Opinion
SHOHAM GEVA
EDITOR IN CHIEF
CLAIRE BRYAN
AND REGAN DETWILER
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MANAGING EDITOR
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, September 14, 2016
BRETT
GRAHAM
The politics of diagnosis
W
ith Pavlovian rhythm,
my phone buzzed and
I
diverted
attention
from my Sunday
homework
routine
to
check the CNN
notification that
flashed
across
my
screen.
It
read:
“Hillary
Clinton
was
diagnosed with
pneumonia
on Friday, her
doctor says. The
doctor revealed
the condition hours after Clinton
stumbled while leaving a 9/11
event.” So, like any political junkie
worth his salt, I minimized Canvas
and put Google to work on the
handful of questions I now had. If
she was diagnosed on Friday, why
are we finding out two days later?
What exactly does stumbling look
like? How serious is this?
As someone whose knowledge
of medicine begins and ends with
episodes of “Scrubs,” I was hoping
for a straightforward response. It
seemed to me that there would be
little room for interpretation with
something as straightforward as
pneumonia — either the incident was
cause for concern from a medical
standpoint or it was not. But, as with
any news story that drifts within
the orbit of Trump Tower or the
so-called Clinton World, facts are
secondary to spin. My eye naturally
combed through the feed, I learned
the facts of the story and I returned
to my homework.
Here are the facts of the story
that I learned: The Democratic
frontrunner
for
president
has
been campaigning through illness
for several days now and became
overheated while toughing it out
through a 9/11 commemoration
service. As Bloomberg Politics
correspondent
Jennifer
Epstein
tweeted on the day she was
diagnosed,
“...She
appeared
at
2 fundraisers, ran a 2-hour natl
security mtg, sat for CNN intvu.”
What a champion! Hours later,
I saw a video of her walking out
of daughter Chelsea’s New York
apartment, smiling and claiming
to be “feeling great.” I saw the
statistic that more than 1.1 million
Americans
are
admitted
to
hospitals for pneumonia every year.
Things were more or less the same
as I expected. And I moved on.
Here are the facts of the story I
could have learned if I had different
political leanings: After two days
of covering up a serious illness,
Hillary Clinton fainted and had
to be dragged into a waiting van.
While her campaign is claiming
that the cause is pneumonia (which
can be fatal in its own right),
doctors are questioning whether
this incident, and the cough she
has tried to hide for weeks, may
be representative of something
more serious, like Parkinson’s. At
68 years old, she clearly lacks the
stamina to assume the office of
the president. If I hated Hillary
Clinton, things were more or less
the same as I would have expected.
And I would have moved on.
For better or worse, the health
of our presidential candidates has
become an important issue during
this campaign. Rather than seeking
impartial diagnosis, however, or
getting second opinions as one
would for themselves or a loved
one, the American voter in 2016
seeks whatever bill of health makes
them comfortable — whether that
be the absurd and over-the-top
letter from Trump’s doctor Harold
Bornstein claiming that his patient
would be “the healthiest individual
ever elected to the presidency,”
or the note from Clinton’s doctor
Lisa Bardack, who brushed off the
episode as caused by dehydration
and assured the Democratic faithful
that their champion was “recovering
nicely.” Alternatively, the voter
could tumble down the wormhole
of internet diagnoses, into the world
where the difference between the
common cold and typhoid is just
three clicks. Or, as was seen with
this most recent incident, there
can be diagnosis by committee,
constituted
of
nonmedical
professionals posting on Twitter
or Facebook what their thoroughly
(un)informed opinion may be. At
no point was the consideration
made that the health of both major
party presidential candidates could
be reported objectively, without
partisanship or agenda.
Of
course,
presidential
candidates are human, and an
exam in September by no means
guarantees a clean bill of health
for the next four years. And, in
retrospect,
many
Americans
have learned just how human
presidents can be — from John
F. Kennedy’s Addison’s disease
to
Woodrow
Wilson’s
stroke,
from Abraham Lincoln’s battle
with depression and the state of
Ronald Reagan’s mental faculties
toward the end of his second
term. Learning about these after
the fact — only once these people
are already out of office — the
American people turned a blind
eye, refusing to allow the disease
to stain the legacy of the man.
But would JFK have been elected
if Americans had seen his weight
loss and frailty, when he was
feverish and struggling to get
through a day on the campaign
trail? Absolutely not; presidential
candidates should show vigor,
stamina, strength and energy.
Unfortunately,
the
odds
of
finding a candidate that fits the bill
this year are slim. On election day,
the major party candidates will
have a combined age of 139. One is
currently battling a lung infection
and the other has a reputation of
eating too much fast food while
operating on an irregular sleep
schedule. Neither is the spitting
image of health. So if the American
people have decided that the
physical health of the president is
an issue in this campaign, fine. But
let it be an issue like tax returns
or reports of donations to the
Federal Election Commission —
concrete, factual and indisputable.
Otherwise, the reports out of
each camp from personal doctors
should be recognized to be just as
partisan, biased and predisposed
as
statements
from
campaign
surrogates in the spin room after
a debate.
—Brett Graham can be reached
at btgraham@umich.edu.
Incarceration won’t stop assault
I
was 7 years old when I had my first attack.
The accusations swarmed my head: “Stop
pretending,” “you just want attention,”
“you’re being over dramatic.” I head for my
school’s office. My back hurts more than any
pain I have ever experienced. My eyes are
flooding, but I break through the tears and
manage to ask to call home. My mom’s panic
beamed through the phone. “Just try to relax,
hold it in if you can.” My dad drives past
our home and pulls the car up to the Detroit
Medical Center’s emergency drop-off zone.
There they got the nurses to assess my pain.
“Can you rank your pain from one to 10? One is
OK and 10 is bad.” “It’s an 11!” As if ambivalent
to my response, they place an I.V. in me and take
some blood from me. Then I was stuck waiting
for the results.
Three hours later … The doctors brought
proof of the pain they now believed I had
because they saw it in my blood tests. “She has
sickle cell anemia. Her hemoglobin is lower
than average, and her white blood cell count is
high. It’s a chronic disorder,” again acting as if I
were not there. I feel I am no longer a 7-year-old
girl but rather an object— like a computer my
parents brought in for repair, only to find out I
was permanently damaged. Then I am trapped.
So I walk around the hospital with the
I.V. in my arm and push the machine that is
connected to it. Several doctors consult with
me. A psychologist interviews me to make sure
I am “handling my chronic illness.” A physical
therapist helps me move around after my pain
becomes “manageable.” A physician checks in
on me periodically and asks how my pain is.
There are also several nurses on rotation. They
come in, write their names for me, sometimes
give me more medicine, but always move on
to the next patient. It all feels like an assembly
line. I am just another part in line for a repair
that is only going to fix me temporarily.
After the doctors do all they can to make my
pain “manageable,” I am finally released. Yet
the sickle cell attacks come back sporadically.
One minute I feel fine and the next I scream
with pain. “Be strong,” my parents say, “so we
don’t have to take you back to the hospital.” I
tried with all my might to “hold it in” and avoid
confinement. But the pain is stronger than I am.
There is a red, angry wave pulsing through my
body. It forces itself through the channels meant
only for my blood without care or hesitation. It
is a bully. It pushes itself through my veins, and
wherever it passes, the pain follows.
The house shakes with my pain. It tears my
family apart and wreaks havoc wherever I am.
It is not biased. It does not discriminate. It does
not care that I am “just a little Muslim girl from
Nigeria,” as my parents would say. It does not
care if I am well-mannered or if I misbehave. It
does not care if I am at school, a friend’s house
or at home. It frightens my parents and fills
them with worry. Yet, no one can understand
how I feel. They want me to stop expressing my
pain. But I cannot stop. It is a force out of my
control. I try to explain to them but I have lost
my biggest means of communication.
I open my mouth to attempt to form words
but the pain chokes them. My larynx is gone
and in its place is a broken tape recorder. “My
dearest daughter, please stop screaming, the
neighbors will hear you and think something
bad is happening.” I wonder why expressing
my pain is such a “bad” thing. At school, I was
given the chance to express myself through art.
So I took a piece of cardboard and used a black
sharpie to highlight its imperfections. My art
teacher looked at it with confusion but did not
question my creation. I looked at it with awe. I
felt that I had just created something beautiful
out of the cardboard’s pain and hoped I could
do the same with my own.
I struggle to feel good when I am in pain,
however. I try to cry and kick the pain out of
me, but those actions do nothing. My parents
tell me to “just pray,” and that “Allah does not
give someone what they cannot handle.” But I
feel that God has forsaken me; that my pain was
His way of punishing me; that for some reason
unknown to me, God was upset with me. I find
it hard to pray in so much pain. Even when I did
pray, the pain came back. Even while praying,
the pain persisted. Even after praying, the pain
did not disappear.
However, I managed to stay out of the hospital
for a while; seven years, to be exact. But I was
not pain free. I just stayed at home. I sometimes
missed school because the pain was too much.
My mom did her best to soothe me, but there was
only so much she could do. I had to learn how to
manage my pain. Over the years, it became more
tolerable. I realized what I would have called an
11 back when I was 7 years old was now an eight. I
got better at suppressing my pain and muting my
screams. No one knew I had a “chronic disorder”
unless I told them. I only conveyed that fact when
I was in pain.
I was 14 years old the second time I was
admitted to the hospital. I was doing so well in
school. It was nearing the end of my freshmen
year, and so far I had straight A’s. I suppose the
stress of finals was getting to me. The doctors
told me stress could cause “sickle cell attacks.”
Well I guess my back really felt the stress. While
in the hospital, I was restless. I could not help but
feel surrounded and restricted by the machines. I
wanted nothing more than to be released as soon
as possible so I could return to school. I thought
it was normal to desire to be back in school, so I
was surprised to find out that the girl in the next
room was begging to stay in the hospital. I could
not imagine why she did not want to go back to
school. My nurse told me I was special and that
most of the other sickle cell patients prefer to stay
in the hospital than return to school. No one had
ever referred to my pain as special. Until then I
thought I was the only one who had to deal with
such pain. I felt fortunate to be so motivated in
school and thought that maybe God had not
forsaken me after all. I became proud of my pain
and my ability to not let it define who I am, even
though the pain still came back.
P
eople seem to think we can
fix rape culture and sexual
assault by putting rapists
in prison for a
long time. Take
for
example
the
response
to
the
Brock
Turner
case:
people
yelling
for him to be imprisoned for way
longer, people outraged at his early
release, a mobilization to recall the
judge who sentenced him to six
months, as well as the passage of a
mandatory minimum sentence law
for specific types of sexual assault
by the California legislature.
This reaction is understandable;
people aren’t wrong for wanting
rapists to go to prison since we’ve
been given no avenue other than
incarceration
as
a
suggestion
for how we might resolve the
harms done to individuals and
to communities through sexual
assault and rape. But to me, there
seems to be something faulty
with this line of thinking which
assumes that we can fix something
as dehumanizing, violating and
oppressive as sexual assault with
something
as
dehumanizing,
violating and oppressive as prison.
If Brock Turner, or anyone for
that matter, rapes someone again,
which likely will be the case given
the rate of serial rapists, it won’t
be because we didn’t lock him up
for long enough. It’ll be because
of his unaddressed sexism, sexual
entitlement and toxic masculinity
(among
other
problematic
behavioral traits); it’ll be because
he was never truly rehabilitated;
and it’ll be because, I think, the
structure of our criminal justice
system
is
incompatible
with
achieving real justice for sexual
assault victims and survivors.
In order to prevent rape, you
need to know why it happens, and
it doesn’t happen because we’re not
sending people to prison for 14 years.
It happens because our society is
full of patriarchy and sexism and
problematic power relationships.
The prison environment reinforces
and
amplifies
harmful
power
dynamics
that
feminists
and
anti-rape advocates are trying to
eradicate. Prison is not the place
to
rehabilitate
rapists
because
it
replicates
the
dynamics,
hierarchies and aggressive hyper-
masculine culture that are all at
least partially responsible for the
normalization,
acceptance
and
proliferation of sexual assault.
In addition to the issue of using
an oppressive environment to
correct an oppressive behavior, our
justice system also seems to be ill
set up to prosecute sexual assault
cases and ultimately incapable
of really achieving justice for
survivors and victims of sexual
assault. Often, the reason people
report their assault is because
they want their assailant to take
responsibility for the harm they
inflicted. In other words — and
this is very basic — many survivors
and victims want their rapists to
acknowledge and recognize the
pain they inflicted: they want an
apology. Take the viral victim
impact statement from the Brock
Turner case, where she writes: “I
also told the probation officer that
what I truly wanted was for Brock
to get it, to understand and admit
to his wrongdoing.”
Our system is not set up for
this. It actively disincentives any
admission of responsibility, what
it calls being ‘guilty,’ through
its threat of severe punishment,
i.e. prison. People charged with
felonies
are
understandably
afraid to admit guilt because
that likely would mean going to
prison. Because our system is
punitive instead of restorative, it
incentivizes selfishness and self-
preservation
over
compassion,
dialogue and true resolution.
Also,
the
established
way
guilt is decided in the courts
is through the jurors. Socially,
we’re to understand jurors as
people
who
provide
outside,
objective
evaluations
of
the
evidence in order to arrive at a
fair assessment of the defendant’s
guilt or innocence. But it’s mostly
impossible for jurors to do this
because 1. There’s hardly ever
any concrete evidence for jurors
to review in rape cases and 2.
Jurors exist in the same world we
do, and by that I mean jurors are
ensconced in all the same rape-
culture bullshit the rest of us are
and are thus likely to be swayed by
sexist tropes and victim-blaming
myths in the deliberation process.
What ought to be the guiding
principle of handling sexual assault
and rape cases is that a person — the
survivor/victim — feels like they
were violated and so they were. We
must accept this truth and create
alternative models of restorative
justice to rectify this harm. This
means the creation of survivor/
victim-centered spaces for resolving
rape and sexual assault, spaces that
are radically divergent from the
current ones we have, whether that
be the college sexual-assault panel
or the official court room trial. In
these spaces the question isn’t if
this person was violated, but rather
accepting that this person was
violated and that we as a community
need to do something about it with
the survivor/victim as the leader of
the process.
This
might
seem
really
outrageous and unachievable, but
we already do accept and practice
this principle in other aspects of
our lives. There’s an episode of
Louie that talks about it: Louie
tells his friend that he, the friend,
Lenny, hurt him when he hit him.
Lenny says he didn’t hurt him, and
then Louie says “I’m telling you
that it hurt and you don’t get to
deny that. When a person tells you
that you hurt them you don’t get to
decide that you didn’t.”
In this process of resolving
sexual assault and rape not the
perpetrator, nor anyone else, gets
to decide against or argue about
the survivor/victim’s account of
the assault. They don’t get to decide
that they didn’t assault them. The
perpetrator’s opinion and anyone
else’s opinion of the perpetrators
guilt/innocence is irrelevant. The
only account of what happened that
can hold any weight is that of the
person who was assaulted.
Collectively, we’re responsible
for cultivating an environment
where the survivor/victim is able
to heal, where the perpetrator
recognizes what harm they caused
and is required and desires to do
something to resolve the harm.
This
represents
a
major
and
necessary
departure
from
our
established principles of justice
by removing the threat of severe
punishment (i.e. prison). We deter
the rampant selfishness and self-
preservation that exists in our
current justice system through
this paradigm shift — by moving
towards a model that prioritizes
honesty, healing, compassion and
humane reparations.
—Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven can
be reached at cedon@umich.edu.
Reconsructing cultural norms of pain
MICHELLE SHENG
email michelle at shengmi@umich.edu
Carolyn Ayaub, Claire Bryan,
Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan,
Jeremy Kaplan, Ben Keller, Minsoo Kim,
Payton Luokkala, Kit Maher,
Madeline Nowicki, Anna Polumbo-Levy,
Jason Rowland, Kevin Sweitzer,
Rebecca Tarnopol,Ashley Tjhung,
Stephanie Trierweiler
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
HALIMAT OLANIYAN | MICHIGAN IN COLOR
CLARISSA
DONNELLY-
DEROVEN
—Michigan in Color is the Daily’s designated
space for and by students of color at the University of
Michigan. To contribute your voice or find out more
about MiC, e-mail michiganincolor@umich.edu.
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