Pain is that joke you can’t un-hear though you try. Or more precisely: its the jest wherein you’re the punchline. Maybe you’re less than that—you’ve been reduced to a slur. For me as a child it was always “hey Blindo!” Or “here comes blindo!” Sometimes they’d call me “Mr. McGoo.” It turns out you can’t un-hear it. Its the triumph of the bullies. You’ll always be McGoo. You’ll be McGoo when you win a prestigious award. With your white stick or dog you’re McGoo at the ballgame. God help you if you lean close to see the beautiful petals of a strange flower. I did that once in a botanical garden and a guard rushed over to tell me it was forbidden. This was in a foreign city. I couldn’t figure out what was taboo: looking closely at a flower or trying to look. But I know the answer: my blindness would harm that loveliness. That man in the uniform knew it. I knew he knew it. We would not have a discussion about this. I moved on. So sometimes the slur is simply “no!”
I like to think of disabled people getting free. That they are not presently free should be indisputable. Human rights, the subject heading is a late arrival on earth. As far as I know the first person to use the term was Gerhard Ritter who coined the term in 1948. Ritter was the earliest scholar to write about the history of human rights. The Americans with Disabilities Act is now thirty-three years old. Disability freedom is a very new kid on the block. So if you’re fighting for disability inclusion, and taking into account cultural history, you’re a pioneer. But you’re alive to the hopes of the creatures inside all cripples. Free you may not be but freedom you shall continue to hold.
You’re still McGoo. In my case (as a professor at a noted university) I must contend with faculty and administrators who can barely tolerate my difference. One professor called me ignorant when I pointed out that his rudeness was potentially readable as ableism. Case closed. He was a genuine ableist and not a dime store knockoff. McGoo ye will always have with ye. Bigotry of all kinds assures you’ll never un-hear the slur, the crude joke, the perverse infantilization, the institutional neglect. Its a shame I’ve never been able to stand the voice of Jim Bacchus.
Planet of the Blind 