Jack Pickard has died. Jack was in his mid-thirties, married with two little boys. Apparently, this was very sudden and unexpected. The news is difficult to comprehend.
I was not close to Jack but he was a friend and someone I've “seen” several times a week for years. He was an entertaining and eclectic blogger – he blogged about current affairs, technology, football, Dr Who, books and philosophy. But to me, the two most notable things about the blogger Jack were his excellent sense of humour and his tremendous sense of fair-play. Inequality, unfairness in any form, from any quarter was anathema to him. And yet he was extremely reasonable in his arguments, never ad hominem, always sincere. His last non-football-related post is a good example.
Jack was a prolific commenter here - many of you will have seen him around. He was a supportive and enthusiastic promoter and participant in Blogging Against Disablism Day, despite being, as he put it, “disability-challenged” (non-disabled).
There's nothing positive to be said about such a death other than it was good to have him around. I feel so very very sorry for his family and close friends to have to lose him so suddenly when he had so much yet to do.
See also Ian Cuddy's post Jack Pickard Remembered and James' We'll miss you Jack
Monday, January 18, 2010
Thursday, January 07, 2010
It's my pavement and I'll cry if I want to
I probably got more distracted by this than I ought to have but it made me cross.
Contrary to a photo caption in this BBC News article, scooters do have an image problem and if they didn't already, articles like this wouldn't help.
Scooter-users are not quite as readily identified as disabled in the same way wheelchair-users are. There are practical as well as social reasons why some people prefer scooters to wheelchairs and vice versa, but since the largest group of scooter-users are older people, and impaired mobility is often seen as an inevitable part of the aging process, scooter-users don't read as disabled in our dominant tragedy and charity models of disability. Accommodation of disabled people hinges on sympathy and compassion, not automatic respect. Old people who have difficulty walking just aren't tragic enough. In fact, they're mildly amusing;
There is only extremely anecdotal evidence of any Mobility Scooter Menace. There are accidents, but then there are lots more accidents involving people on their feet, on bicycles, on rollerskates or skateboards, children in prams and pushchairs. People collide with, trip over and fall down things and other people every day. The article throws in a the odd allegedly and apparently but otherwise presumes the moral liability of scooter-users in each accident they are known to have been involved in, as well as a host of hearsay events:
It may be that there are incompetent scooter-users driving into market stalls and store aisles. Or it could be that having no consideration for people with mobility-impairments, market traders and store workers have piled displays and produce up in walkways, leaving only narrow gaps for people to walk through and insufficient room for a wheelchair, scooter, anyone with crutches or an otherwise wide gait. My wheelchair is not nearly so bulky as a scooter, but even in a supermarket I bump into things because there isn't enough room.
I rarely bump into people, but it is hard work not to. Some pedestrians can be extremely absent-minded, expecting to be able to move about at terrific speeds and suddenly stop or change direction without collision. Quite apart from the fact that such people put themselves at risk, they are a genuine menace to those ambulant disabled people who walk slowly and are vulnerable to being knocked down. They should have to pass a test! If a pedestrian is involved in three accidents, they should have all their shoes and socks confiscated!
Probability dictates that some scooter users are a menace, some will careless and selfish, others will have cognitive and neurological issues which make them unsafe. Giving people the option of a proficiency test isn't a bad idea, but mostly because it is likely to be helpful to them, to help them learn how to use their scooters and to give them greater confidence.
However, articles like these (compared to the same story in the Telegraph, which isn't perfect but a great improvement) are a bit of a filler about nothing that give people with non-disabled privilege a license to moan about disabled people taking up space. They read that grannies are running amok with mobility scooters – even though there's no evidence of a widespread problem – and this is highly satisfying. So they'll be allowed to tut at and patronise scooter-users, blaming them for any accidents and bothering a little less about accessibility because half these people shouldn't be allowed out.
And at the bottom of the page, as well as a lot of daft comments about insurance (wheelchairs and scooters have the same insurance status as bicycles – it's not at all complicated), there are the usual gems such as
BBC News isn't doing great this week. Yesterday there was an article asking whether the quest for the G-spot has helped or hindered womankind, ignoring the five year old remap of clitoris, written by a man. Hmm.
Contrary to a photo caption in this BBC News article, scooters do have an image problem and if they didn't already, articles like this wouldn't help.
Scooter-users are not quite as readily identified as disabled in the same way wheelchair-users are. There are practical as well as social reasons why some people prefer scooters to wheelchairs and vice versa, but since the largest group of scooter-users are older people, and impaired mobility is often seen as an inevitable part of the aging process, scooter-users don't read as disabled in our dominant tragedy and charity models of disability. Accommodation of disabled people hinges on sympathy and compassion, not automatic respect. Old people who have difficulty walking just aren't tragic enough. In fact, they're mildly amusing;
No official statistics exist for the number of accidents involving the scooters, but there are tales from around the country of old ladies steering into shop windows, mobility scooters trundling along motorways and even people driving off railway platforms.Ha ha ha! A number of scooter-users are quoted in the article and having resisted the temptation to detail the tweed and tea-cosy style hats they were probably wearing, the author opts for tirelessly stating each of their ages, to remind us that these are just doddery old folk (starting at age sixty-four - ancient!). Not people who count. Not people who should be assumed to be sensible and responsible or people whose quality of life really matters. So an underemployed MP (no age given) can suggest a “three-strikes and you're out” rule on scooter-users, and it won't occur to anybody that you're talking about threatening the means a person has to leave their houses independently.
There is only extremely anecdotal evidence of any Mobility Scooter Menace. There are accidents, but then there are lots more accidents involving people on their feet, on bicycles, on rollerskates or skateboards, children in prams and pushchairs. People collide with, trip over and fall down things and other people every day. The article throws in a the odd allegedly and apparently but otherwise presumes the moral liability of scooter-users in each accident they are known to have been involved in, as well as a host of hearsay events:
“In the market place if you speak to the traders they will always tell you a tale of their vegetables being knocked over or people being run into by mobility scooter users," says Penny Carpenter, of Norfolk Police. "Some people have even been banned from stores for knocking over aisles."Again, it doesn't say how old the police spokeswoman is, so we'll have to assume she's relatively young, making the voice of secondhand experience more reliable than the firsthand experience of any old dear on a scooter.
It may be that there are incompetent scooter-users driving into market stalls and store aisles. Or it could be that having no consideration for people with mobility-impairments, market traders and store workers have piled displays and produce up in walkways, leaving only narrow gaps for people to walk through and insufficient room for a wheelchair, scooter, anyone with crutches or an otherwise wide gait. My wheelchair is not nearly so bulky as a scooter, but even in a supermarket I bump into things because there isn't enough room.
I rarely bump into people, but it is hard work not to. Some pedestrians can be extremely absent-minded, expecting to be able to move about at terrific speeds and suddenly stop or change direction without collision. Quite apart from the fact that such people put themselves at risk, they are a genuine menace to those ambulant disabled people who walk slowly and are vulnerable to being knocked down. They should have to pass a test! If a pedestrian is involved in three accidents, they should have all their shoes and socks confiscated!
Probability dictates that some scooter users are a menace, some will careless and selfish, others will have cognitive and neurological issues which make them unsafe. Giving people the option of a proficiency test isn't a bad idea, but mostly because it is likely to be helpful to them, to help them learn how to use their scooters and to give them greater confidence.
However, articles like these (compared to the same story in the Telegraph, which isn't perfect but a great improvement) are a bit of a filler about nothing that give people with non-disabled privilege a license to moan about disabled people taking up space. They read that grannies are running amok with mobility scooters – even though there's no evidence of a widespread problem – and this is highly satisfying. So they'll be allowed to tut at and patronise scooter-users, blaming them for any accidents and bothering a little less about accessibility because half these people shouldn't be allowed out.
And at the bottom of the page, as well as a lot of daft comments about insurance (wheelchairs and scooters have the same insurance status as bicycles – it's not at all complicated), there are the usual gems such as
"Mobility scooters should be for those in real need of them, unfortunately this is not always the case."Because it is an act of charity that you allow any scooter-user to share the pavement with you, and it must be a real worry that some of them less than fully deserving. Ideally, they'd have to make an application to each of us in writing. Failing that, we should each be issued with one of those little scanners that Dr McCoy had in Star Trek, so we can tell a person's physical condition as they pass by. Because it really is important, just now we only have sight to go on and some of them don't look nearly as needy as we'd like:
"Most seem to be driven by younger obese people rather than the image portrayed in the article of the elderly using them to get out and about."Because again, tolerating the presence of disabled people in your physical environment is a charitable act and nobody who is young or fat scores enough tragedy points. This has nothing to do with subject of safety, of course, it merely follows the general theme of justifying one's own prejudice and privilege. I did notice that younger scooter users were completely ignored in the article, so intent as it was on that light-hearted ageist spin, but youth doesn't make any difference to how safe or competent a person is. Weight is even less of a factor. Renee wrote about the nonsense around fat folk and scooters just last week.
BBC News isn't doing great this week. Yesterday there was an article asking whether the quest for the G-spot has helped or hindered womankind, ignoring the five year old remap of clitoris, written by a man. Hmm.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas everyone - or anyone!I will be back blogging on something like a regular basis soon, I promise. Just now I am still frantically trying to sew together a Christmas present in time for tomorrow!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Trans Women & Feminism - International Trans Day of Remembrance
Special thanks to Queen Emily who helped me out with some aspects of this post, even though I'm not sure how well I'm currently able to use what I learned from her.
Today is International Trans Day of Remembrance, a day which remembers the horrific number of transgender people who have been murdered because of who they happen to be. Many more transgender people suffer discrimination, harassment and abuse. Transgender people experience the full brunt of homophobia, misogyny and disablist hate and seem to be far more vulnerable to violence than any other global minority.
I'm not sure there can be an adequate response to the roll call of murdered men and women, but for a long time, for various reasons, I have wanted to write about trans women and feminism. Given where my head is and has been lately, I realise I'm not going to do this subject anything close to justice today, but I thought I should give it a go.
Trans women aren't being murdered by cis (non-transgender) feminists, but some mainstream feminists have attempted to wash their hands of trans women, who are among the most vulnerable of our number. By leaving them out, feminism is in danger of losing their contribution as well as failing to support and protect our sisters. Much as I worship the ground she walks on, Germaine Greer is pretty appalling on this subject. She's not the only one, but as by far the highest-profile feminist in the UK, this is big problem. Only this summer, on the fuss about whether runner Caster Semenya was too fast to be a woman, she wrote the following:
So why do some cis feminist insist that trans women are not women? And why does it matter to them so much, when however you understand a person's identity, the problems of transgender people are all about our cultural ideas about gender and sexual inequality?
In my youth, before I'd thought about it for more than two minutes, I imagined the whole concept of transgender was based on a sexist gender binary – the idea that anatomy was destiny and the only way to change your destiny was to change your anatomy (imagining all transgender people did just that, which they don't). Naively, I couldn't imagine anyone else's body could be more ill-fitting as mine seemed to be! I'd also agree with Greer's and other's assertion that a woman is something more than a man without a cock (if that's what anyone was suggesting, which they're not). But if this "something more" is physical, hormonal or genetic, then we're back to only a slight variation on anatomy is destiny.
I'm not at all well read on trans matters, but disability helps me sort this out a little. The only thing disabled people have in common is a social experience. Some of us have other problems, do to do with our bodies or minds. Some of us have conditions which aren't problematic to us but invite differential treatment from others. Some disabled people have no functional difference, but perhaps have a diagnosis which attracts stigma even when there are no symptoms of ill health. Whether a person is disabled or not is not a medical matter, but all about the way society reacts to some physical, mental, sensory or intellectual difference a person has.
This, the social model, ends arguments about who is and is not disabled. When disability is something medical, then there is doubt. What diagnoses count? What if there is no diagnosis? How severely ill or injured must a person be? But that's just daft. And it promotes hierarchies and people – often the most marginalised disabled people - being left out in the cold.
So to woman. As with disability, medical markers are dubious and problematic - sex is a muddle. The only thing feminism should be concerned with is the nature of a person's experience of gender in a sexist society. Do trans women suffer the kind of sexual discrimination familiar to other women? Are trans women, like other women, looked down upon because of their physical, social or sexual deviation from our culture's feminine ideals? Are trans women vulnerable to sexual violence or murder at the hands of men who hate women? Are trans women accused of not being proper women because of social, sexual, reproductive and political choices they make, or because of superficial things about themselves - sexuality, disability, physical apperance - they can't help?
Trans women perhaps have an even greater stake in sexual equality than most cis women, because they typically suffer more than most of us. If there were degrees of womanliness based on negative social experience, trans women would be uberfrauen!
Some cis feminists argue that women are an oppressed group, and nobody can choose to belong to an oppressed group, ergo trans women who started off with (at least some) access to masculine privilege, cannot choose to become women. But of course, this argument merely demonstrates the absence of choice in these matters.
Then there is the argument that women are created by social experience, but trans women didn't get the negative conditioning cis women experienced as children and are therefore not real women. Queen Emily put it very nicely by explaining that it's not a matter of whether or not she had a girlhood, but what kind of girlhood she had. Little boys and little girls might be given slightly different experiences, but we all receive the same gender programming - boys are this, girls are that. If you are a little girl, even if you have a winkle and people treat you like a boy, you still get the message. Even if someone cast a magic spell on any one of us and we woke up as a different gender, we'd have a pretty good idea of what would be expected of us.
I think I can best relate to this when it comes to my bisexuality. I didn't finally work out that this is what I was until my twenties, but I was queer ever since I first fell in love with a girl, aged eleven. Without pointing the finger at me, people around me and society at large made it very clear how they felt about people who deviated from the heterosexual norm and I knew, whatever my exact complaint might be, I deviated. Stephen Fry writes very well about this in Moab is my Washpot, where even at a boarding school where everyone was at it like... rabbits in the absence of lady rabbits, Fry still knew that he was queer and queer was a problem.
If someone comes out of the closet at forty, we don't say, "Sorry mate, but if nobody called you a pouf at school, you just don't count."
And even with disability, getting to fifteen as a non-disabled person didn't mean that I was free from the cultural baggage of disability - on the contrary. There's nothing magic about gender. The only major difference between the childhood of trans and most cis women - apart from possibly the agonies of having long hair combed threw after you had a fight with a gorse bush - is the anatomical stuff. The whole point of feminism (and egalitarian movements in general) is to stop judging one another according to superficial nonsense like what someone has or has once had in their knickers.
Finally, since I do seem to have made this as much about disability as about gender (sorry, head all over the place), a word about gender reassignment treatment. What treatments a transgender person may have and whether these treatments are effective at alleviating mental distress have nothing to do with the authenticity of a person's experience and their value as a human being. The medical side of the transgender experience is nobody's business but individual's and their healthcare worker's.
As long as trans people are treated as badly as they are in wider society, these treatments will remain controversial; many transgender people experience depression, anxiety and remain vulnerable to suicide even after treatment. But this is not surprising. In order to get gender reassignent surgery on the NHS, you need to have a mental illness - not just be trans, but experience clinically significant levels of distress. Depression and anxiety which has built up over a period of years is not instantly cured the minute you take away the source of distress and in the case of these treatments, only one source of distress is being removed (and then rather slowly). Getting treatment doesn't make one immune from discrimination, from relationship problems and social isolation. Even in the UK, trans people are sometimes forced to pay for treatment, which adds massive debt to that mix.
But crucially, even if gender reassignment surgery was a long-winded and intrusive form of homeopathy, it ought not make any different to the way that trans people are treated by the rest of us. No person should be defined by their medical history.
There are far superior and more appropriate posts up about the Day of Remembrance at Questioning Transphobia and the FWD/ Forward blog.
Today is International Trans Day of Remembrance, a day which remembers the horrific number of transgender people who have been murdered because of who they happen to be. Many more transgender people suffer discrimination, harassment and abuse. Transgender people experience the full brunt of homophobia, misogyny and disablist hate and seem to be far more vulnerable to violence than any other global minority.
I'm not sure there can be an adequate response to the roll call of murdered men and women, but for a long time, for various reasons, I have wanted to write about trans women and feminism. Given where my head is and has been lately, I realise I'm not going to do this subject anything close to justice today, but I thought I should give it a go.
Trans women aren't being murdered by cis (non-transgender) feminists, but some mainstream feminists have attempted to wash their hands of trans women, who are among the most vulnerable of our number. By leaving them out, feminism is in danger of losing their contribution as well as failing to support and protect our sisters. Much as I worship the ground she walks on, Germaine Greer is pretty appalling on this subject. She's not the only one, but as by far the highest-profile feminist in the UK, this is big problem. Only this summer, on the fuss about whether runner Caster Semenya was too fast to be a woman, she wrote the following:
Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women's names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn't polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man's delusion that he is female.This is not part of a debate about what sex and gender are – important stuff for feminism. This is just nasty. And all the feminist writings I have ever read which question the authenticity of trans women's feminine gender, also question the legitimacy of trans women's voices and wind up calling them names. These people are disgusting. These people are crazy or just plain funny. In The Whole Woman, Greer, peace be upon her, has a chapter on the subject is entitled Pantomime Dames. Ouch.
So why do some cis feminist insist that trans women are not women? And why does it matter to them so much, when however you understand a person's identity, the problems of transgender people are all about our cultural ideas about gender and sexual inequality?
In my youth, before I'd thought about it for more than two minutes, I imagined the whole concept of transgender was based on a sexist gender binary – the idea that anatomy was destiny and the only way to change your destiny was to change your anatomy (imagining all transgender people did just that, which they don't). Naively, I couldn't imagine anyone else's body could be more ill-fitting as mine seemed to be! I'd also agree with Greer's and other's assertion that a woman is something more than a man without a cock (if that's what anyone was suggesting, which they're not). But if this "something more" is physical, hormonal or genetic, then we're back to only a slight variation on anatomy is destiny.
I'm not at all well read on trans matters, but disability helps me sort this out a little. The only thing disabled people have in common is a social experience. Some of us have other problems, do to do with our bodies or minds. Some of us have conditions which aren't problematic to us but invite differential treatment from others. Some disabled people have no functional difference, but perhaps have a diagnosis which attracts stigma even when there are no symptoms of ill health. Whether a person is disabled or not is not a medical matter, but all about the way society reacts to some physical, mental, sensory or intellectual difference a person has.
This, the social model, ends arguments about who is and is not disabled. When disability is something medical, then there is doubt. What diagnoses count? What if there is no diagnosis? How severely ill or injured must a person be? But that's just daft. And it promotes hierarchies and people – often the most marginalised disabled people - being left out in the cold.
So to woman. As with disability, medical markers are dubious and problematic - sex is a muddle. The only thing feminism should be concerned with is the nature of a person's experience of gender in a sexist society. Do trans women suffer the kind of sexual discrimination familiar to other women? Are trans women, like other women, looked down upon because of their physical, social or sexual deviation from our culture's feminine ideals? Are trans women vulnerable to sexual violence or murder at the hands of men who hate women? Are trans women accused of not being proper women because of social, sexual, reproductive and political choices they make, or because of superficial things about themselves - sexuality, disability, physical apperance - they can't help?
Trans women perhaps have an even greater stake in sexual equality than most cis women, because they typically suffer more than most of us. If there were degrees of womanliness based on negative social experience, trans women would be uberfrauen!
Some cis feminists argue that women are an oppressed group, and nobody can choose to belong to an oppressed group, ergo trans women who started off with (at least some) access to masculine privilege, cannot choose to become women. But of course, this argument merely demonstrates the absence of choice in these matters.
Then there is the argument that women are created by social experience, but trans women didn't get the negative conditioning cis women experienced as children and are therefore not real women. Queen Emily put it very nicely by explaining that it's not a matter of whether or not she had a girlhood, but what kind of girlhood she had. Little boys and little girls might be given slightly different experiences, but we all receive the same gender programming - boys are this, girls are that. If you are a little girl, even if you have a winkle and people treat you like a boy, you still get the message. Even if someone cast a magic spell on any one of us and we woke up as a different gender, we'd have a pretty good idea of what would be expected of us.
I think I can best relate to this when it comes to my bisexuality. I didn't finally work out that this is what I was until my twenties, but I was queer ever since I first fell in love with a girl, aged eleven. Without pointing the finger at me, people around me and society at large made it very clear how they felt about people who deviated from the heterosexual norm and I knew, whatever my exact complaint might be, I deviated. Stephen Fry writes very well about this in Moab is my Washpot, where even at a boarding school where everyone was at it like... rabbits in the absence of lady rabbits, Fry still knew that he was queer and queer was a problem.
If someone comes out of the closet at forty, we don't say, "Sorry mate, but if nobody called you a pouf at school, you just don't count."
And even with disability, getting to fifteen as a non-disabled person didn't mean that I was free from the cultural baggage of disability - on the contrary. There's nothing magic about gender. The only major difference between the childhood of trans and most cis women - apart from possibly the agonies of having long hair combed threw after you had a fight with a gorse bush - is the anatomical stuff. The whole point of feminism (and egalitarian movements in general) is to stop judging one another according to superficial nonsense like what someone has or has once had in their knickers.
Finally, since I do seem to have made this as much about disability as about gender (sorry, head all over the place), a word about gender reassignment treatment. What treatments a transgender person may have and whether these treatments are effective at alleviating mental distress have nothing to do with the authenticity of a person's experience and their value as a human being. The medical side of the transgender experience is nobody's business but individual's and their healthcare worker's.
As long as trans people are treated as badly as they are in wider society, these treatments will remain controversial; many transgender people experience depression, anxiety and remain vulnerable to suicide even after treatment. But this is not surprising. In order to get gender reassignent surgery on the NHS, you need to have a mental illness - not just be trans, but experience clinically significant levels of distress. Depression and anxiety which has built up over a period of years is not instantly cured the minute you take away the source of distress and in the case of these treatments, only one source of distress is being removed (and then rather slowly). Getting treatment doesn't make one immune from discrimination, from relationship problems and social isolation. Even in the UK, trans people are sometimes forced to pay for treatment, which adds massive debt to that mix.
But crucially, even if gender reassignment surgery was a long-winded and intrusive form of homeopathy, it ought not make any different to the way that trans people are treated by the rest of us. No person should be defined by their medical history.
There are far superior and more appropriate posts up about the Day of Remembrance at Questioning Transphobia and the FWD/ Forward blog.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Unfit for Office
This week, there have been rumblings about whether Prime Minister Gordon Brown is taking anti-depressants. Now, I have absolutely no respect for Gordon Brown as a politician - actually, I don't have much respect for Gordon Brown as a person. But it really pisses me off when people use relatively minor health matters to suggest that someone is unfit for office.
So what medical conditions would actually make a difference to someone's ability to lead?
Madness
If Gordon Brown is on anti-depressants, that doesn't point to “psychological flaws” or unfitness. Lots of people take anti-depressants long-term and a huge proportion of us have taken anti-depressants at some point in our lives whilst remaining completely competent in our work. Our most famous (and some say greatest) Prime Minister, Winston Churchill famously experienced "the black dog" of episodic depression, and is often held up as a great stoic.
Depression is not usually a serious long-term mental illness. For some people, it is incapacitating and can effect all aspects of life and relationships. For most people, it is a very unpleasant but relatively mild, short-term condition which need not have a negative impact on work. Someone who is on effective medication may well be free of symptoms.
It has been said that we can't have a Prime Minister with a less than pristine mental health (whatever that looks like) because he has access to the nuclear button. Yet most outrageous irrational acts – murders, rapes, war crimes etc. - are committed by people who have no diagnosable mental illness. We talk about the great tyrants being mad but the evidence for actual illness remains extremely patchy. I'd say it's pretty dangerous giving anyone access to the nuclear button.
Psychosis, when a person has experiences which aren't actually happening, can occur in anyone, triggered by physical illness (such as a virus or hormonal imbalance), a reaction to medication or poison, or an extremely stressful event such as bereavement. People who have had serious mental illnesses like Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder/ Manic Depression for many years will be much better equipped to deal with psychosis than someone who was previously healthy. Such people have ways of coping with hearing voices (and so on) without being compelled by them.
In other words, ruling out people with mental health problems from office is no way to protect ourselves against reckless behaviour on the part of our leaders. It would be as ridiculous as saying that only women should be given positions of authority because we would only expect men to behave aggressively, dress badly and create scandals by sleeping with their secretaries.
Autism Spectrum Disorders
The label of Asperger's Syndrome has attached to Gordon Brown more than once, usually the only evidence being that he lacks charisma and can't do a convincing smile. Last time I looked, neither of these feature on any diagnostic criteria. Last time I looked around me, I saw some fairly charismatic people with autism. Some people have suggested that Hitler had Asperger's Syndrome and whilst you may well criticise him for one or two things, you can't fault the guy on his charisma*.
Author Robert Harris wrote an article in 2006 entitled 'Autistic' brown loses the plot which contained the remarkable (by which I mean awful) disability-as-offensive-metaphor
As with Brown's supposed depression, his supposed Asperger's is seen as a pscyhological flaw. But there is absolutely no reason why someone on the Autistic Spectrum couldn't be Prime Minister, if they were so inclined and otherwise able to do so. Lots of people on the Autistic Spectrum would run a mile at the thought of public office, others would be incapable of standing. But otherwise, why not? It's not like people with Autism or Asperger's are unfeeling robots with human skins - it's not nearly so simple as "an inability to empathise" (see Lindsay's excellent recent post on this). Nor is a leader overburdened with feeling exactly what we need; Blair had an emotional response to every falling leaf and that didn't do us any good.
Cognitive Dysfunction
Friends, I'm so sorry. I can't be your World President because my brain is not up to the job. But nor is my brain up to running for office or performing any of the tasks which would be necessary in order for me to rise to become a serious candidate. If I could, then there'd be no real reason why I couldn't be a leader.
The big danger with cognitive dysfunction is when someone doesn't realise there's a problem. So for example, if someone has dyslexia, they know what they can and can't do and they're not going to make any mistakes because they think they can read better than they can. But if someone has Alzheimer's, there is the danger of forgetting so many things that they become very confused without even realising that they are confused. Which could be confusing.
Towards the end of his second term as Prime Minister, Churchill suffered a stroke which was completely covered up by government. It is said that between this point and the point at which he resigned, he really wasn't up to the job. But that only demonstrates the fact that non-disabled leaders can become disabled leaders. You can't screen out unhealthy candidates because health just isn't reliable.
Terminal/ Life-Endangering Illness and Old Age
Of course, it did all right for the fleet in Battlestar Gallactica. Clearly, if someone is about to die, they're not going to be up for any kind of work. But there is a ridiculous anxiety around leaders who might be ever so slightly more vulnerable to death whilst in office.
The joke (or was it an international nightmare?) around the time of the American elections was that John McCain's age meant he only needed to be standing too close to a balloon when it burst and Sarah Palin could be President. But presidents and primeministers do die in office and this is rarely a cause of political chaos – unless, of course, they were killed with violence.
Often politicians who are supposed to be old are not old in any sense we would apply to other people. We also greatly overestimate what old age is - we imagine that everyone over sixty is vulnerable to memory problems, confusion and physical ill health. Whilst this stuff does increase as we age, none of it is inevitable. Even in your eighties, you are most likely not to have dementia; physical impairments are far more common, but they are just physical. I have met very few people in their sixties or seventies who come across as too old for anything and where they do, this is an entirely psychological phenomena.
Physical Conditions
I have wracked my brains, but I can only think of a few physical issues which would have an impact on one's ability to be Prime Minister. If someone has a very weak immune system or if they have chronic pain which requires strong opiate painkillers, then foreign travel is going to be a problem. Inoculations may be dangerous, exotic disease even more so and some painkillers prescribed in the UK are very seriously prohibited elsewhere in the world. So, another two reasons why I can't be your World President. Never mind.
I'm sure that when more politicians with greater physical impairments do come up, a fuss will be made, but political leadership is simply not a physical role. It is a great annoyance the number of times that critics mention Brown's prosthetic eye and broken jaw. There are far more pertinent ways of criticising the man.
Secrets.
The old (entirely circular) argument against homosexual men in politics, military and the secret services was that homosexual men were particularly vulnerable to blackmail. If a high-ranking politician has a condition of which he or she is ashamed and seeks to cover up, this is a problem. And blackmail isn't the only issue.
Whether or not someone who is dishonest with the public about their health (or the state of their marriage, or any other private matter) is necessarily dishonest with the public about the things that matter, I don't know. But any kind of cover-up takes time and energy, could be a distraction and could lead to revelations which might compromise our leader and thus our country, if they come at a delicate political moment.
With some conditions, secrecy is par for the cause; a person might have an eating disorder or addiction for a long time before they are able to acknowledge the fact to themselves, let alone to other people. Once someone is in recovery, these conditions become much less of a problem. Someone who has had alcoholism, for example, may always identify themselves as an alcoholic, but so long as they are open about the fact and continue to avoid relapse, the condition is not nearly so dangerous. George W. Bush was not a dangerous man to have in the White House because he was a former alcoholic. He was a dangerous man because of his ideas.
Shame.
It is difficult to say whether or not Roosevelt would have been allowed to be President Roosevelt had he been out of the disabled closet, but if that had been possible, disabled people in America and the world would probably be a long away along from where we are today. Politicians who cover up medical conditions and impairments today do a great injustice to members of the electorate with the same conditions and insult the intelligence and tolerance of the rest of us. Same with sexuality.
When David Blunkett said he was “not disabled”, he attempted to dissociate himself from all of us lowly cripples who aren't privileged enough to opt out of the label – people he was happy to talk complete bunkum about whilst in Minister for Work and Pensions. I don't think the American system of having candidates disclose medical records is necessary - by even doing this, there is the implication that the health of a candidate might have some significant impact on their ability to do the job. However, a politician who is evasive or in denial about a medical condition or their disability status is very unlikely to be a political friend to disabled people.
* I don't know why anyone thinks Hitler was an Aspie, but I can't see it myself.
Edit: I'm a little behind with blog-reading so only just read these two posts at Autist's Corner about the accusation that "Republicans are Autistic". It's not the first time entire political movements have been accused of having a mental health or neurodevelopmental condition, of course.
So what medical conditions would actually make a difference to someone's ability to lead?
Madness
If Gordon Brown is on anti-depressants, that doesn't point to “psychological flaws” or unfitness. Lots of people take anti-depressants long-term and a huge proportion of us have taken anti-depressants at some point in our lives whilst remaining completely competent in our work. Our most famous (and some say greatest) Prime Minister, Winston Churchill famously experienced "the black dog" of episodic depression, and is often held up as a great stoic.
Depression is not usually a serious long-term mental illness. For some people, it is incapacitating and can effect all aspects of life and relationships. For most people, it is a very unpleasant but relatively mild, short-term condition which need not have a negative impact on work. Someone who is on effective medication may well be free of symptoms.
It has been said that we can't have a Prime Minister with a less than pristine mental health (whatever that looks like) because he has access to the nuclear button. Yet most outrageous irrational acts – murders, rapes, war crimes etc. - are committed by people who have no diagnosable mental illness. We talk about the great tyrants being mad but the evidence for actual illness remains extremely patchy. I'd say it's pretty dangerous giving anyone access to the nuclear button.
Psychosis, when a person has experiences which aren't actually happening, can occur in anyone, triggered by physical illness (such as a virus or hormonal imbalance), a reaction to medication or poison, or an extremely stressful event such as bereavement. People who have had serious mental illnesses like Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder/ Manic Depression for many years will be much better equipped to deal with psychosis than someone who was previously healthy. Such people have ways of coping with hearing voices (and so on) without being compelled by them.
In other words, ruling out people with mental health problems from office is no way to protect ourselves against reckless behaviour on the part of our leaders. It would be as ridiculous as saying that only women should be given positions of authority because we would only expect men to behave aggressively, dress badly and create scandals by sleeping with their secretaries.
Autism Spectrum Disorders
The label of Asperger's Syndrome has attached to Gordon Brown more than once, usually the only evidence being that he lacks charisma and can't do a convincing smile. Last time I looked, neither of these feature on any diagnostic criteria. Last time I looked around me, I saw some fairly charismatic people with autism. Some people have suggested that Hitler had Asperger's Syndrome and whilst you may well criticise him for one or two things, you can't fault the guy on his charisma*.
Author Robert Harris wrote an article in 2006 entitled 'Autistic' brown loses the plot which contained the remarkable (by which I mean awful) disability-as-offensive-metaphor
The buttoned-up suit, the mouth slightly agape, the physical awkwardness, the alarming smile which seems to appear from nowhere as if a button marked “smile” has been pressed in his head, the nocturnal brooding on imaginary grievances encouraged by a group of chippy cronies — Brown, like Nixon, suffers from a kind of political Asperger’s syndrome. Intellectually brilliant, he sometimes seems socially barely functional: a little bit . . . odd.He goes on to diagnoses him with autism and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and uses nice words like insane and demented. All respect to Robert Harris as a novelist, but this is a nasty article. Could the same rhetoric be used if he had raised questions about the man's race, gender or even sexuality? As for "a little bit ...odd." Not exactly Ciceronian, is it?
As with Brown's supposed depression, his supposed Asperger's is seen as a pscyhological flaw. But there is absolutely no reason why someone on the Autistic Spectrum couldn't be Prime Minister, if they were so inclined and otherwise able to do so. Lots of people on the Autistic Spectrum would run a mile at the thought of public office, others would be incapable of standing. But otherwise, why not? It's not like people with Autism or Asperger's are unfeeling robots with human skins - it's not nearly so simple as "an inability to empathise" (see Lindsay's excellent recent post on this). Nor is a leader overburdened with feeling exactly what we need; Blair had an emotional response to every falling leaf and that didn't do us any good.
Cognitive Dysfunction
Friends, I'm so sorry. I can't be your World President because my brain is not up to the job. But nor is my brain up to running for office or performing any of the tasks which would be necessary in order for me to rise to become a serious candidate. If I could, then there'd be no real reason why I couldn't be a leader.
The big danger with cognitive dysfunction is when someone doesn't realise there's a problem. So for example, if someone has dyslexia, they know what they can and can't do and they're not going to make any mistakes because they think they can read better than they can. But if someone has Alzheimer's, there is the danger of forgetting so many things that they become very confused without even realising that they are confused. Which could be confusing.
Towards the end of his second term as Prime Minister, Churchill suffered a stroke which was completely covered up by government. It is said that between this point and the point at which he resigned, he really wasn't up to the job. But that only demonstrates the fact that non-disabled leaders can become disabled leaders. You can't screen out unhealthy candidates because health just isn't reliable.
Terminal/ Life-Endangering Illness and Old Age
Of course, it did all right for the fleet in Battlestar Gallactica. Clearly, if someone is about to die, they're not going to be up for any kind of work. But there is a ridiculous anxiety around leaders who might be ever so slightly more vulnerable to death whilst in office.
The joke (or was it an international nightmare?) around the time of the American elections was that John McCain's age meant he only needed to be standing too close to a balloon when it burst and Sarah Palin could be President. But presidents and primeministers do die in office and this is rarely a cause of political chaos – unless, of course, they were killed with violence.
Often politicians who are supposed to be old are not old in any sense we would apply to other people. We also greatly overestimate what old age is - we imagine that everyone over sixty is vulnerable to memory problems, confusion and physical ill health. Whilst this stuff does increase as we age, none of it is inevitable. Even in your eighties, you are most likely not to have dementia; physical impairments are far more common, but they are just physical. I have met very few people in their sixties or seventies who come across as too old for anything and where they do, this is an entirely psychological phenomena.
Physical Conditions
I have wracked my brains, but I can only think of a few physical issues which would have an impact on one's ability to be Prime Minister. If someone has a very weak immune system or if they have chronic pain which requires strong opiate painkillers, then foreign travel is going to be a problem. Inoculations may be dangerous, exotic disease even more so and some painkillers prescribed in the UK are very seriously prohibited elsewhere in the world. So, another two reasons why I can't be your World President. Never mind.
I'm sure that when more politicians with greater physical impairments do come up, a fuss will be made, but political leadership is simply not a physical role. It is a great annoyance the number of times that critics mention Brown's prosthetic eye and broken jaw. There are far more pertinent ways of criticising the man.
Secrets.
The old (entirely circular) argument against homosexual men in politics, military and the secret services was that homosexual men were particularly vulnerable to blackmail. If a high-ranking politician has a condition of which he or she is ashamed and seeks to cover up, this is a problem. And blackmail isn't the only issue.
Whether or not someone who is dishonest with the public about their health (or the state of their marriage, or any other private matter) is necessarily dishonest with the public about the things that matter, I don't know. But any kind of cover-up takes time and energy, could be a distraction and could lead to revelations which might compromise our leader and thus our country, if they come at a delicate political moment.
With some conditions, secrecy is par for the cause; a person might have an eating disorder or addiction for a long time before they are able to acknowledge the fact to themselves, let alone to other people. Once someone is in recovery, these conditions become much less of a problem. Someone who has had alcoholism, for example, may always identify themselves as an alcoholic, but so long as they are open about the fact and continue to avoid relapse, the condition is not nearly so dangerous. George W. Bush was not a dangerous man to have in the White House because he was a former alcoholic. He was a dangerous man because of his ideas.
Shame.
It is difficult to say whether or not Roosevelt would have been allowed to be President Roosevelt had he been out of the disabled closet, but if that had been possible, disabled people in America and the world would probably be a long away along from where we are today. Politicians who cover up medical conditions and impairments today do a great injustice to members of the electorate with the same conditions and insult the intelligence and tolerance of the rest of us. Same with sexuality.
When David Blunkett said he was “not disabled”, he attempted to dissociate himself from all of us lowly cripples who aren't privileged enough to opt out of the label – people he was happy to talk complete bunkum about whilst in Minister for Work and Pensions. I don't think the American system of having candidates disclose medical records is necessary - by even doing this, there is the implication that the health of a candidate might have some significant impact on their ability to do the job. However, a politician who is evasive or in denial about a medical condition or their disability status is very unlikely to be a political friend to disabled people.
* I don't know why anyone thinks Hitler was an Aspie, but I can't see it myself.
Edit: I'm a little behind with blog-reading so only just read these two posts at Autist's Corner about the accusation that "Republicans are Autistic". It's not the first time entire political movements have been accused of having a mental health or neurodevelopmental condition, of course.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
This post is brought to you by the numbers 3 and 13
Like much of the blogosphere in August, things are a little quiet around here. My health has been up and down, and when I've not been ill, I've been using my energy to either work on the book or get out to enjoy the sunshine. I've got lots of things I want to blog about, but forgive me if that happens slowly. Thank you all for sticking around.Yesterday was the thirteenth anniversary of my getting sick. I don't mind it too much, I certainly don't mind the anniversary. I just hope that, being a teenager, the Dreaded Lurgy doesn't now try to hook up with other chronic illnesses. I'd be very happy if it throws a tantrum and storms off, but this seems unlikely.
It was also the anniversary of going to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, my finally getting my essential GCSEs (nine years) and of my sister going into labour (three years). So Alexander is three today! I have made him a fire-fighter's uniform, as he is currently obsessed with putting out imaginary fires and rescuing people at the moment. I shall maybe add a picture to this post if someone takes one.
Have not deserted you. Will be back again soon.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Disability and modern-day Nazism?
Last night, disabled activist Liz Crow sat in her wheelchair on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square dressed as a Nazi as part of the One and Another art project. It was a shocking image. Kind of like when Samuel L. Jackson dressed up as a Nazi in The Spirit (a terrible film, memorable only for putting a black man in a Nazi uniform). And then this morning, Nick Dupree shows us Donald Duck as a Nazi! But of course Liz Crow had far more dignity than either.
Liz Crow's brave and startling protest was to commemorate the victims of Aktion T4 and to draw attention to the relevance of those events for disabled people today. She says in the press release available here;
These days the concept of Nazism is a touchstone of hyperbole. My favourite Nazi-related portmanteaus are econazi and feminazi. Environmentalism and feminism having exactly what in common with the far-right? Telling people to change their behaviour, apparently. The first Nazis took away people's freedom of speech, freedom of movement, the right to a private life and in many cases, life itself. These days, exactly the same kinds of people are making us feel ashamed for using plastic bags. Vee have ways of making your recycle und respect vimen!
But calling someone a Nazi is a good way of shutting them up. It's an insult, it turns people off and it silences debate. Nobody is going to engage with you in you compare them to the forces of tyranny and genocide. And clearly that's often way people are after. If nobody you disagree with engages with you, you can pretend that nobody (who isn't an evil Nazi) has any other arguments. I don't believe that of Liz Crow, Clair Lewis and other disabled activists for whom I have the utmost respect, and so I want to challenge their assertion.
The idea that modern disablism and the disablism of the Nazis are connected is not without merit. Personally, I've never heard anyone suggest that disabled people should be killed off but I do occasionally hear or read someone state that disabled people are an economic and social burden to everyone else, and it is imperative for current society and future populations that we abort foetuses which are likely to result in a disabled baby (even if the vast majority of disabled people could not be "screened-out"). But this isn't many people, certainly not most.
I have met, hear or read very many more people who think that disabled people are an economic and social burden but that, out of compassion, we should be looked after. They see reasonable accommodation as an act of charity, state benefits as alms. This causes no end of problems for us and it does leave us in a vulnerable position should the former rhetoric grow stronger. But is this comparable to Nazism?
I have written two lengthy posts on euthanasia if anyone wants to read my ultimately ambivalent views here and here. I'm not making an argument for one side or another here, just asking questions about some questions about the comparison, focusing on the most controversial issues of euthanasia and abortion.
Are the abortion of disabled foetuses and calls for the decriminalisation of assisted suicide driven by the same motives as the Nazi Aktion T4 programme?
As far as abortion is concerned, I'm afraid there is an echo. The individual decisions of pregnant women are always individual, but broader social attitudes are clear. Parents of disabled children (and disabled parents or non-disabled children) report the judgment of others that having their child was somehow irresponsible. Sarah Palin's choice to continue with her pregnancy when her unborn child screened positive for Down Syndrome has been presented both as an act of saintliness and profound selfishness - it was neither. I've written a lot about prevention here and here, but yeah, it's the same old. Don't subject your child to this half-life, don't burden society with this half-person.
But does that mean we shouldn't screen for impairments and we shouldn't allow women to have abortions on those grounds, just because the rhetoric stinks? Does the only way to make disabled people equal involve restricting women's reproductive freedoms? Would it not be better to focus on the creation of a world in which having a disabled child was not seen as a disaster?
Assisted-suicide is quite a different matter. Calls for decriminalisation are driven by ideas around compassion, the relief from tremendous suffering or simply freedom - the freedom for people with severe impairments to make the same self-destructive choices that the rest of us can.
Whether these ideas are misguided is up for debate. Point is, the non-disabled people most vocal about assisted suicide do not so much as imply that this is about disabled people being a burden to others. Tragically, some of the disabled people talking about assisted suicide consider themselves a burden, but that's not really how this argument is popularly made.
Are there similarities between legal assisted suicide as it might exist in the UK, the abortion of disabled foetuses and what the Nazis did to disabled people?
No. There's a very important word here and that's consent.
This was the biggest reason that T4 was ultimately abandoned. The Nazis didn't act with the consent of disabled people's families, let alone the disabled people themselves. There is a tremendous moral difference between an abortion which a woman consents to and a forced sterilisation. There is a similarly enormous difference between assisted suicide and murder. And whilst alas, many Germans could turn a blind eye when the Jewish family down the street disappeared, when it was their child, their parent or their sibling, it could not be born.
Being murdered, or having your reproductive choices violently removed are perhaps the greatest imaginable crimes against your person. Not that everything that may be consented to is necessarily okay, but at least there's some room for debate when there is consent.
And I think it is possible to increase the degree to which a person can give their consent. The more information a person has, the less pressure they are under, the more freedom they really have. Whatever the choice they have to make.
Could assisted-suicide be the first step on a slippery slope towards the persecution and genocide of disabled people?
Slippery slope arguments can be made about any change and are therefore best avoided.
In any case, it is very unlikely. I have plenty to say about the disablism that exists in the world today - as do others - but I still reckon that we're winning the battle. In general, things are better for disabled people in the UK now than they were five years ago, and even better than they were ten years ago. There are increasing reports of disability hate crime in the UK, but that may be because we've only very recently started talking about hate crime towards disabled people. Like any kind of crime against an oppressed group of people, reporting patterns and offending patterns may not completely coincide.
What is a real danger is unintended consequences. In the same way that women report feeling under increased pressure to abort a disabled foetus, there will be some severely ill people who will feel under pressure to opt out – or, perhaps even worse, some people with physical impairments and depression may find that their irrational suicidal thoughts are given some legitimacy by the society in which they live. This is a long way from genocide, but it would still be very very bad news.
The one thing I do feel really strongly about in all this is that there is no moral difference between the suicide of any two people who are not actually dying. The life of a young man who wants to die because he has a spinal injury is no less valuable than that of a young man who wants to die because he failed his exams or broke up with a beloved girlfriend.
But there may be ways of decriminalising assisted-suicide to prevent unnecessary suffering in death and preventing tragedy. If perhaps we think and talk about it for long enough?
Whatever happens, disabled people who consider themselves equal to non-disabled people need to be talking about this stuff and applying a little imagination. These are grey areas of morality; people have abortions or end their lives because they regard their chosen course as the lesser of two evils. I believe that we can and must decide which shade of grey is preferable for everyone, but seeing the matter in black and white missing the point entirely.
Liz Crow's brave and startling protest was to commemorate the victims of Aktion T4 and to draw attention to the relevance of those events for disabled people today. She says in the press release available here;
Today, the development of pre-natal screening and a rush to legal rights for newly disabled people to assisted suicide, show that disabled people’s right to life still needs to be defended. With a rise in hate crime, disabled children still excluded from mainstream schools, and over 340,000 disabled people (more than the population of Cardiff) living in institutions, disabled people still experience those historical values as a daily threat.”Clair Lewis put it even more strongly;
"The values that the Nazis used to justify murdering quarter of million disabled people are just as strong today."Now Nazism is over-rated. Nazism itself has become synonymous with total uncomplicated evil, the worst thing ever. It was, at the very least, a rather complicated evil and hardly the worst thing ever - very many times more people suffered and died in the Atlantic slave trade, for example, because of similarly nationalist and racist ideas.
These days the concept of Nazism is a touchstone of hyperbole. My favourite Nazi-related portmanteaus are econazi and feminazi. Environmentalism and feminism having exactly what in common with the far-right? Telling people to change their behaviour, apparently. The first Nazis took away people's freedom of speech, freedom of movement, the right to a private life and in many cases, life itself. These days, exactly the same kinds of people are making us feel ashamed for using plastic bags. Vee have ways of making your recycle und respect vimen!
But calling someone a Nazi is a good way of shutting them up. It's an insult, it turns people off and it silences debate. Nobody is going to engage with you in you compare them to the forces of tyranny and genocide. And clearly that's often way people are after. If nobody you disagree with engages with you, you can pretend that nobody (who isn't an evil Nazi) has any other arguments. I don't believe that of Liz Crow, Clair Lewis and other disabled activists for whom I have the utmost respect, and so I want to challenge their assertion.
The idea that modern disablism and the disablism of the Nazis are connected is not without merit. Personally, I've never heard anyone suggest that disabled people should be killed off but I do occasionally hear or read someone state that disabled people are an economic and social burden to everyone else, and it is imperative for current society and future populations that we abort foetuses which are likely to result in a disabled baby (even if the vast majority of disabled people could not be "screened-out"). But this isn't many people, certainly not most.
I have met, hear or read very many more people who think that disabled people are an economic and social burden but that, out of compassion, we should be looked after. They see reasonable accommodation as an act of charity, state benefits as alms. This causes no end of problems for us and it does leave us in a vulnerable position should the former rhetoric grow stronger. But is this comparable to Nazism?
I have written two lengthy posts on euthanasia if anyone wants to read my ultimately ambivalent views here and here. I'm not making an argument for one side or another here, just asking questions about some questions about the comparison, focusing on the most controversial issues of euthanasia and abortion.
Are the abortion of disabled foetuses and calls for the decriminalisation of assisted suicide driven by the same motives as the Nazi Aktion T4 programme?
As far as abortion is concerned, I'm afraid there is an echo. The individual decisions of pregnant women are always individual, but broader social attitudes are clear. Parents of disabled children (and disabled parents or non-disabled children) report the judgment of others that having their child was somehow irresponsible. Sarah Palin's choice to continue with her pregnancy when her unborn child screened positive for Down Syndrome has been presented both as an act of saintliness and profound selfishness - it was neither. I've written a lot about prevention here and here, but yeah, it's the same old. Don't subject your child to this half-life, don't burden society with this half-person.
But does that mean we shouldn't screen for impairments and we shouldn't allow women to have abortions on those grounds, just because the rhetoric stinks? Does the only way to make disabled people equal involve restricting women's reproductive freedoms? Would it not be better to focus on the creation of a world in which having a disabled child was not seen as a disaster?
Assisted-suicide is quite a different matter. Calls for decriminalisation are driven by ideas around compassion, the relief from tremendous suffering or simply freedom - the freedom for people with severe impairments to make the same self-destructive choices that the rest of us can.
Whether these ideas are misguided is up for debate. Point is, the non-disabled people most vocal about assisted suicide do not so much as imply that this is about disabled people being a burden to others. Tragically, some of the disabled people talking about assisted suicide consider themselves a burden, but that's not really how this argument is popularly made.
Are there similarities between legal assisted suicide as it might exist in the UK, the abortion of disabled foetuses and what the Nazis did to disabled people?
No. There's a very important word here and that's consent.
This was the biggest reason that T4 was ultimately abandoned. The Nazis didn't act with the consent of disabled people's families, let alone the disabled people themselves. There is a tremendous moral difference between an abortion which a woman consents to and a forced sterilisation. There is a similarly enormous difference between assisted suicide and murder. And whilst alas, many Germans could turn a blind eye when the Jewish family down the street disappeared, when it was their child, their parent or their sibling, it could not be born.
Being murdered, or having your reproductive choices violently removed are perhaps the greatest imaginable crimes against your person. Not that everything that may be consented to is necessarily okay, but at least there's some room for debate when there is consent.
And I think it is possible to increase the degree to which a person can give their consent. The more information a person has, the less pressure they are under, the more freedom they really have. Whatever the choice they have to make.
Could assisted-suicide be the first step on a slippery slope towards the persecution and genocide of disabled people?
Slippery slope arguments can be made about any change and are therefore best avoided.
In any case, it is very unlikely. I have plenty to say about the disablism that exists in the world today - as do others - but I still reckon that we're winning the battle. In general, things are better for disabled people in the UK now than they were five years ago, and even better than they were ten years ago. There are increasing reports of disability hate crime in the UK, but that may be because we've only very recently started talking about hate crime towards disabled people. Like any kind of crime against an oppressed group of people, reporting patterns and offending patterns may not completely coincide.
What is a real danger is unintended consequences. In the same way that women report feeling under increased pressure to abort a disabled foetus, there will be some severely ill people who will feel under pressure to opt out – or, perhaps even worse, some people with physical impairments and depression may find that their irrational suicidal thoughts are given some legitimacy by the society in which they live. This is a long way from genocide, but it would still be very very bad news.
The one thing I do feel really strongly about in all this is that there is no moral difference between the suicide of any two people who are not actually dying. The life of a young man who wants to die because he has a spinal injury is no less valuable than that of a young man who wants to die because he failed his exams or broke up with a beloved girlfriend.
But there may be ways of decriminalising assisted-suicide to prevent unnecessary suffering in death and preventing tragedy. If perhaps we think and talk about it for long enough?
Whatever happens, disabled people who consider themselves equal to non-disabled people need to be talking about this stuff and applying a little imagination. These are grey areas of morality; people have abortions or end their lives because they regard their chosen course as the lesser of two evils. I believe that we can and must decide which shade of grey is preferable for everyone, but seeing the matter in black and white missing the point entirely.
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