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Disabled People Are Not Necessarily "Angels"

Debater Slayer

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
Yesterday I read a post made by a member of the charity organization I'm in. He said, "When you deal with disabled people, you feel like you are dealing with angels. They are something else."

I found the comment condescending, full of pity, and melodramatic. Putting someone on a pedestal because of any given inherent trait or characteristic that they can't change and is outside their control strikes me as just as offensive as treating them as being inferior. This person's comment uses the same logic that some people use to defend the idea that women should be put on pedestals and treated as "queens" (a common excuse that a lot of people use to justify the idea that men should do everything on behalf of women), that minorities can't be prejudiced, that Black people can't be racist, etc.

Taha Hussein, dubbed the Dean of Arabic literature, became blind during his childhood. The reason he became blind was that he had conjunctivitis, and instead of taking him to a doctor, his family put lamp oil in his eyes so that they would "light up like a lamp." They were that ignorant. As a result, he lost his eyesight, and his parents treated him very differently from his numerous siblings. In the introduction to his autobiography, Al-Ayam (The Days), he said (and I'm paraphrasing his words):

But they [his parents] treated me with a mixture of pity and contempt. I felt that they permitted my brothers and sisters to do things they didn't allow me to do. If only they hadn't treated me as if I were different, if only they had treated me like a normal person.
Click to expand...

So, no, disabled people are not necessarily "angels." They are also not inferior to anyone else. They are people.
 
Augustus

Augustus

…
This video expresses it pretty well


Gist for tl;dw:

...Years later, I was on my second teaching round in a Melbourne high school, and I was about 20 minutes into a year 11 legal studies class when this boy put up his hand and said, "Hey miss, when are you going to start doing your speech?" And I said, "What speech?" You know, I'd been talking them about defamation law for a good 20 minutes. And he said, "You know, like, your motivational speaking. You know, when people in wheelchairs come to school, they usually say, like, inspirational stuff?" (Laughter) "It's usually in the big hall."

And that's when it dawned on me: This kid had only ever experienced disabled people as objects of inspiration. We are not, to this kid -- and it's not his fault, I mean, that's true for many of us. For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire...

And in the past few years, we've been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You may have seen images like this one: "The only disability in life is a bad attitude." Or this one: "Your excuse is invalid." Indeed. Or this one: "Before you quit, try!" These are just a couple of examples, but there are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one, the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. (Laughter)And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, "Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person."

But what if you are that person? I've lost count of the number of times that I've been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I'm brave or inspirational, and this was long before my workhad any kind of public profile. They were just kind of congratulating me for managing to get up in the morning and remember my own name. (Laughter) And it is objectifying...
 
Last edited:
Robert.Evans

Robert.Evans

You will be assimilated; it is His Will.
Debater Slayer said:
Yesterday I read a post made by a member of the charity organization I'm in. He said, "When you deal with disabled people, you feel like you are dealing with angels. They are something else."

I found the comment condescending, full of pity, and melodramatic. Putting someone on a pedestal because of any given inherent trait or characteristic that they can't change and is outside their control strikes me as just as offensive as treating them as being inferior. This person's comment uses the same logic that some people use to defend the idea that women should be put on pedestals and treated as "queens" (a common excuse that a lot of people use to justify the idea that men should do everything on behalf of women), that minorities can't be prejudiced, that Black people can't be racist, etc.

Taha Hussein, dubbed the Dean of Arabic literature, became blind during his childhood. The reason he became blind was that he had conjunctivitis, and instead of taking him to a doctor, his family put lamp oil in his eyes so that they would "light up like a lamp." They were that ignorant. As a result, he lost his eyesight, and his parents treated him very differently from his numerous siblings. In the introduction to his autobiography, Al-Ayam (The Days), he said (and I'm paraphrasing his words):



So, no, disabled people are not necessarily "angels." They are also not inferior to anyone else. They are people.
Click to expand...
Well I agree with most of that though I would have to ask what you mean by "inferior" because clearly someone with no legs is inferior to someone with.
 
Kilgore Trout

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
Personally, I've actually found people with disabilities to generally be even bigger jerks than able-bodied people. Then again, I can understand why.
 
Draka

Draka

Wonder Woman
Kilgore Trout said:
Personally, I've actually found people with disabilities to generally be even bigger jerks than able-bodied people. Then again, I can understand why.
Click to expand...
There are those who get complexes and think they are deserving of even more special treatment than what their disability requires. There are also just outright mean ones just like any other person is capable of being. Plus I see nothing "angelic" about someone who happens to be disabled who still commits crimes. I have a cousin who is mentally handicapped and was raised by a sexist molester (molested and raped his eldest daughter since she was little). My cousin was raised with that mentality and his handicap only worsened his behavior. He has always been very inappropriate and gave me the heebie jeebies since I was a kid. The feeling was warranted apparently as he did end up molesting a young girl (8y/o) when he was a teen. One can say he didn't know what he was doing, but it still doesn't make him an "angel".
 
Shadow Wolf

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Reminds me of some arguments I've had on other forums where I've told people that "poster children" (specifically from this area) are not always the saints people hype them up to be -- sometimes, rather, they are bitter and nasty people who need to get over themselves and their self-thrown self-pity-party.
 
Wirey

Wirey

Fartist
I once knew a lady who had MD so bad she was twisted into a wheelchair, and she is still the worst person I ever met. Her death improved the planet. Cripples can be scumbags, too.
 
Iti oj

Iti oj

Global warming is real and we need to act
Premium Member
one of my best frie
Augustus said:
This video expresses it pretty well


Gist for tl;dw:

...Years later, I was on my second teaching round in a Melbourne high school, and I was about 20 minutes into a year 11 legal studies class when this boy put up his hand and said, "Hey miss, when are you going to start doing your speech?" And I said, "What speech?" You know, I'd been talking them about defamation law for a good 20 minutes. And he said, "You know, like, your motivational speaking. You know, when people in wheelchairs come to school, they usually say, like, inspirational stuff?" (Laughter) "It's usually in the big hall."

And that's when it dawned on me: This kid had only ever experienced disabled people as objects of inspiration. We are not, to this kid -- and it's not his fault, I mean, that's true for many of us. For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire...

And in the past few years, we've been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You may have seen images like this one: "The only disability in life is a bad attitude." Or this one: "Your excuse is invalid." Indeed. Or this one: "Before you quit, try!" These are just a couple of examples, but there are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one, the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. (Laughter)And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, "Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person."

But what if you are that person? I've lost count of the number of times that I've been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I'm brave or inspirational, and this was long before my workhad any kind of public profile. They were just kind of congratulating me for managing to get up in the morning and remember my own name. (Laughter) And it is objectifying...
Click to expand...
one of my best friends nick (he got me started on the blog talk stuff) is in a wheel chair and does motivational speaking.
 
Wirey

Wirey

Fartist
Iti oj said:
one of my best frie

one of my best friends nick (he got me started on the blog talk stuff) is in a wheel chair and does motivational speaking.
Click to expand...

Anyone can be a motivational speaker. Tell him to be a motivational tap dancer. No, wait, don't! He might start a trend!
 
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