willow: "some of my favorite anecdotes are from this book"

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willowNov 28, 2024

"Where language is perceived to be the site of progressive action, action is taken in language. Actions taken in other spheres can become less urgent and less necessary."

Loneliness and Its Opposite, pg 37. Don Kulick and Jens Rydström.
What we will present in this book, though, is the example of a country where wildly politically incorrect language about disability coexists with policies and practices that are both politically radical (for what they mean for the rights of people with disabilities as citizens) and ethically progressive (for what they imply about how disabled and nondisabled people might imagine and engage with one another). This contrasts starkly with Denmark’s neighbor, Sweden. There, language about disability is constantly monitored and uncompromisingly judged. But policies and practices relating to the sexual lives of people with disabilities are politically retrogressive and ethically arrested. Significantly disabled individuals’ access to sex is actively blocked—by the very same people who would be the first to correct you if you said “handicap” instead of “disability.”

willow @dreary.dev

some of my favorite anecdotes are from this book

Loneliness and Its Opposite, pg 35-36. Don Kulick and Jens Rydström.
Denmark is strikingly different on this front—there, there is little or no political correctness when it comes to the language used to talk about disability. Even people who work most closely with and care most passionately about people with significant disabilities habitually use words like spastic (spastiker) when referring to people with cerebral palsy—and, indeed, people with cerebral palsy call themselves spastics. The name of their advocacy organization is the Association of Spastics (Spastikerforeningen), and their bi- monthly magazine is called The Spastic (Spastikeren). Another telling example that succinctly sums up Denmark’s unique relationship to politically correct language regarding disability is what happened to the Danish Association for People with Restricted Growth (Landsforening for Væktshæmmede). In June 2007, by a vote of its members, the association officially changed its name to the Association of Dwarves (Dværgeforeningen). Their members’ magazine is Short and Sweet (Kort og Godt). And at one of the group homes where Don lived while conducting fieldwork, he sat outside one morning having a cup of coffee with a female social worker in her sixties who had worked in that group home for twenty years. This woman was devoted to her job and clearly was much loved by the young men and women who lived in the group home. In between puffs of her cigarette, she turned to Don to tell him a story about a young woman who lived there. “Og så har vi den lille mongol,” she said: “We have the little mongoloid.” As soon she said “den lille mongol,” the woman stopped and apologized, perhaps because she noticed that Don had nearly choked on his coffee. “Oh, undskyld,” she said. “Sorry; I know I shouldn’t say ‘little.’ She’s an adult.”

November 28, 2024 at 11:48 AM