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See: "Thanks to capitalism Terri Schiavo had an eating disorder," MIM Notes , February 15, 2004
By a contributor March 21, 2005
The Chicago Tribune reports that President Bu$h signed a bill this morning permitting a federal court to review Florida judge George Greer's order to remove brain-injured Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.(1) Depending on what the federal court decides, it looks like Amerikans may have to keep hearing about Schiavo on the news for some time.
Various individual-rights Liberals who eschew any analysis of the patriarchy are saying that Schiavo should be "allowed" to die because she supposedly consented to it at some point before her brain injury, which was probably caused by what psychologists call "bulimia nervosa." In "Patriarchal society tired of paying Terri Schiavo's medical bills" ), it was pointed out that "for materialists, there is no such thing as carrying out the wishes of a persyn who no longer exists." This is true generally speaking. Decisions should be made on the basis of scientific materialism and proletarian anti-imperialist and feminist morality, not on the basis of liberalism or spiritualism. If a dead persyn's wishes coincide with resisting the imperialist-patriarchy, then those particular wishes should not be ignored.
There is no right to die preventable deaths from patriarchy, just like there is no right to die preventable deaths from imperialist militarism and genocide. It is as simple as that. Encouraging wimmin to exercise their "right to die" is an incitement to patriarchy-caused homicide. The fact that many of those supporting Schiavo's supposed "right to die" have not drawn the connections between her patriarchy-caused bulimia and her present situation is an indictment on its own. It is a sad state of affairs when only MIM, the Associated Press, Off Our Backs and a handful of others are bringing attention to the bulimia and socially-caused violence issues involved in Terri Schiavo's situation--in different ways of course.(2)
MIM is under no illusion about Bu$h's own religious and cultural reasons for keeping Terri Schiavo alive, and indeed there are bigger things going on in the world than one individual's survival: continuing Iraqi deaths from the united $tates-led war for profit and super-profits for instance. However, since the media is paying so much attention to Schiavo, there is a need to increase the truth quotient in public opinion regarding Schiavo's situation. Just because the mainstream media only portrays religious zealots as supporting keeping Schiavo alive does not mean that the religious orientation characterizes every argument in defense of Schiavo's staying alive.
If Terri Schiavo's parents' lawyers were inclined to be feminist legalists (and if the courts were to let them argue in this way), they could argue that Schiavo never consented to dying from gender oppression. This is something that even the "right to die" doctors should be able to understand: even in the liberal ideology, there is a difference between consent and informed consent. Others have made a distinction between consent and informed consent in the context of the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, but not addressed issues relating to gender oppression.
Arguably, Schiavo never consented to being taken off of "life support" after sustaining a patriarchy-caused injury. To put it one way, "would you want to be kept in a vegetative state after a car accident" is a different question from "would you want to be kept in a vegetative state as a result of a patriarchy-caused eating disorder or attempted murder." Clearly, the issue here is not whether Schiavo will be able to recover at some point in the future, but should Schiavo be "allowed" to die from patriarchy even though she is supposedly not consciously suffering now. If Schiavo truly is in a vegetative state, then "allowing" her to die is not really about comforting her, but about comforting those around her.
In an oppressive society, there is really no such thing as letting something happen. Nothing just happens on its own when it comes to people dying from "mental illnesses" that directly relate to the romance culture. To say that Schiavo should be "allowed" to die is to say that something should be allowed to overtake her and destroy her. What this "something" is, is patriarchy, and this needs to be acknowledged.
It is necessary to bring attention to the patriarchal ideology of Terri Schiavo's "right to die" "supporters." The better part of the "right to die" crowd argues only that Schiavo said she would not want to be kept on life support in such a condition, that her expressed wishes should be respected, etc. Although whether she actually indicated any such wish is questionable, there is something to be said for this argument. MIM is not libertarians, but overall MIM would not support the imperialist-patriarchal state's attempts to control people's bodies. However, the other "right to die" speakers are emphasizing that Schiavo's situation is a "private family matter." Some even go as far as to say that it is only her husband who should decide her fate, that Schiavo's other family should be excluded from the decision-making.
The various conservative and liberal Liberals opposing the family to the state, and insisting that Schiavo's situation is a "private family matter" in various ways, are obscuring the power relations within the family. Not everyone in the family grouping has "privacy" or the same amount or kind of privacy. Depending on their position in the age and gender hierarchies, people within the family are able to intrude on each other on a daily basis. For example, parents often view children as property, and parents' consideration of their children's opinions rarely rises above tokenism even in matters relating to taking the children off life support.(3) In this sense, children do not have privacy even in their own bodies, or in relation to the control of their own bodies.
Ignoring children's intelligent opinions about their own medical treatment is not the only issue. People still debate whether likely child abusers should have a say in whether their own infant children should be taken off life support.(4) This is how powerful the notion of the "private family" is: even abusive parents might be able to have in a say in whether their children, in a vegetative state as a clear result of the abuse, live or die. In a society without group oppression, individual adults would not have exclusive say in whether the children they are "caring" for live or die. And males, less likely to die or become ill from eating disorders in patriarchal society today, would not have exclusive say in whether their female partners should be taken off life support.
The majority of wimmin in the Euro-Amerikan nation are net gender oppressors, but this privilege is not spread evenly throughout the white nation, which is why Terri Schiavo is disabled due to patriarchy. Even wimmin in the white oppressor nation are subject to power relations relative to the men. As gender oppressors, female-biology adults in the white oppressor nation are in a better position to control their situation, but even they do not consent to being subordinate within the patriarchal family in the short term. They live in circumstances not of their own making. Nobody can truly consent to dying from patriarchy. Patriarchy creates what looks like consent, but it is not really consent.
Notes:
1. William Neikirk, "Bush signs measure aimed at keeping Schiavo alive," http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/11188463.htm
2. Vickie Chachere, "Eating disorder is 'lost lesson' in Schiavo case," http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/health/11011204.htm
There is some dispute over whether bulimia actually caused Schiavo's injury; some are alleging that Schiavo's husband injured her himself. Either way, we can attribute the cause of Schiavo's brain injury to patriarchy and probably not be wrong.
Ingrid Tischer, "No Guts, Not Glory: Where Are the Feminists on Terri Shiavo?" Off Our Backs 34, no. 1/2 (2004): 49.
"Perhaps most frightening in its absence is evidence raising the specter of past domestic violence. I learned this information from disability rights' media sources. During a week of e-mails from otherwise progressive women's rights organizations about the assault on abortion rights, I have heard nothing about this ongoing assault on the life of a woman who is severely disabled. Not terminal, dying, or on her deathbed. Disabled. I understand the critical difference between dying and disability. Many others do not."
3. "Seen but not Heard : Are we ready to listen to what children have to say about their health?" Berkeley Medical Journal, Spring 1998, http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~issues/spring98/children_rights.html
4. Julie Akiko Gladsjo et al., "Termination of Life Support After Severe Child Abuse: The Role of a Guardian ad Litem," Pediatrics 113, no. 2 (2004): http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/113/2/e141
"Although the parents missed multiple follow-up appointments to meet with the ethics team, they were able to meet with the team on several occasions, and eventually, Infant Jane's parents seemed to comprehend the information about the seriousness of their daughter's condition and the likelihood that she would not improve. The parents made clear statements that they did not want their child to continue in her current state but paradoxically demanded all medical interventions that would prolong her life and refused to consent to any efforts to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments [perhaps because one or both of the parents did not want to be charged with manslaughter or murder, rather than just abuse]."
5. "Right to die: Who should decide?" http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/talking_point/3203921.stm
6. "Revolutionary feminism," http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/gender/