Professional Documents
Culture Documents
the authors contradict this position when they argue, When we adopt an invitational approach and are civil
[emphasis added], the potential for grief and violence is minimized (p. 457). Likewise, they write, Civility . . . can
be understood as an . . . integral component of democracy (p. 457). Based upon historical and contemporary
(e.g., labor; women and people of color; the poor; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT] people).
9=11 climate, moreover, uncivil protestors are equated with terrorists (and terrorists cannot be ascribed any
rationality whatsoever). Bederman (1995) asks whether conforming to mainstream standards of civility replaces
Discourses
of civilization have proven [to be] a slippery slope for those who dream of a more
just society (Bederman, 1995, p. 239). Likewise, Mayo (2002) argues that civility is a form of social
discrimination, for it is predicated on making distinctions that support accepted
practices and values, and entails enacting those distinctions to the detriment of the
purportedly uncivil (p. 82). In other words, we view Bone et al.s argument for invitational civility in
situations of conflict as potentially perpetuating discrimination in the name of
peace. Theorizing resistance to oppression requires attention to both invitation and
confrontation, along with criteria enabling critics to evaluate both modes. Consequently,
we believe it is irresponsible to displace more confrontational models for social change
in favor of a politics of civility that has been proven to leave those already
disempowered in a continued state of conformity, punishment, and/or
silence.
one kind of exclusion with another. This paradox holds except in cases of discourses among equals.
Suicidologists suggest that the incidence of different types of suicidal acts is influenced
by their social and cultural acceptability.111 For example, non-fatal suicidal behaviour is
most acceptable and most common in young women; fatal suicidal behaviour is
most permissible and most frequent in elderly males .112 Med Law Rev (2007) 15 (1): 1 at 24
Overall, fatal (self-inflicted) suicidal behaviour in females is socially less acceptable than fatal suicidal behaviour in
males, and is less common.113 Canetto points to research indicating that this is because
self-inflicted
suicide subverts cultural stereotypes of femininity : women who take their own lives may be
perceived negatively because, by taking ownership of their body and control of their destiny, they challenge the
gender patterns in preferences about assisted death methods revealed by the empirical data. Physician-assisted
suicide is more likely to be chosen by men than by women. Women demonstrate a stronger preference for the more
passive method of euthanasia. Similarly, in the Kevorkian deaths, women strongly preferred the more passive,
structured method of death by lethal injection. The incidence of female self-inflicted suicide compared with the
incidence of female assisted death also supports the explanation. In self-inflicted suicides, the people killing
themselves must assume an active role. The vast majority of these suicides are men. Thus in the United States, for
example, women are less likely to kill themselves than men by a ratio of 1:4.117 This ratio has remained constant
since 1989 and 'is consistent with international patterns, with the exception Med Law Rev (2007) 15 (1): 1 at 25 of
rural China'.118 Yet, as I have outlined in Part II, the incidence of assisted death by women in the Netherlands,
It is clear
that increasing numbers of women decide to die when offered the more passive
options of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide . There is also the observation, noted at the
Oregon and elsewhere is nearly four times that of female self-inflicted suicide in the United States.
beginning of this paper, that the assisted deaths that receive prominent media exposure are predominantly women.
Canetto and Hollenshead point to pro-euthanasia literature that most often uses women as models or case studies
of assisted death.119 Wolf argues: even while we debate physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia rationally,
we may be animated by unacknowledged images that give the practices a certain gendered logic and felt
studies analysed here challenge the notion that women's decisions for
assisted death are unambiguous expressions of autonomy and choice. The decisions
for death of some women could reflect the influence of socio-cultural forces that uphold a
perception of femininity as passive and compliant, a stereotype that reinforces gendered power
differentials. 2. Assisted Death 'Plays Out' Male Dominance and Female Subjugation
correctness.120 The
Women's experience of power imbalance and gender domination could be 'played out' in a clinical relationship and
relationships: where there is a greater perception of a patient's emotional distress and hopelessness, combined
with a doctor's limited psychological training and his or her own difficulty in caring for the patient, the doctor may
be more inclined to hasten the death of the patient.122 Moreover, Miles says that doctors may develop an inflated
confidence in their insights regarding suicidal patients and proceed to the 'unacknowledged medical enabling of
suicidal choices'.123 There was a similar finding in the Australian study: 'an attitude that conveys endorsement of
the wish to hasten death on the part of the doctor may facilitate that stance on the
part of the patient'.124 Miles concludes that there is support for concerns that: a patient's suicidal decision
can at least partly arise in response to a physician's need for release from a painful clinical relationship, rather than
as an independent patient's choice.125 Women's preferences for more structured, passive deaths at the hands of
their physicians could be evidence of gender dynamics at play. Is there a sense that dying in such a way is more
'feminine' and deferential, more befitting of a woman's gender role, and the gender role Med Law Rev (2007) 15
(1): 1 at 27 of her (more often than not) male physician? One commentator has observed that: The fatal attraction
for the women who used the Kevorkian techniques is that it offered them a passive way to end their life with the
approval of a paternalistic figure.126 F. Women have Limited Access to Health Care Canetto and Hollenshead
late-adulthood, the time when decisions about hastened death are most likely to occur, with vastly different
of the care that is given to dying patients, although women who need care tend to receive less assistance from
family members than men, and are more likely to have to pay for assistance even if married Wives are only one
death may be influenced by lack of choice . There are also indications that women have less access
to healthcare than men. For example, a number of studies show that in the US women receive fewer cardiac
treatments and procedures than men and have worse outcomes.130 Women are also more likely than men to Med
Law Rev (2007) 15 (1): 1 at 28 suffer inadequate pain control.131 However, studies also suggest the converse: On
average, women visit physicians more frequently, use more preventative and curative drugs, are more likely to
have a regular doctor and undergo general medical check-ups than men.132 Others argue that low class position
and low income are more determinative of inequalities in health than is gender. One British study demonstrates
that 'structural inequalities in health are equally pronounced for women and men in later life'.133
the international legal system to be as shocking as violence against people for their political ideas, women would
beyond the various public/private barriers is imperative if human rights law "is to have meaning for women
brutalized in less-known theaters of war or in the by-ways of daily life." 63 Because, as currently constructed,
human rights laws can reach only individual perpetrators during times of war, one alternative is to reconsider our
factor is being a woman, and to describe the conditions of our lives as "peace" is to
deny the effect of sexual terrorism on all women. 6 7 Because we are socialized to
think of times of "war" as limited to groups of men fighting over physical territory or
land, we do not immediately consider the possibility of "war" outside this narrow
definition except in a metaphorical sense, such as in the expression "the war against poverty."
However, the physical violence and sex discrimination perpetrated against women
because we are women is hardly metaphorical. Despite the fact that its prevalence makes
the violence seem natural or inevitable, it is profoundly political in both its purpose and its effect.
Further, its exclusion from international human rights law is no accident, but rather part of a
system politically constructed to exclude and silence women. 2 6 The appropriation
of women's sexuality and women's bodies as representative of men's ownership
over women has been central to this "politically constructed reality . 2 6 9 Women's
bodies have become the objects through which dominance and even ownership are
communicated, as well as the objects through which men's honor is attained or
taken away in many cultures.Y Thus, when a man wants to communicate that he is
more powerful than a woman, he may beat her. When a man wants to communicate
that a woman is his to use as he pleases, he may rape her or prostitute her. The
objectification of women is so universal that when one country ruled by men (Serbia)
wants to communicate to another country ruled by men (Bosnia-Herzegovina or Croatia) that
it is superior and more powerful, it rapes, tortures, and prostitutes the "inferior"
country's women. 2 71 The use of the possessive is intentional, for communication
among men through the abuse of women is effective only to the extent that the
group of men to whom the message is sent believes they have some right of
possession over the bodies of the women used. Unless they have some claim of right to what is
taken, no injury is experienced. Of course, regardless of whether a group of men sexually terrorizing a group of
accusation with a "yes." The figure of the feminist killjoy makes sense if we place
her in the context of feminist critiques of happiness, of how happiness is used to
justify social norms as social goods (a social good is what causes happiness, given happiness is
understood as what is good). As Simone de Beauvoir described so astutely " it is always easy to describe
as happy a situation in which one wishes to place [others]."[ 4] Not to agree to stay
in the place of this wish might be to refuse the happiness that is wished for. To be
involved in political activism is thus to be involved in a struggle against happiness.
Even if we are struggling for different things, even if we have different worlds we
want to create, we might share what we come up against. Our activist archives are thus
unhappy archives. Just think of the labor of critique that is behind us: feminist critiques of the figure of "the happy
housewife;" Black critiques of the myth of "the happy slave"; queer critiques of the sentimentalisation of
heterosexuality as "domestic bliss." The struggle over happiness provides the horizon in which political claims are
made. We inherit this horizon.
about things, or could anger be the moment when the bad feelings that circulate through objects get brought to the
The feminist subject "in the room" hence "brings others down"
not only by talking about unhappy topics such as sexism but by exposing how
happiness is sustained by erasing the signs of not getting along. Feminists do kill joy
in a certain sense: they disturb the very fantasy that happiness can be found
in certain places. To kill a fantasy can still kill a feeling. It is not just that feminists
might not be happily affected by what is supposed to cause happiness, but our
failure to be happy is read as sabotaging the happiness of others.We can consider
the relationship between the negativity of the figure of the feminist killjoy and how
certain bodies are "encountered" as being negative. Marilyn Frye argues that oppression
involves the requirement that you show signs of being happy with the situation in
which you find yourself. As she puts it, "it is often a requirement upon oppressed people
that we smile and be cheerful. If we comply, we signify our docility and our
acquiescence in our situation." To be oppressed requires that you show signs of
happiness, as signs of being or having been adjusted. For Frye " anything but the
sunniest countenance exposes us to being perceived as mean, bitter, angry or
dangerous".[6] To be recognized as a feminist is to be assigned to a difficult category
and a category of difficulty. You are "already read" as "not easy to get along with"
when you name yourself as a feminist. You have to show that you are not difficult
through displaying signs of good will and happiness. Frye alludes to such experiences
when she describes how: "this means, at the very least, that we may be found to be
"difficult" or unpleasant to work with, which is enough to cost one's livelihood ."[7] We
surface in a certain way?
can also witness an investment in feminist unhappiness (the myth that feminists kill
joy because they are joy-less). There is a desire to believe that women become
feminists because they are unhappy. This desire functions as a defense of happiness
against feminist critique. This is not to say that feminists might not be unhappy;
becoming a feminist might mean becoming aware of just how much there is to be
unhappy about. Feminist consciousness could be understood as consciousness of
unhappiness, a consciousness made possible by the refusal to turn away. My point here
would be that feminists are read as being unhappy, such that situations of conflict,
violence, and power are read as about the unhappiness of feminists, rather than
being what feminists are unhappy about.Political struggles can takes place over
the causes of unhappiness. We need to give a history to unhappiness. We need
to hear in unhappiness more than the negation of the "un." The history of the word "unhappy"
might teach us about the unhappiness of the history of happiness. In its earliest uses, unhappy meant to cause
We
can learn from the swiftness of translation from causing unhappiness to being
described as unhappy. We must learn.The word "wretched" has its own genealogy,
coming from wretch, meaning a stranger, exile, banished person. Wretched in the sense of
misfortunate or trouble. Only later, did it come to mean to feel misfortunate, in the sense of wretched or sad.
"vile, despicable person" was developed in Old English and is said to reflect "the sorry state of the outcast." Can we
rewrite the history of happiness from the point of view of the wretch? If we listen to those who are cast as wretched,
perhaps their wretchedness would no longer belong to them. The sorrow of the stranger might give us a different
angle on happiness not because it teaches us what it is like or must be like to be a stranger, but because it might
estrange us from the very happiness of the familiar.Phenomenology helps us explore how the familiar is that which
is not revealed. A queer phenomenology shows how the familiar is not revealed to those who can inhabit it. For
To be "estranged
from" can be what enables a "consciousness of ." This is why being a killjoy can
be a knowledge project, a world-making project.
queers and other others the familiar is revealed to you, because you do not inhabit it.
in a rage so uncontrollable that the man (and the audience) can dismiss it as irrational. "I can't talk to you when
you're like this." Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. For a woman in our society is denied the forthright
expression of her healthy anger. Her attempts at physical confrontation seem ridiculous; "ladies" do a slow burn,
A
woman has learned to hold back her anger: It's unseemly, aesthetically displeasing,
and against the sweet, pliant feminine image to be angry. And the woman fears her
own anger: She the great conciliator, the steadier of rocked boats, moves, out of her fear, to quiet
not only others' anger but also her own. Small wonder that when the vacuum-sealed
lid bursts off, the angry woman seems either like a freaked-out nut or a bitch on
wheels. Her frenzy is intensified by the shakiness of her commitment to her own
anger. What if she's really wrong? What if the other person is right? --Or worse (and this is the greatest fear) hits
back with, "You're crazy, I don't know what you're so mad about." Why can't women allow themselves
the outlet of their contained anger? Why do those around them find an angry
woman so frightening that they must demoralize and deflate her into a degraded,
inauthentic calm? Healthy anger says "I'm a person. I have certain human rights which you can't deny. I have
letting out their anger indirectly in catty little phrases, often directed against a third party, especially children.
a right to be treated with fairness and compassion. I have a right to live my life as I see fit, I have a right to get
what I can for myself without hurting you. And if you deprive me of my rights, I'm not going to thank you, I'm going
to you, I won't work with you or be friendly toward you, or else, ultimately, our association is over.) Expressing
anger means risking. Risking that the other person will be angry in return, risking that he or she will misunderstand
you need
strength to say you're angry--both the courage of your convictions and the ability to
accept that your anger may be unwarranted without feeling crushed into
nothingness. You must not have your total worth as a person riding on the worth of
each individual case of anger. Thus anger is self-confident, willing to fight for itself
even at the jeopardy of the status quo, capable of taking a risk and, if necessary, of
accepting defeat without total demise. Above all, ang er is assertive. The traditional
woman is the polar opposite of this description. Lacking confidence in herself and in her own
the anger or refuse to deal with it, risking that the anger itself is misplaced or misinformed. So
perception, she backs away from a fight or, following the rules of chivalry, lets someone else do battle for her.
Strong emotions disturb her for the disruption they bring to things-as-they-are. So shaky is her self-image that every
woman out of her earth mother role as bastion of peace and calm, out of
her familial role as peacemaker, out of her political role as preserver of
the status quo, out of her economic role as cheap labor, out of her social
role as second-class citizen . It takes her out of roles altogether and makes
her a person . It is no accident, then, that the emotion which accompanies the first
steps toward liberation is, for most women, anger. Whatever sense of self-worth you have been
able to emerge with after twenty or thirty years of having your mind messed with, gives you the vague feeling that
your situation is not what it should be and sends you looking tentatively at the world around you for explanations.
Realizations are, at first, halting, and then begin to hit you like a relentless sledge hammer, driving the anger
deeper and deeper into your consciousness with every blow. Your fury focuses on the select group of individuals
who have done you the most damage. You are furious at your parents for having wanted a boy instead; at your
mother (and this fury is mixed with compassion) for having let herself be stifled and having failed to show you
another model of female behavior; at your father for having gotten a cheap bolster to his ego at your and your
mother's expense. You are furious at those who groom you to play your shabby role. At the teachers who demanded
less of you because you were a girl. At the doctors who told you birth control was the woman's responsibility, gave
you a Hobson's choice of dangerous and ineffective devices, then refused you an abortion when these failed to
work. At the psychiatrist who called you frigid because you didn't have vaginal orgasms and who told you you were
neurotic for wanting more than the unpaid, unappreciated role of maid, wet nurse, and occasional lay. At employers
who paid you less and kept you in lousy jobs. At the message from the media which you never understood before:
"You've come a long way, baby" -- down the dead-end, pre-fab street we designed for you. Furious, above all, at
men. For the grocer who has always called you "honey" you now have a stiff, curt "don't call me honey." For the
men on the street who visit their daily indignities on your body, you have a "fuck off," or, if you're brave, a knee in
the right place. For your male friends (and these get fewer and fewer) who are "all for women's lib" you reserve a
cynical eye and a ready put-down. And for your man (if he's still around), a lot of hostile, angry questions. Is he
different from other men? How? And when he fails to prove himself, your rage explodes readily from just beneath
the surface. This is an uncomfortable period to live through.
have a mind and will of its own. Your friends, most of whom disagree with you, find you strident and
difficult. And you become all the more so because of your fear that they are right, that you're crazy after all. You
yourself get tired of this anger--it's exhausting to be furious all the time --which won't
even let you watch a movie or have a conversation in peace. But from your fury, you are gaining strength. The
exercise of your anger gives you a sense of self and of self-worth. And the more this sense increases, the angrier
you become. The two elements run in a dialectic whirlwind, smashing idols and myths all around them. You see,
too, that you can get angry and it doesn't kill people, they don't kill you, the world doesn't fall apart. Then this
anger, burning white hot against the outside world, suddenly veers around and turns its flame toward you. Sure,
they fucked you up and over, sure, they oppressed you, sure they continue to degrade and use you. But--why did
you let it happen? Why do you continue to let it happen? All of a sudden you are up against the part you played in
of anger turned inward is terrifying. You are alone with your own failed responsibilities toward yourself, however
much you can still blame others. It is this phase that some women find unbearable and flee from, returning to the
first phase of anger or dropping out altogether.
Because this inturned anger demands action-change--and won't let go until its demands begin to be satisfied. You can fall back
on your inability to control others and their behavior toward you. But you can't
comfortably claim powerlessness over your own conduct. Nor can you, at least for long, go on
being furious at others (the forty-five-year-old who still blames mommy, flounders) if you don't even try to get
make personal changes but to deal with the world outside as well. You can mobilize your anger to warn those
around you that you're not having any more bullshit, to underscore your seriousness, to dare to drive your point
home. Through the exercise of your anger, as you see its efficacy and thus your own, you gain strength. And the
growing feeling that you control your anger and not vice versa adds to this strength. As you gain this control,
become surer of yourself, less afraid of being told you're crazy, your anger is less enraged and, in a sense, calmer.
So it becomes discriminating. You reserve it for those individuals and groups who are messing with your mind--be
can start to move together to create new social forms and structures in which individual changes can come to
fruition.
personal to the political and becomes a force for shaping our new destiny.
solidarity is hardly exhaustive. As feminists we have our own tables. If we are unseated by the family table, it does
not necessarily follow that we are seated together. We
generate it, we can more genuinely encounter each other and more extensively
acknowledge each other's needs, class position, and specific form of oppression.
If we
do not understand the unique social conditions shaping our sisters' rage, we run the risk of divisiveness, of fragmenting our
potential solidarity. Such mutual understanding of the different structures behind different women's anger is the precondition of our
finding a way to work together toward common goals. I think a lot about the phenomenon of the colonized mind. Everything that I
am and want has been shaped within a social process marked by male dominance and female submission. How can women come to
understand and collectively attack this sexist social order? We all face, and in various ways incorporate into ourselves, sexist
representations, sexist modes of thought. Institutionally, such representations are propagated throughout culture, law, medicine,
education, and so on. All families come up against and are socially measured by sexist concepts of what is "natural"--that is, the
"natural" roles of mother, children, or the family as a whole. Of particular concern to me is the fact that I have lived with a man for
fifteen years while I acutely understand the degree to which heterosexuality itself is socially constructed as sexist. That is, I love
someone who has more social privilege than me, and he has that privilege because he is male. As an institution, heterosexuality
projects relations of dominance and submission, and it leads to the consequent devaluation of women because of their sex. The
institution of heterosexuality is the central shaping factor of many different social practices at many different levels--which range,
for example, from the dependence of the mass media on manipulating sexuality to the division of labor, the split between the public
and private spheres, and the relations of production under capitalism. Most painfully for women, heterosexuality is a major, a social
and psychological mode of organizing, generating, focusing, and institutionalizing desire, both men's and women's. Literally, I am
wedded to my own oppression. Furthermore, the very body of woman is not her own--it has been constructed by medicine, the law,
visual culture, fashion, her mother, her household tasks, her reproductive capacity, and what Ti-Grace Atkinson has called "the
institution of sexual intercourse." When I look in the mirror, I see my flaws; I evaluate the show I put on to others. How do I break
through representations of the female body and gain a more just representation of my body for and of myself? My social interactions
are shaped by nonverbal conventions which we all have learned unconsciously and which are, as it were, the glue of social life. As
Nancy Henley describes it in Body Politics, women's nonverbal language is characterized by shrinking, by taking up as little space as
of oppression so as to arrive at a collective, shared awareness of these aspects of women's lives. We also need to understand how
we can and already do break through barriers between us. In our personal relations, we often overcome inequalities between us and
establish intimacy. Originally, within the women's movement we approached the task of coming together both personally and
politically through the strategy of the consciousness-raising group, where to articulate our experience as women itself became a
collective, transformative experience. But these groups were often composed mostly of middle-class women, sometimes
predominantly young, straight, single, and white. Now we need to think more clearly and theoretically about strategies for
negotiating the very real power differences between us. It is not so impossible. Parents do this with children, and vice versa; lovers
deal with inequalities all the time. The aged want to be in communion with the young, and third-world women have constantly
extended themselves to their white sisters. However, when women come together in spite of power differences among them, they
feel anxiety and perhaps openly express previously suppressed hostility. Most likely, such a coming together happens when women
Women's rage is most often seen in the narratives that surround us. For example: Classically, Medea killed her children because she was betrayed by their
father. Now, reverse-slasher movies let the raped woman pick up the gun and kill the male attacker. It is a similar posture of dead end vengeance. The
news showed Patty Hearst standing in a bank with a gun embodying that manufactured concept "terrorist," and then we saw her marrying her FBI
bodyguard long after her comrades went up in flames. In melodrama and film noir, as well as in pornography, women's anger is most commonly depicted
through displacement onto images of female insanity or perversity, often onto a grotesque, fearful parody of lesbianism. These displacements allow
reference to and masking of individual women's rage, and that masked rage is rarely collectively expressed by women or even fully felt. We have relatively
few expressions of women's authentic rage even in women's art. Often on the news we will see a pained expression of injustice or the exploitative use of
an image of a third- world woman's grief. Such images are manipulated purely for emotional effect without giving analysis or context. Some great feminist
writers and speakers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Tubman have provided models by which we can
understand ourselves, but too often the very concept of "heroine" means that we hold up these women and their capacity for angry self-expression as the
exception rather than the rule. In Illinois, women chained themselves together in the state house when it was clear that the ERA would not pass; the
women sought to express our collective anger at our legislators' cowardice and to do so in a conspicuous, public way. But actions such as these often have
little effect beyond their own time span. We need to think beyond such forms to more socially effective ones. It is a task open to all our creativity and skill-to tap our anger as a source of energy and to focus it aesthetically and politically. We may have to combine images of anger with something else--say,
images of how women can construct the collectivity as a whole. It is here that, by their example, our third-world sisters have often taken the lead. Rosa
Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus, Harriet Tubman leading slaves to the North, an Angolan mother in uniform carrying a baby and a rifle, a
Vietnamese farmer tilling and defending her land, Nicaraguan women in their block committees turning in wife abusers to the police--these images let us
see that women can gain more for themselves than merely negating the bad that exists. And it is in their constant need to attack both sexism and racism,
as well as poverty and imperialist aggression, that third-world feminists now make us all see much more clearly both the urgent need for and the
Until the women who experience this violence are freed they wont
have access to decision making, politics etc. - Aggressive resistant
strategies enable women to confront their imprisoned state
Law, 2010 Victoria is an anti-prison activist. New Politics. Nor Meekly Serve Her
Time: Riots and Resistance in Womens Prisons
http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/fromthearchives?nid=174
Anti-prison activist Victoria Law offers this history of uprisings and organizing by
women prisoners. They demanded education and service programs, and fought
brutal prison policies. She closes by offering ways we can support the struggle by
women inside. Originally published in New Politics, Winter 2010. Reprinted with
permission of the author. IN 1974, WOMEN IMPRISONED at New Yorks maximumsecurity prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion.
Prisoner organizer Carol Crooks had filed a lawsuit challenging the prisons practice
of placing women in segregation without a hearing or 24-hour notice of charges. In
July, a court had ruled in her favor. In August, guards retaliated by brutally beating
Crooks and placing her in segregation without a hearing. The women protested,
fighting off guards, taking over several sections of the prison, and holding seven
staff members hostage for two and a half hours. Male state troopers and (male)
guards from mens prisons were brought in to suppress the uprising, resulting in
twenty-five women being injured. In the aftermath, twenty-four women were
transferred to the Matteawan Complex for the Criminally Insane. Three years earlier,
male prisoners in Attica, New York, captured headlines nationwide when they took
over the prison for four days demanding better living and working conditions. The
governor ordered the National Guard to retake the prison; 54 people (prisoners and
guards) were killed. The rebellion catapulted prison issues into public awareness,
becoming the symbol of prisoner organizing. In contrast, the August Rebellion is
virtually forgotten today, leading to the widespread belief that women prisoners do
not organize or resist. Women prisoners have always resisted. When imprisoned in
male penitentiaries and work camps, they refused to obey the rules. When states
began housing them in separate facilities, they protested substandard conditions,
sometimes violently. In 1835, New York State opened its first prison for women. The
environment was so terrible that the women rioted, attacking and tearing the
clothes off the prison matron and physically chasing away other officials with
wooden food tubs.[1] A century later, women continued to protest horrifying prison
conditions: In 1975, women imprisoned in North Carolina held a sit-down
demonstration demanding better medical care, improved counseling services, and
the closing of the prison laundry. When prison guards attempted to end the protest
by herding them into the gymnasium and beating them, the women fought
back.////// Using volleyball net poles, chunks of concrete, and hoe handles, they
drove the guards out of the prison. Their rebellion was quashed only after the state
called in over one hundred guards from other prisons.[2] Some instances of
resistance remain little known outside the prison. Former political prisoner Rita Bo
Brown recounts that women imprisoned in Nevada took action against the prisons
psychiatrist who had been pushing psychotropic medication, even to women who
did not need it. One woman died as a result. Her death unleashed the womens
anger. The next time the psychiatrist visited the prison, the women threw chairs,
tables, and anything they could lift, driving him not only off-premises but also off
the job. Not only was the psychiatrist replaced (with the prisons first woman
psychiatrist who did not share her predecessors enthusiasm for drugging patients),
but so were the prisons doctor, warden, assistant warden, and other higher-ups in
the prison administration. The womens action did not make the news. Brown
learned of it only after arriving at the prison itself two months later. Former political
prisoner Laura Whitehorn also recounted tales of resistance that, were she not
outside telling them, would have remained buried behind prison walls. When she
first arrived at the Baltimore City Jail in 1985, she quickly learned that she would
have to fight for her rights, even those she was entitled to under jail regulations,
state law, and the constitution. As a white middle-class woman, I really hate
waiting on lines. I didnt want to. But I had to learn the difference between making
that an issue, which no one else there thought was the big issue, and fighting for
things that were really important to people. And taking leadership from the women
who knew better than I did what was important to resist. She recounted that, like
many other jails and prisons, the food was almost inedible. We had been hoping
that at Thanksgiving, we would get a piece of turkey, something that was decent,
she recounted. Come Thanksgiving, they [the guards and administration] hand out
these, I dont know, they were dinosaur legs! You could break a window with them.
And, in this prison, when you come in and you had dentures, they would take your
teeth away. So most of the women didnt have teeth. I couldnt eat them with my
big choppers and other women couldnt either. We were all furious. We marched out
and we threw them all in the garbage and walked out. That was the first little bit of
resistance around this issue. So me, with my Were going to make a revolution
Case
PAS disproportionally targets women lack of healthcare,
longer lifespan, and depression means that physicians apply
cultural stereotypes to women and encourage death as a
treatment.
Susan Wolf 1996 (Susan wolf 1996, Susan Wolf, JD, McKnight Presidential
Professor of Law for Medicine & Public Policy at the University of Minnesota,
"Gender, Feminism, and Death: Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,"
Feminism and Bioethics)
Women in America still live in a society marred by sexism, a society that particularly
disvalues women with illness, disability, or merely advanced age. It would be hard
to explain if health care, suicide, and fundamental dimensions of American society
showed marked differences by gender, but gender suddenly dropped out of the
equation when people became desperate enough to seek a physician's help in
ending their lives... Gender differences may translate into women seeking
physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia for somewhat different reasons than men.
Problems we know to be correlated with gender--difficulty getting good medical care
generally, poor pain relief, a higher incidence of depression, and a higher rate of
poverty--may figure more prominently in women's motivation. Society's
persisting sexism may figure as well. And the long history of valorizing
women's self-sacrifice may be expressed in women's requesting assisted suicide or
euthanasia... To institute physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia at this point in
this country--in which many millions are denied the resources to cope with serious
illness, in which pain relief and palliative care are by all accounts woefully
mishandled, and in which we have a long way to go to make proclaimed rights to
refuse life-sustaining treatment and to use advance directives working realities in
clinical settings--seems, at the very least, to be premature... Against those
background conditions, legitimating the practices is more than just premature. It is
a danger to women. Those background conditions pose special problems for
them. Women in this country are differentially poorer, more likely to be either
uninsured or on government entitlement programs, more likely to be alone in their
old age, and more susceptible to depression. Those facts alone would spell danger.
But when you combine them with the long (indeed, ancient) history of legitimating
the sacrifice and self-sacrifice of women, the danger intensifies . That history
suggests that a woman requesting assisted suicide or euthanasia is likely to be seen
as doing the 'right' thing. She will fit into unspoken cultural stereotypes. She
may even be valorized for appropriate feminine self-sacrificing behavior, such as
sparing her family further burden or the sight of an unaesthetic deterioration. Thus
she may be subtly encouraged to seek death. At the least, her physician may
have a difficult time seeing past the legitimating stereotypes and valorization to
explore what is relaly going on with this particular patient, why she is so desperate,
and what can be done about it."