I’m going to start here with a basic truism that anyone who belongs to a minority or a disadvantaged group knows: nobody likes being told they are behaving in a bigoted manner, no matter how kindly the message is given.
Now, most of us don’t just say “wow, you’re a bigot!” We say, “You said something problematic here, and this is why.” Matter of fact, we often spend a great deal of time on explaining why something is problematic.
Recently, a dog trainer who writes for Dogster.com compared aggressive dogs to people with disabilities, in terms of being undesirable and requiring a ‘special person’ to adopt them and care about them. Here’s the exact paragraph for you, so you can see why we were so offended:
The fact is that many of the best dog owners I know would not want to live with an aggressive or reactive dog. This doesn’t make them “bad” dog owners, it makes them perfectly normal. Many people adopt human children. A small percentage of adopters of human children may be willing to adopt a child with Down’s Syndrome, severe birth defects, severe behavioral issues, a child who will always need someone to change diapers even into her teenage years, a child who is blind or deaf or may never speak. Are the people who choose not to adopt these children horrible people or horrible parents? Certainly not. It takes a special kind of person to accept these additional responsibilities and limitations, someone who is willing to accept a variance of what is the “normal” parenting experience.
I’m sure at this point you’re wondering why on earth I titled this entry ‘On Integrity’.
Well, fellow service dog partner and person with disabilities, Sharon Wachsler of After Gadget, responded to the article where this comment was made. She pointed out that it was a problematic comparison and explained why, including links to other sites that helped explain parts of the problem and how they can be avoided. It was a very measured reply that explained what the trainer had said that was offensive, and the troublesome attitudes behind it. The approach was I think friendly, and certainly respectful. Sharon didn’t accuse the trainer of hating us, or of intentionally hurting us. She simply stated that the trainer was perpetuating hurtful myths about what it means to be disabled, and what it means to be in the life of a person with a disability. She also made a post in her blog including her original comment, which you can find here.
Now, I have to say this first. Sharon’s response was far more measured and understanding than I would have been. I am perhaps not the most mild-tempered person. (Okay, so that’s an understatement).
So Sharon made her comment in the dog trainer’s blog. The response, which was posted the next day, was extremely disheartenening. I know, if you’ve come from that dog trainer’s blog, that you can’t see what I’m talking about because it’s been deleted – more on that later. However, if you go to Sharon’s blog, the dog trainer made the same comment in both places – a comment that accused Sharon of slandering her, describing her as a hate-monger, and stated that she was not ‘the disabled community’s…Klan leader’. To Sharon, who had tried to give the dog trainer links so she could educate herself on the issues, she said, “Which is worse? My making statements out of ignorance which are unintentionally hurtful or your statements which are intentionally hurtful yet misguided?”
Now, I know Sharon pretty well. She’s a person who spoke only to educate someone she thought was open to learning.
A friend of the dog trainer leapt in, saying much the same but in harsher terms. She started with the usual accusation towards people in a minority – that we were jumping to offense about something that wasn’t offensive. Even the trainer herself admitted that some of the things she said could have been offensive but she hadn’t known that before she wrote. This friend also stated that Sharon should have aired her concerns in private, instead of addressing a public post with a public comment. It didn’t stop there, but I don’t think I necessarily need to get into the rest of the details. You can read them for yourself on Sharon’s blog.
The trainer went to that woman’s blog, and referred to Sharon as ‘the hater’. The hater, because she had chosen to try to educate someone about how hurtful their language was. The hater, because she stood up for herself – and the rest of us – as being people. The hater, because she said ‘we are no different from anyone else’.
Of course, some of us commented back on the trainer’s blog. A woman named Rachel spoke out explicitly in support of what Sharon said, and in disgust at the response.
And I responded. I wrote on February 16th about the fact that it doesn’t take ‘special’ people to love disabilities. It’s a myth that hurts us because people choose not to engage with us thinking that our lives are just too difficult to deal with.
Nine days later, the Disability Blog Carnival was posted. It included a further post on the subject from Sharon.
That very day, the comments by Sharon, that dog trainer, the dog trainer’s friend, and Rachel were all deleted by the dog trainer. All of the anger and nastiness that was poured out by the dog trainer and her friend was deleted so that it couldn’t be seen.
Instead, the dog trainer put up a note saying that I – I, who came later and made a single point about being loveable instead of talking about all of the issues with what was written – brought to her attention that the paragraph was offensive and deleted it. She linked to my blog…and to a couple of other places that are about people with disabilities rather than written by people with disabilities.
I suppose she was trying to play divide and conquer. Because I was being ‘nice’, I was the good cripple and she could leave my comment up on her blog.
If I got through to her, I suppose that’s one victory.
In the process of playing this as a game, the dog trainer has sacrificed her integrity, though. She has removed her own vicious comments, she has erased someone who spoke the truth that she didn’t want to hear, and she has hidden the attack of one of her followers.
If you’ve come from the dog trainer’s blog, I hope you choose to read Sharon’s blog and see what was really said. See what really happened. Then judge for yourself. I challenge you to put aside your indignation and anger that someone you like was ‘attacked’ and read what was written.
I don’t find the original paragraph offensive.
I did not follow the paper trail of comments and replies because I am more concerned about American politics at the moment.
There is plenty in American politics to be indignant about, and that’s where I choose to focus my indignation at the moment.
Implicit in your comment is the idea that the issues I’m writing about aren’t big enough to worry about, and/or that I should be worried about ‘bigger issues’.
That’s pretty offensive, too. I write about issues when I think I can have an effect. Part of why I thought that in this situation is that the dog trainer linked to my blog. I don’t think it’s right to let her hide the nasty responses she had to someone pointing out what she said was offensive.
Even the trainer herself admitted that what she said could be offensive, and it’s mighty damn problematic. As I said on her blog, when you talk about it taking ‘special’ people to be involved in the lives of PWDs, you’re giving people an excuse to avoid us, to not engage with us, and to think it’s okay to just ignore us. Not cool.
I’m kind of not understanding the point of this comment unless it was to try to make me feel small for being concerned about this.
Disability politics are pretty linked with American politics. Especially right now.
Health care reform – completely a disability-related political issue and I don’t think I need to explain why.
Planned Parenthood/Women’s health issues – the risks for people with disabilities in terms of accessing appropriate care without prejudice are pretty high. And a high percentage PWDs are low income so may need the access to organisations such as Planned Parenthood just to get basic healthcare such as pap smears or birth control.
Unions – Unions can go either way in that they can be extra supportive of PWDs to help them keep jobs or they can help protect those discriminating against PWDs. Not to mention works rights in terms of workers comp and other things are pretty highly tied in with PWDs.
Military Issues – Have you looked at the injury rate, numbers of soldiers being diagnosed with PTSD, etc?
Budget – often an early thing to losing funding are home care programs (despite being cheaper than nursing homes), also funding for powerchairs is getting cut for Medicare/Medicaid and this will trickle down into private health insurance pretty quickly trapping more people in their homes due to lack of appropriate mobility (or forcing them into nursing homes). Not to mention the Social Security mess.
Thinking only “special” people can love PWDs effects all of these things. It’s part of the out of sight/out of mind that leads to nursing home care rather than the cheaper option of home healthcare and the trapping of people by not giving them appropriate mobility. Are you going to tell a veteran who has just returned from Iraq with a newly acquired disability that they’re stuck because they’ll have to wait for a ‘special’ person before they can be loved?
So I’m not really sure why disability image concerns are less important than American politics. They’re part of them.
It was offensive. (Note to DahliaK: You can feel indignation about many things at once.) I think in all of us there’s an impulse to react that way when called out in public (‘cyber-public’ in this case.) when what was called for and what was never said was, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that and I won’t say it again.”
I’m glad the story has been preserved in its entirety. Frankly it is the trainer who comes across as petty and narrow-minded in her responses. She shows little regard for the effort that Sharon has to put into her replies and is mostly intent on nursing her own hurt feelings than going back and seeing where she might have erred in her phrasing.
I don’t think the original quote was addressing whether it takes a special person to love PWDs. I think it was about choosing to parent one or, in the analogy, to adopt a dog with “special” behavioral traits. It certainly did not extend to failing to love such a child if one comes along unplanned. It certainly did not mean PWD should receive fewer services.
Kali, the point of my earlier comment was certainly not to make you feel small. As a PWD myself, I wanted to supply a different perspective. We can choose what to get offended by.
Kali, the point of my earlier comment was certainly not to make you feel small. As a PWD myself, I wanted to supply a different perspective. We can choose what to get offended by.
and yet this is exactly what you are doing, because you are essentially suggesting that “choosing” to not be offended by comments that are one, blatantly offensive, and two, from an individual who later uses backhanded language that are frequently frowned upon in the disabled community (such as “special”, “differently abled”, “defects” and “normal”) – and for good reason.
especially since she acknowledged later that yes, what she said was inappropriate and edited it, but not before dragging sharon through the mud for daring to criticize her behavior in a manner she didn’t like. and then erasing any traces of such behavior in an environment that she could control, sanitizing her image as best she could after it was brought to the disabled community’s attention through posts and the blog carnival.
even if what she had written wasn’t problematic (which it was), her response to the situation was atrocious. calling it anything but that is pretty much ignoring the rest of the situation, meaning the attempts at sanitizing it were successful. which is just bullshit.
damn it brain, you’re supposed to finish sentences you start.
the first sentence (paragraph? might as well be one) is supposed to read:
and yet this is exactly what you are doing, because you are essentially suggesting that “choosing” to not be offended by comments that are one, blatantly offensive, and two, from an individual who later uses backhanded language that are frequently frowned upon in the disabled community (such as “special”, “differently abled”, “defects” and “normal”) – and for good reason – is somehow a more appropriate path to take.
It’s called a “flame war,” people. If you can’t recognize and deal with flame wars, perhaps you shouldn’t publish online, because they go with the territory.
Every blog owner has a right to delete posts, including her own, that do not further the goals of the blog enterprise.
Let’s all move on and let this blow over. Or not. Again … it’s a choice.
That’s the thing, Dahlia. It wasn’t a flame war. It was one person talking about the ways the original article was problematic towards people with disabilities and the blog owner herself ‘flaming’ that person.
I think when someone who has made themselves a public figure does something like that, we have an obligation to speak up, for the betterment of our community. If this was a national political figure, would you feel differently?
I’m old enough to be your mother, Kali, and let me tell you why that is relevant.
I was around in the “first wave” of feminism. I got my consciousness raised. I marched for the ERA (multiple times). I was obnoxious in insisting on opening doors myself.
Over time I realized that maybe some of the feminists were a tad too militant. Also, they were wrong. You can’t have it all, and those among my generation who tried generally failed in several ways – health, children, crashed marriages. And bit by bit I came to see the radically feminist as actually hurting their cause by being so doctrinaire.
How does this apply to disability issues? By insisting that everyone be totally PC in the ways they refer to PWDs, you actually alienate many of the people you should be befriending. I bet you can’t see this, so, tuck my observation away for 25 years.
I’m a joiner, not a splitter. People have more commonality than difference. I want folks in my circle that disagree with me but admire me anyway.
Should we befriend people who talk about us in terms that make us less than they are? I think not. Someone who has to compare an aggressive dog to a half a dozen different types of disabilities isn’t thinking of us as people. We’re problems, we’re difficult, and people don’t want to adopt us.
No. That is not someone I want to befriend unless they can learn better.
This isn’t forcing men to stop opening doors for me. It’s more like making sure they know that they can’t sexually harass me at work or call me a bitch or a harpy with impunity.
You had a serious connection to feminism; perhaps you learned the most basic lesson of social justice: changes do not happen because we make nice with others. They happen because we organize and we stand up for ourselves and each other. We organize million man marches to end segregation, we lock our wheelchairs to buses to get access legislated, we push big cases to the media to get sexual harassment laws changed, we hold conventions and organize to get the vote.