Toxic Capitalism

In order to delivery a happy and healthy baby, pregnant women are told they must follow a strict set of guidelines. The mother usually receives the blame if her child is born with any defects or if the pregnancy results in miscarriage, as if she is a machine in a factory that is to blame for molding a deformed doll. She smoked, she drank alcohol, she worked long and strenuous hours, she didn’t eat healthy enough, or she didn’t take her prenatal supplements. We are quick to point fingers at the process by which an abnormal child is brought into the world, and the responsibility of a birth defect weighs heavy on the mother when it may not be her fault at all. 

While we continue to place the blame on a mother’s actions, research has shown possible links of harmful pesticides and chemicals leaked into our environment to an increase in miscarriage and birth defects in certain populations. In her book Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES, Nancy Langston cites multiple instances of miscarriages and birth defects increasing, sometimes doubling, in areas where pregnant women are exposed to trace amounts of harmful manmade pesticides and chemicals. Unlike other substances, these chemicals can accumulate in a woman’s body over time and disrupt hormonal signaling that develops and directs cells during the growth of the zygote, blastocyst, embryo, and eventual fetus. Exposure to minute amounts have also shown aversive effects in studies, which should make these chemicals scary to everyone regardless of race, class status, or proximity to areas that use them.    

Despite this data, we continue a public surveillance on pregnant women and their actions that may affect their pregnancy. Native American women in Washington recently faced a rise in miscarriage, which was blamed on their perceived destructive, drug-involved lives rather than considering pesticides spread over nearby areas that easily permeate through soil and water sources. The prevalence of miscarriages among these tribes may not be exclusive from miscarriages and birth defects occurring in modern, middle class Americans; however, the proximity of the tribes to the areas sprayed with pesticides likely expedited the reproductive consequences we are seeing, and the effects aren’t being researched in non-Native American miscarriages and birth defects. The possible cause for these birth defects being harmful manmade chemicals is being erased because a marginalized group like Native Americans is easy to scapegoat, placing the blame on their perceived individual actions rather than something that, if accepted, would erase all women’s autonomy over their pregnancy as well as have dangerous political and economic consequences.

Ms. Langston uses a similar framework in Toxic Bodies to expose institutional motives as to why they are targeting marginalized groups, resulting in hidden eugenics and attempted genocide. One example she uses is Planned Parenthood’s history of population control over minority groups using harmful contraceptives and immoral medical procedures and how easy it was to do this to groups who have no voice and little political and economic power. We can compare this to pesticides and Native Americans to expose the same framework that allowed for Planned Parenthood to create a rhetoric that blames the individual and her actions if an error occurs in pregnancy. Both instances are clearly blamed on the mother when a miscarriage happens or birth defects plague a child according to information spewed out by the government and medical data. However, the government and medical community have a strong capitalistic motive that can be traced to the continued and wide use of pesticides and manmade chemicals, which is tied into the intention of population control to construct the neoliberalism we are experiencing today.

            Our question now is – why doesn’t the government or chemical industry further investigate the effects of pesticides on human development? The resistance of the government and chemical companies to ban many of these toxic manmade chemicals lies in a perceived absence of data surrounding the effects of the pesticides on pregnancies, but one thing is clear to most researchers: an absence of data does not prove safety, it proves ignorance. It makes perfect sense as to why they refuse to investigate these effects if you consider capitalism and our economy. Let’s say the government funded research that linked millions of birth defects and miscarriages to a list of chemicals used as pesticides around the world. Litigation would likely dismantle major chemical companies in the industry, resulting in an exposed system that has the potential to sink the world economy all while blaming the US government for lighting the fire. It is in their best interest to blame individuals for their actions rather than unearthing the systematic injustices that result from a flawed capitalist government tied to industry.

Individuals born as intersex would be grouped with those having birth defects, and exposing the system that has capitalistic ties will have specific implications for intersex people. If we successfully prove that these toxic pesticides can result in birth defects, it will undercut an intersex person’s rights and citizenship by pinpointing the unnatural origin of their being. Furthermore, it has the power to strengthen the gender binary by linking genders other than male or female to being inhuman. We can see from history that when intersex people are dehumanized and even demonized, the responsibility of the situation always falls on the mother. This is consistent throughout time, and individualized rhetoric surrounding pregnancy, miscarriages, and birth defects has proven to be dangerous for us and profitable for institutions.

Men in Ballet: Inhabitation and the Double Bind

          Turn after turn, a ballet dancer must be graceful, flexible, and light as a feather in order to successfully entice an audience by their movements on stage. The femininity of moving one’s body in this fashion is confirmed by our culture’s gender stereotype inherent in this style of dance. We assume ballet dancers are supposed to wear white or pink tutus with a tight leotard and slippers, but more importantly, we assume that they are female. This information is produced by mass media and confirmed by popular culture in the US that links femininity and womanhood to this style. Because of this systematic connection, a man dancing ballet is instantly perceived as feminine due to his movements and often assumed to be homosexual. In other words, it is not cool for guys to do ballet even if they are skilled. They appear to need something more than talent to be appreciated by the public.   

            One male ballet dancer who managed to make ballet cool for some people and more attractive to male dancers was Edward Villella (shown below), a former boxer who brought to the stage his muscular build and masculinity that swayed those who watched to appreciate the talent he exuded. His face is serious, not soft like the dancer above, and his costume accentuates his rippling muscles. Alex Wong, a trained ballet dancer and past contestant on the hit TV show So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD), admitted that “[Edward] was known as the most masculine ballet dancer in America at the time and, really, made it cool for guys like me to do ballet." Wong’s statement confirms the fear male ballet dancers have about their perceived lack of masculinity and the need for an outsider to help normalize gendered performances.

This need for a gendered performance to be normalized or improved by an outsider is located by Erica Rand in Court and Sparkle, which varies slightly from the previous example (p. 448-9). She describes the phenomena as alien inhabitation and analyzes Wong’s SYTYCD crunking routine with hip-hop dancer tWitch. Wong, being trained in ballet, needed tWitch to improve his crunking skills. Wong’s crunking skills increased to the level of tWitch’s natural rhythm throughout the routine, but Wong challenges him at the end with three quick and elegant turns to which tWitch responds with less skilled and ungraceful turns. The judging panel not only confirms the concept of alien inhabitation but also fuels the transformative model to the public by exclaiming their incredulity toward Wong being able to dance like tWitch. Because many people do not understand the technicality of dance, it is up to the dance experts on the judging panel to frame what is going on. In this case, they were astonished by Wong’s ability to crunk despite him being trained in only ballet and classical dance. 

           This leaves us with an interesting question: how was Wong able to acclimate effortlessly once he was shown the rhythm whereas tWitch was unable to cross the boundary to ballet (or choreographed to do so)? As the subject, Wong has the autonomy to be able to learn and adapt to tWitch’s effortless movements, but not the other way around. tWitch is seemingly stuck in his ways as a hip-hop dancer and cannot cross the boundary to another discipline, which makes him an object that is used as an instrument to improve Wong’s crunking abilities. Objectification of an individual reduces their personhood and steals their autonomy to be perceived as they would like to.

            This same objectification happens with male ballet dancers who wish to be perceived as masculine but are tied by our cultural stigma that all male ballet dancers are feminine and therefore, gay. Wong’s fear of being objectified is totally warranted – the stereotype of male ballet dancers being gay exists in many Americans’ minds. Edward Villella’s masculine presence in ballet showed many people that this stereotype is flawed and that it is cool for men to dance ballet. Luckily, Wong and many others found inspiration in Villella and put aside their anxieties to follow their dreams. What is unfortunate and problematic is that Villella, performing as hyper masculine, set a precedent for men in ballet that many Americans continue to expect as the accepted standard. In a way, he only made it OK for masculine, heterosexual men to dance ballet. This creates a double bind in which feminine and non-muscular men are still objectified and not seen as they wish to even though it is the graceful, feminine movements that make a ballet dancer successful.

            Of course, this argument would be incomplete without addressing other traits such as ethnicity that can lead an individual to be objectified and expected to act a certain way. We can infer from racial stereotypes that since tWitch is African-American, he is objectified and expected to have a natural hip-hop rhythm with aggressive and sharp movements. A Latinx person might be expected to have a similar natural rhythm with salsa-like movements, regardless of who they are and how they would like to be seen. This has the power to make individuals of a certain look to feel out casted when they do not fulfill the racist, homophobic, or xenophobic expectations produced by the media in television, movies, and popular culture. On the other hand, those who do align themselves with these expectations may feel that their culture is being exploited by our capitalist and consumer culture in the US. Either way, expectations about a certain group of people should not be assumed or inferred from their physical appearance.