos aged between 50 and 74 released in June found that 40% of respondents lacked money for necessities like food and medication. According to the survey, 48% of the respondents feared losing their homes within 2022. Some were unstably housed and others said they lived on the streets or in parks. (via)
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photograph by Hannah Reyes Morales via
Tuesday 22 October 2024
Cultural Ageing Stereotypes in Europe
Friday 11 October 2024
The well-behaved, asexual, uncomplaining subject
Thursday 10 October 2024
There are consequences with age ...
Wednesday 2 October 2024
Not the Usual Gender Pay Gap
According to top modelling agent Elizabeth Rose, male models are paid 75% less than female models. While all the top ten female models make millions, only the top three male models make over a million.
The world's highest paid female model made 35 million pounds in 2015 (source Forbes), the highest paid male model made 1.15 million pounds in 2013 (the years compared differ because there was no data compiled for male model incomes in 2015). The discrepency is not only there when it comes to top models. In an interview (2016), Rose mentions: "I had a brief today that came in and it was 'male model, [pay] £1,500', and the female model was £5,000, for the same usage.'"
An inverse gender pay gap might come as a surprise. What is little surprising are the traditional ageist patterns prevalent in the industry. Female models do make more money. However, they are discriminated against based on their age at an earlier stage. Men have a longer career path and make the most when they are in their thirties - when a great many female models seem to be sent into retirement (via and via).
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photograph of Capucine via
Saturday 28 September 2024
Domestic Violence and Gender in Numbers
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (as of 2023), 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men experience physical violence at some point during their lifetimes. Intimate partners stalk 6 in 10 female and 4 in 10 male victims. 1 in 5 women and 1% to 2% of men experience attempted or completed rape at some point in their lives.
It is estimated that 1.5 million intimate partner female rapes and physical assaults occur every year (vs 800.000 male assaults annually). Intimate partner violence has decreased by more than 60%, from 10 victimisations per 1.000 persons to 4 per 1.000 (n = persons aged 12 or older) (via).
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photograph via
Thursday 26 September 2024
Multilevel Relationships between Perceived Age Discrimination and Happiness
Abstract: The present study examines how contextual age discrimination moderates the individual-level association between perceived age discrimination and happiness among older Europeans. In this endeavor, we test two opposing views: 1) the "social norm" hypothesis that predicts the association between perceived age discrimination and happiness to become weaker in areas with a higher average level of age discrimination; and 2) conversely the "contagion effect" hypothesis that predicts the association to grow stronger in such areas.
Using data from the European Social Survey (2008), we estimate two- and three-level mixed effects models to test these opposing hypotheses. Our findings from multilevel analysis lend support to the social norm hypothesis. Specifically, the negative link between perceived age discrimination and happiness is weaker in subnational regions where the proportion of victims of age discrimination is higher. (Hyun Jung & Hyun-Soo Kim, 2023)
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- Hyun Jung, J. & Hyun-Soo Kim, H. (2023). Does Misery Love Company? Multilevel Relationships between Perceived Age Discrimination and Happiness among Older Europeans. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 42(6), 1234-124, link
- photograph by Flip Schulke via
Wednesday 25 September 2024
Devaluing the Elderly, Devaluing Residential Long-Term Workers
As of 2022, in the United States, the median hourly pay for workers in nursing homes and residential care facility industries is 15.22 dollars (vs the US median hourly wage of 20.7 dollars). 7.2% of these workers live in poverty (vs 5.3% poverty rate for all workers) and 6.9% are covered by a union contract (vs the rate of 11.9% for the overall workforce). Compared to workers in general, residential long-term care workers are also less likely to be covered by employer-provided retirement and health insurance benefits. 80.9% of the workers are women, a disproportionate number (22.4%) Black women and immigrant women (12.8%). (via)
“For too long, our society has devalued the elderly and people with disabilities as well as the workers who help them lead more enriched and independent lives. It is no coincidence that women—particularly women of color and immigrants—perform much of this hands-on care work, both paid and unpaid, in homes and in residential long-term care settings.”
Julia Wolfe
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photograph by Flip Schulke via
Tuesday 24 September 2024
Age and Heat-Related Disability
Abstract: This study examines how functional disability worsens among older adults exposed to extreme heat, particularly those socially isolated. Analyzing data from over 35,000 older adults aged 50 or older from the Health and Retirement Study from 1996-2018, this study found that more frequent exposure to extreme heat is associated with an increase in the number of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) that older adults find difficulty in performing over time.
This heat-related disability progression is greater among those living alone and not working. However, findings indicate that maintaining contact with children and receiving higher levels of support from friends can alleviate the risk of IADL disability progression amidst extreme heat days for older adults with limited social relationships at home and work. By examining various aspects of social isolation and their nuanced effects, this study underscores the need for social support and assistance for older adults during extreme heat. (Hyunjung et al., 2024)
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- Hyunjung Ji, Su Hyun Shin, Alexandria Coronado 1, Hee Yun Lee (2024).Extreme Heat, Functional Disability, and Social Isolation: Risk Disparity Among Older Adults. Journal of Applied Gerontology, link
- photograph by Flip Schulke (1930-2008) via
Sunday 22 September 2024
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was a policy on military service that allowed homosexual and bisexual US-Americans to serve their country as long as they kept their sexual identity secret. Part of the act was - and that was a crucial change - that superiors were not supposed to initiate investigations of service members' orientation as it had been common practice before. Signed in 1993 by Bill Clinton (who knew that it was "not a perfect solution"), the policy was seen as a compromise between "those who wanted to end the longstanding ban on gays serving in the U.S. military and those who felt having openly gay troops would hurt morale and cause problems within military ranks".
It was seen as a liberal step, as an approach to allow queer US-Americans be part of the military. At the same time, they were forced into secrecy since only closeted members or applicants were protected from discrimination. People who were said to "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" were not allow to serve in the armed forces as their presence would "create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability". Coming out of the closet meant being discharged.
In 2011, Barack Obama announced the repeal of the policy. In 2016, the ban on transgender service members was lifted (via and via).
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photograph (Contemporary Muses) by Kameliya Stoeva via
Saturday 21 September 2024
Flowers at Your Feet. Texas Isaiah's Archive.
I was interested in developing a more concrete archive because I had lost a significant amount of people in an eight-month period. People from childhood had passed away, my coworker, and the last person was my grandfather.
Looking back, I didn’t have a visual archive of these people. I just had my memories, and there was a visual loss that resonated with me deeply. I started to think more about what it would look like to contribute to an everlasting archive. Black and brown POC trans people weren’t being imaged a lot during that time, so I thought about the ways I can do that differently that weren’t immediately tethered to media or traditional aspects of representation. When I was creating the archive, which was Black trans people in general, I didn’t feel a full connection with a lot of the [other trans-centered] work that was being created, especially of just masculine people in general. There are so many reasons why there isn’t a lot more Black trans representation in the media. It was not so much that I wanted to be seen, actually. I wanted to be able to extend space to people who felt invisible, who felt that they didn’t deserve to be imaged. When we look at media, the transmasculine people that are popular and who are extended resources are white transmasculine people.
It’s so important for people to see themselves so that they are able to heal and grow from the things they’ve been taught. There is so much that is projected onto us, and the reality is that we haven’t always been in proximity to the most healthy terrains of masculinity. But I believe that Black transmasculine people — in the ways that we have cared and loved throughout history and today — are really shifting the perspective of what it looks like to be a person of good character who is also masculine. The beautiful thing about Flowers at Your Feet is that it mostly highlights transmasculine people, which includes trans men. I think that there is so much nuance there because not everybody has the same relationship to their masculinity — not everybody identifies as a man.
And I’ve learned myself that other people desire specificity. I don’t need that for myself because I don’t think that there is always language to describe our existences, and I’ve made peace with that. Those gray areas are really beautiful to me, because that means that I don’t have to lock myself into something that I may grow out of. There’s such a deep desire to keep that open.
Inherently, I view transness as, like, such a deeply spiritual space. I believe that, you know, the spirit doesn’t have to have any specificity. I think that’s such a beautiful thing.
It (Flowers at Your Feet) was something that someone I dated a long time ago used to say to me. I asked them, “What does that mean?’ They said, you know, ‘I’m just giving you your flowers. I’m offering you gratitude.’” And when I was thinking about a Black transmasculine archive, and also the masculine archives that exist today, it was during that era where people were creating a lot of images of Black masculine people and flowers.
That was so beautiful aesthetically, but I don’t think that conversation went as far as it could have. I think it stopped at aesthetics. I decided to use that title for the project to offer my gratitude to Black transmasculine people — past, present, and future — but also to contend with the images made at that time. There aren’t any flowers within the images I make; the flowers are the Black transmasculine people themselves.
Texas Isaiah
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Friday 20 September 2024
Disability and the Housing Cost Overburden Rate
Thursday 5 September 2024
Beautiful Disruption. Nadine Ijewere's Photography.
My work is all about the celebration of diversity without creating a representation – particularly for women, as we are the ones who are more exposed to beauty ideals and to not being comfortable in who we are.
I find beauty in all its facets. My work is about showcasing different forms of beauty that I believe our society could do a better job of representing. We are so different, and I think it is especially important to show this in the world of fashion. I follow this principle when I cast models and also by exploring my own origins and identity.
Monday 2 September 2024
Beautiful Boy. By Lissa Rivera.
Sunday 1 September 2024
Dementia in Transgender Population: Case Vignette
In their paper, Beehuspoteea and Badrakalimuthu (2021) shortly discuss the lack of research on dementia in the transgender population and the specific need for carers to be provided with the psychoeducation necessary to better understand the impact dementia possibly has on transgender persons. They also mention the higher level of stress carers of transgender people might experience and the higher level of stress transgender persons might have when developing dementia. In order to illustrate the complexity of this intersection, the authors present a case vignette:
"A 76-year-old female transgender person was diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia in 2014 with MOCA (MOntreal Cognitive Assessment) score of 17/30. She was treated with donepezil 10mg OD and prescribed mirtazapine 15mg ON to treat insomnia and low mood. She underwent male to female gender reassignment surgery, including bilateral breast surgery completed in 1960s, and hormonal treatment with estradiol. She considered her sexual orientation to be towards the same sex, and she was in a long-term relationship with a female partner. Her medical history included migraine and she was on propranolol 80mg OD. There was no other significant psychiatric history. She resided in her own flat and her partner lived in a separate flat in the same block. The couple had two of three surviving adopted daughters, both in their forties. The patient's primary carer was her partner and there was no formal care input. In 2016, her MOCA score dropped to 11/30 and she had impaired hygiene and nutrition. In 2018, she started wandering and bringing men to her flat and engaging with them in sexual activities leading to a high risk of vulnerability to abuse culminating in Mental Health Act assessment and admission to a dementia unit. MOCA was not performed due to receptive and expressive dysphasia. In the unit, she presented with insomnia, agitation, dysphasia, having sexually inappropriate conversations with staff about being interested in men, which was a continuation of new behaviour that was identified in the community, as well as making innuendos to female members of staff while talking about herself as a ‘man’. She presented with toileting behaviour that would identify her as male gender, for example standing to urinate as if using a urinal, interpreted as reversal towards biological gender identification. Her partner felt devastated by behaviours exhibited by the patient, which could be identified as male-gender based behaviour aligned with biological gender by birth."
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- Nirja Beehuspoteea & Vellingiri Raja Badrakalimuthu (2021). Dementia in transgender population: case vignette. Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry, link
- photograph by Lissa Rivera via
Tuesday 27 August 2024
"I feel like a caged pig in here." The Role of Ethnicity in a Nursing Home.
Monday 26 August 2024
Safety in Housing for Older Adults
Sunday 25 August 2024
The Lavender Scare
The Red Scare, the witch-hunt against Communists during the Cold War, was accompanied by what was later dubbed the Lavender Scare. In 1947, the U.S. Park Police launched the so-called "Sex Perversion Elimination Program" targeting gay men. The following year, an act was passed that facilitated the arrest and punishment of "sexual psychopaths". Homosexuality was seen as a subversive threat, just like Communism. In 1950, Senator McCarty directly linked Communism and homosexuality. In his speech, he claimed to have a list of 205 Communists working at the State Department. McCarthy went into details about some individuals who he branded as "unsafe risks" Two cases, "Case 14" and "Case 62" concerned homosexuality.
According to a top intelligence official, so McCarthy, "practically every active Communist is twisted mentally or physically in some way". That included the two cases he had mentioned since homosexuals were susceptible to Communist recruitment due to their "peculiar mental twists". One week later it was reported that 91 homosexual employees of the State Department had been dismissed for the sake of national security. Political rhetoric was more and more characterised by linking "Communists and queers", assumptions about Communists were mirrored beliefs about homosexuals. What they were said to have in common was that both groups were: morally weak, godless, psychologically disturbed, undermining the tranditional family, shadowy figures with secret subcultures. From the 1940s to the 1960s, thousands of gay employees were fired from the federal workforce (via).
In 2023, on the 70th anniversary of the Lavender Scare, the White House published a statement calling the decades-long period of investigation, interrogation and firing of up to 10,000 queer Federal employees one of the darkest chapters in US-American history (via).
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photograph (John Paul Evan's photograph of his own marriage) via
Wednesday 21 August 2024
Inspiration Porn
Monday 19 August 2024
Can I Keep My Job? Adult Children Caring for their Elderly Parents
In the 1970s, studies started showing to what extent public services can support parents when it comes to combining caring for their children with participation in employment. Only in the 1990s did researchers begin to focus on the impact adult children's caring for their elderly parents can have on their participation in the labour market. According to research, the need (or wish) to care for older parents can lead to adult children losing their jobs, more absence from work, increased use of part-time work or more difficulty concentrating at work (due to being worried) and negative effects on productivity, promotion and salary.
Adult children are important care providers, most of the non-professional care is provided by daughters of older people. In other words, a great many women "in their fifties and sixties are now both working and having to care for their parents", hence "more likely than men to withdraw completely from the labour market" or work fewer hours - either because they need the time to care for the parent(s) or because of health problems resulting from attempts to combine care work with job. "Public expenditures on eldercare appear to affect both intergenerational support and female labour market participation."
Gautun and Brett (2017) investigated the connection between adult children's attendance at work and public care services for older people.
We test the hypothesis that the detrimental effect on attendance at work of having an older parent in need of care is moderated (reduced) by the parent’s use of a public nursing homes, possibly also by home care services.
The study was carried out in Norway (n = 529, employees aged 45 to 65). A majority of respondents (80%) had provided support to their parent(s) in mostly practical form, e.g. purchases or transportation. 16% ha given nursing assistance. 58% of those reporting to have helped their parent(s) during the past year said that it was difficult to combine care and work.
The results are interesting and probably not extremely surprising:
Institutional care for older people in need of care (i.e. nursing homes) was associated with improved work attendance among their children—their daughters in particular. Data also indicated a moderating effect: the link between the parents’ reduced health and reduced work attendance among the children was weaker if the parent lived in a nursing home. However, the results were very different for home-based care: data indicated no positive effects on adult children’s work attendance when parents received non-institutionalised care of this kind. Overall, the results suggest that extending public care service to older people can improve their children’s ability to combine work with care for parents. However, this effect seems to require the high level of care commonly provided by nursing homes. Thus, the current trend towards de-institutionalising care in Europe (and Norway in particular) might hamper work attendance among care-giving adult children, women in particular. Home care services to older people probably need to be extended if they are intended as a real alternative to institutional care.
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- Gautun, H. & Brett, C. (2017). Caring too much? Lack of public services to older people reduces attendance at work among their children. European Journal of Ageing, 14, 155-166,, link
- photograph by Dorothea Lange (1938) via