My friend Bill Peace is fond of the phrase: “I’m not impressed.” Bill is an anthropologist so he knows when you’re less adept at pottery than your neighbors. For example: my immediate neighbor (who I’ll call Erasmus) can’t spin a pot to save his life–whereas my thrice removed neighbor can turn out a pot that would make Josiah Wedgwood weep.
The thing about being or not being impressed is the choice we make about saying so. Especially when we’re outsiders. You can bet Margaret Mead didn’t tell the Arapesh their pots were laughable.
But what do we do when the pots are laughable? When we have disabilities and the constructed world is mediocre? How you say it–how you “tell it” is a complicated business.
Look: they’ve plowed snow into the disability parking space. Look: they’re hosting a conference without disability accommodations. Look: there are not alternative methods for reading the handouts in a meeting. No sign language interpreters.
The pots are laughable.
Some days it seems to me that while disability culture has been progressing by leaps and bounds, the mainstream has been under a spell—delusional iron age magic—and so we have neighborhoods of potters and whatever might be the opposite of potters, shatterers I guess.
I live in this reality. Its not disposable, like the disappointment following a loss by my favorite baseball team. The shatterers are all around the disabled.
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Shatterer number one, former boxer Evander Holyfield:
“Boxer Evander Holyfield, who is currently on the U.K.’s Celebrity Big Brother, is in hot water for remarks he made on the program comparing homosexuality to a disability, saying both can be treated by a doctor. All together now: Ughhh.
Holyfield made the remarks on Sunday when reality star Luisa Zissman asked him if there were any gay boxers, according to TMZ. He responded that homosexuality is something doctors can fix.”That ain’t normal!” he says. “The Bible lets you know what’s wrong and what’s right.” He continued his “handicap” analogy: “If you were born, and your leg was turned this way, what do you do? Go to the doctor and get it fixed…The only thing I’m trying to tell you is you know how handicapped people, you can’t say because they’re born that way you can’t move that…Yes, it is a choice.””
Full story here.
Shatterer number two, the story of Joe Schultz:
“An Army veteran in Waco is trying to figure out who scammed him out of tens of thousands of dollars in back-paid disability benefits.
Now his fellow veterans are doing what they can to make sure he’s not left out in the cold.
“I’m disappointed and hurt,” says 66-year old disabled veteran Joe Schultz.”
Full story here.
And number three, the story of Marie-Patricia Hoarau, a wheelchair user who was booted off an airline flight. Read here.
Shatterers all…
Planet of the Blind 