(Note – I’m still trying to process the briefs in the Pennsylvania Hockenberry case. No word on the oral arguments yet. I’m hoping for some reports and/or press coverage by tomorrow.)
Last week, I was alerted about a blog entry on the HBO biopic You Don’t Know Jack that was published on the site of Ms. Magazine. Like most of the bloggers who have reviewed this film, Carol King is a big fan of the movie and of Kevorkian himself. In Kevorkian and the Right to Choose, King explains her close connection to the Kevorkian saga – she was the executive director of the Michigan Abortion Rights Action League, which was right across the street from the office building of Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian’s attorney.
In a ringing endorsement of Kevorkian’s career, she carefully steps around any mention of Kevorkian’s “assistance” in the suicides of non-terminally ill individuals, which were in fact more typical of the people whose lives he helped end. She also appears to be totally ignorant about the 30 years prior to Kevorkian’s suicide assistance spree – in which he passionately advocated for the establishment of the specialty of “medicide” – a specialty in medicine that would involve killing patients – death row prisoners, people with dementia, disabled infants, etc. – in a way that they could also be exploited for live human experimentation and organ harvesting. See this post for more information.
Given her role as the director of an organization that advocates for abortion rights, it’s probably not surprising that she draws a straight and simplistic line in her entry – a line between assisted suicide and abortion. (This is, of course, the same line that prolifers like to draw – it seems to be an area of agreement between euthanasia proponents and Christian prolifers.).
But King pulled something that evoked a response that neither she nor her editors at the magazine anticipated. She wrote the following:
“The “right-to-lifers” enlisted the disabled in their cause when they cautioned that allowing people to choose to die would soon become their “duty to die.” They used the same rhetoric during the recent health-care reform debate when they conjured up fears about Obama’s “death panels.” This fear-mongering is adapted to the abortion issue when claims are made that women blithely abort “imperfect” fetuses.”
This brought an unexpected shitstorm of anger from feminist disability activists, some of whom don’t even oppose assisted suicide, but were and are enraged by the automatic marginalization of people with disabilities by the use of the term “the disabled” and the suggestion that we’re pawns of the Christian Right.
The quote above is no longer on the blog. After several days of angry complaints from feminist disability activists, Ms. editor Michele Kort wrote the following:
Both the writer and the editors of the Ms. blog would like to apologize for using the expression “the disabled” rather than “people with disabilities” in this post. It was careless on our parts not to catch both the inaccuracy and the offensiveness of that term. Also, the post has been edited to reflect that the right wing TRIED to enlist people with disabilities in their campaign; quite obviously, people with disabilities have the agency to refuse such overtures.
There are a number of problems with the edit: First of all, the new version gives the impression to uninformed readers that there wasn’t any disability opposition to Kevorkian at all. Real respect would entail an acknowledgment of that opposition and the distinctiveness of our bases for opposition – as opposed to Christian pro-life groups. It seems that people who like to think of themselves as “progressive” have only two ways of dealing with disability activists opposing assisted suicide and euthanasia: Label us “tools” of the religious right – or just pretend that we don’t exist, we were never there, we don’t count.
I also find it interesting – and telling – that Carol King herself didn’t deliver the apology. In fact, she hasn’t entered a comment or reply to this blog entry at all. It’s interesting because if you check the link to her name, you can view other recent blog entries by her – she’s likes to engage with people who comment on her blog entries – but now I see it’s only if they are praising her.
I recommend people reading the blog entry and the comments entered by disability activists. After that, I want to recommend a few other blogs that weighed in on this way before I did:
- I believe that Knitting Clio was the first one to take this blog entry on in “Blogging Against Disabilism, Part II;”
- Lauredhel says it’s “time to push back against this fuckery” in “The Disabled” are pawns of the right wing, sez Ms Magazine;
- and Anna posted “An Open Letter to Ms Magazine Blog” at FORWARD – FWD (feminists with disabilities) for a way forward.
Just to reiterate one point made above. A number of feminists with disabilities have taken Carol King to task on and off her blog. She could at least show them the respect of replying to them directly instead of leaving it to her editor to do something she probably finds distasteful to have to do herself. –Stephen Drake
Thanks for addressing this, Stephen. It is surprising to me that “a simplistic straight line”
would be made by any self-identified feminist from choice/abortion to “assisted suicide”. I am 7 0, longtime self-identified feminist, believer in choice (and had an abortion in 1966 or so, pre-legal, my choice, married but contraception failure, and didn’t want a child in NOLA, a segregated society, while living there and doing civil rights work and art).
On the blog entry by Carol King:
I could not mentall completely follow her reasoning/writing (read when I was ME/CFS escalated; my severe disabling illness) but got her core support for Kevorkian. I was so bothered, that I have not been back to the site and I do not know if my comment was “moderated” successfully and posted beneath her entry. I was not able to find an email address for her so I could express my shock at what I perceive as ignorance.
I do expect more from feminists. Women are fairly tolerant. It is not a new problem that feminists, like other groups, within the general society, do not perceive disability.
The Womyns Braille Press, a publisher with library, that no longer exists, was a feminist collective of women with disabilities, primarily lesbian oriented, often noted the problem. I published articles in their magazine in the early 1990s and noted that within the disability community, we needed more understanding of other people’s disabilities (it was in re perfume, etc. at meetings but it’s still true in re all disabilities). I rec’d the WBP magazine on audiocassette due to asthma from print. The group no longer exists. The books of poetry on cassette were given to an NLS Library in Florida.
The gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community (some of) seems to be more open to disability than many other “minority” groups. I published in another lesbian mag also, which welcomed “straight”women. (Viz: A show on WBAI in NYC, “Out FM” featured a segment not long ago on ADAPT and the demonstration for long term care at home, with an interview featuring Nadina LaSpina.)
I had been a MS Magazine reader from the beginning until I became print disabled in the early 1980s, and they didn’t have much awareness of disability;still don’t. I only recently discovered MS Blog, which is part of the MS group that is now under a foundation. I am only online 2plus years.
It is sad to keep finding out that so called progressive groups are not so inclusive as I’d have thought “inevitable” by 2010. (I ignore the Right wing, religious groups, and groups that I don’t expect much of – since, as I said, I have to pick my “battles”.) The wonderful, but alas, late “Grandpa” Al Lewis used to say, “I am what I am; I do what I can.”.
(PS my word verification is “hatepro”…!!!)
My stamina is low, so I pick my extended battles carefully.
When I posted my comment on MS Blog Carol King’s article Praising Kevorkian, I was not able to remember the name of his #35, but did after I got offline. I think it was Cullen. I remembered she’d been a nurse in MA. At the time, I was mostly abed,with CFS/ME (#35’s illness also) but followed the story via xerox copies of the unfolding story my spouse got for me. One of the horrifying aspects was that her decision to ask Kevorkian to kill her was allegedly based on “I don’t want to BECOME a burden to my family.” (My capital letters.) Pre-emptive and illogical,if true and by a nurse.
sanda,
we all have to pick our battles, or we will spend all our time flailing out at one thing after another – and sucking every bit of joy and energy out of our lives at the same time.
The person you mention in your second comment was – I believe – Judith Curren. Her husband was a psychiatrist with a domestic violence complaint pending against him.
I am dissappointed that so many people who read and contribute to this blog feel a compelling need to distance themselves from pro-lifers and the so-called “religious right”.
I understand that no one wants to be put in a box and that advocacy against assisted suicide and euthanasia sometimes leads to attempts to do just that. Yes, Carol King and others should recognize that many different factions of people oppose assisted suicide and even within a given faction, such as people with disabilities, the motivations for that opposition may differ strongly.
Having said that, why focus so much attention on factions at all? Doing so just divides people of like mind about an important issue.
For example, I’m a Catholic prolifer who opposes assisted suicide, euthanasia, and “abortion rights”. This background may make me very much like some people with disabilities and very much unlike others.
In an effective movement, however, differences between people are downplayed if the areas of agreement or more important. When a principle and position is well formed, it will usually be the case that people arrive at that position for very different reasons. Is it more important to advocate for the “right reason” or the “right position”? I argue for the latter since there are usually multiple “right reasons”.
I’m not telling anybody what to do or say, but I am just pointing out that there are many people who have a pro-life perspective and strong faith who are much more likely to be supportive than unsupportive of some very important issues that affect the disabled.
Sadder and sadder. Thanks for the correct name of #35. Judith Curren is a perfect example of what was wrong with Kevorkian.
Roger,
I think I understand your frustration (or that may be too strong a word), but turn it around and look at our frustration.
1. For the most part, the concerns and critiques of euthanasia/assisted suicide that come from the disability community are pretty different than those of the political juggernauts on the Religious Right. If we get lumped with them, our arguments and critiques aren’t heard.
2. These issues are supposed to be *about* us. What does it say about people on the right or the left who want to marginalize us and yet say they’re our “friends?” If you really care about “the disabled” or “people with disabilities” then you don’t go around describing yourself as a “disability rights advocate” without telling people they should really be going to the people with disabilities themselves. That’s a standard that holds for both sides of the political spectrum.
3. An added objection to being “lumped in” with the large conservative advocacy groups is that their agenda is all one package – so if you’re “with them” it means people can assume you’re with all of their agenda – anti-abortion, anti gay rights, anti “entitlement” programs, etc. NDY has no position on abortions, but we have GLBT board members – and none of us want to be associated with an anti-gay agenda.
This is a political struggle for people’s lives. Who speaks matters. –Stephen
I knew when I typed the sentence, it could be clearer. I “distance” from rightwing political groups/individuals because I disagree with their ideology. I also “distance” from religious groups because I have no interest in religion:I am a Jewish atheist. Many of my closest friends have been/are religious Catholic, Protestant and one was Born Again. The Born Again Christian was also a black woman artist who was severely disabled, who lived in a small town in IL and died from hospital complications of an illness that’s not supposed to be fatal.
The bottom line is being able to empathize with disabled people and to support my/our right to a good life, which means aids, aides, housing, etc. not benign neglect.
Hmmmm, I just remembered going to visit someone I love in a nursing home run by religious, a few years ago. Great reputation nursing home. I was challenged on leaving (different guard than when I entered): I had to prove I was
not a resident trying to flee. Terrifying experience; luckily, my spouse was pushing my wheelchair.
The nursing home residents who I had observed, who were not involved in a planting in the flower pots exercise worthy of being an activity for children,not adults, were sitting around bored to death.
Stephen’s analysis to Roger was
perfect, as well.
Great article. Thanks for the reference to my blog post.
Knitting Clio,
First, thank you for linking this blog on your own and at Ms magazine.
Second, I could hardly have made the point about the importance of showing respect by listening to what people have to say if I hadn’t linked to you and the other feminist disability bloggers. 😉 –Stephen