David Bernstein

Mr. Kogan

Disability in the Past

16 December 2015

Feigning Disability and Vietnam Draft Evasion: A Cultural and Intersectional Analysis

Research Question: How did the anti-war movement of the Vietnam Era and attempts to feign disability to evade the draft affect cultural perceptions of disability?

Our class discussions throughout the term have addressed numerous instances of people feigning disability. These discussions have included slaves who would feign epilepsy to alter their sales and beggars in the late 19th century who would feign disability in the hopes that a passerby would give them more money. Feigning disability or purposefully exploiting disability has been an effective method of exerting agency over one’s body and further providing a performative rejection of hierarchical systems of oppression. Malingering can also be seen, however, as a method of exploiting and commodifying disability for selfish gain. One area of disability history that appears to be unaddressed both in scholarship as well as our discussions has related to feigning disability and the strategic use of disability in various wartime situations, particularly the Vietnam draft. This research would focus on the strategic deployment of disability as well as feigning disability in order to dodge the draft in Vietnam Era America. Further connecting this instance of malingering with societal conceptions of disability, the anti-war culture of the 1960’s, and conceptions of homosexuality as a mental disorder, this research will provide an analysis of disability history that has been almost entirely untouched.

Research relating to draft evasion and disability has not been entirely neglected and has been noted particularly during the Civil War. Work from Peter Levine has noted that “All men called to service could legally avoid it by obtaining one of a number of offered exemptions, the most common involving physical disability.”^[1] Levine provides an apt discussion of draft evasion in the North during the Civil War using well researched evidence, but he focuses more on pure historical data as opposed to a focus on disability. His work can also not address the vast differences in Vietnam Era draft evasion due to the different ideological justifications for the war as well as the popular anti-war sentiment of the Vietnam Era. Levine still provides one of the only analyses of the strategic deployment of disability to evade participation in wars throughout American history.

This research will further build on various scholars’ discussions of draft resistance in the Vietnam War and the anti-war culture of the 1960’s. Michael Foley’s book “Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War” provides an important interrogation of numerous draft resistance efforts during the Vietnam Era. Mark Atwood-Lawrence’s review of Foley’s book acknowledges that “protest against the Vietnam Era draft remains little-studied and poorly understood” and that further research that does not solely focus on the extreme acts of resistance is necessary to truly understand the Vietnam Era anti-war movement.^[2] Building upon Foley’s research, an interrogation of feigning disability as a form of draft resistance would provide a new mode of understanding the anti-war culture of the Vietnam Era. Foley also notes the successes of the draft resistance movement in creating legislative changes during both the Johnson and Nixon administrations.^[3] This research would investigate cultural conceptions of disability and the extent to which feigning disability to protest or evade the draft led to these legislative changes.

Further, research could provide an interesting intersectional approach to disability history that studies the intersections between queer/gay identity and  disabled identity. During the Vietnam Era two of the most commonly exploited methods to evade the draft were feigning insanity or openly asserting that one was homosexual. An investigation of cultural conceptions of homosexuality as a mental disorder through a lens of disability history proves necessary considering that homosexuality was declassified as a mental disorder in 1973, near the end of the Vietnam War (of course, homosexuality continued to be banned in the military for several decades). David Harley Serlin’s work regarding the intersections of disability and queerness in military culture will provide an essential base for this research, especially regarding medicalized conceptions of disability in the military. Although his work does not extend to the Vietnam era, his discussions of the draft in the United States, which medicalized disability as well as homosexuality, will provide an interesting piece of analysis for the discussion of disability and homosexuality in the Vietnam Era. Serlin notes that “Taxonomies of physical difference became, in effect, strategies used by the military to rationalize assumptions about queerness and disability that prohibited the so-called unfit from military service,” and that these ideas were founded upon an almost eugenicist approach to disability and homosexuality.^[4] Accompanying this approach to the army that relied on eugenicist beliefs to medicalizing disability and homosexuality will build upon Levine and Bashford’s analysis of the development of the eugenics movement. Although the majority of the eugenics movement had ended after World War II and before the Vietnam era, the medicalized approaches to the draft process could possibly represent a continuation of the eugenicist mindset.^[5] The eugenicist approach appears rather ironic, as the draft weeded out supposedly inferior bodies and instead chose to send the superior bodies into combat to die. Further research into conceptions of homosexuality as a mental disorder will provide an analysis of the intersections between disability and queerness which have not been addressed in our class.

        A major primary source for this research would be Tuli Kupferberg and Robert Bashlow’s pamphlet “1001 Ways to Beat the Draft.” This source details numerous graphic and ludicrous methods to resist the Vietnam draft which frequently relied on feigning some sort of mental disorder. The list includes “wear pants made of Jello” and “proclaim that you are the living God” as well as contracting numerous different diseases.^[6] Focusing on this and other Vietnam Era methods of draft resistance that relied on feigning disability in order to protest the war would provide for an interesting method of interrogating the performative aspects of malingering. Kupferberg and Bashlow’s anti-war pamphlet would also prove useful for the discussion of intersections between queerness and disability. Numerous methods to evade the draft rely on portraying oneself as gay or queer including, “Report to the induction center in drag, with obviously flashy eyelashes and an overabundance of facial cosmetics. Wiggle your hips seductively  at the sergeant and say ‘Baby, I can’t wait to get in! All these bea-yoo-tiful boys …!”^[7] An analysis of historical examples of people attempting to use these strategies to avoid military service would provide a fascinating examination of the Vietnam Era through a focus on disability as well as queerness.

        Expanding upon this anti-war pamphlet with a further analysis of the 1960’s anti-war culture can provide an interesting explanation for the cultural justifications of feigning disability. This discussion of malingering would provide an analysis of disability more predicated on participation in a social movement than was the case with slaves feigning epilepsy in the antebellum south or beggars feigning disability in hopes of earning more money on the street. The more cultural based analysis, as opposed to the individualized approach of malingering for personal benefit presented in Boster and Schweik’s work, will distinguish this work from other research about malingering.^[8] Further utilizing these scholars’ discussions of intersectionality (Boster’s discussion of race and Schweik’s relating to class) and malingering, this research will address the intersections between queerness and disability.

        An analysis of feigning disability to evade the Vietnam Draft accompanied with an analysis of cultural conceptions of homosexuality as a mental disorder would provide a fascinating and important area of research. Anti-war pamphlets and other primary sources that discuss methods of draft resistance and depict homosexuality as a mental disorder will provide a necessary starting point for this research. This project will further interrogate cultural conceptions of disability in the Vietnam Era and will also provide a unique analysis of the intersections between queerness and disability. Building upon other scholarship discussing feigning disability, this research will further attempt to understand feigning disability as a cultural tool instead of an individualized strategy.