Jill Filipovic with her reliably bad take on any subject under the golden rays of Our Beloved Sun.

The problem with all this talk about two-parent ‘privilege’

Having a child outside of marriage has taken a similar course: more common across classes than it was a few decades ago, but much more common among poorer Americans and those with the lowest levels of education. One Johns Hopkins sociologist found that, between 2017 and 2018, 24.5% of college-educated women were unmarried when they birthed their first child, a radical increase from 1996, when just 4% were unmarried.

But among Americans with less education, the results are even more startling: Between 2017 and 2018, 86.5% of women without a high school degree gave birth while unmarried, as did more than 60% of those with a high school diploma. The numbers also reflect stark inequities among racial lines: Close to three-quarters of Black mothers have a child outside of marriage, compared with 66% of American Indian and Native Alaskans, 53% of Hispanics, 29% of Whites and 17% of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Weird. The Solution is always more government.

 

Why Aren’t Disabled Astronauts Exploring Space?

Even with hopeful futures like that of space travel, we can expect the production of disability. Space is already disabling for humans. Just as the built environment on Earth is not suited for disabled bodies, space as an environment is not suited to any human bodies. Every astronaut comes back from the low gravity of space with damage to their bones and eyes—​and the longer they are off Earth’s surface, the worse the damage. Some things can be restored over time, but some changes are long-​lasting. These realities are absent from futurist writing about technology, which is framed as simply magicking away the disabling effects of space travel.

This is why technofuturists’ discussions of “The End of Disability” are so silly. Disability isn’t ending; we’re going to see more and newer forms of disability in the future. This doesn’t mean that all medical projects aimed at treating disease and disability are unpromising. But we need to prepare for the disabled future: becoming more comfortable with other people’s disabilities, accepting the fact that we ourselves will eventually be disabled (if we aren’t already), learning to recognize and root out ableism—​these are all moves toward building a better future for everyone. Planning for the future in a realistic way requires embracing the existence, and indeed the powerful role, of disabled people in it. We must rid ourselves of technoableism—the harmful belief that technology is a “solution” for disability—and instead pay overdue attention to the ways that disabled communities make and shape the world, live with loss and navigate hostility, and creatively adapt.

As a disabled, I want healthy people exploring space. I don’t know how this is controversial.

 

When this fucker eats you, you stay eaten.