Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff or
Speaker 1: cpw DCS. If you're feeling an acronymy, which I said
Speaker 1: just to bring out the pedants who want to correct
Speaker 1: me to say that it's not an acronym unless it
Speaker 1: spells a word. But let me tell you, pedance language
Speaker 1: is socially constructed. That's what we're gonna talk about. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Kildrey, and with me this week
Speaker 1: it's Samanth McVay. Samantha, how you ry?
Speaker 2: I'm great. I'm so excited to be on talking about
Speaker 2: Helen Keller.
Speaker 1: Yay, yay. Sophie's our producer.
Speaker 2: Wait did I just spoil that?
Speaker 1: No? No, this is part two. Everyone who doesn't okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Also it's in the title. Now you are the only
Speaker 1: way who came into it not knowing last time everyone
Speaker 1: else was talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always the last one. Why it's just you?
Speaker 1: Actually, I tell all the other guests, rude, that's.
Speaker 2: What I feel like, this conspiracy conspiracy theory. I'm like,
Speaker 2: you're setting me up. I know you're setting me up,
Speaker 2: aren't you?
Speaker 1: But I'm ling, how you doing? Sophie? You know, let's
Speaker 1: do it Okay, okay, our audio engineers ian our theme
Speaker 1: music was written for us by unwomen. And this week
Speaker 1: we are talking about Helen Keller, about deaf blindness, about
Speaker 1: how history discusses her all wrong, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: social construction of disability. So if you've paid attention to
Speaker 1: theory in the twenty first century, you'll realize we're talking
Speaker 1: about more and more things is being socially constructed rather
Speaker 1: than like objective facts, it's scare quotes. The one that
Speaker 1: gets talked about the most is gender. What is a
Speaker 1: woman is socially constructed and therefore mutable, and therefore can
Speaker 1: be understood to include, for example, a trans woman like myself,
Speaker 1: as well as this woman like you all. And I
Speaker 1: don't really want to get into the gender thing too
Speaker 1: much right now, but one of my favorite examples of
Speaker 1: social construction, maybe this is a weird one. Okay. If
Speaker 1: you gave a map of the world to a kid
Speaker 1: and ask them how many continents there were, they're not
Speaker 1: going to say seven. They're going to say six if
Speaker 1: they get convinced that Australia is big enough to count, right,
Speaker 1: because you've just taught the kid that the continent is
Speaker 1: a land mass right, and so then they'll say six
Speaker 1: not seven. Because it is social construction that gives us
Speaker 1: Asia and Europe. This is my theory. Someone might tell
Speaker 1: me I'm wrong at some point.
Speaker 3: Now, somebody will definitely tell you you're wrong at some point,
Speaker 3: but that's just because that person's an asshole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fair enough, that's true. So in general, the
Speaker 1: social construction of disability seeks to remove barriers for participation
Speaker 1: in society versus the medical model, which seeks to medically
Speaker 1: solve disability. In the social model, the impairment is the
Speaker 1: medical condition that sets someone up for disability, whereas disability
Speaker 1: itself is the result of the interaction between people living
Speaker 1: with impairments and the barriers in the physical, attitudinal, communication,
Speaker 1: and social environment. Shout outs to the group people with
Speaker 1: Disability Australia for that definition. In the social constructive disability,
Speaker 1: it's not a disability until barriers are put up by society.
Speaker 1: And this model has been in people's minds one way
Speaker 1: or another for a very long time, but it was
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties that it kicked in more
Speaker 1: and got its name and stuff, at least as I've
Speaker 1: been able to find in nineteen seventy five, a UK
Speaker 1: organization called the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation said,
Speaker 1: in our view, it is society which disables physically impaired people.
Speaker 1: Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments. By
Speaker 1: the way, we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full
Speaker 1: participation in society. In nineteen eighty three, a disabled academic
Speaker 1: named Mike Oliver gave this name, gave this the name
Speaker 1: the Social Model of Disability. And to me, it's not
Speaker 1: a coincidence that this movement started around nineteen seventy when
Speaker 1: just about everything in American society was changing, well, Western society.
Speaker 1: A lot of this comes from the UK as well.
Speaker 1: The more I read about late sixties and early seventies
Speaker 1: in the US, the more it feels like we actually
Speaker 1: kind of did have a revolution, not as complete as
Speaker 1: one of we would have liked, but modern feminism, anti racism,
Speaker 1: bodily autonomy, decolonization, queer liberation, disability rights, just fucking all
Speaker 1: of it and pouring in because of people fighting really
Speaker 1: really hard with everything from sit ins to rifles. And
Speaker 1: I bring this up because I think we owe everything
Speaker 1: to the prisoners who are still in fucking prison from
Speaker 1: that time, because there are still people in prison from
Speaker 1: these struggles. The other thing about that model is it's
Speaker 1: a really good lens with which to understand some of
Speaker 1: the problems in capitalist society, or really productivity is the
Speaker 1: end goal society. Author Susan Wendell, in an essay called
Speaker 1: the Social Construction of Disability, said, when the pace of
Speaker 1: life in a society increases, there is a tendency for
Speaker 1: more people to become disabled, not only because of physically
Speaker 1: damaging consequences of efforts to go faster, but also because
Speaker 1: fewer people can meet the expectations of quote normal performance.
Speaker 1: The physical and mental limitations of those who cannot meet
Speaker 1: the new pace become concer aspicuous and disabling, even though
Speaker 1: the same limitations were inconspicuous and irrelevant to full participation
Speaker 1: in a slower paced society. That one kind of like,
Speaker 1: mind blew me a little bit when I like, just
Speaker 1: like this idea that it's like, yeah, you can see
Speaker 1: that we are suddenly disabled because more is expected of us, right,
Speaker 1: so fewer people are meeting that bar. The other thing
Speaker 1: that she said in there that I think is worth
Speaker 1: pointing out, quote two things are important to remember about
Speaker 1: the help that people with disabilities may need. One is
Speaker 1: that most industrialized societies give non disabled people, in different
Speaker 1: degrees and kinds, depending on class, race, gender, and other factors,
Speaker 1: a lot of help in the form of education, training,
Speaker 1: social support, public communication and transportation facilities, public recreation, and
Speaker 1: other services. The help that non disabled people received tends
Speaker 1: to be taken for granted. It is not considered help
Speaker 1: but entitlement because it has offered to citizens who fit
Speaker 1: the social paradigms, who definition are not considered dependent on
Speaker 1: social help. And so just pointing out that like literally
Speaker 1: everyone gets help from society, you know, and that absolutely
Speaker 1: able body people or not disabled people get more help
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, you know. And Mora Lee way, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: So almost on talking about the social conceptions of disability.
Speaker 1: But because being me, I spent a while reading about
Speaker 1: medieval conceptions of disability, because I like that branding, and
Speaker 1: because anything that might have a sword in it is
Speaker 1: just like cooler, right, you.
Speaker 2: Could go for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think seeing how social constructs change over time
Speaker 1: is incredibly useful to our modern conceptions. Medieval conceptions of
Speaker 1: disability were radically different from our own, and they weren't
Speaker 1: the medical model. They weren't good, but they weren't They're
Speaker 1: just different, right, I'm still learning about this. Medieval studies
Speaker 1: is very complicated because medieval studies is like millions of
Speaker 1: different cultures over like a thousand years, all like cramped together,
Speaker 1: is like you know, and usually it means like the
Speaker 1: Christian West, but even then there's like all of these things. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the medieval Christian world was a world full of where
Speaker 1: where things were judged by morality first and foremost, as
Speaker 1: compared to currently where we're judged by like productivity. Right,
Speaker 1: So in the current world, you're not disabled until you
Speaker 1: can't be productive to society. In the medieval world, at
Speaker 1: least in some places, and in some societies, you weren't
Speaker 1: disabled except by moral failing. Physical impairment wasn't always enough
Speaker 1: to count. That said, there were complicated prejudices against impairment.
Speaker 1: It seems like some people were like, Oh, you're judged
Speaker 1: by God as a sinner and that's why you look
Speaker 1: like that. And other people were like, no, you're living
Speaker 1: closer to God, living out purgatory in this life. You'll
Speaker 1: get to heaven sooner. Neither one of these is good.
Speaker 2: Right, but you know you're made to suffer. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can get the rewards when you die.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: I like the current method, the social construction model, that
Speaker 1: the one that.
Speaker 2: But so can we add the somehow add a saying
Speaker 2: about swords to help out that other one to make
Speaker 2: you like it better somehow?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: I really like the Tarot card the Nine of Swords
Speaker 1: where it's like the woman sitting in bed with nine
Speaker 1: swords on the wall, and I just it's like, it
Speaker 1: couldn't be me. Could you imagine waking up and having
Speaker 1: nine swords and being sad? I can't?
Speaker 2: I could?
Speaker 1: I could?
Speaker 2: I think they're yeah, because like what if there's there's
Speaker 2: why why does she have the swords? What are the
Speaker 2: swords for? Is it for her? Or is it like
Speaker 2: against her? Like? What? What?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: I get? Okay, Okay, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2: I'm a sad sag. You can't ask me questions like that.
Speaker 1: I'll find sad anywhere.
Speaker 2: I got this. Let me bestimistic.
Speaker 1: I really fixed my last name too soon. By like
Speaker 1: mid twenties, I was like, I kill Joyce. Who I am?
Speaker 1: I'm like literally professional optimist at this point basically try
Speaker 1: and telling.
Speaker 2: To be constantly smiling, and they're talking about happy people.
Speaker 2: I'm like, this doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: I try to be really outgoing in my twenties, and
Speaker 1: that's why I was a kilt choice. My social battery
Speaker 1: was constantly drained, so I was always fair crouchy. All right,
Speaker 1: that's fair. So back to Alec briefly, we're almost done
Speaker 1: with Alex.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, we're still talking about Alex LESCo.
Speaker 1: Okay. He left a legacy that people argue about to
Speaker 1: this day. Why is this important? Because he was close
Speaker 1: friends with Helen Keller and her entire life her over
Speaker 1: her entire life. It was a huge inspiration for her
Speaker 1: positions on many things, including almost certainly her position on eugenics,
Speaker 1: which we will get to. She dedicated her first book
Speaker 1: to him, and both of his brothers died of tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: which has nothing to do with this episode. I just
Speaker 1: tracked TV's body count in all my episodes because there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with me, and we're up to four at
Speaker 1: this point.
Speaker 2: Wait, only four?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that I found in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've done so many episodes.
Speaker 3: This episode only in this episode, that's okay, It's like, yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 3: that's you've only.
Speaker 2: Found four the entire time you've been on for over
Speaker 2: a year.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it's just the fact that someone dies of TB
Speaker 1: in every episode I do. In this episode, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you for the entirety of the seasons?
Speaker 1: No, because some of them are you need to, Although
Speaker 1: I keep bringing this up because I'm just really excited
Speaker 1: about it. The first a Manda get the first trans
Speaker 1: man to get gender firming surgery in the United States,
Speaker 1: and like at all that we know of, went on
Speaker 1: to save millions of people from TB by revolutionizing the
Speaker 1: way that we screened for TV. Name was Alan Hart,
Speaker 1: cool with fewer caveats. Alan Hart was just great, all right,
Speaker 1: so I like it. Alec Bell he starts hanging out
Speaker 1: with young Helen Keller and she's like seven something. Sorry,
Speaker 1: not even seven yet, I think at this point, and
Speaker 1: he's like, Hey, go talk to the Perkins Institute for
Speaker 1: the Blind. That's where you're going to find your answers.
Speaker 1: So Bridgman, Laura Bridgeman is still there, she lives there,
Speaker 1: she's hanging out and the school Perkins was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we have this twenty year old student who just graduated.
Speaker 1: Anne Sullivan she could go help you, and this started
Speaker 1: a fifty year friendship between Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.
Speaker 1: Anne considered not taking the job because of Helen's family's
Speaker 1: connections to, you know, treating humans like chattel, but she
Speaker 1: ends up taking the job and the world is probably
Speaker 1: better off for that. Helen refers to March fifth, eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven as her soul's birthday. When Anne showed up,
Speaker 1: immediately she started teaching Helen words by writing them in
Speaker 1: her hand, and the first thing she handed Helen was
Speaker 1: a doll and then spelled out the word doll in
Speaker 1: her hand. This didn't work right, the first attempt, of
Speaker 1: course didn't work. But a thing that makes me happy
Speaker 1: about this is that I know at some point Helen
Speaker 1: wound up with a doll from Laura Bridgeman, with clothes
Speaker 1: that Laura herself had hands sewn for the doll. And
Speaker 1: so I really like the idea that seven year old
Speaker 1: Helen's first words that she was shown was the representation
Speaker 1: of this gift of love from someone who had been
Speaker 1: through it before her, right, And it just like makes
Speaker 1: me happy.
Speaker 2: It does. But you know what I keep thinking about
Speaker 2: is the people who would gouge out the eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of their dolls. I'm sorry, no, no, it's a
Speaker 1: really striking image. I'm sorry, No, it's it's.
Speaker 2: I'm never gonna be invited. Whoa. Yeah, Like that's so sweet.
Speaker 2: But I keep thinking about the bad people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the children right here, and you're just
Speaker 3: me that.
Speaker 2: I just go real dark. Anyway, keep it alight, let's go,
Speaker 2: let's go.
Speaker 1: So it took her about a month for this to
Speaker 1: for her to get it to go from like mimicry
Speaker 1: to understanding. And this breakthrough event has been made famous
Speaker 1: everywhere in the world. And which is that she spelled
Speaker 1: out the word water while running water from a fountain
Speaker 1: over Helen's hand, and basically, you know, Helen Keller's like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, this is a thing that represents this other thing.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, teach me all the things that represent other things.
Speaker 1: And she just hits the ground running. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a statue at the US Capital of Helen at the
Speaker 1: water fountain, and I don't know, it's like, it's funny
Speaker 1: to me because she's this revolutionary socialist and there's a
Speaker 1: statue of her at the Capitol that said she did
Speaker 1: meet every US president She's just actually that fucking famous, right,
Speaker 1: And this is how people ignore her life is that
Speaker 1: she is immortalized in bronze in the US capital when
Speaker 1: she's seven years old, when she first learns how to speak,
Speaker 1: not what she learned how to say to most of
Speaker 1: the world. Her story stops as soon as she can
Speaker 1: read and write and communicate. The cool thing is done.
Speaker 1: Story over. Little girl overcomes adversity through hard work and friendship.
Speaker 1: National hero No notes, what people don't like talking about
Speaker 1: is what she actually said. And there's another problem with
Speaker 1: stopping the story of Helen Keller when she was a child.
Speaker 1: People in fantilize people with disabilities fucking constantly. I want
Speaker 1: to quote a black disability, writes lawyer named Haben Germa
Speaker 1: from an interview that she did with Time magazine. Quote.
Speaker 1: Since society only portrays Helen Keller as a little girl,
Speaker 1: a lot of people subconsciously learn to infantilize disabled adults.
Speaker 1: And I've been treated like a child. Many disabled adults
Speaker 1: have been treated like children. That makes it difficult to
Speaker 1: get a job, to be treated with respect, to get
Speaker 1: good quality education and healthcare as an adult. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the story does not stop when she's seven or eight years.
Speaker 2: Old, and that story that we know really just kind
Speaker 2: of highlights and Sullivan more than Helen Keller's achievements, as
Speaker 2: well as the fact that thinking about the fact that
Speaker 2: she learned a language like that in a month, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's incredible. Yeah, I'm trying to relearn a language now
Speaker 2: and it's not working well.
Speaker 1: She she learned that language was what was happening in
Speaker 1: a month, right, But the.
Speaker 2: Fact she could really get into it, the fact that
Speaker 2: there's like this correlation that it actually happened, and of
Speaker 2: course she builds up, but this whole level is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: as a child, I remember trying to learn English and
Speaker 2: it took me six months, and I you know, with
Speaker 2: all of the different things, like she had an incredible
Speaker 2: achievement and she was they do they make it. They
Speaker 2: set it up to be as if she was incapable
Speaker 2: to begin with, and that whole level again they being
Speaker 2: the story right right, the story. Yeah, but then you
Speaker 2: look at the levels like, wow, this is more than
Speaker 2: just your typical of like I taught something to this
Speaker 2: and this person was so great that they were able
Speaker 2: to teach them. It was her abilities to do that.
Speaker 2: It's like that that takes away from her story a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 1: I feel like, no, that makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: and it also weirdly also leads out leaves out the
Speaker 1: larger context of because when it gets presented as like
Speaker 1: the first deaf blind person to learn to communicate, which
Speaker 1: is a lie, one of the things that gets left
Speaker 1: out is literally this lineage where Laura like lived with Anne,
Speaker 1: you know, and like it's like we stand on the
Speaker 1: shoulders of giants, like we create things because we as
Speaker 1: a society learn things. And and I don't mean to
Speaker 1: take away from Helen's achievements by saying this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's all of this stuff. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: when she was seven or eight, not long after Anne
Speaker 1: showed up, the two moved up north and Helen attended
Speaker 1: the Perkins Institute for the Blind, then bounced around to
Speaker 1: a couple of schools for the deaf. She went to
Speaker 1: New York for a minute for a school to the deaf,
Speaker 1: Then she went to a regular high school for a while,
Speaker 1: as I can tell, And then she did the this
Speaker 1: was when I was speed running a little bit this part.
Speaker 1: Then she did the thing that she's famous for, which
Speaker 1: is go to Harvard. Well, I mean, I don't of
Speaker 1: you knew this, but you can't have girls studying at
Speaker 1: Harvards shes a Radcliffe, the women's annex of Harvard.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm trying to, like because the storylines and what
Speaker 2: I know versus what like they don't match. I'm like, oh, oh.
Speaker 1: No, tell me, tell me. I'm curious.
Speaker 2: No no, no no no, meaning like because of the way
Speaker 2: that it's framed, you think it's so far back past,
Speaker 2: but it really and then at the same time, like
Speaker 2: it my timeline is off, is what I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, Oh I see yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. She goes.
Speaker 1: She goes to Radcliffe, which is the women's annex of
Speaker 1: Harvard where they quarantine all the cooties. And the rich
Speaker 1: philanthropist guy who paid for her education was someone that
Speaker 1: she met through her good pal Mark Twain. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what episode we talked about Mark Twain on. He
Speaker 1: is complicated. She's very good at being friends with complicated folks.
Speaker 1: The rich guy, his name is Henry Huddleston Rogers. He's
Speaker 1: an oil magnate who invented the oil pipeline. Thanks Henry
Speaker 1: Huddleston Rogers. He was half evil capitalist and half progressive reformer,
Speaker 1: and not just with having paid for Helen. He like
Speaker 1: did a lot of work of I can't remember where
Speaker 1: they funded. I can't remember what he funded. He funded
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff. I don't know they were good stuff.
Speaker 1: Now he's fucking he invented the oil pipeline. Was a millionaire,
Speaker 1: cool people he is not.
Speaker 2: So Yeah, did Helen not come from a rich family.
Speaker 1: Oh, she came from a rich family, but I think
Speaker 1: that there's probably like rich family money. Like Also, some
Speaker 1: of the ways it's described is that her family wealth
Speaker 1: was like kind of shot by the fact that they
Speaker 1: got their asses kicked by trying to have an unjust war,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I know they didn't lose a lot, but
Speaker 2: apparently it wasn't enough to get not a lot lot okay, okay,
Speaker 2: yeah a lot, not a lot lot, and I feel
Speaker 2: not enough. Yeah, they still had money, yeah, instead.
Speaker 1: Of like giving it all to the people who had
Speaker 1: literally built all.
Speaker 2: Of their wealth, right, I mean, they didn't get in prison,
Speaker 2: they still had their land.
Speaker 1: I know exactly. They did fucking fine. They did a
Speaker 1: little too fine. They were fine. Yeah, so yeah, no,
Speaker 1: so so Helen Keller goes to college, becomes the first
Speaker 1: deaf blind person to get a bachelor's degree, and her
Speaker 1: time at Harvard in like one version of the story.
Speaker 1: There's so many versions of the story and a lot
Speaker 1: of At this point you get into multiple versions of
Speaker 1: the story that are all kind of true. Although before
Speaker 1: we get into those stories, I want to tell the
Speaker 1: story about the person who didn't have any goods or
Speaker 1: services and was very sad.
Speaker 2: And then I need these goods and service like.
Speaker 1: A yeah, like a shiny city on the hill. There
Speaker 1: were goods and there were services, and they were offered
Speaker 1: at competitive prices. God, all right, there's some advertisement. Yes, thanks,
Speaker 1: and we're back. And Margaret is dealing with the complexity
Speaker 1: of having to come up with some other clever way
Speaker 1: to point out the complexity of pointing out ads. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: four times a week.
Speaker 2: Perfect, So we just ignore them.
Speaker 1: No, that's completely fair. I kind of like, like, I
Speaker 1: just think it's like funny to be like, eh, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: roun here come the ads. I don't know whatever.
Speaker 2: I feel like y'all have a lot more space, I guess,
Speaker 2: freedom to do with the ads than we do, because
Speaker 2: I don't know if I've ever told you this, Sophie.
Speaker 2: After I got done with Behind the Bastards, and we
Speaker 2: know how Robert likes to introduce the ads, and he
Speaker 2: got an email from a listener who came to listen
Speaker 2: to our show was criticizing her for not doing the
Speaker 2: same thing as a Robert for the ad breaks. And
Speaker 2: she was like, what he hell, I wasn't even on
Speaker 2: that show.
Speaker 3: God, get fucking life that you track down a host
Speaker 3: of a podcast to complain that they're not doing ad
Speaker 3: transitions in the same way as a as a comedic
Speaker 3: history podcast like come the Rock on.
Speaker 2: Or like we have a whole different standard when it
Speaker 2: comes to our podcast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: But yes, Margaret, you're doing a great job. And I
Speaker 2: joined every single one of them.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, why I get paid the big bucks.
Speaker 1: I don't actually write the scripts. All I do is
Speaker 1: the ad transitions.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Ye that would be easy, man, I have such an
Speaker 1: easy life anyway.
Speaker 2: So coming back.
Speaker 1: To yeah, her time at Harvard, her time at Cooties,
Speaker 1: Harvard gets presented at as this like great accomplishment, this
Speaker 1: huge place of learning and wonder of fucking Hogwarts or whatever,
Speaker 1: And this is not how Helen Keller what Helen Keller
Speaker 1: had to say about it. In nineteen sixteen, in an
Speaker 1: article in the New York Tribune, she talks about how
Speaker 1: she learned how society creates disability, how reading HG. Wells
Speaker 1: and Karl Marx opened her up to understanding how human
Speaker 1: suffering and often disability, was created by capitalism. The interviewer
Speaker 1: asked her, and all of this had to come after
Speaker 1: you left college. Did you get none of this knowledge
Speaker 1: of life at college? Her answer is no. Like the
Speaker 1: interviewer goes on at length about how emphatic this no is,
Speaker 1: college isn't the place to go for any ideas, She
Speaker 1: said about her teachers, they did not teach me about
Speaker 1: things as they are today, or about the vital problems
Speaker 1: of the people. They taught me Greek drama and Roman history.
Speaker 1: They celebrated the achievements of war rather than those of
Speaker 1: the heroes of peace. For instance, there were a dozen
Speaker 1: chapters on war where there were a few paragraphs about
Speaker 1: the inventors. And it is this over emphasis on the
Speaker 1: cruelties of life that breeds the wrong ideal. Education taught
Speaker 1: me that it was a finer thing to be a
Speaker 1: Napoleon than to create a new potato. This is where
Speaker 1: I should have done the ad break with potato. I know,
Speaker 1: really fucked that one up. Yeah, golden potato.
Speaker 2: Golden potatoes. Wait, the school zone people have an obsession
Speaker 2: with potatoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a thing for a while.
Speaker 5: Just me and MagPi.
Speaker 1: Yeah, potatoes, I just think they're neat.
Speaker 2: I mean, I agree with you. Potatoes are delicious.
Speaker 5: Yeah, gold gold potatoes are great.
Speaker 1: Yeahm hmm yeah. Fan of the fan of the potato.
Speaker 1: Helen Keller also said quote in the same interview, it
Speaker 1: is my nature to fight as soon as I see
Speaker 1: wrongs to be made right. So after I reld Red
Speaker 1: Wells and Marks and learned what I did, I joined
Speaker 1: a socialist brand. I made up my mind to do something,
Speaker 1: and the best thing seemed to be joining to join
Speaker 1: a fighting party and help their propaganda. That was four
Speaker 1: years ago. I have become an industrialist. Since the interview
Speaker 1: is shocked by this. They're like, quote, an industrialist, I asked,
Speaker 1: surprised out of composure. You don't mean an IWW A syndicalist,
Speaker 1: she said. I became an IWW, an industrial worker of
Speaker 1: the world. I became an IWW because I found out
Speaker 1: the Socialist Party was too slow. It is sinking into
Speaker 1: the political bog. It is almost, if not quite impossible
Speaker 1: for the party to keep its revolutionary character so long
Speaker 1: as it occupies a place under the government and seeks
Speaker 1: office under it. The government does not stand for the
Speaker 1: interests of the Socialist Party is supposed to represent. The
Speaker 1: true task is to unite and organize all workers on
Speaker 1: an economic basis. And it is the workers themselves who
Speaker 1: must secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong. Nothing
Speaker 1: can be gained by political action. This is why I
Speaker 1: became and IWW so, yeah, this is not That's not
Speaker 1: the Hell and Keller that they like talking about.
Speaker 2: No again though, I think, as you said, as many
Speaker 2: people said, they kept her as a child, so you like,
Speaker 2: really really that's where you think the story ends and
Speaker 2: realizing ah, yeah, she has some thoughts, Yeah, great thoughts.
Speaker 1: She has twelve books, something like four hundred essays and
Speaker 1: like wow, lectures and stuff that she wrote because after
Speaker 1: college she started looking around and seeing what was wrong
Speaker 1: with society, and she wrote. She also wrote openly about
Speaker 1: the fact that she owed her success to class privilege.
Speaker 1: Because there is something that you're reading all of this
Speaker 1: and you're always like, yeah, of course it's not. She
Speaker 1: accomplished an amazing thing, a lot of amazing things, but
Speaker 1: a lot of them were accomplished because her family came
Speaker 1: from money, right, and they came from fucking dirty money,
Speaker 1: and she just wrote openly about that. She joined the
Speaker 1: Wobblies in nineteen twelve and she wrote the IWW and
Speaker 1: she wrote for the newspaper for years discussing, among other things,
Speaker 1: the fact that disability was caused by social conditions. She
Speaker 1: meant that in a fairly literal way as compared to
Speaker 1: more of the modern social construction, although people also sometimes
Speaker 1: refer to some of her writing as a precursor to
Speaker 1: the social construction model. To quote her, I was appointed
Speaker 1: on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind
Speaker 1: for the first time. I, who had thought blindness and
Speaker 1: misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it
Speaker 1: was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the
Speaker 1: selfishness and greed of employers, and the social evil contributed
Speaker 1: its share. I found that poverty drove women to a
Speaker 1: life of shame that ended in blindness. And this is
Speaker 1: her talking about sex work and syphilis causing blindness. Speaking
Speaker 1: of complicated politics. So Helen Keller she just kind of
Speaker 1: did everything. She walked picket lines, She toured around the
Speaker 1: world talking about socialism and disability. She joined vaudeville for
Speaker 1: five years. And this is kind of interesting. It's like
Speaker 1: what we were talking about with Laura, where people would
Speaker 1: come and see her as this entertainment thing. But Helen
Speaker 1: chose this like this is the read that I've gotten
Speaker 1: from the people I've read talking about this is that
Speaker 1: this was like kind of more of a reclaiming of
Speaker 1: her stories again in the way I've seen it presented,
Speaker 1: where her act on vaudeville was her and Anne would
Speaker 1: go up and she'd take about twenty minutes to like
Speaker 1: describe her condition and stuff right and what had happened,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of side showy, and then answer questions
Speaker 1: from the audience. But I really should have written some
Speaker 1: of them down. When she answers questions for the audience,
Speaker 1: it's just full of snark and she's kind of a
Speaker 1: stand up comic really like, yeah, she's funny as hell,
Speaker 1: and she's just like, I don't know, I really should
Speaker 1: have written them down, and now I feel guilty that
Speaker 1: I didn't. And so she did vaudeville and liked it
Speaker 1: a lot. And really I think she liked playing the
Speaker 1: crowds and stuff like that. And they only stopped when Anne,
Speaker 1: basically Anne's health like kind of stopped making that easy.
Speaker 1: She traveled to dozens of countries. She learned five languages,
Speaker 1: far more than I've ever learned. Frankly, she tried to
Speaker 1: overthrow capitalism. She flew a plane once. This is one
Speaker 1: of the things that gets used as an example of,
Speaker 1: like clearly Helen Keller's fake is that she claims to
Speaker 1: have flown a plane. It was a pr stunt. They
Speaker 1: went up into an aircraft with her in the co
Speaker 1: pilot's seat, and then she took the controls for a
Speaker 1: little while once the flight was stabilized. Yeah, that's more
Speaker 1: flying than I've ever fucking done.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I would never.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she got into Christian mysticism. I wanted to learn
Speaker 1: more about this. I always wish I had twice as
Speaker 1: much time for every subject. She wrote twelve books. She
Speaker 1: also her first like published or the first short story
Speaker 1: stuff that she wrote with science fiction. That's when she
Speaker 1: was little, but it ended up getting published because who
Speaker 1: she is.
Speaker 2: I think she wrote this when she was little. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she wrote a science so it was good enough. They
Speaker 2: wanted to publish it later. But I think I think
Speaker 2: they wanted to publish it later once she was famous.
Speaker 2: That's that's my best Okay, so using her name, it's.
Speaker 1: My read but I don't know. I didn't read it.
Speaker 2: Go read it right now, Okay, go do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll come back, and we're back and I haven't
Speaker 1: read it, and no time has passed, all right. And
Speaker 1: then here's the most complicated thing that I'm like confused
Speaker 1: as shit by, that no one talks about in her
Speaker 1: like list of things. Is this song that she wrote
Speaker 1: the lyrics for in nineteen seventeen called Uncle Sam is Calling.
Speaker 1: It's a patriotic song about how everyone should join the
Speaker 1: army to fight in World War One. What this does
Speaker 1: not map to anything I know about her and what
Speaker 1: she's actively doing as activism in this time period. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's up with this. I wrote it, No,
Speaker 1: I am not sure. I am sure it is attributed
Speaker 1: to her. It is attributed to her and not some
Speaker 1: other Helen Keller. I think it is possible, and I
Speaker 1: am not saying this is a truthful thing because I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it's possible that they slapped her
Speaker 1: name on it because she's right right.
Speaker 2: Was she somewhere near a vicinity of someone saying something
Speaker 2: and said one word and then they were like, she
Speaker 2: wrote a song?
Speaker 1: You know. I don't know, but it's a uncle Sam's
Speaker 1: calling is a jingoistic like, let's all go fight.
Speaker 2: Did she get royalties? I don't know, like they're going
Speaker 2: to attribute that to her. Shouldn't she get some money?
Speaker 1: I yeah, maybe she just did it as a like
Speaker 1: blatant I need some money, or like there's another I
Speaker 1: have another theory. I'll get to you in a second
Speaker 1: about it, but okay, okay. Other stuff she did, she
Speaker 1: spoke out about against racism, like regularly. She donated a
Speaker 1: ton of money to the NAACP, and in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: she helped found the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union,
Speaker 1: alongside future friends of the pod who I have not
Speaker 1: gotten to talk about yet but I want to, the
Speaker 1: social worker Jane Adams and the Wobbly and birth control
Speaker 1: activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. The ACO was formed in response
Speaker 1: to the Palmer raids, which were we've mentioned a couple
Speaker 1: times on the show. It's the kind of first red scare,
Speaker 1: the little red scare before the bigger one. Wasn't little
Speaker 1: to the people who lives were ruined by it, which
Speaker 1: is when anarchists and communists were swept up and deported
Speaker 1: for protesting against the war, which she'd written a patriotic
Speaker 1: song for. I don't know. Here's what she said about
Speaker 1: war and revolution. Quote, I am not for peace at
Speaker 1: all hazards. I regret this war, but I never regretted
Speaker 1: the blood of the thousands spilled during the French Revolution.
Speaker 1: Generals testify to the splendid initiative the workers and the
Speaker 1: trenches take. If they can do that for their masters,
Speaker 1: you can be sure they will do it for themselves
Speaker 1: when they've taken matters into their own hands. My cause
Speaker 1: will emerge from the trenches stronger than it ever was.
Speaker 1: Under the obvious battle waging there. There's an invisible battle
Speaker 1: for the freedom of man. So here's my other theory
Speaker 1: that I am not convinced by. Maybe she wrote that
Speaker 1: song to be like, everyone go fight in World War
Speaker 1: One so that you all learn how to fight, so
Speaker 1: you can come back and like have a revolution.
Speaker 2: I would, I mean, that's an interesting. I get the
Speaker 2: idea that we all need to be prepared things go down,
Speaker 2: and for those who are not high on the social
Speaker 2: economic status level and need to protect, especially against those
Speaker 2: who have too much power, too much money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I'm.
Speaker 2: Guessing that's where she was coming. But then like to
Speaker 2: turn that into World War Yeah, confusion about uncle especially
Speaker 2: loving Uncle Sam when she's actively not loving.
Speaker 1: I know, Uncle Sam, I know, I don't understand.
Speaker 2: So many so many does she ever claim it or
Speaker 2: the name was just on it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if she claimed it. There is so
Speaker 1: much written about her, and I read a lot about her,
Speaker 1: but this was like a last minute I'm like looking
Speaker 1: through her like works attributed to her, I'm like, Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam is calling. And I fell into a rabbit hole
Speaker 1: looking it up. And then I was just like does
Speaker 1: this line up?
Speaker 2: I'm there right now, I'm like what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you find the sheet music? I didn't. I
Speaker 1: almost was like, I'm going to put it in a
Speaker 1: Midian play it for the audience. I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do this to anyone.
Speaker 2: I kind of wished you would sing a stanza.
Speaker 1: Oh I can't. It's funny. I'm like, actually terrible at
Speaker 1: I see the guitar in the back notation. No, I'm
Speaker 1: bad at taking notation and like singing it right. No,
Speaker 1: I yeah, I got you, I got you. I consider
Speaker 1: myself a competent but not amazing musician.
Speaker 2: I think you're great. It works.
Speaker 1: Thanks you.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you were in a band, a bunch of bands.
Speaker 2: I just remember. Yeah, hell, you're a musician, come on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but I just I would have to very
Speaker 1: slowly take the notation and like look at it and
Speaker 1: be like, okay, face facee okay, so this one's between
Speaker 1: this one and this one. That's how I I So
Speaker 1: that's the work here.
Speaker 5: That you tricked me into singing on the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did that go?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, I thought it was amazing.
Speaker 5: It wasn't.
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I'm Margaret, I know, I just myself right now.
Speaker 1: I need ear.
Speaker 2: We're just mixing everybody.
Speaker 5: Else anyone's name wrong.
Speaker 2: It's true, it's true.
Speaker 1: Are you true?
Speaker 2: You're the best, Margaret. I'm gonna need that to come
Speaker 2: back if I come next year, you le learn what I'm.
Speaker 1: Going to learn. I have to learn. Uncle Sam, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's clearly I'll learn. Battle him in the Republic. I
Speaker 1: kind of let's go die to free people. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's that's my vibe. No, I mean, you know, lots
Speaker 1: of complications there, but whatever, all right, Oh, and then
Speaker 1: speaking of complix she ends the interview when she's talking
Speaker 1: about the war and stuff. She ends this interview by
Speaker 1: comparing herself to future friend of the podcast, Joan of
Speaker 1: Arc And for most people, I'd be like less a
Speaker 1: little much, but this is Helen Keller, right, it's fine, Like,
Speaker 1: it's fine.
Speaker 2: Maybe she thought she was going down that path being
Speaker 2: a socialist and like the red scared.
Speaker 1: It's really true, honestly, she like, I mean everyone during
Speaker 1: this time was like, we're gonna have a revolution. This isn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: capitalism is gonna fall under the weight of its own contradictions. Like,
Speaker 1: so back to the ACLU. The other big issue right
Speaker 1: off the bat for the ACOU, besides the Palmer raids,
Speaker 1: was defending the NAACP. And so that is like what
Speaker 1: she's up to with her time, right, the ACOU has
Speaker 1: gone on to fight for basically everything good. Now, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that she also worked with her
Speaker 1: dear friend Alexander Graham Bell in advance of some of
Speaker 1: his theories like around oralism and eugenics. Those talk about
Speaker 1: Alan Caller's eugenics.
Speaker 2: So wait, she actually worked in agreement with oralism.
Speaker 1: Okay, so people, the way that I've read about it
Speaker 1: is that she like more or less agreed with Alexander
Speaker 1: Graham Bell's general camp around this stuff. And people claim
Speaker 1: that she has some like she talks sometimes about how like,
Speaker 1: blindness is fine, but deafness is what sucks. And I
Speaker 1: am not in a position to you know, but like
Speaker 1: it's it's a thing that has been very frustrating to
Speaker 1: lots of people, and so like, overall, she seems to
Speaker 1: be very heavily influenced by Alexander Graham Bell and continues
Speaker 1: to be friends with him his entire life. And the
Speaker 1: thing that we know about her in eugenics is in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, there was a eugenesis doctor I can't remember
Speaker 1: his name, fuck him. He left an infant to die
Speaker 1: because of its disabilities. This spark controversy. Helen Keller wrote
Speaker 1: in his defense. She wrote an article in The New
Speaker 1: Republic in nineteen fifteen that included support for an infanticide
Speaker 1: in the case of a quote poor Misshape and paralyzed
Speaker 1: unthinking creature and that it quote seems to me that
Speaker 1: the simplest, wisest thing to do would be to submit
Speaker 1: cases like that of the malformed idiot baby to a
Speaker 1: jury of expert physicians. They would only act in case
Speaker 1: of true idiocy, where there could be no hope of
Speaker 1: mental development. Yes, bad.
Speaker 2: There's so much outdated language in that, and I know
Speaker 2: it was used at that point. Everything makes me cringed.
Speaker 1: Though I know, I know, Yeah, it's not good, it's
Speaker 1: actively bad. This is the only specific pro eugenic statement
Speaker 1: she's ever been on record saying that anyone comes up
Speaker 1: with when people talk about this, right, but it is
Speaker 1: a big one. It is not subtle. Later in her life,
Speaker 1: people sort of claim she walked it back, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to push back against that. Later in life, in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, she made several statements that on some
Speaker 1: level contradict her nineteen fifteen statement, talking very explicitly she
Speaker 1: did not believe that people should kill babies for being
Speaker 1: blind or whatever. People use this later statement to say
Speaker 1: that she'd walk back to the eugenics. But to my understanding,
Speaker 1: the thing that she seems focused on is mental development.
Speaker 1: She seems to think that mental impairment is like actually
Speaker 1: bad as compared to her physical impairments, which are not
Speaker 1: actually bad. So I have no way of knowing or
Speaker 1: conceiving of whether in nineteen thirty eight she had actually
Speaker 1: changed her position on this or not. I do know
Speaker 1: that this is the only work she ever did in
Speaker 1: favor of eugenics, and she did multiple pieces of work
Speaker 1: against it, although those pieces of work against it were
Speaker 1: in the context of physical impairments.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. Yeah, the fact that it's also in defense
Speaker 2: of an act is kind of double waomy. I know,
Speaker 2: I'm not that anything is good, but you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're taking this example of a horrific act and saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is okay, Yes we can and justify it for
Speaker 2: later times. It's kind of like ah burns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a period during which, like I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it was a couple of decades earlier, but
Speaker 1: it was like Alexander Graham Bell was like literally on
Speaker 1: a eugenicist board, like because every area had their eugenicist board,
Speaker 1: because the actual dark ages with the Victorian era. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's possible that this was a way
Speaker 1: that she felt in nineteen fifteen and not later. It's
Speaker 1: possible that she felt this way her entire life. I've
Speaker 1: run across a lot of seemingly contradiction positions in her
Speaker 1: writing in life, and I think that I think she's
Speaker 1: a person of great contradictions. Yeah, she's a socialist who
Speaker 1: backs Eugene Debs, the socialist candidate for president, but meets
Speaker 1: with every president during her life, you know. And she
Speaker 1: also so she lived her life in the limelight, and
Speaker 1: she fundraised constantly for people with disabilities, especially the American
Speaker 1: Foundation for the Blind. And one take I've heard is
Speaker 1: that the sanitized version of her life, the sort of
Speaker 1: miracle worker version of her life, was something that she
Speaker 1: also pushed later in her life because it was a
Speaker 1: really good fundraising method. Yeah, the like, oh, I'm just
Speaker 1: a simple girl, learned to read, isn't that great, played
Speaker 1: well with crowds, and brought in the dough to help
Speaker 1: disabled people.
Speaker 2: You work with what you got, Yep.
Speaker 1: Fucking complicated And speaking of complicated interactions of money, do
Speaker 1: I have to do the thing again? Here's the thing
Speaker 1: where we here's some advertisers, and we're back and we're
Speaker 1: talking about how complicated it was. She met with every president,
Speaker 1: even though she supported you know, the overthrow, the violent
Speaker 1: overthrow of the United States government, of which she wanted
Speaker 1: to be a joan of ARC figure leading.
Speaker 2: So did she just meet them because they asked her
Speaker 2: to meet them, or was she advocating for something? Or
Speaker 2: is she just like I'm just going to the White
Speaker 2: House because I'm cool.
Speaker 1: I'm actually not sure. I would guess that it was
Speaker 1: probably part of her activism and like maintaining a high
Speaker 1: profile in order to be more effective, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: And one thing that happened to her a whole bunch, though,
Speaker 1: is whenever she would like, whenever she was like doing
Speaker 1: the good disabled person thing, the newspapers would be like,
Speaker 1: Helen Keller are the wonderful world. And then whenever she
Speaker 1: would say some like socialist shit, they would stop saying like, Wow,
Speaker 1: she's so brave and smart to have overcome so much,
Speaker 1: and instead all the newspapers would like, for a while,
Speaker 1: be like, she's clearly mentally impaired by her disabilities, that
Speaker 1: she's saying these things.
Speaker 2: You know, she's not all She's not competition.
Speaker 1: She became friends with the complicated alumni of the Pod
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin.
Speaker 4: Yep, A, sorry, yeah, that's the reaction. I'm sorry, fair, okay,
Speaker 4: keep going respectfully understood.
Speaker 1: To say he is not a good feminist would be
Speaker 1: a minor hyperbole understatement. Yeah, the FBI tracked her every
Speaker 1: move because of course they did, because she's of course
Speaker 1: they did.
Speaker 5: Those fucking piece of ship ghouls Jesus.
Speaker 2: But she wrote the song Uncles. I know, that's not
Speaker 2: that's not gonna leave my head. I'm like, if I
Speaker 2: write a song like that, will everyone like, well the
Speaker 2: FED stop? Well no, now we know we know the answers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: unless they credit her after her death, which would have
Speaker 2: been sixty.
Speaker 1: I don't think it is because the PDF music, you know,
Speaker 1: World War One. Yeah, yeah, it's like old timey sheet music.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, of course they of course they fucking
Speaker 3: tracked her, right, yeah, god damn it.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I know. It's like it would have been
Speaker 1: so interesting what if she had been alive, like ten
Speaker 1: years longer. Yeah, Like how she would have interacted with
Speaker 1: the seventies. You know, although it does seem like in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, her like social her like she
Speaker 1: she did step back from a lot of the radical
Speaker 1: politics and just moved towards fundraising and a more sanitized
Speaker 1: version of her own image as she aged. She fell
Speaker 1: in love once when she was thirty six years old,
Speaker 1: with a socialist who knew how to fingerspell. Yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: he did. And his name was Peter Fagan.
Speaker 5: Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: He showed up to transcribe for her when Anne was
Speaker 1: sick one time.
Speaker 2: And want to put quotes on transcribe fling.
Speaker 1: It's kind of sad they made plans to Elope, but
Speaker 1: to quote author Kim Nielsen, Kelly's family quote vigorously squashed
Speaker 1: the relationship with forced midnight train trips out of town,
Speaker 1: an angry and gun waving brother, and drama worthy of
Speaker 1: a bad novel.
Speaker 2: These people, man, what the I mean that kind of
Speaker 2: that tracks? I feel on that track. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: what Brian Kibb does for his ads. So of course, yeah,
Speaker 2: slave owners would do that, yeah, slave people, yes, which
Speaker 2: would Yeah. But I do wonder so if if she
Speaker 2: was doing all these things about socialism and conversations about that,
Speaker 2: I'm assuming her parents really hated that.
Speaker 1: I wish I knew. It's like again, it's like there's
Speaker 1: like annoyed that. I Like, there's so many versions of
Speaker 1: her story, and that's that there's so much that people
Speaker 1: do and don't talk about. Yeah, and people do know
Speaker 1: this when I'm a I wish I knew. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean like it's unknown to history. It means that like
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, you know. Yeah, Yeah, she gave
Speaker 1: into her family's disapproval of the wedding in a heartbreaking
Speaker 1: way where she basically was like, oh, yeah, they're right,
Speaker 1: no man will ever love me or whatever she wrote once,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine a man wanting to marry me. I
Speaker 1: should think it would seem like Mary in a statue.
Speaker 2: Ah, just bad parents. We know this in general.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and it's.
Speaker 5: That's genuinely soul crushing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised, like she didn't have friends or people will
Speaker 2: be like, yeah you should, they're great unless he was
Speaker 2: a bad guy. You never you never know, but like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it seems like as many friends as she had, that's
Speaker 2: on the outlier you would think that someone.
Speaker 1: So I think Ann Selvan also didn't approve of the match,
Speaker 1: and I don't know like why, and I I mean
Speaker 1: they were, I mean Ann Sullivan and Helen Collor were
Speaker 1: very close. I'm actually I'm usually always trying to be
Speaker 1: like historically close friends. I'm actually not trying to historically
Speaker 1: close friends Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say, that's a first for you.
Speaker 1: I know what. My Google search historate does have some
Speaker 1: phrases and questions about whether or not this is a thing.
Speaker 1: But it actually seems like they were historically close friends.
Speaker 1: But not in a euphemistic way. But I suspect that,
Speaker 1: like I suspect that their their relationship there was felt threatened,
Speaker 1: you know, hmmmm mm hmm. But and there were other
Speaker 1: there were other caretakers and other companions in Helen's life.
Speaker 1: Anne Sullivan, her lifelong companion, died in nineteen thirty six
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy while Helen held her hand,
Speaker 1: and then she herself lived till June first, nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: She died in her sleep at home. She was eighty
Speaker 1: seven years old, and her ashes were placed next to
Speaker 1: Anne Sullivan's and next to one of her other companions
Speaker 1: who didn't end up enough in the script for me
Speaker 1: to add another name to try and remember.
Speaker 2: Awful there, Oh that's so sad, and yeah, and she
Speaker 2: never like she wanted.
Speaker 1: To be fucking eighty seven and did like amazing shit.
Speaker 1: She went to more countries but more languages, did more
Speaker 1: shit than like. And it's like the thing that I
Speaker 1: really like when I was trying to decide, when I
Speaker 1: was like, am I gonna do a Helen Keller episode? As
Speaker 1: I was like, would I do a Helen Keller episode anyway?
Speaker 1: Just based on like being a badass socialist and shit,
Speaker 1: and like I might, I would have all been framed
Speaker 1: very differently. And I don't mean to erase the fact
Speaker 1: that she was disabled, right right, but I she did
Speaker 1: amazing shit and not just like on its own face.
Speaker 1: I don't know I'm trying to say here, but I
Speaker 1: don't think the story of Helen Keller ends with her death.
Speaker 1: I've read several accounts from folks deaf blind or deaf
Speaker 1: blind to talk about living in her shadow, about resenting
Speaker 1: her and then grappling with her legacy because of the
Speaker 1: way that her story has been told. And I know
Speaker 1: I keep bringing this up, but this is like a
Speaker 1: thing that has been really messy and a thing that
Speaker 1: is people have done with her legacy her whole life.
Speaker 1: Her story was larger than life, and her death did
Speaker 1: nothing to diminish that. But the story about disability too
Speaker 1: often starts and ends with her, So I want to
Speaker 1: point some other stuff out too. In nineteen ninety, the
Speaker 1: Americans with Disabilities Act the ADA was passed. This bill
Speaker 1: basically says you can't discriminate against people with disabilities and
Speaker 1: employers have to make reasonable accommodations for people. This didn't
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere. The government wasn't just like, man,
Speaker 1: let's be good today. I feel like we've been doing
Speaker 1: a bunch of bad. Why don't we just like do
Speaker 1: some good?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: It's like not how governments work. I'm hoping I'll come
Speaker 1: back to this topic with more info and details. But
Speaker 1: some of the people who fought this in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: a group called ADAPT started. This is me come in
Speaker 1: full circle back to acronyms. Yeah, this because it actually
Speaker 1: is a word. This is an actual acronym.
Speaker 2: This is an actual acronym.
Speaker 1: On like c PW.
Speaker 2: Just make it a word?
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 1: Because? All right? Originally ADAPT stood for Americans Disabled for
Speaker 1: Accessible Public Transit. They're a non violent direct action organization.
Speaker 1: They're still around. On July fifth, nineteen seventy eight, in Denver,
Speaker 1: they blocked public buses with their wheelchairs and spent all
Speaker 1: night in the streets in front of these buses, preventing
Speaker 1: them from moving. And they started doing this all over
Speaker 1: the place, blocking public buses because of their inaccessibility, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they would crawl up into the bus for dramatic effect.
Speaker 1: On March twelfth, the most famous of their actions took place.
Speaker 1: There was a protest called the Capital Crawl, organized by Adapt.
Speaker 1: The ADA was being stalled. Business lobbyists were like, we
Speaker 1: don't want to pay money to help people, and the
Speaker 1: evangelical right was like, we don't want anyone to help
Speaker 1: those ichy homos who are dying of AIDS. So out
Speaker 1: of a crowd of thousand people or so in front
Speaker 1: of the Capital, sixty protesters abandoned their mobility aids and
Speaker 1: climbed and crawled their way up the eighty three stone
Speaker 1: steps to the Capitol. The youngest of these protesters was
Speaker 1: an eight year old named Jennifer Keelan Chaffins. She later
Speaker 1: went on to write a children's book about it all
Speaker 1: called All the Way Up to the Top. And there
Speaker 1: were other actions too. I think more than one hundred
Speaker 1: activists were arrested after chaining themselves together in the rotunda
Speaker 1: in the big central room of the Capitol, and it
Speaker 1: gets presented, and I don't have a counter argument that
Speaker 1: this kind of drawing, this attention shamed people into action,
Speaker 1: right and actually getting their shit together to get the
Speaker 1: eighty eight passed. So on July twenty sixth, nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: the bill was signed into law. And these days ADAPT
Speaker 1: seems to be focused more on medicaid and pushing for
Speaker 1: people that have access to personal care attendants rather than
Speaker 1: nursing homes. And I guess, like everything we talk about
Speaker 1: on the show, the shit isn't over. We want to
Speaker 1: keep the moving come. We want to keep the conversation
Speaker 1: moving forward, but sometimes we get stuck and having to
Speaker 1: say really simple things like yes, deafblind people can communicate
Speaker 1: with the world. Helen Keller was a real person. What
Speaker 1: the fuck is wrong with you all? And that's Helen Keller,
Speaker 1: a badass socialist who should never be simplified one dimensionally.
Speaker 1: Who's complicated?
Speaker 2: Oh complicated, Helen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you got? You got takeaways?
Speaker 2: Or me? Yeah, Sophie, no, until who you're looking at?
Speaker 2: Oh me? Yeah, there's so many takeaways. I definitely didn't
Speaker 2: know her history in socialism. I definitely stopped with the
Speaker 2: young age story again. Yeah, really problematic, really problematic play
Speaker 2: that we did. But yeah, that's really fascinating. But then, yeah,
Speaker 2: her her friends, her crew of friends also interesting. I'm very,
Speaker 2: very very confused about the song.
Speaker 1: I am too, really confused. Someone is going to message
Speaker 1: me three years from now on Instagram in my DMS
Speaker 1: and explain the song and they're not going to tell
Speaker 1: me what they're talking about, and I won't remember because
Speaker 1: they won't say anything about what episode it was. That's
Speaker 1: how it goes, right, Yeah, we did it yesterday when
Speaker 1: when they explained the context, I will then be happy
Speaker 1: because I want to know what the fuck was going
Speaker 1: on with the song.
Speaker 2: Right, there's so many things. I'm really sad that she
Speaker 2: didn't have that. I wonder if that dude was bad though.
Speaker 2: Maybe that dude was bad, maybe just trying to riot
Speaker 2: on her hotels and try to come in on her
Speaker 2: fame or something good. Suffinitely, I hate that she fell away. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I hate that she felt that way though. That really
Speaker 2: my feelings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he does seem to like disappear from her
Speaker 1: life after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's too compact.
Speaker 1: I hope he doesn't just like bury in a shallow
Speaker 1: grave by some fucking you.
Speaker 2: Took it dark this time, I didn't say that that's true.
Speaker 5: This is cool people who did cool stuff. As a
Speaker 5: reminder to myself, I.
Speaker 1: Know, I think sometimes this show is Margaret explores people
Speaker 1: who are presented as cool, proposed.
Speaker 5: To be in the podcast. That makes me feel better
Speaker 5: about the world back bye.
Speaker 2: But like that, here's the thing in everything with good intentions,
Speaker 2: they're still like they're human. So you never know because
Speaker 2: as a child, I definitely as a younger person in
Speaker 2: my younger in my youth, in my youth, I definitely
Speaker 2: have made problematic comments, not understanding and not growing. So
Speaker 2: when you have moments like that, and if you become
Speaker 2: famous and then you start getting really really studied and
Speaker 2: like people start digging ship up, yeah it gets it's gross.
Speaker 2: So you can never and there's never anyone who is perfect.
Speaker 1: Sophie.
Speaker 2: Of course Sophie, but that's yeah, that's why we're from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one's actually perfect. No one can see Sophie.
Speaker 1: But Sophie is actually one of those biblical representations of angels,
Speaker 1: just like the like lots of eyes on floating rings.
Speaker 2: You know, you're you're you're going real. Okay, you're going
Speaker 2: real in this frightening angel. I was like, oh she's
Speaker 2: got a halo. Oh no, no, okay, we're.
Speaker 1: Not afraid kind of angel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thou not afraid with a bunch of eyes. Come
Speaker 2: on now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's Sophie. But that's separate then, like people,
Speaker 1: that's the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, but yes, I thank you so much for
Speaker 2: bringing this because I did not know half this information.
Speaker 2: I was very fascinated with her in my high school days,
Speaker 2: and now to know all of this, she does seem cooler. Yeah, complicated,
Speaker 2: but cooler.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I I feel like usually I end
Speaker 1: these research this research period with like I've cracked it.
Speaker 1: I think I understand this person, you know, love that
Speaker 1: there's just still mysteries here for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of mysteries.
Speaker 1: And I think that in some ways that's like kind
Speaker 1: of cool, like people just like actually contain multitudes and
Speaker 1: people do a lot of different things and fuck yeah,
Speaker 1: like the different things that you do. Mean you like
Speaker 1: that transition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what's complicated is because we are on zoom,
Speaker 2: I can't tell if you're talking to me or Sophie.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, for me, who's the cool person because
Speaker 2: I would not say that was me. But I am
Speaker 2: on a podcast called Stuff Mom Never Told You, which
Speaker 2: we do talk about intersectional feminism. We have a whole
Speaker 2: conversation about so many different things that apply to that.
Speaker 2: We are on all of the social media's other either
Speaker 2: under stuff Mom Never Told You or mom Stuff because
Speaker 2: we had to pick something and it sounds like we're
Speaker 2: a mom podcast. We are not sorry. We also have
Speaker 2: a book coming out in August. You can pre order
Speaker 2: it on stuff you Should Read dot com and it's
Speaker 2: called Stuff Mom Never Told You, The Feminist Past, Present,
Speaker 2: and Future, where we talk about different things that happened
Speaker 2: in history, not all the things because there's too many things,
Speaker 2: with some cute illustrations and such. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to see that book. I the mine
Speaker 1: it for podcast topics.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, what's so funny. It's the first podcast
Speaker 2: I did with you, episode about the Jaine Collective. I
Speaker 2: had just finished writing that chapter for that book, which
Speaker 2: is why I was so like, ah, this is amazing.
Speaker 2: I couldn't say it at that point because we were
Speaker 2: just starting the project, but I had finished that chapter
Speaker 2: and then you brought it to me and it was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, here we go. Yeah, very fitting you.
Speaker 2: You You predicted so many things, right, Sophie.
Speaker 1: What do you got? Plug?
Speaker 5: Just follow at cool Zone Media and Instagram and Twitter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can follow me on the internet at
Speaker 1: Twitter for now, at Magpie Killjoy on Instagram where I
Speaker 1: post pictures of my dog at Margaret Kiljoy. And the
Speaker 1: bands that were referenced is I'm in a feminist black
Speaker 1: metal band called Femina's School, just my token reference for
Speaker 1: the day. And I'm also in a bunch of other bands,
Speaker 1: but I'll pick another one as I'm an electro pop
Speaker 1: duo called The Lave. We put out a three song
Speaker 1: demo and I really like it.
Speaker 2: Hellow yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's They're on band camp and you can. They're
Speaker 1: also on like Spotify and stuff, which is cool. I
Speaker 1: like when people like my music. But if you go
Speaker 1: to band camp, there's like ways to give me money
Speaker 1: instead of Spotify's like point zero zero four cents or whatever.
Speaker 1: And we will be back next week with more. Let's
Speaker 1: get ready to cool people who did it's a did it?
Speaker 5: Oh oh oh? We gotta do it again, my boxing
Speaker 5: and announcement One more time.
Speaker 2: Before I go Yeah, one more time before I go Sophie,
Speaker 2: Please please for.
Speaker 5: You, Samantha.
Speaker 3: And next week we'll be back with another episode of
Speaker 3: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 5: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 5: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 5: visit our website
Speaker 3: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.