Dodging Billables

Members of the Kambula Pride in 2023. Here the lionesses have brought their brand new wee cubs to the iconic West Street Bridge. Unbeknownst to the pride, this is the same bridge their ancestors — the West Street Males — were named after.

The founding lionesses of the Kambula (and Ntsevu) Pride were daughters of the Mangheni lionesses and sired by the Majingilane. The Mangheni were daughters of the Tsalala lionesses and sired by the Mapogo. The Mapogo were sons of the Sparta lionesses and sired by the West Street Males. The latter had arrived to Sabi Sands when, in the nineties, a fence separating Kruger and Sabi Sands was taken down.

Out of the near-infinite reasons of the past, present, and future, how many of them could have been caused by your actions? Every choice you make is less than a molecule in an ocean of cause and effect.

Yes, there was a reason for the earthquake, flood, or cancer. But it's not your fault. A bullet falling from the sky does not seek out someone who deserves to die. A drunk driver doesn't veer off the road to hit a teenager who just had sex for the first time. Glaucoma doesn't descend on sinful eyes.

Pain and tragedy is not sent to punish or bring glory to a higher power. It simply happens because somewhere in a line of collapsing dominoes, physics and biology tipped one over. There is no moral path that makes you too good for this world, nor too evil. The world simply is.

People have reasons to hurt each other. A dog will bite that hand that feeds if it is also the hand that beats. But then that dog will bite an innocent stranger because biting is all it knows.

Everything happens for a reason. Anything can be traced backward in time to an origin, and more often than not that origin is random, innocuous, and completely amoral.

A butterfly's wingbeat is a reason. There is no lesson to be learned, nor action to be taken. Tearing the wings off every one will not stop a hurricane. Terrible and beautiful things will continue to happen, as long as the world exists. The only thing we are destined to face is the indifference of the universe.

Childbirth. It fucks up your hips SO FUCKING BAD. The connective tissue of your pelvis literally dissolves in order to allow you to widen your hips to push a small human out and even if it heals properly you're still going to have a lot of 'wear and tear' on the pubis, and striations on your ischial spine. Horror stuff.

Anyway. Our prof said that in those days there were so few women who DIDN'T give birth at some point in their lives that those marks on the pelvis are pretty much the first thing archaeologists look for. Ofc, there's also looking for skull shape, but that's a much less certain method. Even our prof with like a 40 year long and very illustrious career said in about 5% of individuals there is almost no way to tell with any certainty, if their skull is the only thing you have. Pelvis is the one surefire way to tell if it was an AFAB person capable of carrying a child to term.

So if you're MtF or FtM individual who never had a baby, and all that's left of you are bones with no grave goods, there is absolutely a team of archaeologists who will spend three days arguing over your gender.

They can tell how much calcium you got, if you were vegetarian, if you grew up on a mountain or in a valley, if you were a farmer or a noble, sometimes even how many older siblungs you had, just about every disease ever, how often you fucked (specific wear and tear on the head of the femour) very easily with a bit of practice. But sex? You need to consult the oracle in at least a quarter of the cases.

First let me start with a disclaimer that I am speaking generally here. Of course both the U.S. and Europe are both massive and diverse places containing hundreds of millions of people, and a lot of regional differences. Neither the U.S. or Europe are a monolith (although a lot of people on the internet speak of both places as a monolith, which I wish people would stop doing, since neither are).

I could be wrong about this, since I don't live in the U.S., and haven't visited everywhere in Europe. But between where I have visited in the U.S., and where I have visited / lived in Europe, and from what I know from my friends in the U.S. and friends in other European countries, I get the feeling that overall the U.S. has stricter disability access laws than a lot of places in Europe do, especially in regard to building codes.

Of course there are exceptions, I know New York city is abhorrently hostile in its design towards anyone elderly and/or disabled. Although when I visited New York city it really just felt on par with a lot of major European cities with how abhorrently inaccessible it was.

One example of this is that recently I saw a Reddit discussion where a USAmerican vacationing in France was surprised at how many staircases didn't have handrails, because according to this man handrails are required by law in the U.S.

The comments were all Europeans having an absolute field day with this. Pretty much all of the comments were some variation of "I can't believe Americans are too stupid and lazy to use the stairs without a handrail 🤣🤣🤣 what's wrong with you fat lazy stupid Americans that you can't even use stairs without a handrail 🤣🤣🤣 thank GOD I was born in Europe where I was just taught how to walk up and down the stairs on my own and don't need a handrail like a lazy fat stupid American 🤣🤣🤣"

A few people tried to gently point out that this was about accessibility for elderly and disabled people, and it's not cool to laugh at building codes that are about accessibility, but those commenters were usually shut down with some variation of "yeah well in MY European country if someone is disabled or becomes elderly we either move to a more accessible building or we modify our home to be more accessible, we don't sit around whining like a bunch of Americans that our building isn't already accessible 🙄"

Which is, such a cruel way to talk about accessibility. Why wouldn't disabled and elderly people deserve the same access to a building as anyone else? Are elderly and disabled people not allowed to visit friends and family? Anyone could get hit by a car today, and after that struggle with going up and down stairs without the use of a handrail for the next several months, years, possibly the rest of your life. It's so easy to feel smug when you can easily trot up and down the stairs without a handrail, but so cruel to be unwilling to consider anyone who struggles with stairs should maybe be allowed access to the same places as you.

Honestly when I go on vacation abroad with my elderly + disabled mother, it's often easier to go to the U.S. with her than other places in Europe, because the U.S. does tend to be more accessible (in my experience, and except for New York city ofc) making going around to different public places with my mom generally a lot easier than somewhere like France or the Netherlands.

The USA has something called the Americans With Disabilites Act (ADA), and apparently it works fairly well. An American in my WhatsApp group went to a figure skating championship in Toronto a while back and was stunned that the arena didn’t have wheelchair access for spectators. Because an American arena would have.

Not everything about the USA is awful. Not everything about Canada and Europe is great.

Also, I live in Vancouver. We didn’t have a subway system until 1986, that’s when the Skytrain was finally built. Several of the Skytrain stations were originally built with no elevators. People with wheelchairs were expected to enter or exit the system at a different station that did have wheelchair access. In 1986.

The system wasn’t built in 1896 or 1926, when wheelchairs were a newfangled idea. It was built in 1986. British Columbian Rick Hansen’s Man In Motion world wheelchair tour started in 1985 (in Vancouver).

Or well, the Skytrain was opened in 1986. Let’s say the plans for it were finalized by 1983, since it would’ve taken a few years to build. In 1983, there was already a substantial disability rights movement in Canada, but several Skytrain stations didn’t have elevators anyway, presumably because it was cheaper.

Naturally, it eventually became politically unacceptable to make wheelchair users (and people with strollers, and people with canes or walkers, and people with suitcases) skip a station because they hadn’t bothered to put an elevator in that station.

So those stations had to be retrofitted at vast expense to make them wheelchair-accessible. It probably would’ve been cheaper to just build them accessible from the start, in retrospect. But we didn’t have a Made In Canada version of the ADA, so it didn’t happen.

Also, wheelchair accessibility does not only help wheelchair users. It also helps people with babies or toddlers in strollers, people using walkers, crutches, or canes, travellers with heavy suitcases, elderly people, etc, etc. I take the Skytrain several days a week, and I see all those people taking the elevator instead of the stairs or escalators.

The fight for the ADA was long, and bitter, and every single line of it is thanks to decades tireless activism work. Evangelical religious groups widely opposed the ADA because they believed that disability (and especially particularly disabling conditions, such as being HIV+) was God’s will, and wanted disabled people to be reliant on (religious) charity. Most large corporations and business interest groups opposed the ADA, because complying with accessibility requirements might hurt their bottom line. The US Chamber of Commerce came out swinging against it. The National Federation of Independent Business called it "a disaster for small business" and fear-mongered about it shutting down mom & pop shops and throwing hard-working American out of work. Greyhound Bus Lines literally testified before Congress that they were ~so concerned~ about the costs of requiring disability accommodations that they believed that passing the ADA would be tantamount to denying all rural people access to any buses, because apparently having to install a few fold-out ramps and fold-up seats would instantly bankrupt every extant bus company.

The bill was trapped in limbo for months. It looked hopeless. A lot of people thought it couldn’t happen – that the lobbies against disability rights and the disabled were simply too strong.

And in response, hundreds of disabled protesters showed up in Washington, DC and crawled up the steps of the Capitol.

That's not a hole because I don't think the age difference is relevant to what I was talking about in the original post. Since this post has taken off and gained a lot of traction I get multiple notes a day pointing out the age difference between the buildings in Europe vs the U.S., but the age difference in the buildings was never the point (at least in my original post, I can't control what others add on) the rancidly ableist / fatphobic / ageist attitudes of many Europeans was the point.

The point was that a U.S.American can't politely say "wow it sure is different not seeing so many staircases with handrails, guess you guys just have to be more careful over here haha 😊" without dozens of Europeans gleefully jumping at the opportunity to say "FAT!!! LAZY!!! STUPID!!!" and then when it's gently pointed out that handrails are for accessibility, not a fat/lazy/stupid thing, the very same Europeans will just dig their heels in and say "well Europeans don't need accessibility because we're not a bunch of whiny fat stupid Americans, we're too smart and fit to need accessibility over here! 😤" without bothering to stop and think how horrifically ableist they sound while asserting that.

I can't control what people add on, but that pervasive attitude of Europeans pointing and laughing at accessibility in the U.S. as a fat/lazy/stupid thing that Europeans are too smart and fit to need was all I was trying to talk about in my original post, and age difference between the buildings doesn't excuse that attitude.

You can read about it here: https://minds-africa.org/fabric-map-of-africa-the-art-of-storytelling/