Many of my friends, colleagues, and family members have heard me rant about pity on many occasions. I am very proud of a recent seminar paper I am preparing for future presentation and publication (hopefully) that is titled “Why We Want to ‘Piss On Pity, or How The Ideology of Pity Is a Social Harm to People with Disabilities.” Surely, this blog will serve as a way to test drive many of my ideas about pity, as I try to sharpen them and work them out more fully. One of the main challenges raised every time I mention pity as a harm is the idea that there is something very positive that is closely related to and sometimes confused with pity. This “something” is sometimes called compassion or empathy or sympathy.
While I agree that this something is sometimes linked to pity in our thoughts somehow, I want to argue that this something goes so far beyond mere pity that it becomes its opposite. For the sake of this essay, I will call this something empathy.
While I am not going to take the time to completely lay out my argument for why pity is a harm, let’s start by saying that pity depends on the existence of a harmful power relation and serves as a way of preserving that power relation. For pity to exist, there must be a power inequality between the pitier and the pitiful. Someone must be better off than someone else and look down upon them from a perch of privilege. Pity preserves this set of pre-conditions because it does not acknowledge or work to change this power relation. In fact, pity treats this power relation as inevitable and natural. Responding to someone’s suffering with an act of pity obscures the fact that the root causes of their suffering could be changed. For example, let us say that someone responded with pity to a person with a mobility disability who could not access a restaurant because of a staircase. That able bodied person may express their pity with words of sorrow at the chair user’s horrid predicament at not being able to walk up the stairs. Perhaps, the able bodied person may offer to get a take out order for the chair user. However, these responses do not at all respond to the fact that the chair user could enter the restaurant if it was ramped. Once you make the move to thinking about the problem in this way, you move away from a response of pity and toward a response of justice. A ramped doorway is not an act of pity, but an act that equalizes people’s power status and contributes to considerations of justice.
However, just as an unequal power relation is a pre-condition for the existence of pity, it seems to me that empathy is a pre-condition to the existence of justice. The “golden rule” or the ability to place yourself in the situation of the suffering other in a genuine way (aka empathy) dismantles this power relation. When we are able to authentically imagine ourselves in the situation of the person who is suffering, we recognize that mere pity is harmful and that we must address the power relation itself that has created this suffering.
While talking to a friend who also has dwarfism a few days ago, she told me a story about the first time she meant someone that was homeless and had dwarfism. She was struck by their suffering, gave them a hug, and bought them lunch. The fact that she hugged this man speaks to me that this was an act of empathy and not mere pity. That is, she treated him as a respected friend rather than an other she was looking down upon. Without any prompting, she explained her actions as motivated by a sense that “that could have been me…” She recognized that the injustices in our society create a system where folks with disabilities like dwarfism (and every other kind of difference that would be characterized as disabling) face huge challenges of bigotry that severely limit their flourishing. With these words of “that could have been me…” she recognized that it was a matter of chance that she was born into a family that had the disposition and the means to not turn her over to the state for a life of institutionalization. The chance of her circumstances allowed her to join Little People of America and gain access to a network of support and eventually get a college degree so that she would not face the same suffering of this man on the street. My friend recognized that it was an accident of fate that positioned her to help this man in the way that she could and that this was a matter of injustice. This friend has developed a perceptive empathy for these kinds of situations and these experiences have moved her to become involved in the disability movement and pursue a law degree so she can address these matters of injustice head on. I think her desire to fight for and with the most marginalized folks with disabilities all comes back to her ability to say “that could have been me…”
September 11th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Joe- I like where you’re going with this and your disentangling the notions of pity and empathy is very interesting.
I agree that pity emerges from a power imbalance. But I’m not sure empathy equalizes that imbalance either. It seems no matter how empathic individuals are toward one another, there is a systemic power imbalance between the abled and disabled, and this will always frustrate an authentic attempt to be purely empathic.
Anyway, these are just my first thoughts.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Dom,
I think that is going to be “part 2″ of this strand of thought… whether social position allows some folks to be more empathetic than others. Perhaps, there is some kind of relationship between experiencing marginalization and having the ability to empathize with another who is experiencing it. While it doesn’t hold true in all cases, imagine a situation where there is someone with a high level spinal chord injury who is “incarcerated” in a nursing home b/c they can’t get Medicaid to pay for the community supports they would need to live with their friends and family — this is a very real scenario that happens frequently. Now, perhaps the closer you are to that position in various ways, in your own experience, maybe the more able you are of having authentic empathy? That is, someone with most privileges, at the top of the social hierarchy may be able to empathize somewhat with some moral imagination, a person who experiences a qualitatively different kind of marginalization (racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc) may get a bit closer, a person with a biological dissimilar disability (like, blindness for instance) may be positioned to empathize a bit more easily, a person with a similar set of biological facts (say, a quad with post-polio) has an easier time saying “that could have been me,” and finally someone that actually has had the experience in the past and “escaped” has the easiest time imagining this type of suffering. Does that make sense? I am not sure it’s completely impossible for any person at any “stage” closer to the situation in question to empathize in a genuine way, but it may take more imagination and education about that kind of experience. Likewise, being closer in social position doesn’t guarantee empathy. Does this make any sense at all?
(Note: I am not trying to play oppression olympics and say that the closer to the nursing home resident you are the more oppressed you are, this is an unrelated claim. It is a case of apples and oranges and so a person with a disability who experienced privilege in other ways may have a harder time understanding other types of marginalization.)
September 12th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Joe,
That does make a lot of sense. I think its okay to play the oppression olympics b/c it is true: The closer the ‘empather’ is to the situation of the ‘empathee’ makes authentic empathy much more likely. I get that, and you illustrated it nicely in the hug example. But the rub is trying to instill empathy in people who consider themselves fully ‘abled’ - i.e. very distant from the situation of the disabled. This is where I think trying to teach that everyone is future-disabled can help bridge that gap, at least in theory.
Dom
September 12th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Hi, Joe~ I found your link on the Yahoo Dwarfism site. Last May16th when I found out my son would be born with achondroplasia, the first thing I said to my parents when I told them the news was that I just didn’t want anyone to look at him or look at our family and feel sorry. I cried that day mostly because of what I knew he would inevitably encounter which is what I want to protect him from so much. I realize, though, the best way I can “protect” him is to empower him and instill in him a sense of empathy that would create the needed change in the world if we all would learn and practice the “that could be me” belief that you write about, so this will have to be my focus. Joaquin was born June 17th. I enjoyed your piece and look forward to visiting your site often.
BTW, Steve Schoonover, also at MSU, is a friend and former student of my husband’s who teaches philosophy at Wittenberg. Tell him hello.
Thanks for all you do, Julie Holland
September 12th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Julie,
Steve told me that one of his teachers had a child with dwarfism and had stumbled across my blog! What a small word. It sounds like you are a great mom. I truly believe that there is a “second wave” of people with disabilities that is starting to come into it’s own and has the potential to really change the face of society. The “post-ADA” generation, of which I am part, has grown up with the basic assumption that they deserve a full place in our society and culture and that change CAN happen that frees us in important ways. I think you have every reason to have hope for your son and to believe there will be a community of people empowered along side him and working to fix things. Have you been involved in LPA at all? I think we are in the same district and I’d love to meet up at an event sometime!
September 13th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Thanks for your encouragement. My sisters are supposed to be getting my son his LPA membership…So we haven’t officially been involved, but plan to and want to meet you in person. We met an informal group of parents with LP children (5 families) through a friend of a friend who all live in and around Columbus. We loved the experience and the very welcoming families. It makes such a difference and I know I’ll love being involved in LPA too.
Let Steven know we talked!
October 17th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Pity is one thing that really grinds my gears. I was brought up on it, and it was my worst enemy. I never got the tools to survive in the world on my own, I never fought for a good education. But at such a young age you feel like pity helps you “cope” with your handicap.
Thank you for your site.