Until recently when the site went down, I enjoyed visiting kidsontheblockvermont.org, the website for an organisation dedicated to helping people overcome their disabilities and prejudices by using dolls with similar disabilities and prejudices. The site described and pictured the dolls. Though the site is no longer, through the wonders of locally cached pages, I managed to save a little of it so that it might touch more hearts.
"Renaldo Rodriguez is 11 years old and has been blind from birth. He has a great sense of humor and enjoys playing baseball with his friends, who think his beeper ball is pretty cool."
"Mark Riley is 11 years old and in the 5th grade. Mark has cerebral palsy. He is very bright and does especially well in math and science. Mark gets around great with his "cruiser" (wheelchair)."
The aim of this is to aid acceptance of disabilities and through the use of phrasiology that does not have negative connotations. While doubtless they helped a lot of people who will consider this good work, I find it both patronising and the wrong thing to do.
"Jennifer Hauser is 11 years old and is in the 5th grade. She has a learning disability or "learning difference" as she likes to call it." While Jennifer may prefer to say she has a "learning difference", when I am king she will only get special dispensation if it's a learning disability. I would hate for her to go without, as she doesn't look particularly capable to me. Even worse than this over compensation is "Stephen Arthurs is 11 years old. When he realized that his beatings were more serious than the discipline other parents used, he got some help and so did his Mom and Dad." After an extended period in state custody, Stephen was relocated with another family. They were eager to take him as they wanted to take naked pictures and put them on the internet. His parents went to jail where they too were repeatedly raped. As dreadful as it is that Stephen's parents beat him, to vaguely say that they "got help" is a very dangerous thing.
It is quite possible that I do not appreciate the specific examples used because I am detached from them - indeed, I have much empathy for individuals who are hard done by though do not suffer a specific disability, as they have no help. I also think that the internet is a good medium for the provision of support as it enables help to be given to those who need it who are not geographically able to find it elsewhere. Accordingly, I would now like to initiate the movement for internet help of non-disabled but really angry individuals whose problems, brought on by life through no fault of their own, are merely exacerbated by where they live.
Hatred lives in Elko, Nevada. I think that CSI makes Nevada look a pretty cool place to live, though I recognise that this is possibly just for the purposes of making entertaining television, so I will accept the assessment of someone who lives there. Having said this, the 19th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering wasn't held in my town!
Ana lives in Nova Scotia, and for this has my deepest sympathies. She has to put up on a daily basis with the sanctimonious US emigrants who eagerly attempt to embrace all things Canadian by buying .ca domain names then e-mailing me wanting to exchange links. As though this is not enough, she is also subject to an economy based soley on sales of Molson Beer, and an international association with nothing but beavers, moose, travel by sled, SARS infestation and the 'musical' stylings of Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, and Barenaked Ladies.
Evil Charles lives in Kentucky. I have no idea whether he likes it there or not, but anything that drives a person to drink like he does is not to be endorsed.
