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lightreadsThe Flowers of Vashnoi
2/5. Ekaterin is involved in an experimental project to try and cleanse the radioactive site where the Cetagandans dropped a dirty bomb decades ago. This unearths an ugly secret.
Hm. This is a good idea done without much of the richness I was expecting. This is a story that, by its shape, literally goes to the radioactive heart of this culture's ableism. Most of the story is set on the bomb site which started this supposed deep-rooted phobia of mutation. And yet it somehow manages to not … really … be about that? And I'm not sure how? Partly it's that Ekaterin drives this story, rather than Miles, though Miles is the one who personally owns the site and whose personal baggage re disability it encapsulates. That's fine – and it makes sense – but Ekaterin has basically nothing to say about disability or this culture's view of it that I found interesting or illuminating.
Also, here's my real problem. This story posits as a matter of course that naturally people stopped abandoning their disabled infants to die in a radioactive hellscape when they got access to healthcare. And I just, lol. That is so naïve it is laughable to me. As if the problem was that a kid with six fingers couldn't be fixed. Instead of the problem being what birthing a six fingered child was supposed to say about the parents. That is the route of the phobia – dissent of unfitness. Being able to medically address disability won't magically address that phobia. In fact, it would be another pain point, as it would involve outsiders, authorities, gossip, speculation, etc. And the thing I really don't get is that LMB knows this, specifically. Or at least she did, as it was a major plot point in Komarr.
So would getting access to better care decrease the number of parental murders of disabled kids? Yes. Would it eliminate them? Don't make me laugh. Go on, google the rolls of the dead project a friend did years ago, compiling the hundreds upon hundreds of news articles discussing the parental murder of disabled children in the U.S. and, more often than not, excusing the parent. If you can stomach it. My friend had to stop collating these stories as it was becoming too traumatizing.
So yeah. I don't think this story is being honest about what ableism is and how it functions and how you combat it. And it feels that way – dishonest – rather than merely ignorant.
Content notes: Infanticide; child abandonment; attempted murder; ableism everywhere.
2/5. Ekaterin is involved in an experimental project to try and cleanse the radioactive site where the Cetagandans dropped a dirty bomb decades ago. This unearths an ugly secret.
Hm. This is a good idea done without much of the richness I was expecting. This is a story that, by its shape, literally goes to the radioactive heart of this culture's ableism. Most of the story is set on the bomb site which started this supposed deep-rooted phobia of mutation. And yet it somehow manages to not … really … be about that? And I'm not sure how? Partly it's that Ekaterin drives this story, rather than Miles, though Miles is the one who personally owns the site and whose personal baggage re disability it encapsulates. That's fine – and it makes sense – but Ekaterin has basically nothing to say about disability or this culture's view of it that I found interesting or illuminating.
Also, here's my real problem. This story posits as a matter of course that naturally people stopped abandoning their disabled infants to die in a radioactive hellscape when they got access to healthcare. And I just, lol. That is so naïve it is laughable to me. As if the problem was that a kid with six fingers couldn't be fixed. Instead of the problem being what birthing a six fingered child was supposed to say about the parents. That is the route of the phobia – dissent of unfitness. Being able to medically address disability won't magically address that phobia. In fact, it would be another pain point, as it would involve outsiders, authorities, gossip, speculation, etc. And the thing I really don't get is that LMB knows this, specifically. Or at least she did, as it was a major plot point in Komarr.
So would getting access to better care decrease the number of parental murders of disabled kids? Yes. Would it eliminate them? Don't make me laugh. Go on, google the rolls of the dead project a friend did years ago, compiling the hundreds upon hundreds of news articles discussing the parental murder of disabled children in the U.S. and, more often than not, excusing the parent. If you can stomach it. My friend had to stop collating these stories as it was becoming too traumatizing.
So yeah. I don't think this story is being honest about what ableism is and how it functions and how you combat it. And it feels that way – dishonest – rather than merely ignorant.
Content notes: Infanticide; child abandonment; attempted murder; ableism everywhere.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-18 07:36 pm (UTC)"Instead of the problem being what birthing a six fingered child was supposed to say about the parents."
Yes, this. It's also the entire plot of "The Mountains of Mourning."
I remember so much that after my sister got diagnosed, my paternal grandmother not only refused to get the blood test (so we could figure out which side of the family to tell to go get tested), but she flat out insisted it didn't come from her and it must have been from my mother's side of the family, even when my dad was like, LOL, Ma, that's not how autosomal recessive genetic diseases work.
Like, 1 out of every 27 American Ashkenazi Jews carries Tay Sachs, but nope, didn't come from her or her precious kid, couldn't be.
So, yeah, good medical care would make things better for the disabled kids, but it's not magic.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-18 11:31 pm (UTC)Okay to post at
no subject
Date: 2018-11-18 11:34 pm (UTC)Sure.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-19 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-19 02:25 am (UTC)Yes, I almost wanted to reread MoM after this, as I haven't read it in years.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-19 11:57 am (UTC)I was deeply disappointed in this story, but hadn't really dug into why, except that it felt cowardly in the way all of Bujold's post-Diplomatic Immunity writing has felt to me - it flinches away from characters having to make hard choices or confront any consequences. Things heat up and then just... resolve, without the protagonist actually having to struggle or grow. (And she used to be my favorite author specifically *because* she made her characters struggle and confront difficult choices in order to earn their triumphs.)
Ekaterin has basically nothing to say about disability or this culture's view of it that I found interesting or illuminating.
Yeah, that. I hoped for better, especially from returning to the territory of Mountains of Mourning. :(