One man's humour...

...is another man's (or woman's) offence... My friend wrote as his Facebook status the other day: "saw a rather offensive car window sticker on the drive home tonight". As my mate's got a dry sense of humour, I expected it to be something either insulting to his beloved footy team, or something salacious. Not a bit. The sticker read: "Men are like parking spaces. The good ones are all taken, the only ones left are handicapped or too small". I'd seen this "joke" before, and it upset me then, and nothing's changed since. It's simply not acceptable to parade around this disablist (not to mention sexist) humour. You try driving around with a racist sticker on your car, and see how far you get. We are sick to the back teeth of being the butt of people's jokes, and this is by no means an isolated incident (see my previous post). Meanwhile, the only disabled character in EastEnders has been axed. I know there are other characters who are disabled in soaps, but surely the more we are seen, the more "normal" we become, and therefore less likely to be seen as figures of fun? Discuss.

Disablist Rubbish

Last night I had the misfortune to watch "In-Betweeners" on E4. If you haven't seen it, don't bother. The first episode was pretty bad for disablist language; retard, etc but the second took the biscuit. Mong, retard, spaz, spastic (not in the medical sense) were just a few I heard, and I'm sure many more. I didn't stay to find out, I switched off in disgust. There was, I believe, a lass with CP in it (either that, or she was a female version of Danel Day-Lewis; the startle reflex when she was hit with a frisbee (accidentally) looked genuine enough.). Now, I don't have CP, so I don't know what the reaction of an average person who has it would be to being hit on the head in the manner I've just described. I'm pretty sure that a string of expletives would be the (understandable) response, and not uncontrollable tears - but then she was meant to be foreign, and there's always been a stereotype of highly-strung foreigners, hasn't there? I've had enough of this rubbish and I've made a complaint to Channel 4 here in the UK. No doubt whoever's in charge will try to say "it reflects real life and the way young people speak" but that's no excuse. Just because they DO speak like that it doesn't mean they SHOULD. Think of the outrage if someone said "n*gger" or something similar. What's the point of giving young people citizenship classes to teach them how to treat people with respect, and then showing this garbage? The irony is, Channel 4 has an editorial manager for disabililty, and a database for disabled people who want to work on TV, so what's going on? Watch this space... Anyway, if you did see it, please let me know what you think.

Blogging against Disablism

Disablism? What's that, then? It's not big, and it's not clever, that's what. Why should someone have the right to disciminate against, tease, ignore, stare at, beat up, ostracise or otherwise make someone else's life a misery, just because they're "different"? Or even kill them? We're all different, aren't we? Even identical twins must have traits one doesn't share with the other one. So why is it so bad to be "different"? I'm an individual, so I'm different from everyone else. For the best part of a day, I have wheels underneath me; when I'm not in my car, I'm in my wheelchair. In my car, nobody knows I'm not "like them", unless they're really nosey and peer into my car to see my wheelchair. But the moment I get out of my car, I'm "different" again, and people feel they can talk to me as if I'm a kid. Pram mentality I call it: because I'm only about 3 feet off the ground, I get the kiddy treatment. People don't expect so much from me because I'm disabled. Well, FYI, I can act, sing, play musical instruments, I work and I live alone. How's that for starters? Defensive? Moi? People think it's OK to stare at me in the street, or make remarks because they think I can't hear them. Well, it's not. And it should stop. Now. And not just for me; for anyone who's "not like you". Think about it. Pity doesn't help us. Understanding does.