The Hierarchy of Disposability
By: Alex Pagliuca
Tags: Patriarchy, Poverty, Ableism, Disposability, White Supremacy

It comes to a point where so much is happening, that there’s nothing to say. One of the nation’s two major political parties is openly embracing a strategy which is anti-democratic. A pandemic is raging across the nation, as some 45% of the population plainly believes a quarter of a million deaths in eight months isn’t something to take seriously enough to cause them to reconsider their political loyalties. The investor class is once again reaping the benefits of the rest of the nation being dragged through the thorn strewn ditch the same pandemic is producing in regards to an economy. Wall Street is doing just fine, while lines for food pantries stretch for miles in many cities, and the failure to muster the political will to deal with the pandemic swiftly and efficiently drags the compounded circumstance out, month after month.

This also ignores the destabilizing ruptures caused by racial injustice or the inequalities produced by the continued adherence to the irrational existence of a belief in gender as some kind of natural law, instead of recognizing it as standards and norms without basis in anything but the fact of their previous and continued existence, as if Hippocrates humors and metaphysical spiritualism should also be seriously considered as worthy considerations in medical treatments. Like the socially and politically catastrophic willingness to ignore just how badly these are eating away at the stability of the nation, our political leadership have long chosen to treat climate change as something possible, instead of the inescapable reality it is. A good portion of the Western half of the country burned for months, as well as it being yet another record year for storms in the Atlantic, threatening the Southeastern portion of the country. The latest science suggests we can expect storms to both intensify and to be pushed inland with more regularity.

Over the last decade, I’ve gone through intensive periods of what can be described either as obsession or intense, long term curiosity, depending on how charitable you might be and your proximity to me personally, about a handful of topics. Economic inequality, systemic racism (with a particular interest in criminal punishment and the history of white supremacy as a political and social organizational model), and the inequalities of gender (with a particular interest in masculinity as it has been synonymous with power, as a social construct and as an individual identity). What’s become clear is the centrality of disposability to the function of the economic, political and social systems of the country.

Discussions of ideas like intersectionality have started to give us a better way to understand the shape of this disposability, specifically the way different forms of discrimination interact or intersect with each other, and how we need to be able to interact with each other in order to not be furthering one variety of discrimination or oppression while attempting to alleviate another. Regularly, we still have discussions about whether the nature of a problem is foundationally one of class or one of race. There is a section of the feminist movement which finds it offensive to consider trans women as among their rank, they consider trans women a threat to the progress of feminism, while a more broad perspective sees this as discrimination and the support of oppressive gender norms and standards.

We’ve been granularly breaking down these ideas, and focused on them individually and singularly. An excellent example is that we’ve had vital, life affirming discussions about the ways in which racism and feminism intersect. Black women at the center of the Black liberation movement spoke, wrote and argued at length about the way misogyny within the movement was counter to the stated aims of Black liberation. Black women who are also LGBTQ have also contributed their experience of the ways their queerness has often meant being marginalized. All of these contributions should be seen as indispensable to anyone who has some hope we might someday stop treating each other as disposable in some way or another.

The last five years, most specifically have seen the popularization of some understanding of the phrase patriarchal white supremacy. To say this though, is to nominally leave behind the realities of capitalism as part of both of these. We leave out, then the experience of class as related to the experience of the rest of it. We also fight to insure we are including members of the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, and so on.

What’s happened, in the way we speak and write about these things, in part because we are often speaking and writing about these things in contrast to a far right view of the world where these discriminations are presented as either natural or necessary, is that we come to a kind of competition about them. Which part of these oppressive systems must be addressed first? Who’s particular needs are going to be left unmet, as a result? What we end up with, as right now white feminism has become something of a go to example for, is a variety of thinking which creates the sense we can and must deal immediately and directly with whatever discrimination we may face individually and personally, while not putting much consideration into how our struggle to do so might be contributing to the discrimination others face. Let’s not leave out the contribution to this state of affairs that competition makes, as we are a society which places a heavy value on competition, which should be recognized as having its base in both patriarchy’s heavy privilege of “masculine ideals” and capitalisms focus on competition as both an outgrowth of patriarchy, but also as feeding this same sense of competition as a healthy ideal.

We are all acculturated to compete. In this case, as we fight to attempt to create a more just, more livable world, what we are really competing about is our own disposability. This is a losing proposition.

When we talk about the kinds of statistics and data we use to outline inequalities, what we’re talking about is the disposability of certain people to the larger society. What does it mean when we say that Black men are 6% of the overall population, but 33% of the unarmed people shot by police, and that this has been a reality which society has found acceptable enough not to address? It’s the same thing we’re saying when we say people with severe mental illnesses are sixteen times more likely to be killed by police than those who don’t live with severe mental illness, and this too is a reality society has found acceptable enough not to address. We’re talking about people being disposable, as their lives are treated as the cost paid so the rest of society is able to experience the perception of safety and security. The same is true when we compare life expectancy among the wealthy and the poor. The cost of the longer life expectancy for the wealthy is years of life for the poor. When we start to look at things like the likelihood of poverty for people with disability, we again see a reality of disposability. Being disable leads to a much greater likelihood of poverty, which itself leads to a shorter life span, even when the disability itself isn’t a physical factor in that lifespan. We see the same thing in the murder rate experienced by trans people in comparison to the rest of the population. Plainly, it would never be accepted if it were happening to a different community at the rates it does trans people. These examples can be piled one on top of the other, and all of them are measures of disposability. Each measure added means one is lower in standing in the hierarchy of disposability.

It’s important to understand all of these things separately, as solutions can be specific to each different community, but what we’ve failed to do is to address the fact all of these things, patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, and the long list of other systemic varieties of discrimination and oppression are different expressions of this hierarchy of disposability. When we begin to add them together, for someone who is say, Black and disabled, the outcomes get even worse, because this is someone whose disposable in more than one way. People who are both Black and disabled or mentally ill make up half of all the Black people killed by police. The reality is being Black with a disability or mental illness also means someone is going to experience discrimination in the Black community, because despite there being a very clear understanding in the Black community that this is a society built on white supremacy, it’s not as clearly seen to be an ableist society.

Because Western culture has been shaped by wealthy, white, heterosexual, cis gender, neurotypical men who aren’t disabled, it has privileged them above everyone else. With each additional step a community of people takes away from being fitting this “standard/norm,” the more they are going to be perceived as being disposable.

At the end of the day, this is really what we’re seeing American culture and society struggling with and refusing to acknowledge, the competition created by the hierarchy of disposability. It’s often said “economic anxiety” is what leads to someone like Trump being accepted as a figurehead, which is to say nothing of the fact that he’s accepted as the figurehead of a fascist movement. Even this explanation of “economic anxiety” is skirting the fact that for anyone to experience this degree of anxiety because of their economic situation, they have to be fighting for their place on the hierarchy of disposability. What they’re really saying is that poor white people are afraid of being as disposable as non-white people. It’s an argument hinging on the hierarchy of disposability, without ever acknowledging the existence of that hierarchy.

It’s constantly suggested demographic changes are fueling the white anxieties which are motivating the growth of the far right and the white supremacist groups within it. The joke is often made, “Well, what are they afraid of? Are minorities in this country treated poorly?” Again, these are ideas which point to, but don’t specifically name the hierarchy of disposability, which is the umbrella under which racism and classism are protected. When we see an organized, vicious and vocal response to women attempting to secure basic safety and security by talking about the issues of rape culture and sexual harassment, we’re again seeing a response to the hierarchy of disposability, even within racial and class groups. The perception of men being that if women are less disposable, it is automatically going to make them more disposable, and in truth, they’re not completely wrong. If women aren’t facing the kind of trauma’s which come from rape culture and a culture which accepts sexual harassment, chances are they’re going to advance en masse in ways we haven’t previously seen, in large part by being able to expend the effort previously directed at not being victims of sexual assault, rape or sexual harassment in the direct pursuit of their goals. This would mean more direct competition for men, across social, political and economic arenas. That isn’t women’s fault though, and not something women should bear the brunt of the kind of threats of violence, and basic inhumanity often directed at them when they address these things. The fault there is in the hierarchy of disposability, which is what these men are actually afraid of. They’re afraid of being as disposable as women.

As long as we’re continuing to try to fight these battles as singular instances or singular varieties of discrimination, we’re going to keep being put into competition with each other, for a variety of reasons. One of the most important is our political system, and the existence of white supremacy as part of its foundation. It should be clear by now, whiteness stands as the thing which is centered, and thereby creates the environment in which all other racial groups have to be in competition for the attention of. Whiteness is, by design, meant to be a coalition which transcends all other boundaries. It’s been the foundational structure for 400 years. It existed before the United States existed, and it went directly into the foundation of the United States as a result. At this point, it should be clear there is no democracy in the United States which is going to function in a way which benefits it’s population without the cooperation of whiteness, and we’ve learned whiteness is so deeply set in to our culture, it transcends recognition of reality for nearly half the white people in the country.

We undermine its ability to coalesce and form power by organizing resistance to white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, capitalism and the rest of the destructive, oppressive forms systemic discrimination, as parts of the hierarchy of disposability. We do that by acknowledging the degree to which the disposable outumber the indisposable, and by creating the conversation and environment which encourages us to see these as different fronts in the same war. The war is on those who are disposable, and each front may use different tactics and strategies, but in the end, the war is being fought to insure we are still disposable at the end of the day, and it is fought to make it acceptable for us to see our fellow Americans as disposable. This also means we can’t separate the economic realities of white supremacy from the arguments about class. These are different fronts in the same fight, and strategy deployed in the form of white supremacy may be different than the strategy deployed in the shape of classism, but these are only strategies in those battles. The war is about disposability.

Part of the point of organizing these discussions under the hierarchy of disposability is to also eliminate the ability to make us compete with each other for the attention of power. If we can begin to see each other, whether we are primarily effected by white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, classism and part of the same fight, we will be more likely to support each other and there is less risk in asking for support from others who are also disposable. Black lives can no longer be disposable. Women’s lives can no longer be disposable. The lives of the disabled can no longer be disposable. Trans lives can no longer be disposable. More of us are effected by more than one form of disposability than aren’t, as well.

At the end of the day, this is what we’re facing, being made disposable. We are going to have two choices as we move forward and these slow moving disasters we’re facing continue worse and challenge our ability to act ignorant to their effects. We are going to acknowledge we have failed to deal with them, in large part because we were able to lean on the idea the people being most effected are disposable or we’re going to continue to try to feign ignorance, as the hierarchy of disposability expands in scope and contracts in privilege. We’re going to be rapidly facing a society where fewer and fewer are going to be able to live their lives unaffected by whatever axis of disposability they fall on. It’s already happening, and is part of what is destabilizing the nation now. That destabilization is going to effect the majority of us, whether we’ve felt the sting of disposability or not, but for those of who have and are aware of the degree to which this hierarchy of disposability finds us with a value less than others, need to be able to find some way to begin to work and organize together more effectively and as more of standard, because it is our only hope.