NDY Discussed at “Bisexuality Across Cultures Event” – the Message AND the Messenger Matter!

I was at a conference last week and will be writing about that later today. In the meantime, I wanted to share a few excerpts from Indybay.org, about a “Bisexuality Across Cultures” event held on May 27th.

Assisted suicide, euthanasia and NDY came up in this event. Here’s the intro:

The Bisexual Forum of San Diego County hosted an event May 27 called “Bisexuality Across Cultures” that highlighted self-identified Bisexuals from Europe, Mexico and the community of people with disabilities. They compared notes and found that Americans have a much more rigid concept of “sexual orientation” than people in other countries, and Bisexuals with disabilities face the disinclination of many Americans to believe that people with disabilities have sex lives at all. The speaker representing people with disabilities spoke of a “hierarchy of discrimination” in which people of color are more privileged than Queer people, who in turn are more privileged than people with disabilities, and also attacked so-called “assisted suicide” laws for devaluing the lives of people with disabilities.

Incredible quote from Bisexual Forum board member Jennifer Wrestle at the end of this particular part of her discussion of the “hierarchy of discrimination.”:

Restle discussed her own situation as a blind Bisexual woman and said there’s what she called “a hierarchy of discrimination,” in which some groups victimized by discrimination are nonetheless more socially privileged than others. According to Restle, racial and ethnic minorities are at the top of the hierarchy of discrimination; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people are in the middle and people with disabilities are at the bottom. To prove her point, she noted that people frequently say they’d “rather be dead” than have to live with being disabled, “so in a way we’re even below dead people.” (emphasis added.)

Finally, the end of the article is devoted to Restle’s comments on assisted suicide, euthanasia and NDY:

The conversation took an unusual turn when Restle was asked about the suicide rate among Queer disabled people — and her answer tapped into the whole controversy over euthanasia and assisted suicide. This debate is usually presented similarly to the contest over abortion — between support for people’s “right to choose” and opposition based on a “pro-life” religious or moral commitment — but, as Restle explained, many people with disabilities fear the legalization of assisted suicide because “a lot of people encourage us to kill ourselves.” She mentioned that within the disability community there’s an organization called Not Dead Yet, which mobilizes against laws allowing assisted suicide because they fear such laws will be used to pressure people with disabilities into believing they have, not a “right,” but a duty to die to spare taxpayers and society as a whole the costs of taking care of them.

I have no doubt that Restle was able to make a dent in the assumptions and biases in her audience that assisted suicide and euthanasia are thornier issues than simply matters of “choice” and “compassion.” To the extent that she reached people in her audience, it was because she was the right messenger. She is a member of the LGBT community talking to an audience from that same shared community. Who else would they listen to? A member of an organization that poured money into Proposition 8 to end the right for Gays and Lesbians to marry in California? A straight member of the disability community?

Nope. To the extent that Restle’s message reached people it was because she was the right messenger carrying this particular message to this particular audience.

And btw, I urge people to read the entire article. The panel participants had some interesting insights to share about cultural variations in how bisexuality is viewed. Restle had more comments about the hierarchy of discrimination in addition to what I’ve shared here.
–Stephen Drake