ABU Letter

Kathleen Flannigan
1910 Oxford Street, #210
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 666-0588

February 21, 2008

Henry Long
Regional Center of the East Bay
7677 Oakport Way, Suite 300
Oakland, CA 94621

Dear Mr. Long

This letter, from Kathleen Flannigan, a client of Regional Center of the East Bay,
and whose case manager is Henry Long, is to inform you of the behavior of Abu, an
employee of Unity Social Service, an organization that has a contract with RCEB.

I live an independent life here in Berkeley, going to school, creating art work,
taking care of my cat, and visiting with friends and family -- with the help of Felicitas, my
in-home supportive service worker and best friend. She comes to my house seven
days a week to assist me. I think of her as my daughter. She has been working for me
for 20 years.

Abu supposedly was the supportive service worker, whose job, funded by the
RCEB and the State of California, was to assist me with house cleaning, shopping, and
planning meals. Abu helped me with none of these tasks. Rather, he only made my
bed (with much disgust -- my body fluids might somehow pollute him), washed a few
dishes, and put my medications in a plastic pill box. This perhaps took him 10 minutes
at most, yet he would be paid for the entire 2 hours. At the medication box task, he was
useless -- leaving out important medications that I had to renew. I then had to go to
Kaiser to pick up the medications, taking perhaps 4 hours waiting at the Fabiola
Pharmacy.

I also found his housekeeping skills to be terrible. The only dishes he washed
were those that were physically in the sink, leaving alone any on the countertops.
When I reminded him that he was supposed to be helping me for three hours, he merely
informed me that he had better things to do.

He has held this position this August, and he has never had me sign a time
sheet. Also, since August, I have been asking him to find me a supportive service
worker who could work at least three hours. He pleaded "fatigue." He said he could not
help me with shopping because he would have to utilize his car and he did not want to
pay the meter fees. He also did not show up for work sometimes and never phoned to
tell me he was not coming. I found his personal behavior toward me to be rude and
insulting, and he was very controlling and arrogant.

Abu was also supposed to help me with medical appointments that were difficult
for me. I had to have root canal dentistry done at the UC San Francisco Dentistry
School. I asked Abu to be of assistance to me. I took paratransit; he took his car. He
was very late arriving at the dentistry school and wanted to leave early before
Paratransit arrived to take me back to Berkeley. I was very tired and still under the
influence of medication. I had to threaten him with calling his superior if he did not wait
with me for Paratransit. Threats, in my opinion, are the only things that motivate Abu to
do his job.

This problem was finally solved about a month ago when my housekeeper,
Felicitas, took over Abu's job. Please note that Abu described Felicitas' job as "coming
to work for a few minutes and pocketing the rest of the money." Felicitas has turned out
to be a wonderful, supportive service worker and is very careful with my medications.

The day before Thanksgiving, I was hospitalized at Kaiser Oakland. I was there
for three weeks with a broken back, a compacted colon, and pneumonia. I was then
transported to a Kaiser nursing facility in San Leandro for a week. With the support of
my son, Gabe, friends, relatives and Felicitas, I have made a complete recovery.
Kaiser sent a Home Health Team to my apartment to help with my recovery, and this
team agreed that I was completely restored to health.

While I was at Kaiser Oakland, my family and I felt that Abu was interfering and,
indeed he took over, informing my initial case manager that I belonged in a nursing
home and was completely incapable of taking care of myself. He was also quite
threatening, telling Felicitas (and I personally overheard this conversation) that he had
the power to place me in a nursing home for the rest of my life any time he wanted.
Later, Abu also told Felicitas that he could employ "force" to compel me to obey his
decisions.

On February 15, 2008, I called you and told you that I wanted no more contact
with Abu or Unity Social Services. You agreed to terminate our contract effective March
1, 2008, and you would send me a list of agencies that will continue to allow me to keep
Felicitas as my support worker. Even so, Abu continues to call me and Felicitas
demanding that Felicitas call him once a day with a status report.

I hope this letter will not end up in a file in a vast bureaucracy. I am a strong
person, able to defend myself, but the more vulnerable clients of the Regional Center
might not have the strength to navigate the system and protest Abu's oppression. Is it
not the goal of Regional Center (and the whole de-institution movement) to promote the
independence and incorporation into the community of its clients -- free from excessive
control, from autocratic authority -- and enable them to enjoy autonomy and have the
power of choice in their lives? Abu, in my opinion, exemplifies the old institutional pattern of exploiting
the vulnerable, and taking advantage of their powerless..

Sincerely,

Kathleen Flannigan

cc:

Matthew Timbo, Unity Social Services
Ellen Goldblatt, Chief Legal Counsel
James G. Marks

Ellen Goldblatt
Chief Legal Counsel
Protection and Advocacy Inc.
1330 Broadway, Suite 500
Oakland, CA 94612

James G. Marks
1231 Rio Cresta Way
Sacramento, CA 95834

Musings on Disability

I am 68 years old with a disability, cerebral palsy and severe arthritis, and I lead a

pleasant life, going to UC Berkeley, enjoying the closeness of family and friends, and creating

art work. But, I feel that I should never have been born. This feeling comes and goes in the

background of my psyche -- ever ready to spring into action, negating otherwise happy

experiences -- to remind me of my unfortunate experiences. This feeling is ever lurking, ready

to strike to steal the show. Like a drop of ink in clear water, these subliminal messages taint my

existence. The effect of this -- a blow to the stomach, a lessening of happiness, ever ready to

overflow my rational facilities -- the feeling that I never should have been born.


You mentioned in class last week that you attended a Chicago meeting which was

concerned with new medical technology in obstetrics to detect genetic disorders in the unborn

fetus. The parent-to-be has a choice, carrying a possibly disabled fetus or aborting it. These

tests can be flawed. The logic behind this genetic procedure is genetic infanticide -- to get rid of

disability, to create in America a society of health and normal people, producing a homogenized

culture with no diversity and no aberration from the ideal. The result, a utopia similar to science

fiction -- the creation of a master race. This proposal reeks of eugenics and fascism that operates

on the female pregnant body -- action that takes place in the womb eliminating the different, the

other. Is there no safe place for life in our society? We are always under surveillance and

regulated in the process of normalization, affected by biopower. Even the womb is penetrated.

The disabled fetus "offed" by selective abortion, gotten rid of, not polluting the gene pool of the

nation state.


The conference you attended in Chicago included a space for the differently embodied,

the deviants, who aspired to live out their lives and enjoy their well being in our society. But I

contend that a disabled fetus, like me, should not be born. I base this opinion about selective

abortion of a disabled fetus on my experiences. I am probably wrong, but I must be true to my

own experience as a person living with disability. My argument is based on my own self worth.

I see this selective abortion as a choice, a reproductive right not to bring a defective fetus to

birth. My argument: there is a lot of suffering in the world, why add to it?

Capitalism and Immigration

In the last half of the 20th Century, late capitalism, the post-industrial state, emerged and

was characterized by the de-industrialization of the American economy. Capital invested itself

in high technology and society was restructured to create a highly educated, professional class

and an accompanying growth of a service class to serve this privileged section. A duality of

class emerged in the modern American scene: capitalism was in crisis and racism intensified,

labor union membership declined as First World industries moved into developing nations with

cheap labor, free trade policies favorable to this enterprise.


The world economy became globalized in the new de-industrialized age. The market

now was a worldwide phenomenon as developing countries became industrialized. Successful

industrial nationstates, like Japan and South Korea, emulated the United States by outsourcing its

heavy industry to underdeveloped countries. In these countries, restructuring created a highly

educated professional class that could migrate to the United States for high paying jobs.

This search for cheap labor source is characteristic of American capitalism. We see this

in the enslavement of Africans to work in the southern plantations economy, eastern Europeans

migrating to America to work in factories, and in the immigration of the Pacific Coast of Asians,

pulled in by the promise of high pay in industries that needed cheap labor -- whether in the

railroads or on the farm. Asians were preferred because the people did not know the language of

the West and could do hard and dangerous work.


Global imbalances in power also affected immigration. Immigration is not random; it has

patterns that are sensitive to super power conflict. For example, the Cold War, fought by

Western powers, especially the United States with its ideology of anti-Communism and

containment of this menace to capitalism and foreign policy, influenced migrations. The

Communist revolution in 1949 was a major blow to U.S. hegemony and the tiny island of

Taiwan was one of the bulwarks against the insidious spread of godless, totalitarian

Communism. The United States poured billions of dollars to westernize and industrialize its

economy. Taiwan became a major trading partner. Immigration law changed to accommodate

Taiwan's immigrants to the U.S. We could not afford to have any racial strains on its white

banners of freedom. Immigration now reflected the inclusiveness of American state policy the

West was in mortal conflict with the enemies of the free world.


Asian immigration was racialized and the United States has a long history of racial

exclusion. The United States has an obsession of cheap labor, whether in agriculture or modern

industry. Capitalism drives the farmers and the factory to achieve maximum profits in the

western expansion of the United States, fueled by the ideology of the highly racialized ideology

of manifest destiny, the Big Five in California imported Chinese men of working class status to

build the railroads connecting the east and the west. Money earned by hazardous labor was sent

to family back in China. These immigrants were not white Americans, migrating to California to

find permanent homes. This was a temporary sojourner population. But white Californians

came to see these Chinese men as the other, totally foreign, a menace worthy of genocide. These

workers were expelled in the 1882 Chinese Expulsion Act.


But the California economy, especially agriculture, still needed cheap labor and looked

again to Asia as a source. Japanese immigrated and then experienced expulsion. The

Philippines were an easily negotiated source of labor. America rescued that country from Spain

in 1595 in the Spanish American War. The Philippines were colonized and could provide

unskilled labor to the United States. But eventually they were seen in an unfavorable light and

the Davis-Tyding Bill granted independence to the Philippines and immigration ended.

The United States maintained its white identity in the early 20th Century despite this

immigration. This was a terrible time for minorities: African-Americans were subject to harsh

Jim Crow laws as the country maintained its cultural hegemony of racial superiority. This

changed with the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the advent of World War II. The

country had to shed its racial exclusion in the fight against the Nazis. The United States was

allied with China and could not afford to be seen as prejudiced. Chinese again migrated to the

United States and we have the emergence of the model minority: the driven to succeed Asian

American like David Kuo and his two brothers, all great at math and headed to Harvard and a

future life of money and privilege -- the American dream. This is the myth of Horatio Alger --

success by independent effort not state and not Affirmative Action and other programs helping

people out of poverty. The logical question to other minorities, beset by high rates of teenage

pregnancy, gang culture and high unemployment: Why can't you succeed in realizing the

American dream?


We have in these examples two populations of Chinese immigrants in two different

times. We see a big change in racial identity that is deeply, inherently connected to state policy.

The immigrants had not changed, the same genetic material in the two populations. State policy

changed to meet the demands of global, world wide events. Immigration can be seen as

historically specific. We let in immigrants based on shifting internal and national goals. Race

then in America is a social construct -- not a biological identity. International events like World

War II and the late 20th Century shift of capital, and the emergence of the global economy

directly affected migration. With a need for certain immigrants, unskilled workers or a

professional class, immigrants are preferred and selected out: a filtering system is created to keep

out undesirables and attract the preferred immigrants. This is a coded exchange, an unspoken

gentleman's agreement of the privileged white elite. Race is a component of immigration. We

are not an inclusive society -- even though almost all our citizens came eventually as immigrants,

symbolized by the Statue of Liberty.


Even the Immigration Act of 1965, passed by the liberal Democratic Legislature in a time

of the Civil Rights Movement when America was embarrassed by such racially exclusive

immigration quotas, had a filtering function. Although this Act that stated intention that "... no

person shall receive any preference or priority," the Bill prefers or selects the unmarried sons and

daughters of migrants. The young are more easily socialized than adults and adjust to their new

environment to be integrated, by American society. Further, in Section 3 of this Bill, which

purports to "repeal discriminating policies toward Asian immigration" Section 3 states that the

professional class or those skilled in the arts and sciences will be the preferred immigrants.

Surprisingly, Section 6 allows the migration of unskilled labor who, if the history of America has

set a pattern, will work for low pay and will facilitate the needs of the professional class.

With the Immigration Act of 1985 and a glance at the sad tale of Asian immigration in

the United States, the obsession capital has with unskilled labor who will consent to work for

low pay is evidence of preference. Immigration further is racialized in the selective process of

determining the American identity, excluding those who do not measure up. The United States

is still a segregated society dominated by the elite. This country maintains its ideological

hegemony as an integral and necessary brand of racism.

Written for a Class in Gender Studies at UC Berkeley, Bodies and Boundaries

In this piece, I will address a diverse group of human beings, male and female, black and white, civilized and savage, gay and straight, as described in the articles in our reader. I propose to examine these marginalized groups to detect a pattern that unites these people. That when these extraordinary bodies pose a threat to their respective societies, they get attention -- to neutralize them, categorize them, and control their danger lest it infect the dominant society. Once the threat is over, these groups fade into time, vanish into history. These groups are all outsiders -- marginal and powerless -- and I propose that it is their position of being closer to nature than to culture that I detect their real menace, lest the flow of nature sweep away the carefully constructed male symbolic order, an order that deems primary rationality and objectivity. I then conclude some remarks about nature and culture.

In Londa Schiebinger in "Skeletons in the Closet," the first illustrations of the female skeleton in 18th Century anatomy describes the rise of modern science in the West emerging as a discipline and engage in a flurry of objectivity of truth -- with measuring, categorizing, classifying the natural world in all its variety and abundance, including human variety -- a hot topic for a European imperial activity of colonization. One area of interest in this science was the human body, especially the skeleton. Much to the early scientists' surprise, not much was known about the female skeleton. In collections, there were many male skeletons, but no female ones. Scientists began procuring female skeletons and, for a brief period of time, the female skeleton was one that mattered.

The first drawing of the female skeleton was published in 1796, which also witnessed the rise of modern medicine. In the process of characterizing the female skeleton, scientists discovered by measuring and classifying that these skeletons were different from the male. The consensus was that the female skull was smaller and less dense than the male skull, the brain being the seed of intelligence. Women did not need intellectual ability in their daily lives of nurturing and child care, as wives and mothers -- a destiny in biology. The women's rib cage was smaller, perfect for the sedentary life of the European female and in the societal division of labor -- men in the public sphere, women in the domestic. The female skeleton's larger pelvis enhanced her role as mother -- the perfect instrument for a new life. This division of labor in the very bones of human beings rendered the female status as unequal. These findings could also be found in nature and, as such, were not to be tampered with.

Eighteenth Century European thought stressed the difference of the sexes -- the natural inferiority of women to men. Women were different in every respect, physically, emotionally and morally, as the Schiebinger states: "As creatures of feeling fulfill their natural destiny as mother, conservators of custom in the combined sphere of the home." (Schiebinger, p. 51.)

In the early 19th Century, scientists, notably the famed French anatomist and natural historian, Civier, as related by an Anne Fausto-Sterling in her Gender Race and Nation, the Comparative Anatomy of the "Hottentot" Women, wanted Sarah Bartman body with its fabled genitalia, but it was only in her death that the scientists possessed her body. Sarah was a black woman from South Africa who came to Paris, and finally to England, to be exhibited in a freak show where visitors relentlessly probed her exotic black sexual organs -- the mythical Hottentot apron. Civier dissected her in order to produce an anatomical description of the sexual organs of a woman of color.

Civier lived and worked in the European period of intense colonialism, especially on the African continent. Part of that mission was with the help of missionaries to subdue the black female sexuality -- to control the savage libido that was viewed as degenerate. This was the European power's projection a dangerous ... At first, Sarah refused Civier's desire to examine her but, after her death, he could freely explore this unknown sexual territory. Civier, a scientists, wanted to know her -- in the bodily sense -- to classify and characterize her into a schemata. One can only imagine Civier's restlessness awaiting her corpse, his anticipation to dissect palpable, to know her in a necrophilic fashion almost. In his journal, Civier wrote that Sarah's skull, in the scientific view, the neurological structure of the brain and intellect, resembled that of an orangutan. He also proposed that she was the missing link between apes and men. He also proposed that she was baboon like in her sexual swellings. With the body in his possession, he is in scientific control of her genitals, of her black sexuality.

This was a time in European history when there was insecurity about race and gender. The colonized woman of culture was characterized as lustful and libidinous, without modesty and without European morality -- rather a creature of nature and not the embodiment of culture. As the article states regarding Sarah as a colonized woman of nature, "she served as primitive primitive, she was both a female and a link to nature." (Fausto-Sterling, p. 212.)

Sarah's body mattered to Civier and to science as long as it was out of his reach. Sarah resisted, in her modesty covering her labia from his greedy male gaze. But when she was in his possession and he was exploring the new territory of the black female body, as he dissected, manipulated and controlled her, penetrating her, he then lost interest, he did not care any more and relegated her body to the basement and dusty of the museum in Paris.

In "Domesticity in Federal Indian Schools, the Power of Authority Over Mind and Body," by Tsianina Lomawaina, she documents the controlling wars of genocide of the United States against Native Americans. Defeated in war, these human beings were placed on reservations and were under the control of the Bureau of Indian Affairs whose policy was to remove young Native American boys and girls and place them in boarding schools -- where they would lose their tribal identity, language, customs and values. But this policy was not assimilation -- to become United States citizens and achieve the American dream. These children were educated not to achieve a liberal education of mainstream white America. For the girls, they were to become domestic servants.

These schools were run in a military way with much regimentation -- school uniforms, Christian religious practices, proper comportment and hygiene to civilize and Christianize these native people. In every moment and in every way, these students were on a schedule, less the native go back to his tribal identity -- now a powerless defeated identity. Their bodies and minds were shaped and manipulated and gender rules were strictly enforced. Girls labored in the kitchen and in crafts; boys in the agricultural fields. The Native American body was colonialized to learn subservience in a "complete transformative experience ... as detribalized economic underclass. (Lom . p. 41.) -- not of the nation's state, except as exploited, powerless workers. These boarding schools provided an education that stressed mental and moral discipline -- a perfect ending for a vanquished race. These regimented bodies, deep seated and racially defined" Lom , p. 47) would assimilate into the main stream, there to disappear and their genius to become extinct. What could not become at Wounded Knee, total obliteration of a people -- would be accomplished in the Indian school. The tribes would be destroyed, the community also, and the erasure of identity. Divested of their language and independent life, these children would be absorbed into the social structure of America, their proper place in society. The girls would clean and wash the dirty clothes and houses of the American middle class; the boys would harvest crops meant for the dinner table of the American elite.

The bodies of Native American children did matter, as long as they were an integral part of their own civic body. As such, they were a menace and were sent to boarding schools to be self-regulated and under surveillance. What happened after this education? Did boys and girls find jobs in white America suited to their bodies? At that point, Native American bodies were no longer of interest to the federal government. They ceased to matter.

In Terry Kapsalis' "Mastering the Female Pelvis," relates the story of how black female slaves in Alabama in 1849 who underwent multiple surgeries for vesico vaginal fistulas due to difficult child birth, the father was often the white master, who underwent multiple surgeries with no anesthetics in the back yard of Marion J. Sims, renown in American medicine as the father of modern gynecology and is the architect of the vagina also displayed this pattern of intense interest and then neglect. One of the outcomes of his horrific was the speculum, used now in modern gynecology. With the aid of this instrument, it was possible for Sims and other gynecologists -- a terra incognita of the vagina to the male gaze, and undiscovered land. This is the seed to femininity, both white and black. A dark space was illuminated, a veritable dark continent. This sexual site was made civilized and enclosed in a medical discourse of white gynecology. Under the control of Dr. Sims, a theatrical figure with much charisma, a vaginal spectacle was performed on a surgical table to much acclaim. After publishing his findings, Dr. Sims went on to fame and fortune, establishing the women's hospital in New York City where he performed the surgery he invented on poor white Irish women, as well as women of the upper class. He was called a hero by the press. Triumphing over trials and tribulations. The black slave women, who were seen as creatures impervious to pain, returned to their masters to live out their lives.

The black female slave body as it was depicted in the pre-Civil War period, was the body to be feared and controlled, but now it was mastered by Sims and his medical experimentation.

Where was the white female of the pre-Civil War South, herself controlled by the cult of true womanhood and the dictates of patriarchy, which discipline and regulated her white body under constant surveillance, lest she exhibit signs of unbridled freedom? Like the black female slave, the white female lacked power. She was locked into a system of values in a process of normalization, her cult status of purity and religiosity -- pure lily white. Her body was fit only for reproduction. Her mind and emotions did not matter and she exercised authority in the plantation economic system. She, too, true to her gender, produced heirs for her husband's enterprise.

The homosexual body is a body that is dangerous to the civic order as related by Jennifer Terry in "Anxious Slippages Between Us and Them." Is this difference, in a sexual sphere of perverse erotic desire, a constitutional deformity -- in the body, in the spermatic society. There was concern in the hetero normative culture that frequent masturbation and abnormal proclivities of the body would threaten the very fabric of society and make it a genetic dead end. The high moral values and intelligent standing of America's male ordered society feared the decline of the West -- the result was a high level of anxiety in a symbolic order.

In the 20th Century, there were attempts to codify this sexual difference. The sex variant study reflected American societal distress. Male and female were classified and categorized as masculine and feminine, from genitalia to hair -- a veritable spectacle. The homosexual body was x-rayed and drawn, pathologies described, to document this menace to the body politic. This search for evidence of the suspect body included measuring body fat, firm muscles, and skulls. Voices were categorized as low pitch or high pitch. The author calls the a "stereotypical construction of sexual inversion (Terry, p. 58) -- to detect in the body the stigma of a menacing difference. The outcome of these scientific studies unleashed fears. Homosexuals were everywhere, invisible, endangering male cultural institutions, molesting school children, diluting military strength -- an issue of national security. This imperceptible erosion of the heterosexual ideal infected the State Department and the commerce of the United States. Tensions mounted and paranoia ran wild as these ubiquitous perverts drained the life blood of the American homeland.

As if that were not enough danger for America, Kinsey came along to fan the flames. His findings of much sodomy in U.S. manhood terrified the nation. In this study, there were no clear cut findings, no distinct homosexual body. Homosexuals were widely dispersed, lurking, about to prey upon the nation's manhood. Who can tell who is a fag? They are in every part of the nation, engaging in unspeakable acts, causing hysteria among governmental officials.

For a brief interlude, the bodies of Igorotes, a tribal people of the island territory of the Philippines as Christopher Vaughan described in "Ogling Igorotes, the Politics and Commerce of Exhibiting Cultural Otherness." In the Spanish American War, the United States seized the Philippines from Spain in an act of colonization for the empire of the United States. The 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louise was planned to highlight the nation with its white city and in a remote area of the midway the village of the subject people as they lived out their everyday life -- hunting, crafts and, much to the horror of pet loving Americans, feasting on dog meat. This village was extraordinarily successful, drawing huge crowds to gawk at these wild people. The Igorotes were heathen and non-Christian -- an exotic display of primitive life -- whom the U.S. regarded as needing the benefits of Western civilization. The tribe were people of nature and savagery, an authentic other. With their cigar smoking women, culinary dog eaters, and head hunters with tattoos covering their bodies, they were an exotic site. As Terry writes, "Igorotes posited an alternative existence. The diet and lack of dress offended the fair goers. The Igorotes images served to enhance self identifications with advance society by confirming America's distance from backwardness." (Terry, p. 227.)

The Igorotes and their village at the Worlds Fair were presented as an ethnographic display, as real certified by the emergent anthropological science; but the person-to-person experience of the savage and the American citizen in the process of defending the collective self of the American colonizing mission. But any scientific objective truth was destroyed when the Igorotes were exhibited as freaks and, as such, were dehumanized in the spectacle of difference. They were seen as novelties, as objects of the gaze of the American conqueror, celebrating the nation's power, sophistication and whiteness -- not the Igorotes who were "creatures of nature, lithe and graceful panthers they once were. (Terry, p. 230)

The sad history of what happened to these freaks of nature as they were transformed into freaks of culture, exploited by the greed of their handlers, testifies to their powerlessness. Having been entertained by the savage other, their bodies were worthless and of no value. They mattered only as long as a profit could be made and then they disappeared.

In her introduction "From Wonder to Error - a Genealogy of Freak Discourse," by Rosemary Garland Thompson, states that freaks fare little better in the consciousness of modernity than Igorotes -- as successfully by Aristotle as part of the order of the world and nature's abundance to the rise of religious discourse in the West as punishment for sin. With the rise of science and the medical model of disability, freaks were seen as oddities to be categorized and classified. What was marvelous became in this era pathology. In 19th Century America, freaks became the most popular form of entertainment with the rise of P. T. Barnum and his circus, stimulating curiosity, invoking awe. There was then a major shift in the freak show with the rise of the Disabled Rights Movement, which saw freaks as pornography, pushed freak shows to the margins of entertainment claiming political correctness. In 1937, freak shows were banned by the Nazi government and European countries followed suit. Freaks became icons of deviants and what was assumed to be a freak of nature now became a freak of culture.

According to Thompson, the extraordinary body matters when society attempts to make sense of our being in the world. We see ourselves as not -- creating distance from the freak body. We have a fascination with the different body, but want to classify that body to control its power to intrude on our normal existence. Leaving the freak show, we deem the freak body as useless, sheer entertainment rather than the marvelous, as pathology to be sullenly discarded.

What is going on here? Why is it that these diverse bodies, mostly female but including some male, gain attention when they pose a threat to the nation state? These different bodies, for example, the body of dead Sarah Bartman, dissected by Civier in Paris in 1815-1817, Native American children sent to military like boarding schools in the early 20th Century are seemingly dangerous bodies that I have addressed in this final exam. And then nothing.

 These marked bodies disappear and become invisible when their threat to the nation has been eliminated. There is a pattern here, occurring and reoccurring. Black female slave bodies in the anti-bellum South come to matter for a brief time because their subject bodies are useful as raw human flesh to be experimented on for the goal of relieving the pain of white women. At the end of their usefulness, they are sent back to the white master. We see this pattern in the Igorotes, the tribe from the Philippines. Useful bodies for the celebration of American colonialism in 1904. What do we know of these people when Americans lost interest in possible financial profit from them? Did they go back to the Philippines to resume their tribal life? And freaks in America in the 19th Century, did they have any life participating in the civic body. They are a vanished people wandering forever on the American landscape, only given value for the spectacle of their different bodies. The bodies of homosexuals become prominent and arouse paranoia come to matter, causing that deviant to be measured and questioned, to be examined to detect pathology. When the crisis disappears, all the homos in the State Department purged, the gay body is locked into the ghetto never to be heard again until the next crisis.

These are invisible bodies that lack power, power to determine their own lives, to set their own agendas. All are sexual groups that are oppressed and marginalized. They have a negative identity in the nation state -- stigmatized, a personhood that they have to manage to perform in the modern state -- as not dangerous, not unruly. These deviant bodies can be resisting the internalization of oppression. Gay groups become politically active, demanding same sex unions and civil rights befitting their minority group status. Gays parody heterosexual gender in performance that satirizes heteronormativity. Native American children in strict boarding schools use government-issued clothing -- bloomers -- to subvert dominating white authority. Sarah Bartman resists the advances of Civier who desires to probe her dark body with its extraordinary sexuality while still alive in a coy, almost flirtatious manner.

These anomalous bodies are closer to nature than to culture. The Igorotes with their wild ways, a savage people who live by hunting and eating dogs, are a part of nature, not culture. Black female slaves whose bodies are deemed as uncontrollably savage, descendants of Africa, renown for its untamed sexuality and from the dark continent, can be seen as children of nature. Freaks, too, lack a cultural identity and as defined in utero as in possession of defective genes occupy a marginal space in Western civilization. Gays are viewed by the dominant culture as against nature, they deny themselves to the civic order in their refusal of adult goals of raising children necessary for the continuance of the nation state. But this population can be viewed as close to nature in their emphasis on the primacy of sex, but a sexuality that is abhorred as disgusting, that renders the gay community as ghettoized and invisible. Native American children are deemed closer to nature also -- in their government structure as a tribe, lower than the hierarchy of the classic political structure. Civilization --- the state of their oppressors -- is assumed to be the highest. These wild children are to be sent to military-like boarding schools to mold their character, to discipline their savage souls.

Women, whether African Sarah Bartman or the women whose skeletons helps 18th Century science to document their lower status and little power, are associated with nature. Their menstrual blood and the gore of childbirth, a tainted state, and lactation categorizes them as unclean and polluting. They exist in a state of troubled objection, really the main male anxiety of the castrated woman. Women are seen as emotional and subjective, never capable of objectivity, rendering women as incapable of high intellectual thought, lacking rational ability. Women are prone to hysteria and lack control. As Aristotle writes, "the uterus is a thing unto itself, wandering in need of the discipline and pregnancy." In Freud's view, women are consumed with envy over their lack of a male organ, a phallus that in later life gives the male his potency. This abjection must be ejected, lest the blood issuing forth contains pollution for the ordered world. Infused with nature's women want to break orders between humans and animals, between nature and culture. They want to push rigid structures to flow over the carefully built little boxes by which men retain power, creating disorder and chaos, breaking boundaries.

Cultures intrude, nature resists. Nature grows power as culture declines. Both have power and have agency. Both are actors on the stage of our planet Earth, and both are needed, elements not to be separated. Both nature and culture must act to fill the gaps in the other's knowledge. They are closely constructed, malleable and free of determination. There is agency in nature to combat culture's excessives. Nature and culture are inseparable with no rigid boundaries, flowing together, not dammed. They are equally powerful -- not to destroy the other and permitting a resolution of inequality, coming together in a community of respect. All are needed -- Freak and norm, man and woman, nature and culture to work together. Our very existence is threatened and we need resolution of difference, of binary opposition to solve our common problems. We must abandon rigid dichotomy, our fixed and comfortable little boxes to join a wider space.

BETTER DEAD THAN PREGNANT

The white conquest of America -- as exemplified in Manifest Destiny -- the Western expansion saw the genocide of many native people, especially women, the promise of new generations of Indian people. But even the segregation and isolation of Indian tribes on the reservation did not stop this new form of genocide -- the mass sterilization of Native American women, sponsored by the federal government's Indian Health Services. The womb of the female Native American was seen as endangering the United States. This pregnant female body was an essential target -- the womb of the full bodied Native American woman -- for genocide by sterilization. I totally agree that this genocide by the Indian Health Service, with the colusion of the federal government, controlled the Native American body -- it was a form of colonization. But when Native American women continued to imbibe toxic chemicals, such as alcohol, into her uterus, damaging the fetus, I draw the line. In our culture in recent years, with medical science discovering that the fetus is damaged for life by intake of alcohol during pregnancy, we have demonized the pregnant woman who has a drink. And I think, rightly so -- but I don't want to address that problem. But isn't the genocide of a child damaged by alcohol a form of genocide, whether it be Native American or white American?

My Teeming Womb

In the drawing “Fish of the Sea”, fish are depicted as free, flowing, fluid in their watery primordial environment – creatures of nature. They do not suffer the oppression of the human world like domesticated animals. They obey the laws of nature – unconfined, old beyond belief. These fish are surrounded by other creatures, dragonflies and butterflies – symbols of transformation – depicted in organic circles in my composition. These creatures of the deep are wild, untamed and uncontrolled, free of restraint. They exist as individuals not as groups. The human world does not affect them but there are dangers in their existence – overfishing is a major environmental problem.

In “Alhambra Fountain I and II” - meant to hang side by side – fish are shaped by the artist's hands, under control, trained to human authority. Here they form groups giving up individual identity. They are no longer the wild creatures of nature. I shaped these creatures; I discipline them into a group and then I draw them. I am oppressing them with my power. These fish are no longer timeless and eternal. In these two drawings I have intruded on the fishes silent, watery world and they are voiceless, without language, defenseless against the machine-like human world.

“Twilight” is another drawing from “My Teeming Womb” series and is one of the last drawings from the series. “Twilight” is the epitome of my deliberations depicting butterflies in an architectural setting – a church-like structure. This revolutionary sequence of transforming images sums up all my musings on nature and transmutation into artifice. When I went to Berkeley I became really empowered by the experience, energized. This image is a summation and the last self-portrait I did in this series.

In these drawings, there is a shift from nature to art as I as an artist has shaped these creatures, put them under my control. They are transformed into artifice from the raw materials of nature and I have mastery over nature, shaping it to my ends.

I work in colored pencil on black paper here in my studio apartment overlooking the UC Berkeley campus in Berkeley California. In these drawings, pattern is paramount, structuring my pieces and helping to convey the meaning of my visual experience. Pattern is essential to me because if frees my unconscious mind and I lose myself in the energy of the universe. The animals that I love are intensely patterned – feathers of birds and scales of snakes. Pattern is built up, layer after layer, pattern on pattern. This gives my drawings a richness and complexity that fits the creations of nature – in a visionary effect. In my work, color also works to convey my message; greens, purples and oranges produce hues of colors, not dull charcoal or drawing pencil sketches. Color increases the intensity of my pattern, enlivening them on the black paper as I draw. This results in a dazzling effect as these creatures take form in my work.

While at UC Berkeley from 2009 to 2010, I dealt with the oppression and criticism from professors there, I created a series of drawings I'm calling “My Teeming Womb”. I utilize feminist theories in these drawings, 12 in number, and these images based on gender study courses are female images – curving womb-like shapes, flowing fish roaming the seas, butterflies of an on-going mutation.

In the past, my images were not self-portraits of me as an artist living with disabilities. . . I did not draw myself sitting in a wheelchair, for example. I also do not draw myself in pain as does Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo. Rather, I draw the benefits of my disability – my keen focus on the natural world. My work is a visual endorphin and I make pain work for me. I take that pain and explore it and transcend it from the base material to the gold of artifice.

When I was growing up, I could not look at myself, my face was ugly and my body crippled and deformed – a reflection of my disabled body. I could not stand the sight of myself reflected in the mirror.

But in the past 6 months, I have been exploring my own body as subject matter. These new creations have reflected a new media for me – acylic inks, super-saturated with intense color, more vivid than my colored-pencil drawings with their subtle variations. In these conceptual pieces there are even more patterns giving an almost baroque quality to my work. My palette is almost monochromatic, using sepia inks to add an antique, classical feel to these drawings.

In my gender studies classes at UC Berkeley, I was fascinated by Foucault's writings on biopower and the way that this absolute power acts on the human body. These are self-portraits of myself but with an added interest in feminist theory which are much different than my drawings of the natural world. For example, one drawing “Biopower in Action” depicts a dark, ominous hand wrecking havoc on flower pots with tulips.

Many years ago, I triumphed over my disability by creating art. Now I feel very differently - my disability plays a positive role in my creative process. I knew I was an artist as a child and never deviated from that path. As a child, I loved animals and kept many pets. I drew incessantly, and my mother told me she knew I was an artist at an early age because I draw pictures in butter on our kitchen table.

Check me out on Facebook!

Hi all...
I just published some great photos of my recent works on Facebook...check it out and let me know what you think!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001268232483