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Meghan Schrader
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By Meghan Schrader Meghan is an instructor at E4 - University of Texas (Austin) and is a member of the EPC-USA board.
One of the reasons that I decided to go back to school to get a Masters degree in Special Education instead of getting a PH.D in disability studies was so that I could stop thinking about Peter Singer so often. I was deeply shocked upon finding his “let’s kill disabled babies” screeds in college, and a lot of my musicology/disability studies research on how the history of eugenics influences contemporary narratives about euthanasia and disability was me trying to understand why turn of the twenty first century society had allowed such a hateful bully to have a platform. My inquiry into this matter led to published research on how pro eugenic narratives about disabled people and euthanasia were communicated in film music, and I loved my research. But, after I recovered from my first bout of psychotic depression, it occurred to me that if I didn’t refocus some of my intellectual energies, I might one day be in my 90s on my deathbed, ranting that Peter Singer was a scumbag. And a hospice nurse would say, “Yes, yes, dear, he’s dead now; he’s been dead for many years.” And then I would pass away peacefully, secure in the knowledge that Peter Singer was dead.
This intellectual entanglement might seem sort of ridiculous, and be kind of unhealthy, but I think my deep anger is understandable. Because in addition to comparing disabled people to chimpanzees and saying that disabled babies should be killed to contain healthcare premiums, Singer also thinks that it’s acceptable to rape some of us.
In 2017 a therapist named Anna Stubblefield was arraigned on charges of having sexually assaulted D.J., a disabled man with cerebral palsy and cognitive impairment. She claimed that the sexual contact was consensual, but D.J.’s family disagreed. In a New York Times editorial about the case, Peter Singer and his colleague Jeff McMahan wrote:
“If we assume that [the alleged victim, D.J.] is profoundly cognitively impaired, we should concede that he cannot understand the normal significance of sexual relations between persons or the meaning and significance of sexual violation. . . . In that case, he is incapable of giving or withholding informed consent to sexual relations; indeed he may lack the concept of consent altogether.
This does not exclude the possibility that he was wronged by Stubblefield, but it makes it less clear what the nature of the wrong might be. It seems reasonable to assume that the experience was pleasurable to him . . . it seems that if Stubblefield wronged or harmed him, it must have been in a way that he is incapable of understanding and that affected his experience only pleasurably.”
Kevin Mintz. A disability studies scholar with cerebral palsy, published an article about the Stubblefield case in the journal Disability and Society titled “Ableism, Ambiguity and the Stubblefield Case,” in which he notes:
“Philosophers Jeff McMahan and Peter Singer also marginalize and objectify D.J. in their op-ed in The New York Times. In particular, they argue that if D.J. truly is severely intellectually disabled, then it is not clear what harm was done to him if Stubblefield did, in fact, sexually assault him. Their logic is flawed because it supposes that for someone to be harmed, they have to actually perceive the harm being done to them. This would also imply that sex crimes against anyone who is incapable of perceiving harm are not explicitly harmful. What would that mean for cases involving children who might not understand when harm is being done to them, the unconscious, or the intoxicated?
As a professional in the field of human sexuality, I find this conclusion appalling and dangerous. There is not enough research on the effects of trauma in these kinds of cases to be able to definitively determine whether such assaults are or are not harmful in their own right.”
Yes: according to Singer and McMahon, DJ could not have the same human reaction to trauma as a neurotypical, able-bodied person, and therefore it was ok if Stubblefield used him as a sex toy.
Oregon assisted suicide model proponents’ tolerance for people like Singer is one of the major reasons for why I do not support the Oregon model. What does publishing Singer and MacMahon’s column say about the New York Times, which loudly favors “MAiD” and also published an article saying that a man shooting his Alzheimer’s affected wife in the head was a “love story”? The Completed Life Initiative gave an “End of Life Pioneer” award to Connecticut “MAiD” activist Lynda Bluestien just a month after it gave Singer a platform at its Faith Sommerfield Memorial Lecture in 2023. Why should disabled people trust the judgment or intentions of a movement that rubs elbows with a man who thinks raping cognitively impaired people is ok?
I realize that advocacy sometimes requires working with people with whom we might not agree, and I do not like everything every fellow euthanasia opponent does or believes, but I swear to God, none of the “MAiD” opponents that I work with has ever said that raping or killing people is ok.
Alas, mainstream “MAiD” advocates are not alone in platforming people like Peter Singer. Singer has been referred to as “the most influential living philosopher.” As I’ve mentioned, the coercion I experienced in the Special Education system led me to want to help prevent even one person from being coerced into assisted suicide, but the second major disability justice reason why I cannot support the Oregon model is because so many people in this world love Peter Singer. A world that doesn’t know any better than to platform a man who thinks that raping disabled people is ok has not earned the responsibility to regulate death.
Author Note: I’ve
discussed my struggles with unfortunate, involuntary feelings of kind of
“wanting” Peter Singer to die so that he can’t hurt disabled people anymore.
However, that’s not a suggestion to harm Peter Singer. It’s wrong
to kill people, it wouldn’t do the disabled community’s broader situation any
good, and it’s not worth getting lost in the criminal justice system.
Previous articles by Meghan Schrader (Articles Link).
EPC works with the Compassionate Community Care charity (CCC) that offers practical advice and information for people when they or a loved one has questions related to medical treatment options or are concerned that a loved one is considering or being pressured to be killed by euthanasia or assisted suicide.
