Why An Education Is Wasted On Me

I have quadriplegia.

Although I am not cognitively impaired, I have faced a number of challenges throughout my life in trying to get an education. Despite these barriers, I was able to enroll in UC Riverside. When I began taking my classes, I was advised by UCR to visit the Department of Rehabilitation because they might be able to offer me financial assistance for my education. But when I went to the Department of Rehabilitation, I was told that I was not eligible for services because I was “too” disabled.

“An education would be wasted on me,” said the Dept of Rehabilitation worker. In her mind, I would ever be able to secure a paid position.

I, like many people with disabilities, are often demeaned because we do not have jobs in the formal workplaces. We are advised to work at sheltered workshops where we make sub-minimum wages doing crap work, and we are expected to be grateful for the opportunity! An intersectional analysis of feminist and Marxist theory can partially explain this phenomenon.

In Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts 1844, Karl Marx argues that capitalism reduces the standard of living to the barest form of existence. All one should expect is the ability to meet the barest needs, but not to thrive any substantive way. He further notes, that human value is reduced that which is “saleable.” Thus if you cannot produce anything saleable, you have no social value.

Marx’s analysis can be used to explain the Department of Rehabilitation worker’s words to me. Education is only of value if it helps produce activity that is saleable. Knowledge has no value other than its ability to create workers for the capitalist system. A person with significant disabilities such as myself has no “value” in this sense, because of my inability to produce anything saleable. Hence, education, which exists only to produce something saleable, is wasted on me.

Gayle Rubin notes in Thinking Sex, that even feminists tend to support the demonization of marginalized sexual practices, such as adult incest, sodomy, or sado-masochism, even when there is consent. The rationale is that “some sexual acts are so disgusting anyone who does so must have been forced or fooled” (168). There are many logics that explain what Rubin describes as a “moral panic” about sex (161). But, borrowing from Marx, one strand is that these forms of sexual practice are seen as non-reproductive. Because it is seen as not producing value for capitalism, it has no value in itself. This might explain why the justification for taking Native peoples land under the Doctrine of Discovery what that they did not properly “work” the land and hence did not produce value. And Native peoples were described as “sodomites” and sexually perverse. So not working put Native peoples and disabilities outside the realm of the human and in the category of the perverse. This is probably why there is such a high rate of sexual violence against both Native peoples and peoples with disabilities.

There is much debate as to whether prostitution should be seen as work. Carol Pateman, for instance, argues in “What’s Wrong With Prostitution,” that such an analysis erases the gender nature of this type of work relationship and does not explain “why there is such an enormous global demand from men that women’s bodies be available for purchase, just like any other commodity in the market” (63). But what is also significant is Marx’s analysis that marriage was also seen as a form of prostitution. But if we put this analysis together, we could also say that marriage, like prostitution, is a form of work. However, it is work that is not recognized as work. Housework, childcare, emotional labor, etc., are seen as activities women just naturally do.

Thus, one possibility is to recognize that what people of disabilities do is also work, even if it is not of value to capitalism. But then another possibility is to stop valorizing “work” as more valuable than other activities. So for instance, why is the term “sex worker” necessarily better than “prostitute” other than it presumes that a person is more valuable if they are a “worker.” If work makes one human, then perhaps liberation will come when we are not afraid to occupy the position of the “non-human” and stop deriving value from the ability to work or have one’s activities recognized as work.

My response to the Department of Rehabilitation worker:

1. No, education is not wasted on me because what I do should be seen as work.
2. I am not afraid to create waste for capitalism because I do not derive my value from it, and I never will.