[lbo-talk] impaired = colorless and noncharismatic

[Quenby Alclaire]

--- Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org> wrote:
> >--- Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org> wrote:
> >>  I know nothing about this new Argentine president's politics.  But
> >>  this is a typical treatment of impairment by our "educated" class of
> >>  journalists.
> >>  The very first paragraph goes off describing the Argentinian
> >>  president's impairments.  And some wonder why I write about
> disablism
> >>  - according to some it doesn't exist! Here it is.
> >>  marta
> >>
> >
> >maybe alot of people don't consider a lazy eye and a lisp as
> imapairments.
> 
> That isn't the point really.  The point is that such physical 
> characteristics get mentioned as the defining ones - they garner such 
> remarks. How does this reporter know what people think of the man's 
> physical state?

from experience? i had a teacher that had a lazy eye and she could see
with it fine. that's not any excuse to be rude of course.......but being
insensitive isn't neccesarily a case of disablism. is being insensitive an
impairment? 

>  The reporter is putting his own colored tainted view 
> of the physical characteristics onto the story -- and in the first 
> paragraph.
> 
> By medical standards, they would be. Speech pathologists would be 
> called in, and opthomologists consulted. (Not that disability rights 
> people would necessarily call that a good thing.)
> 
> >is having buck teeth an impairment?
> 
> Do the buck teeth prevent one from engaging in a major life activity? 

no but neither does a lisp etc. so it depends on what one thinks being
disabled is. 

> Do they prevent one from eating, for instance?  Some might group it 
> as a disability if the buck teeth cause discrimination or prejudice. 

by that criteria afro americans are disabled. women are disabled. 

> Or -- one prong of the ADA defines disability as regarded as having 
> an impairment.
> 
> So personally,would you take a buck teeth woman out for dinner or to 
> the movies? 

if i liked her, yeah. but at some point there are inevitable evolutionary
factors. would i date a woman that had an arm going through her forehead?
it is almost certain that i wouldn't. anything involving sexual selection
is a bad example. that would be like accusing a gay man of sexism etc.

 ~M.E.



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