March » 2010 » Danine N. Spencer

The Pope Needs to Resign

This weekend, I opened my Huffington Post app on my iPod Touch, only to find a headline about how Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican ignored over 200 Deaf boys who were being sexually abused at a school here in Wisconsin. The HuffPost headline linked to a much longer exposé in the New York Times.

As I took in the first few paragraphs, I gasped and became nauseous. I was speechless. How could such a horrific thing happen here, in Wisconsin? How could it happen to people like me – deaf and hearing impaired students? How could one of our priests betray the trust and FAITH of hundreds of his students?

I was heartened that my current bishop, Bishop Fliss, and the former Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee had tried to seek justice for “Father” Murphy’s victims. (Referring to him as “father” just gives me the creeps.)

Still, it appears the buck stops with then-Cardinal Jospeh Ratzinger. When Bishop Fliss tried to hold disciplinary hearings for Murphy, they were shut down by Ratzinger’s deputy after Murphy wrote to the future Pope, pleading his case. Murphy lived out the rest of his life here in the Northwoids, free to work with children and abuse whomever he chooses.

The Pope needs to resign. I don’t care if it has never been done before. The Vatican lawyers can re-write canonical law. Rules are meant to be broken, er, re-written. Since the scandal broke last week, the Vatican has chalked it up to rumors and a “smear campaign” designed to make the Pope look bad.

No, no and a Big, Fat NO.

This isn’t a little sex scandal, like, say, spending $2000 at a strip club. Sex abuse, child molestation and pedophelia by our priests is one of the gravest sins I can possibly imagine. This should have been dealt with decades ago. The perpetrators should have been rooted out and hunted down like dogs. Instead, the Church hierarchy has continued to cover this up and deny, deny, deny.

Apparently, Pope Benedict XVI is the worst of all of them. If he, the head of the Church, refuses to acknowledge his culpability in this horrific crime against hundreds of children, how can we as a Church clean this mess up? How can we as a Church survive?

Women's (Disability) History Month: Barbara Jordan

Barbara Jordan, the former congresswoman from Texas, was born and raised in Houston, Texas. After graduating from Texas Southern University, she attended law school at Boston University before returning to Houston. In 1966, she became the first African-American woman to serve in the Texas state senate, where she did until her election to the U.S. House Representatives in 1972. At the time, Jordan was the first African-American woman from a southern state to serve in Congress. She quickly made a name for herself on the national stage by securing a seat on the Judiciary Committee and is most famous for her impassioned defense of the Constitution during Richard Nixon’s impeachment.

In the 1973, Jordan was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She began walking with a cane and eventually progressed to a wheelchair. She left Congress in January 1979 and returned to Texas as a full professor at the University of Texas. Jordan continued to be involved in politics and among other things, she spoke at the 1988 and 1992 Democratic National Conventions. Many people found it shocking that:

Her 1992 keynote address was delivered from a wheelchair while she was in the midst of a lengthy battle with multiple sclerosis.

While her congressional biographies say, “She never married and carefully guarded her private life”, she supposedlyhad “a longtime companion”, Nancy Earl. Barbara Jordan died from complications of pneumonia and leukemia on January 17, 1996.

About.com: Women’s History-Barbara Jordan

U.S. Congress: Barbara Jordan

Black Americans in Congress: Barbara Jordan

Photo credit: Library of Congress

Why We Fear 'the Disabled'

Yes, I know ‘the disabled’ is a loaded term. That’s why I used it.

Last week, I read Disability (Key Concepts) by Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer, a very quick and very good survey of current disability theory. Reading this book, along with Paul K. Longmore’s Why I Burned My Book And Other Essays on Disability, is just the start of my exploration into the field to disability studies. Still, in a chapter entitled “Culture, Media and Representation”, Barnes and Mercer provide one of the best explanations for why illness and disability is so stigmatized that I’ve ever heard.

Quoting feminist Jenny Morris, Barnes and Mercer write:

Most typically, then, Western cultures identify and mark out certain people as ‘different’ or ‘Other’ – particularly those perceived as having flawed or ugly bodies.

Our disability frightens people. They don’t want to think that is something which could happen to them. So we become separated from our common humanity, treated as fundamentally different and alien. Having put up clear barriers between us and them, non- disabled people further they hide their fear and discomfort by turning us into objects of pity, comforting themselves by their own kindness and generosity. (Morris 1991: 192)

Kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

Works Cited
Barnes, C. and Mercer, G. 2003: Disability. Cambridge: Polity Press. 92
Morris, J. 1991: Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability. London: Women’s Press.

Women's (Disability) History Month: Helene Melanie Lebel

In addition to Jews, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals and transsexuals, the Nazis also persecuted people with disabilities. In 1933, Adolf Hitler enacted the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, which was intended to eliminate “the unfit” from the German race. This law called for the sterilization of all persons with possibly hereditary conditions including mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. Within a few years, the Third Reich decided that forced sterilization was not enough to get rid of their “biological enemies”. Hence, the T-4 Euthanasia Program was enacted, in which people with disabilities and mental illness were systematically murdered.

Helene Melanie Lebel was one of those people.

Helene was born on September 15, 1911, in Vienna, Austria, to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, who later died in World War I. At 19 years old, Helene began showing signs of schizophrenia. By 1935, her symptoms worsened and she was admitted to Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna.

In 1938, the Germans annexed Austria to Germany. Two years later, Helene was still being held at Steinhof even though her condition had improved. Although her family was led to believe she would soon be released, the Nazis had lied:

In fact, Helene was transferred to a converted prison in Brandenburg, Germany, where she was undressed, subjected to a physical examination, and then led into a shower room.

Helene was one of 9,772 persons gassed that year in the Brandenburg “Euthanasia” center. She was officially listed as dying in her room of “acute schizophrenic excitement.

It is estimated that 270,000 people with disabilities died during the 1930s and 1940s at the hands of the Nazi regime. (1)

Read more about Helene Melanie Lebel’s life and death or click on the links above.

Additional Works Cited (But Not Linked To Above)
Barnes, C. and Mercer, G. 2003: Disability. Cambridge: Polity Press. 32-33

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The GOP's Latest Attack on Women

Earlier today, the Senate HELP (Health Education Labor Pension) committee held a hearing on the vital need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) proclaimed in his opening remarks:

A study released last year found that if you factor in observable choices such as part time work, seniority and occupational choice, the pay gap stands between 5 to 7 percent. I believe the best way to address that gap is by encouraging women to enter higher earning fields.

The career choices we all make impact our earnings, and data shows that women are more likely to select fields that pay less. There are many reasons one might make such a choice, including schedule flexibility, job security and the quality of fringe benefits such as health, retirement and childcare. I, for one, would never question the logic of making such a tradeoff. In fact, economists have noted that the current economic downturn has had a harsher effect in traditionally male occupations and the unemployment rate for men has been a full 2 percentage points above that for women throughout the recession.

Yet, to the extent that women may not enter traditionally male fields precisely because they have been traditionally male, they may not be earning to their full potential.

In other words, there really isn’t a wage gap and, if there is, it’s women’s own fault because we have chosen the wrong careers, opted to work part-time or flexible schedules, or had the audacity to take advantage of our well-earned employee benefits. What was the most incredible about Sen. Enzi’s statement that if women just made different career choices they could make as much money as men. While he backed up his words with a concrete plan of action to help more women get job training for predominately male-dominated fields, Sen. Enzi is mistaken if he thinks it is that simple.

Today, in 2010, a woman can get training and become an on-the-road (OTR) truck driver, welder or electrical engineer. However, her grandmother could not have tried to get a job at a construction site in 1920. She would have been laughed at and told to go work at a diner, where she would have earned a tiny fraction of the construction worker’s wages. Likewise, a woman in the 1950s could not have gotten a job as a plumber. She, too, would have been laughed at and told to go a clerk in a grocery store. Even today, there are countless families in which the husband works in construction, manufacturing, plumbing, engineering, medicine, information technology, education (and on and on and on) and the wife works at Wal-Mart. It happens every single day.

Both the husband and wife work 40 hours a week (or more). They both work hard at their jobs. One just happens to earn a heck of a lot more money.

That, my friends, is what you call a wage gap. It hurts real women, men and families – even in Wyoming, Sen. Enzi.

National Women's (Disability) History Month: Alicia Alonso

Alicia Alonso is a Cuban prima ballerina and choreographer, best known for her portrayals of Gisele and Carmen. She was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1921 and began dancing at an early age, first in Havana at the Ballet School of the Pro-Art Musical Society in 1931. After marrying Fernando Alonso, they moved to New York City where Alicia studied with Anatole Vilzak and Ludmilla Shollar at the School of American Ballet. During this time, she also studied with Vera Volkova in London.

In 1938, Alonso made her Broadway debut in the musicals Great Lady in 1938 and Stars in Your Eyes in 1939. Early in her career, probably about the time, Alonso began experiencing problems with her vision and became partially blind. She continued to dance, by adapting to her impairment:

Her partners always had to be in the exact place she expected them to be, and she used lights in different parts of the stage to guide her. Her handicap was totally unnoticed by the audiences.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Alonso danced in New York, London, Paris, Havana, Russia and Monte Carlo. She is most famous for her iconic portrayal of Giselle in 1943.

Alonso founded the Alicia Alonso Ballet in 1948 in Havana which later became the Cuban National Ballet. After Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, Alonso returned to Cuba permanently and became director of the Cuban National Ballet, a position she holds to this day.

Watch Alicia Alonso performing Giselle with Vladimir Vasiliev and Ballet Nacional de Cuba (1981?)

Learn more about Alicia Alonso::

Photo credit: Library of Congress

Women's (Disability) History Month: Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in 1819 in Dorchester County, Maryland. When she was six years old, she was sent to work; first as a weaver, then as a house slave. Seven years later, Tubman was sent to work in the fields.

Tubman had always subjected to whippings and beatings, but at age 12, she suffered an injury that would affect her for the rest of her life. Tubman was defending another slave who was attempting to escape when a white overseer struck her in the head with a 2 pound weight. Most biographical accounts mention the attack, saying something similar to this:

She never fully recovered from the blow, which subjected her to spells in which she would fall into a deep sleep

In other words, Tubman had epilepsy, an extremely stigmatizing and potentially disabling condition.

Harriet Tubman grew up to be one of famous “conductors” of the Underground Railroad. She escaped from slavery in 1849 and made her way to Philadelphia. From 1850 to 1860, she made 19 trips into the South and helped over 300 slaves reach freedom in the North.

Learn more about Harriet Tubman:

Harriet Tubman: African American History of Western New York
Harriet Tubman: Women in History

Photo credit: Library of Congress

Women's (Disability) History Month: Rosemary Kennedy

Since today, March 3, is “Spread the Word to End the ‘r’ Word Day”, it is appropriate to honor Rosemary Kennedy, the third child and eldest daughter of Rose and Joseph Kennedy, who lived with intellectual disabilities (mental retardation). Most people credit Rosemary with having inspired her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver to start the Special Olympics, which has impacted the lives of millions of people with disabilities.

Rather than attempt to write my own mini-biography of Rosemary Kennedy, I’ll use the words the Kennedy family has chosen to remember her by:

Rosemary Kennedy, born Rose Marie Kennedy on September 13, 1918, was the third child and eldest daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. She was slower to crawl, slower to walk and to speak than her brothers, and she experienced learning difficulties when she reached school age. Despite her apparent intellectual disabilities, Rosemary participated in most family activities. In the diary she kept as a teenager she described people she met, dances and concerts she attended, and a visit to the Roosevelt White House. When her father was appointed US Ambassador to Britain in 1938, Rosemary went to live in London and was presented at court along with her mother and sister Kathleen.

But when the family returned to the United States in 1940, “Rosemary was not making progress but seemed instead to be going backward,” as her sister Eunice later wrote. “At 22, she was becoming increasingly irritable and difficult.” The following year, after being persuaded that a lobotomy would help to calm his daughter and prevent her sometimes violent mood swings, Joseph Kennedy authorized the operation. The relatively new procedure, which at the time seemed to hold great promise, left Rosemary permanently incapacitated and unable to care for herself. On the recommendation of Archbishop Cushing, Rosemary was sent to St. Coletta’s School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where she would live for the rest of her life.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver had a particularly close relationship with her older sister, and great empathy for Rosemary and others who faced similar challenges. In 1962 Mrs. Shriver started a summer day camp in her own back yard for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, a camp which evolved into Special Olympics, now a global competition that involves 1.4 million athletes from 150 countries.

Rosemary Kennedy died on January 7, 2005 at age 86. Eunice Shriver said in her eulogy that Rosemary had left a legacy that was long and deep. Along with inspiring Mrs. Shriver’s own work with Special Olympics, Rosemary had inspired her brother, President John F. Kennedy, to initiate sweeping legislation designed to improve the quality of life for Americans with disabilities. She had inspired her sister Jean Kennedy Smith to start Very Special Arts and her nephew, Anthony Shriver, to start Best Buddies. Hospitals, schools and other such facilities around the world have been named in honor of Rosemary Kennedy.

Rosemary Kennedy may have spent the majority of her life tucked away in a small town in rural Wisconsin and hard to imagine a world without her having been in it. Would the Kennedy family have had the same sense of social justice? Would Ted Kennedy have dedicated his career to health care, children, women, people with disabilities and other marginalized groups? Would we have the Americans with Disabilities Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Fair Housing Act Amendments of 1988?

Would we fighting for health care reform right now?

It’s impossible to know.

Learn more about Rosemary Kennedy:

Rosemary Kennedy biography from the JFK Presidential Library
Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s eulogy at Rosemary Kennedy’s memorial service in January 2005
MSNBC: Rosemary Kennedy, JFK’s sister, dies at 86

Image via Special Olympics

Women's (Disability) History Month: Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was a photographer and photojournalist best known for her portraits of migrant workers during the Great Depression, such as her legendary Migrant Mother series.

While Lange’s work is famous, not much is known about her personal life. She had a difficult childhood. She contracted polio when she was seven, leaving her with an obvious limp. The neighborhood children shunned her and even her mother acted embarrassed by her “crippled” child. Lange’s father left the family when she was 12 years old.

As a teenager, Lange discovered photography and later made it her career:

The pain of her childhood, however, gave her a fuller sense of what suffering meant, and later on, when the government hired her to document the effects of the depression, it deepened her compassion for the destitution and despair that she saw all around her.

Lange embraced her disability, saying:

It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, humiliated me, all those things at once. I’ve never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.

Lange spent her career photographing others who had been marginalized by society: migrant workers in the Great Depression, sharecroppers in the deep South, and Japanese-Americans being evacuated to internment camps in World War II.

Learn more about Dorothea Lange:

Women's (Disability) History Month: Juliette Gordon Low

As women, we rarely hear about the integral role women have played in history. We know even less about the lives of women with disabilities in history. Throughout the month of March, which is Women’s History Month, I plan to feature women in history, both recent and not-so-recent, who have lived with disability. Some of these women might be famous while others you might never have heard of. First up, Juliette Gordon Low.

Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts

Juliette Gordon Low was born on October 31, 1860, in Savannah, Georgia. As a child, Juliette, known as “Daisy” to her friends and family, developed a lifelong love of the arts. She wrote poetry, sketched, painted, acted in plays and later became an accomplished sculptor.

After attending boarding school in Virginia and New Jersey, Daisy traveled extensively in the United States and Europe. Daisy suffered from chronic ear infections as a young adult. By the time she married William Mackay Low on December 21, 1886, she had lost most of her hearing in one ear due to improper treatment. Unfortunately, Daisy’s wedding day brought an unwelcome gift:

At her wedding, when she was 26, she lost hearing in her other ear after a grain of good-luck rice thrown at the event lodged in her ear. When trying to remove the rice, the doctor punctured the eardrum and damaged the nerve-endings resulting in a total loss of hearing in that ear.

Daisy and William moved to England after the wedding. Daisy temporarily returned to the United States during the Spanish-American war to help her mother organize a convalescent hospital. William Low died in 1905 and in 1911, Daisy met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, who inspired her to found the Girl Scouts in the United States the following year.

As Daisy encouraged girls to learn about homemaking, arts, science and the outdoors, she also included girls with disabilities, at a time when many organizations excluded them:

“Juliette Low was very open-minded,” says Jami Brantley, historian at Girl Scout First Headquarters, which today showcases vintage uniforms, badges and handbooks, and chronicles the history of the group. “She wanted the organization to not just be for the more elite girls.”

Juliette Gordon Low died of breast cancer on January 17, 1927, in Savannah, Georgia. From the original troop of 18 girls, there are now more than 3.7 million Girl Scouts.

Learn more about the life and work of Juliette Gordon Low: