To Temple Grandin, an Open Letter

To Temple Grandin,

You need to stop now. Stop talking about autism, about autistic people. Stop pretending to know about people whom you don't even interact with, whom you have shown nothing but disdain for.

When you started going to autism conferences and doing the talks, it was a big thing. I'll give you that. You were part of the beginning of autistic voices demanding to be heard, to be taken seriously by professionals and researchers and parents. It feels good to be making a difference, doesn't it?

But you're no longer making a difference; now you're harming people with what you're saying. So you need to stop.

What have you said? You've said that autistic people need to "get [our] butts out of the house and get a job." You've only deigned to pay attention to "high functioning" people who not only have jobs, but "careers." This ignores the fact that for many autistic people, there are systematic and environmental barriers in place that prevents us from getting jobs, never mind leaving the house. This ignores the fact that even if autistic people had the training and skills to look for work, the economies in many countries make it increasingly difficult for disabled people of many types to look and gain employment. This ignores the huge amount of depression and PTSD present in the autistic population, which does impact whether someone can work. 

This ignores that someone's worth isn't based on whether one can work. On whether someone can talk, on what skills or talents a person has. 

In other words, Temple Grandin, you are being ableist, to other autistic people and other disabilities. You speak from a place of unchecked white privilege, without knowing about the lives or truly interacting with other autistic people, yet you try to speak for us. Your words are taken on as gospel by parents and professionals, but in truth, you know nothing about us. And you need to stop, right now. 

Signed, 
~Corina Becker 

Words are Words

To Autism Speaks,

I've noticed you've made some words changes on your mission statement lately. You've replaced "cure" with "solutions" and included "acceptance".  Some people are calling this a big shift for your organization, myself and many other autistic people don't think so.

While I have no doubt that you aim to stop the autistic people boycotting you and your sponsors, this is not the only change that needs to happen. For us to accept that you truly are changing, there needs to be more than just words.  There needs to be actions as well.

There needs to be systematic changes to how your organization is structured, how it is run, in the decisions it makes, in how it spends its money.

In short, these are just words; what do your actions say?

How I can believe that you're making changes, when you still support ABA as a treatment? When you support research looking into autism and immune systems? When your organization still doesn't have autistic people in decision making positions? When you've pretty much not made any other changes?  When you haven't apologized for the way you've demonized us, treat us as tragedies, cite inaccurate statistics about us? When I still see first-person language used, I can still see medicalization in your information about us, despite so many of us demanding that you do otherwise? When you otherwise ignore autistic people and fail in so many ways to support us?

You want to change? Show us you can actually change.  Until then, we're not falling for your superficial gloss over, your charade.  You're not actually supporting us, you're not actually listening to us, and until there is fundamental changes, you never will.

Toronto Star Interview on ABA/IBI

Back in April, I was approached by a colleague of mine on Twitter about being interviewed by a reporter for the Toronto Star.  The story was about the recent changes to Ontario funding to ABA/IBI. If you aren't aware, Ontario just stopped direct funding for ABA/IBI for over the age of 5 years old, with something of a hazy declaration for more funding to other therapies and supports.

Which, pro-ABA/IBI people don't like, cause the parents have been told that this is the only thing that works, and the professionals, well, they have an industry, even if they mean well, it's an industry that causes harm.

Anyways, the reporter of the article was looking for autistic points of view, and found me.  I prefer email interviews, which has upsides and downsides. Downside, no nice sound-clips to put on the radio.  Upside, despite only having a couple of my sentences actually used in the article, I have the entire email interview to post.

I understand that the reporter may not have had complete control of the editing process; pictures and stories of children sure are more appealing than those of a 31-year old autistic woman, after all.  But I like being fully represented, signed no documents to keep the interview quiet, and so I retain my rights to publicize my side of the interview.

So.  Here is the article that was published by the Toronto Star. 

And here is the complete interview that I gave them:

 You wrote that autistic narratives and issues are being completely overlooked in the  discussion. Can you elaborate on what is being left out that most concerns you?

1) In Canada, there has been a silencing of autistic narratives.  It’s subtle, but it’s there.  It can be seen with how there are barely any services for autistic adults, for autistic women. It can be felt with our absence in discussions about our lives, our past, present, and future. But autistic people notice it acutely, as this absence affects our lives, in the supports we receive, in how organizations and support staff treat us.  And the only real cure for this is for us to a part of those discussions, part of the decisions made by support organizations and provincial committees, to have our voices and narratives be included in all the ways that affect our lives.  To put it simply, I am a Canadian citizen, myself and other autistic people want to be part of the process in shaping our futures in our nation.

Do you have an opinion about ABA principles or IBI, and the belief expressed by many parents that their children's futures depend on intensive behavioural intervention? 

 

2) There are two problems with ABA and IBI; that it is the best chance for an autistic person’s future, despite a lack of scientific and ethically sound evidence, and that ABA/IBI principles are based on wrong assumptions regarding behaviour and autistic people. ABA/IBI is based on behaviourism, which states that if you change a person’s outward behaviour, you change how a person thinks.  It was this same premise that created gay conversion therapy, also by the creator of ABA/IBI, Ivar Lovaas. We no longer think of autism as a mental illness, knowing that it is neurological wiring, how our brains work, but the premise of behavourism still remains in ABA/IBI.  Thus, ABA/IBI doesn’t really teach life skills, or offers the best hope for an autistic person’s future, but teaches that our behaviour, our way of thinking and acting, is wrong and must be eliminated, often with a lot of traumatic stress. The accounts of autistic survivors account for a large percent of PTSD caused by ABA/IBI therapy throughout their lives, and the fact that these narratives are ignored does a huge injustice for the survivors, present autistic children, and future autistic people.

But autistic children are given poor prognosis, with claims that ABA/IBI is the only chance they have, when, quite frankly, this just isn’t true. So the decision about ABA/IBI in Ontario has mixed results; a decrease in focus on ABA/IBI, and some encouragement to look into other supports and approaches for autistic people.

 

What are your thoughts on what the provincial government's priority should be when it comes to meeting the needs of children with autism and their families? Can you talk about your own experiences -- what supports you think were most important as a child, and what would have helped that you didn't receive?

3) (tying in a little from above) What the provincial government’s priority, and all service providers, need to do is look into services beyond ABA/IBI.  It does not help that a lot of current research is into what causes autism, and few little is researching what helps us throughout our lives.  Listening to what autistic adults say about what services we need as adults is one of the steps to providing supports for autistic teens, children, and elders.  I would like to see more supports for non-verbal communication, in conjunction with mental health and emergency services, as well as dealing with issues about racism, violence against women, and poverty, as a start. Ideally, the supports we receive as children should transition with us into adolescence, adulthood, and into old age. Yet, there are hardly if any services for adults, and they do not support the full range of abilities and impairments that autistic people have.

Do you have suggestions on how to better include the voices of Ontario people with autism on this particular topic and in media stories? When we're talking about the specifics of IBI this can be challenging, as older teens and young adults who have experienced the therapy aren't always able to recall the experience or express how it affected them

 

4) When talking about autism, parents and professionals are usually the ones taking the stage right now. However, I think there is a huge disservice by not including the voices of autistic people, in government decisions.  Parents, professionals, and other caregivers want what’s best for their children, whether age they might be, but it is autistic adults who can say “this was harmful for me, these other supports are more appropriate” or “making these changes to a classroom would have helped me”, because we’re the ones with direct experience.  It just makes sense to ask willing autistic people for advice on what needs to change in policy and practices. And for this to happen, people also need to be open to various styles in which someone’s narrative is expressed, not so much dependency on speaking, but valuing other methods of communication. 

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April Transitions

This is a more free flowing thought post.

This past month has been busy, and the next month ahead is going to be just as busy, between work, school, research, grant applications, various traveling, and moving into a new apartment!

Even before April was known to me as Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month, it's been a bad month for me; it's the month that mental health issues just get triggered a lot. And this year has been a bad year.  So I turned off my email client (I have over 10 email addresses, by the way) to manage the stress of apartment hunting, work, health issues, and just plain Autism month stuff.

Since April isn't Autism Awareness month in Canada, although some of it has been creeping through via the sponsors of Autism Speaks, I also don't have much incentive to be active unless I have the spoons to do so, mostly online.  So when I checked my email at the end of the month (wow, over a thousand email messages), it was no surprise that there was quite a few April Autism Awareness specific ones for this blog, wanting to be quest interviews, for me to review books, cover certain questionable stories, etc.

The fun part is that most of the people approaching me are approaching me with stories that I will never, ever cover.  Yay, you're publishing another book about raising your autistic child.  That's not something I cover.  There are plenty of people who have written about raising us, what about autistics raising autistic children?

I get quack treatments and stories that are highly questionable, like ECT (electroshock) to treat autism (by the way, that's medical malpractice, if not outright abuse), and if anyone had done their homework and realized that I'm on the side trying to get the Judge Rotenburg Center closed down and know my Mad People's History, they would know not to even email me.

And then I'm getting some emails about medical practices in general, that are totally out there, and I'm wondering how in the world they decided to email me and thought it would be good publicity to have me pick them up on my blog.

I wish some of this stuff was new, but it isn't.  It all looks like some of the same old stories that I've covered before.  I don't feel burned out, I just don't see the novelty of writing new articles for what is essentially the same issues.

In the meanwhile, there are things like health, both physical and mental.  I won't go into details, but even the small things can wear you down.  Shifts in something here and there can have great impacts later on.  And then sudden things that happen all at once, but then the effects don't go away.

I called this post transitions, cause I wanted to talk a bit about my moving.  It's a big transition.  I've been living in the same place for four years, the longest outside of living with my family.  The house I'm in is run by a non-profit organization, for people with developmental disabilities, with mental health issues, and with addiction issues, and those who would just be otherwise homeless.

Housing is set up in area of needed support.  So it's also considered supported housing, from more group home settings, to my level, which is the highest independent level they have.  We have a case worker assigned to us, to call if we need anything, a 24 hour line, maintenance crew (dependability depends on priority; been waiting four years for all of my windows to be totally fixed; non-profit = not a lot of money for fixing things), but otherwise left alone to handle ourselves.  If we wanted to, we can all chip in for a cleaning lady once a month, but generally people are capable of handling chores.

My experiences in the house have varied depending on my housemates.  I used to have to lock my fridge and cupboards until a housemate was finally evicted (four years, still haven't gotten compensation for what she admitted stealing; hey let's talk about how the law isn't always on your side if you're disabled). But also not so bad ones; I've learned to take care of myself, how to read body language better (I hope) and trust my gut about people.

I started this post in the beginning of the month, and now it's in the middle.  But I've outgrown my current living situation, and am moving onto a new place, my first apartment, a one-bedroom unit situated perfectly for me to get to work, social groups and services that I need.  Perfect for the long term, people might think, right?  Most adult support services will be satisfied that this is the end-goal, that the rest is daily living, to continue with my job, my friends, maybe work more and get me off social assistance.

But it's not enough for me, cause you know what, development doesn't stop.  Life transitions don't stop.  And I got my own plans.  This is my own place, for me to spend some time on my own.  My little bachelorette, if you will, before getting hitched.

And I know that adult support services aren't prepared, or at least aren't always prepared for clients who needs supports through marriage, and child birth, and childcare and child raising, and buying a house.  But they really should because after all, don't they know that people are a spectrum?  

The Tony Attwood Apologist

I've been following the events around Tony Attwood for a while, and I just found this post on Tumblr by Janna.  With her permission, I'm posting it here, since I think it says very nicely what I think of the entire situation as well. 

I’ve been at it for a bit now. Still having trouble understanding everything this person is talking about (have I mentioned before that taking Strattera for six months decimated my reading comprehension as well as messing with my typing?) but I’m trying to get through to them.

The post is here, if you want to see. I’m posting as karalianne, as per usual.
For those not up on this situation, a post was made to The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism blog, by an autistic person (who is very successful by NT standards), who attended a session by Tony Attwood while at an autism conference. During the session, Dr Attwood impersonated autistic people in a fashion that was exaggerated and taken as humorous by the allistics in the audience. Meanwhile, the autistic person was offended by this portrayal.

Dr Attwood was later pointed to the post, and he wrote to the author privately. In this e-mail, he explained humour to her and implied that she doesn’t understand humour because she is autistic.

More to the point, Dr Attwood has been doing these portrayals for several years, and many autistic people have asked him to stop. He obviously has chosen to disregard the opinions and desires of the people he supposedly cares about so much that his entire career has been spent studying them.

There is an autistic person who is posting long “wall of text” comments to the original post (they’re divided into paragraphs, but the paragraphs are really long and use a lot of big words; my current reading abilities don’t like this at all), supporting Dr Attwood’s continued use of impersonation in the face of complaints.
Here are a few of the things I’ve said so far:
My first comment to the thread:

I am writing just a general response about Tony Attwood in general.
He has written a bunch of books. He writes forewords a lot. He’s studied Asperger’s a lot. He has degrees and stuff. 
That is really cool, and it’s okay to like people who have done stuff like that. It’s okay to agree with the things they say and write if they are true for you.
It’s important to remember, though, that even the coolest people in the world say and do really bad things sometimes. Saying or doing bad things doesn’t necessarily make them bad people; a lot of the time, cool people who do bad things are just misinformed or don’t realize that those things are bad.
When cool people do bad things, other people need to tell them that those things are bad. Truly cool people might get upset at first, but after thinking about it they go, “Oh, wait, I get it. I won’t do that anymore, then. I’m sorry I did that bad thing.” Less cool people don’t stop doing the bad things. That doesn’t mean they aren’t still cool, and it doesn’t mean they’re bad people, it just means that they’re still doing bad things even though they’ve been asked not to. It’s okay to still like people who do that, but it’s also okay to stop liking people who do that. It’s also okay to criticize people who do that, because they need to be criticized.
If I am standing on someone’s toes and I don’t mean to be standing on their toes, I AM STILL STANDING ON THEIR TOES. I need to apologize and stop standing on their toes. My intent doesn’t really matter except that it was an accident. If I keep doing it to the same person, over and over again, at some point that person is justified in concluding that I am actually doing it on purpose and that I don’t actually care that standing on their toes hurts them.
This article is posted publicly. Anybody can see it, read it, and reply to it. Tony Attwood is perfectly able to do that here or at Karla’s site, I’m sure.
(Note: I wrote this the way I wrote it because this is about the level of complexity I’m capable of today. I’m not autistic, but ADHD impacts my communication sometimes, too. So I’m not “talking down” to anyone by using simplistic words and sentence structures, I’m writing the way I’m able to think about this right now. Just so everyone knows.)

In response to “not everyone has time to peruse the internet”:

Public figures should always expect to be called out publicly. It’s part of being a public figure. 
In addition, it takes about two seconds to type your name into Google and see what turns up. Once you skip to the third page (getting past all the stuff he’s actually written himself), you start seeing criticisms. I would assume Tony has an assistant who could use some time each day to check for such things, make a list of URL’s, and send them to him, with a short summary of each URL. 
Considering the fact that Tony has been spoken to more than once about this sort of thing and continues to do it AND defends it by saying that other people are okay with it is an indication that private communication will do no good and public callings out are now necessary to make it clear that this sort of behaviour is really Not Okay. 
Like I said, you can still like him. I don’t see why what he says about Asperger syndrome should be given more weight than what people who actually HAVE AS say about it, but that’s me. I don’t see why people who don’t have ADHD should be telling me how to “fix” myself, either. *shrug*

About the e-mail Dr Attwood sent:

1. I can’t actually understand all of this right now, so I might come back later, but I will probably forget to do that. 
2. Attwood has been approached by autistic people in the past and asked not to tell these kinds of stories, because they are offensive to autistic people. 
3. He continues to tell these stories. Ergo, he does not actually care what autistic people want and need. 
4. When responding to someone who has been offended by something you have done or said, talking about their perceptions is a way of putting it all on them. Basically, it is saying “I didn’t mean to offend you; therefore, you should not be offended. Since you are offended, it is obviously your fault that you are offended.” 
5. I know plenty of autistic MEN who are hilarious. My autistic friends are not all women. Nor do I know them all just online. 
6. Intent is not magical in any way. Like I said, if I’m standing on your foot without meaning to, I’m still standing on your foot and that is not okay. I need to apologize, get off your foot, and try not to stand on your foot again. Attwood has not done this.

About the difference between what Dr Attwood is doing and what autistic people themselves do sometimes:

Short note that autistic people poking fun at themselves/their own disorder is VASTLY DIFFERENT from people NOT on the spectrum poking fun at them/autism. 
I don’t like it when people who don’t have ADHD say offhandedly “I’m so ADD today” because IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY. I don’t like ti when people who don’t have ADHD make jokes about how I take legalized speed, because THAT’S NOT WHAT I DO WHEN I TAKE MY MEDICATION. I don’t like those memes that are going around right now about trying to fall asleep and Old MacDonald Hey Macarena OR the really old ones about squirrels or bikes (though I grudgingly allow that people who HAVE ADHD have a right to use them if they think they are funny or pertinent or something). 
I still don’t fully understand what the heck you’re talking about for the most part, but I did understand the stuff I just said and I know it pertains to some of what you wrote.

In response to something that was basically “he doesn’t intend to respond, and anyway very few autistic people are statistically going to be at these conferences”:

Regardless of intent. (INTENT DOES NOT MATTER) 
A person who has a particular disorder can say things about their own disorder that it is insulting and inappropriate for people who do not have that disorder to say. 
If I were giving a talk about ADHD, I would talk about positives and negatives and describe my life and the lives of other ADHDers who have given me permission to share their stories. And it would be okay if me doing that made people laugh, because I would certainly play my own stories for laughs if they were funny. However, if a professional who does not have ADHD told funny stories about ADHDers losing their keys every morning or something, I would find that offensive. Someone who doesn’t have ADHD laughing about things that happen to me on a regular basis, that are incredibly frustrating to deal with, is degrading and offensive. 
In addition, doing this - even when no people with the disorder are present - indicates a callous disregard for the people who have the disorder. It also encourages other people to do the same thing. 
Basically, IT DOESN’T MATTER IF SOMEONE IS THERE TO BE OFFENDED, THERE ARE REPERCUSSIONS FOR SUCH BEHAVIOUR THAT WILL AFFECT THEM ANYWAY.

Ableism at the Children's Hospital

What a way to start the new year, I came across this on tumblr, and feel the need to share this as an example of ableism that exists in the world.

As seen in this post by Amelia's parents, doctors at the Nephrology department at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia are refusing to proceed in a kidney transplant because Amelia has Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome, an intellectual and developmental disability. 


I don't think I have the words to express the outrage I feel regarding this.  This should not be allowed to continue.  I'm planning to try and follow the events regarding this, and give as much support as I can.  Hopefully Amelia will be able to get the transplant, and doctors will get the message that treating disabled people like this in not appropriate.

Edit:  There is now a petition to sign to allow Amelia to have a life-saving transplant.  Please sign!!

Loathing Words by Dave Hingsburger

Dave Hingsburger is one of my favourite disability bloggers.  I find that he just has this way this words that says exactly what needs to be said.  This is one of his most recent posts, Loathing Words, which I asked permission for to be reblogged.

Loathing Words!!

Words.

Piles and piles of words.

So many of the things I've been reading recently, about disability, have infuriated me. There are words that appear over and over again. Words that appear benign. Words that appear to be about something BIG, about something GRAND, about something IMPORTANT. Words that assume what I want, as a person with a disability, what we want as people with disabilities. Words crafted by others, that pretend to be about us, about our needs, but are only, really, about the sense they get about being gifted in the presence of what they see to be our deficits. Its is only really a fool that could say, "There but for the grace of God go I," and not understand what it says and what it means. There are words that feel good in the mouth of the privileged but burn in the ears of the dispossessed.

Words like: Empower.

I hate this word. I see it all the time. I've written about it before and I will do again, but for now let me rant. Who the hell wants, ever, to be empowered by another? Who the hell wants to be seen as so weak and so passive that they wait for the benevolent help of one's 'betters' for the 'gift' of power? We can only, of course, empower ourselves. We can only, of course, embrace the power we've always had and begin to use it. We can only, of course, raise ourselves. No one can do these things for us. No one can do these things for another. The word 'empower' - where it bothers me most, is when I see it used by those within systems. Systems that have routinely disempowered, routinely disengaged, routinely disregarded those with disabilities. Those they SAY they SERVE. It's a word used without irony, which is, itself, ironic. They first rob of power and then give tiny pieces of it back and call it 'empowerment'. It's like a thief stealing from someone a dollar and then giving a quarter back in an effort to 're-enrich' the victim. Right.

Empower.

I call Bullshit.

Words like: Tolerance

I do not wish to be tolerated. I do not wish to be the 'one' tolerated by the 'many'. I do not wish anyone making the supreme effort to tolerate the mere fact of my presence. I do not wish to be the fart in the elevator that everyone pretends is not there. Existing with the understanding and tolerance of another, existing with the gift of someone's making an exception, someone's making an effort ... as if my existence here, in this place, is not a right but a privilege granted by another. Those who tolerate get to tut tut the tolerated. Those who tolerate get to roll their eyes and glance conspiratorially at the other tolerators at the antics of the tolerated. Those who tolerate get to determine what is acceptable and what is 'just to much my dear'.

Tolerance.

I call Bullshit.

Words like: Kindness

Let me dissuade you of an idea. I do not want your kindness because I do not wish your pity. And let's be honest, kindness most often grows as a weed around the wellspring of pity. Grabbing a door for a pregnant woman who is struggling with parcels to get in is not KINDNESS, for God's sake, it's CIVILITY. We have become a society who wants kindness credited to their humanity card for simple acts of civility. While I do not wish kindness, certainly not more or less kindness than offered to any other, I do wish for civility. I do wish for behaviour that considers me as a person and my needs in the moment. Just as I wish to consider the needs of you as a person and your needs in the moment. Civility is not kindness. Civility is increasingly rare but that does not make it's occurrence exceptional or it's practitioner kind.

Kindness.

I call Bullshit.

Words like: Blindness

Saying to someone with a disability that 'I just can't see disability' or 'when I see you I don't see your disability' or 'I only see abilities', and this is the worst of course, 'I'm just blind to disability.' Oh, freaking, please. PLEASE. No one is 'blind' to my disability and furthermore I DON'T WANT YOU TO BE BECAUSE I'M NOT ASHAMED OF IT. I don't see how you think I should be flattered or, God Forbid, think you are magnificent, because you don't see what is plainly there. I am disabled. Get that. I am freaking disabled. I am in a freaking, fracking, wheelchair. See it? It's the thing under my fat ass!! Don't try to get me to 'play pretend' that my disability doesn't exist to you or to the world. Don't get me to give in to your desire to play 'dress up reality' and feel that you have RAISED ME OUT OF DISABILITY AND INTO EQUALITY. No, don't. Just don't. I am disabled. I don't like the idea of being verbally euthanized by words like 'challenged' or 'special' or 'exceptional'. I don't like being taken out of language and I don't like being taken out of my wheelchair and into fantasy-land. I live here, in reality, and I FREAKING LIKE IT HERE. I do not wish to move into your world where you pretend I don't have a disability and I pretend that you are a saint.

'Blindness.'

I call, double Bullshit.

Hey, here's a word I'd like to hear a little more often: Respect.

Why don't we try that for a little while? Why don't we empower ourselves though kindness and tolerance towards a disability blindness so that we can ... oh, sorry the word respect doesn't fit in that sentence. Respect Difference. Respect Diversity. Respect Disability. Respect engenders respect. None of the other words have that capacity. None of the other words have within it a deep need for mutual change. None of the other words call us out into real interaction and real comradeship in the real world. Respect knocks at the door of social change. I'm guessing that's why kindness, and tolerance, and 'blindness' and empowerment never answer.

Words.

I love some.

I fear others.

I loathe these. 

Why "Retard" is a Hate Crime

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while I get confronted with a very ugly word.

"Retard"

It's used a slang, as an insult.  People know that it's offensive, but they still use it.  They seem to think "oh, it's slang, it's just a word, it doesn't matter."  But you see, it does matter.   Just because there isn't a person with intellectual disabilities there, or apparent, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Because connotations matter.  The thought behind the word, it matters.  

Let me show you how.

The noun "retard" comes from "mental retardation".  Despite some popular belief, it is actually still used as a diagnosis for people with a low IQ score and two or more adaptive behaviours.  According to the ICD-10 and the DSM-IV-TR, there are even varying degrees of it.  It is considered to be an intellectual disability, and in fact, most advocates prefer the term intellectual disability rather than "mental retardation". 

Why?  Because of how the term "retard" is used.  It is used not just towards people with intellectual disabilities, it is also used against any disabled person.  It gets flung at children in the schoolyard.  It gets tossed around as an insult by adults.  It has been used to mock, ridicule and insult, not only non-disabled individuals, but disabled people specifically by the simple act of using a diagnosis as slang. 

When you use the term "retard", you are specifically taking defining aspects of people, in this case disability, and mocking them.  It's kind of like taking a person's skin colour or sexual orientation and using that as an insult.  We don't use the words "nigger" or "faggot" anymore?  We know better, or at least, we should know better, because there is a history of discrimination against the groups that it refers.  In our supposedly more progressive society, it is no longer acceptable to use those words. 

The same is with "retard", but it seems like the same regard is not applied to disabled people.  It's discrimination.  It says that you can target disabled people, mock and insult them, and get away with it because you can. 

When you can hurt them in your head and with your words, what's to stop you from hurting them psychically?  Because believe me, you're already hurting people mentally and emotionally with your words, and it doesn't take much for those types of attitudes to shift from being merely words to physical violence. 

It already happens.

Right now.

Go on, look up "disabled victim", "disabled crime", "disabled violence", or "disabled murder".  It is said that disabled people have at least two to five, possibly up to ten times, the risk of violence than non-disabled (Sobsey 35).

Disabled people have been beaten, robbed, sexually and physically assaulted, and murdered because of how people think of them.  Because people think it's okay to use us as an insult, to mock us and degrade us, then it's okay to take things one step further and target us specifically for crimes, not just the individual, but the entire group. 

Do you know what it's called when an offence is motivated by a person's membership with a group? 

Hate crime

The question is, do you really mean it?  Do you really want to potentially endanger people with the carelessness of your words? 

Understand that ignorance as an excuse only goes so far, and intent does not mean that you are exempt from the consequences.  Once you know about the potential results, you got to ask yourself how you would feel if someone mocked you for being right- or left-handed.  Or being beaten because of your ethnic background?  Or murdered for speaking another language?  And then the people did that to you just walks away without facing any consequences, legal or otherwise?

Don't like it?

Yeah, neither do we.





Works Cited

Sobsey, Dick. Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities: the End of Silent Acceptance?. Baltimore: P.H. Brooks Pub. Co., 1994. Print.