She thinks her kid is scared of people with beards, too

Imagine parents complaining about the new black host of a children's television show because their children might be afraid of her. Imagine having the trouble those parents will have if their children see that black person and start asking questions about "blackness," forcing the parents to sit down and have a conversation about "blackness" with them.

I've used what I hope is an unsettling scenario to illustrate a point. (And let me be clear here that I feel uncomfortable casting black people as Other, even if it is merely as an illustration.) Most people who read the above paragraph would feel indignation or outrage at such an attitude toward black people. They would recognize it as racist and reprehensible. Yet many of those people would not feel that indignation when the attitude is directed toward a disabled person.

This is exactly what has happened to the new, one-armed host of a British television show. One viewer wrote that she didn't want her child to see this host because she thought the stump would give her daughter "sleep problems." I wonder how this one-armed television host feels knowing she is so frightening.

It is, in fact, the adult who has the problem. Children tend to be at ease, and ask open, non-judging questions. They haven't been conditioned yet to think there's something wrong with or frightening about disabled people. I feel sad that people can be as prejudiced as the mother quoted above, and I'm sad that they are raising their children to be prejudiced, too.

The thing that really irks me is that disability is still seen as something so different. Even the disabled TV host says, "I'd never comment on anyone's parenting or the time for them to have a discussion with their child about disabilities [...]. It's a totally personal thing and people have to do it when they feel comfortable to do it." Why exactly is disability something that needs to be talked about. Do people have talks with their kids about hair color? "You see, Jimmy, there are some people who are ginger..." I long for a day when disability is seen as a physical difference of no more social consequence than red hair, or at the very least, when we are not be treated as something to be afraid of.

More on embryo screening

This week, we have yet another article from The Slate about embryo screening. It looks like this is the next big thing, creating perfect babies, and we are getting ever closer to that goal.

Who would be interested in such a thing? Follow one of the article's links to a May 2007 Times Online piece, scroll down to the seventh paragraph, and you'll find the answer. Just as I suspected: self-hating freaks.

Surprised? Thought it would be cosmetically enhanced, fake-tan-sporting Upper Middle Class types? Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of those who would take advantage of genetic screening, but that's almost expected. The trouble starts when one starts working to eliminate one's own kind. Instead of advocating for those with ocular disorders, this gentleman and his apparently very accepting wife (imagine—she actually married the freak!) have opted to capitulate to the status quo by not bringing into the world as loathsome and hideous a creature as the father apparently is.

I don't mean to pick on this gentleman. I infer from his drastic response (most parents just pray that their kids will be "normal") that he has suffered much in his life because of his appearance. He has suffered enough that he has come to believe that he, and those like him, are pretty worthless. Worthless enough to be destroyed before birth. He should have realized that those individuals who caused him pain are the ones with the problem. It's their thinking that needs to be changed, not the individuals who so offend their sense of aesthetics.

But it's very easy to say that. How many terata, given the opportunity, would not choose to be "normal"?

Improve your marriage: become disabled

I found an interesting article on Science Daily. It describes a study that suggests that disability can strengthen a marriage, but there are some questions yet to be answered:

Does the age of the individuals or the number of years the couple has been together affect the level of happiness? What if disability is present at the start of the relationship? Do these relationships tend to be stronger than others, or does this strengthening only apply when a so-called "normal" person becomes disabled? Does it help when the disability is perceived as the natural process of aging, rather than as something that "shouldn't be"?

To what extent do perceived gender roles affect happiness? That is, do women feel no change in their happiness because they believe on some level (probably suppressed) that the man should be the caretaker?

To what extent can these findings be applied to all relationships? Perhaps it is the simple act of caring for someone that creates a stronger bond, and this can be applied to any romantic or platonic relationship. Perhaps this is just a study's confirmation of what spiritual leaders like Mother Theresa and Ghandi have already told us.

It is worth further exploration.

Two of my poems appear in Apocryphaltext. The first one, Art Objets, was fun for me to write. I love visual art but lack the talent to create it, so I wrote poem where I described the art I would create if I could. The second poem is one of my experimental pieces.

Art and ethics

Last week I listed my top ten books. Included on that list were some authors with unsavory ideas and personal lives, so today I return to that old question that has plagued me for some time: what responsibility do I, as an ethical person, have regarding the art I enjoy and endorse?

As examples, let me explore some artists I like. Sylvia Plath may have been antisemitic in the very genteel, WASPy manner of her time. If she was, it's difficult to tell from her writing, where she in fact often identifies with Jews, particularly those that suffered during the Holocaust. This is something that is therefore easy to ignore.

Olive Moore, on the other hand, expressed in her writing some morally disgusting views toward black people, the elderly, and the disabled. These ideas are absent, as far as I can remember, from the book that made my top ten, but it is clear that she was a very hateful woman. I am able to excuse my admiration of her writing ability because I fall into some of the categories of people that are the objects of her scorn, and I guess I figure that gives me the right to like her writing even though I despise many of her ideas.

With J. M. Barrie, we get into murkier territory. Barrie was possibly a pedophile who took custody of the Llewelyn Davies boys for sinister purposes. The fact that this is unverified is the only reason I can justify my love for Peter Pan.

Henry Darger occupies the same space as Barrie: an unconfirmed, but likely, pedophile, who glamorized children in the same childlike way Barrie did. Neither have evidence linking them to acting on any impulses they may have had. Darger drew nude little girls, but he never had live models, and besides that, his naked girls had male genitalie--a clear indication that he never saw female genitalia. If some evidence surfaced regarding either of them, would I then have to condemn their art along with their actions? Would I naturally develop a distaste for it?

To answer this question, let me explore two, more complex, artists. The first, Lewis Carroll, is one whose work I have never particularly loved. I recognize the value in the Alice books, but I didn't read them until I was an adult and already aware of of Carroll's unsettling photographic works, and that may have colored my perception of the books. Carroll may never have touched any of the girls he photographed, but his perversion is clear, and his no doubt barely concealed leering must have had some sort of troubling effect on his subjects.

Second, there's Hans Bellmer, whose work I very much admired until I discovered his pedophilic desires. Unlike Carroll, Bellmer apparently never interacted with any children in an inappropriate way and was pretty meek in his relationships with adult women. He even credited his art with keeping him from acting on his desires, so why should I reject his art? Shouldn't I have a moral reason, then, to support it? I suppose I reacted so strongly against his art because I was so disappointed. What was I expecting, one might ask, from someone who created those dolls. Well, I suppose the enacted brutalization of adult women (as I believed the dolls to be) is marginally less bad than the brutalization of children. Perhaps what affected me most was seeing a photograph he had in his collection. Knowing I was seeing real children being forced to do terrible things put me off Bellmer and his art permanently.

Of course, that doesn't answer the question of whether I should reject the art of a horrible human being, or that I need to if I am to be a good person. But I'm not sure there is one.