Toxic Bodies

Berila makes many important observations here. She brings up the issue of clout… people with clout (money, power, authority, connections) are never the ones seen as toxic. It is the poor, the minorities, the homosexuals, the homeless, the ill (i.e. AIDS) that are seen as toxic. This article does forget to mention that the disabled and the overweight however. There are so many cultural and social institutions that continue to objectify women and make them second class citizens simply because they are women. This is regardless of social, political, and economic clout she has. In this case women have little social clout. This article is a good summary of the beef that America has had with second class citizens (listed above). This comes up in the end of the semester with reference to the Inuit people. Because they have no social or “insignificant” (in the eyes of American companies) economic clout, the plight of their mothers and babies is being pushed to the wayside.
Berile states that it is difficult to distinguish the out-group from the in-group sometimes. For example ACT UP members easily infiltrated a few sessions where they were not welcome. But then again they were middle- to upper-class white men. The qualities that qualified them for second-class-citizen-hood were not obvious. If a teenage, Latino or African American boy in baggy jeans and a jersey tried to do the same he would not have gotten past security.
One statement that Berila made was to show your patriotism by consuming. I am not sure what that means….