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conuly
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no_pity
. None of the disabled kids that I worked with when I was an advocate wanted to be disabled, especially the high functioning ones who could articulate what was going on and often said things like "I wish the autism/CP/Downs could go away." It broke my heart every damn time.
Y'know, it would break my heart too. It really would.
It also breaks my heart when I hear about little girls saying they wish they weren't so fat, and about little black kids wishing their hair were straighter or their skin lighter, or even about children saying they wished they didn't have freckles, or that their eyes were blue instead of brown. It breaks my heart when I hear about people trying desperately to not be gay anymore.
Because these are children, and adults too, who are being taught to hate a part of themselves. It's hard, it is, but the only solution that works - and works well, for people outside the affected group - is to educate others, and to make the world accessible to different people.
Setting up hypothetical discussions wherein people are encouraged to express their darkest fears about differences... I don't find that particularly helpful. Maybe it's just me.
Don't forget the apparently uneducable girl here, who thinks that all disabled people (or most, anyway) are confined to hospitals, unfulfilled, and nothing but a burden on others.
no_pity. None of the disabled kids that I worked with when I was an advocate wanted to be disabled, especially the high functioning ones who could articulate what was going on and often said things like "I wish the autism/CP/Downs could go away." It broke my heart every damn time.
Y'know, it would break my heart too. It really would.
It also breaks my heart when I hear about little girls saying they wish they weren't so fat, and about little black kids wishing their hair were straighter or their skin lighter, or even about children saying they wished they didn't have freckles, or that their eyes were blue instead of brown. It breaks my heart when I hear about people trying desperately to not be gay anymore.
Because these are children, and adults too, who are being taught to hate a part of themselves. It's hard, it is, but the only solution that works - and works well, for people outside the affected group - is to educate others, and to make the world accessible to different people.
Setting up hypothetical discussions wherein people are encouraged to express their darkest fears about differences... I don't find that particularly helpful. Maybe it's just me.
Don't forget the apparently uneducable girl here, who thinks that all disabled people (or most, anyway) are confined to hospitals, unfulfilled, and nothing but a burden on others.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 12:55 am (UTC)Usually though they say "I just knew...".
Regarding the staff person at the "hospitals"... one thing that scared me when I was growing up, was one of the institutions I was in very briefly (while being transferred between two other ones) they would talk about how such-and-such a kind of person "could not possibly live outside of here" so they "tried to make that person very happy in the hospital" and so forth. (This was a relatively famous children's hospital, and very rich and comfortable but the 'medical' care was... meh... not great, since it was a teaching hospital.)
And the things they described, I later of course learned there's plenty of people with those things who live outside there, it's just a matter of services, etc.
I bet it's the same with wherever that person works.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 12:57 am (UTC)I often see staff online saying what they really think of their clients, whether their clients are inmates in some facility, or living in the outside world and getting in-home services.
And it's terrifying what they think of us.
Utterly terrifying.
It makes me wonder what a lot of my staff really think of me.
Because it's so utterly negative and dehumanizing and "I'd want anything but to be like them."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 02:55 am (UTC)But if you call them on it, they go "Oh, I'm just venting, are you telling me I'm not allowed to vent now? You're being MEAN TO ME!!!!!!!!"
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:42 am (UTC)Although, being brainwashed to think you're happy strikes me as less problematic than being brainwashed to think you're unhappy. Especially if it's about something you cannot change. So, if you can brainwash people to be happy with the unchangeable... is that necessarily bad?
Just to go off on a tangent.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 12:55 am (UTC)Usually though they say "I just knew...".
Regarding the staff person at the "hospitals"... one thing that scared me when I was growing up, was one of the institutions I was in very briefly (while being transferred between two other ones) they would talk about how such-and-such a kind of person "could not possibly live outside of here" so they "tried to make that person very happy in the hospital" and so forth. (This was a relatively famous children's hospital, and very rich and comfortable but the 'medical' care was... meh... not great, since it was a teaching hospital.)
And the things they described, I later of course learned there's plenty of people with those things who live outside there, it's just a matter of services, etc.
I bet it's the same with wherever that person works.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 12:57 am (UTC)I often see staff online saying what they really think of their clients, whether their clients are inmates in some facility, or living in the outside world and getting in-home services.
And it's terrifying what they think of us.
Utterly terrifying.
It makes me wonder what a lot of my staff really think of me.
Because it's so utterly negative and dehumanizing and "I'd want anything but to be like them."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 02:55 am (UTC)But if you call them on it, they go "Oh, I'm just venting, are you telling me I'm not allowed to vent now? You're being MEAN TO ME!!!!!!!!"
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 03:42 am (UTC)Although, being brainwashed to think you're happy strikes me as less problematic than being brainwashed to think you're unhappy. Especially if it's about something you cannot change. So, if you can brainwash people to be happy with the unchangeable... is that necessarily bad?
Just to go off on a tangent.