Thursday, December 25, 2008

Tracy Latimer not Robert Latimer is Oppressed

There are those who claim that Tracy Latimer and Robert Latimer are "both oppressed and that they "suffered together". I intend to expose this cynical, arrogant as well and ablest and bigoted sophistry.

If you look at it, Tracy Latimer was severely disabled. People in psychiatric wards didn't get the vote until 1988. People with disabitities and mental illnesses were sterilized in the days of eugenics. People with disabilities and mental illnesses were the first people to fall victim to the holocaust. They are disproportionaly ghettoized, homeless and unemployed. They are often victims of police terror as well as fascist and fascistic terror. Cuts and privatizations of welfare, healthcare and vocational services hurt them disproportionally. Tracy Latimer was also female and a youth (both of whom are oppressed).

Robert Latimer on the other hand is white, male and has a great deal of property. White men with property were the first people to have the vote (back when voting was a privilege of a tiny elite). Robert Latimer is straight, not transgendered, not of a religous minority, not disabled, not a youth, not a senior citizen, not a Jew, not of a Muslim. So really, I think it is quite proposterous to call him "oppressed". Apparently according to a census from the 1990s by he government of Canada the average farmer in Canada has one million dollars worth of assets, according to the Financial Post more recently the average farmer has around 11.8 billion dollars worth of assets. In the 1980s Robert Latimer had around 1,820 acres of land. Today he has 2,850 acres of land.

In term of the remark that Robert Latimer and Tracy Latimer "suffer together" these to is absurd. The first disabled people killed in the holocaust had the consent of their parents. Their are parents of Autistic and disabled children who consent to having their children said to the Judge Rotenburg "Educational Centre" where disabled children are electrically shocked for everything from nail bitting to nose picking to nagging. Or how about Islamic fundamentalist parents and their daughters who don't want to don the veil. Do they "suffer together"? How about homophobic fundamentalist Christian parents and their homosexual, bisexual and transexual children. Do they "suffer together"? As the ICL points out (althought they have cadre supporting Robert Latimer), the majority of child abuse takes place within the nuclear family. The murder of children by their parents is child abuse at its worst. Also, disabled children are disproportionally victims of child abuse.

Comradely,
A Dedicated Trotskyist,
Michael Gregory

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