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By a contributor, March 18, 2005
The Associated Press is reporting that Woodside Hospice doctors removed Terri Schiavo's feeding tube today even though the u.$. Congress tried to stop it through legal strong-arming. Schiavo's feeding tube has been removed twice before, only to be re-inserted. The last time it was removed was on October 15, 2003.(2) Last month, MIM Notes implicated the patriarchy in Schiavo's psychology-defined bulimia.(3) If it were not for patriarchy-imposed obsessions with body appearance, Schiavo could be having intelligible conversations with other people today. The MIM Notes article also pointed out that force-feeding people would be a manifestation of patriarchy in the long run in the sense that it involves power relations which would not exist in a society without group oppression.
Those who support Terri Schiavo's alleged "right to die" are in a bind. MIM does not pretend to understand completely what it means to be "conscious" in a cognitive, neuroscience or psychological sense (whether consciousness is located only in the cerebral cortex for instance), but if indeed Schiavo is suffering from being alive in her present condition, it is only because she is conscious in some sense, which calls into the question the whole notion of Schiavo being in a vegetative state. But if Schiavo is not conscious, then it really does not matter from her viewpoint whether her body stays alive or not--precisely because she has no point of view. For materialists, there is no such thing as carrying out the wishes of a persyn who no longer exists. Moreover, there is no right to die from patriarchy, just like there is no right to die from imperialism.
The question arises is there any use in keeping Terri Schiavo alive regardless of whether she is conscious. Arguably, more people are learning about eating disorders since reading or watching mainstream news about Schiavo. A lot of TV news programs are about entertaining people, and in this entertainment context, people may draw some connections between bulimia and celebrity worship for instance. On the other hand, Paris Hilton, not Terri Schiavo, was the #1 search on the Internet search engine Lycos in the week ending March 12, 2005 (http://50.lycos.com/), and has been on that list for seventy weeks. This fact does not say much in itself, but it does allude to the reality that Amerikans can pretend to be concerned with bulimic patients, but still engage in the romance culture. This is why NBC can air The Biggest Loser (http://www.nbc.com/The_Biggest_Loser/), and MTV can broadcast morbid entertainment shows like I Want a Famous Face (http://www.mtv.com/onair/i_want_a_famous_face/), but at the same time occasionally talk about anorexia, bulimia, and body dysmorphic disorder (as MTV's SuChin Pak has done). And then there is the whole Michael Jackson thing with the media and others ridiculing his nose--even though some psychologists have suggested that he might have body dysmorphic disorder. So, we have people who pretend to be disturbed by certain people's obsessions with body appearance, but who support these obsessions themselves by watching various plastic-surgery make-over shows--and in various ways helping to spread the oppressor-nation romance culture to the internal semi-colonies of the united $tates and the Third World.
This is something that Terri Schiavo commentators have not touched on at all: how the romance culture, and particularly the body-obsession aspect, impacts gender-oppressed people in oppressed nations. Individuals like Terri Schiavo may be a kind of local fallout from the romance culture in the united $tates (if dying from the romance culture is not a manifestation of oppression, then nothing is), but the obsession with body appearance has a broader impact than just white wimmin suffering brain damage from psychology-defined eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa. For example, English-speaking, imperialist-country wimmin are frequently portrayed as a standard of beauty in Asian-country advertising, particularly in a "sensual/sexy" way.(4) In certain ways, this is connected with imperialist-country female-biology adults' power as majority gender oppressors. Individuals such as Terri Schiavo are just evidence that the benefits of the romance culture for imperialist-country wimmin are spread unevenly. The situation may be even more extreme in oppressed southern Korea, where more than half of wimmin in southern Korea in their 20s have undergone cosmetic surgery reportedly, many suffering injuries as a result.(5)
MIM does not accept at face value psychological definitions of bulimia as an individual "mental disorder" or "illness." Nonetheless, it is interesting that stereotypes about oppressed nationalities and obesity have led to an "underdiagnosis" of bulimia in Black wimmin and Latina wimmin in the united $tates.(6) As far as what causes bulimia in oppressed-nation wimmin, oppressed-nation wimmin's having to work in underappreciated jobs may contribute to the development of behavior that appears as "bulimia."(6) It is also interesting to MIM's line on gender that child abuse, and child sexual abuse in particular, appears to play in role in the development of some wimmin's eating disorders.(6)
While Black wimmin for example may develop eating disorders less frequently than Euro-Amerikan wimmin reportedly, Black wimmin are for economic reasons probably more likely to go to unlicensed cosmetic surgeons and die as a result. The point is that Terri Schiavo is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the lethal consequences of the romance culture in capitalist countries and occupied countries, such as Korea. MIM does not agree with evangelical, Vatican or other biblical reasons for keeping Schiavo's body alive, but patriarchal society must pay a price for causing these deaths and shorter lifespans among gender-oppressed people and among the "collateral damage" of the romance culture the media is calling "Terri Schiavo." The money Terri Schiavo received from lawsuits against negligent doctors would not be used for opposing patriarchy if Schiavo died tonight, so it should be used to keep her alive. There is no right to die under patriarchy when the death would probably be a prolonged result of patriarchy. As long as shows like Blind Date , The Bachelor , Extreme Makeover and A Wedding Story continue to be broadcast, decadent gender oppressors and gender aristocrats in the united $tates deserve to be inundated with images of Schiavo and news of Schiavo while they eat their dinners. Terri Schiavo should forever haunt those who actually benefit from and indulge in the larger patriarchal culture in the imperialist countries and their colonies.
See: "Revolutionary feminism," on the Internet at http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/gender/ ; and MIM Theory no. 2/3, Gender and Revolutionary Feminism ( http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mt/mt2+3.html ).
Notes:
1. AP, "Judge allows removal of feeding tube for brain-damaged Florida woman," March 18, 2005, http://www.680news.com/news/international/article.jsp?content=w031859A
2. Dave Reynolds, "Pressure Mounts On Terri Schiavo's Parents And Advocates;
Federal And State Lawmakers Consider Measures To Save Her Life," March 8, 2005,
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/archives/05/03/08/030805flschiavo.htm ;
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/16/health/main578359.shtml
3. "Thanks to capitalism Terri Schiavo had an eating disorder," MIM Notes, February 15, 2004, http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn314.pdf
4. Katherine Toland Frith, Hong Cheng, and Ping Shaw, "Race and Beauty: A Comparison of Asian and Western Models in Women's Magazine Advertisements," Sex Roles 50, no. 1/2 (2004): 53-61.
"many of the Western advertising conventions and poses for women were being transferred across cultures. They reported that female models in India were adopting poses and displays that conformed closely to gender portrayals in the advertising of the industrialized Western nations" (p. 55).
"Western models are more often featured in advertisements for body-related products—even in Asian magazines, whereas Asian models are used more often in advertisements for facial beauty. This finding is also in line with statistics on cosmetic surgery in the U.S. Kaw (1993) noted that 'the types of cosmetic surgery sought by women in the United States are racially specific' (p. 75). European American women choose body-sculpting surgery such as liposuction and breast augmentation, whereas Asian American women most often request 'double-eyelid surgery,' which is related to the face" (p. 59).
5. Charles Scanlon, "The price of beauty in South Korea," February 3, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4229995.stm
6. Becky Wangsgaard Thompson, "'A Way Outa No Way': Eating Problems among African-American, Latina, and White Women," Gender and Society 6, no. 4 (1992): 546-561.
7. Vijaya K., "Taking plastic surgery to the poor," March 2004, http://www.expresshealthcaremgmt.com/20040331/profile01.shtml