kellysue:

Paste: The way that the word “compliant” is used, and takes on these incredible sinister connotations throughout the first issue…when did you arrive on that?

DeConnick: Everyone who works in the medical field hates me for that choice, by the way. Apparently, non-compliant patients are nothing you want to cheer for. I don’t remember making that decision. This is a thing I see with my daughter. My daughter is a very spirited 4-year-old girl. And with my daughter more than with my son — when my son is, let’s say spirited, it tends to be, “Boys do that; that’s boys.” And it’s chuckled at, if not encouraged. And when my daughter has initiative or is disagreeable or has a different idea about how she wants to do things, she’s a pain in the ass. She’s a troublemaker. She needs to smile and act nice and not disrupt the system. And I want so badly to protect this[, this] thing about my daughter that I most treasure right now: Tallulah does not give a fuck if you like her. I am so proud of her for that. And I know that there are parents that that will horrify. Please understand that we have a saying in our home, that you don’t have to be nice, but you must be kind. And what we’re trying to emphasize is you don’t have to be compliant; you don’t have to just go along with the way of things.

Full interview in LINK. 

I haven’t read Bitch Planet or Pretty Deadly yet, but I have to say I approve of the word usage of ‘complaint’ here. Many people, many of them disabled, many of them female or queer or people of colour, have the label ‘non-compliant’ attached to their files simply because they have opinions about their own medical or psychiatric care that do not mesh with those of their primary physician. This isn’t a benign thing – people’s accounts of their symptoms are dismissed, they are forced into courses of treatment or medications that are unsuitable for them, forced into institutions or even die through improper medical or psychiatric care, all because a physician decided their patient was too uppity and didn’t have a right to independently research their condition or make informed choices about what treatment was right for them. Given that disabled people, women, queer people and POC are more likely to be subjected to these forms of social control by medical practitioners, government agencies and law enforcement, the use of the word compliant rings true to many people who have been subject to the whims of these agencies in the course of their lifetime. Just my two cents, from a disabled autistic queer girl, for whom the world has been difficult, but not as horrific as it has been for some of my fellows.