What is this I don't even.
I don't even know what to do with this
New York Times article, which has got to be one of the more nauseatingly
patronizing pieces I have seen in a while. Maybe I just haven't been
reading enough in the internet.
Anyway it's about the
Pearls Project which involves several young people with disabilities
having their pictures taken and then blogging about their lives so that
non-disabled teenagers can read their blogs and look at pictures of them and
send them questions about what it's like to have a disability.
Which is all very well and good and presumably the young people in question
want to be doing this except, you know, there are students with disabilities
AT THE SCHOOL IN QUESTION and no one has suggested that maybe they should be
invited in to talk about their experiences with the very students who are
supposed to be learning to be all empathetic and shit. Instead, you have a
group of strangers, and "Teachers created assignments requiring students to
get to know the Pearls subjects - read their blogs, watch their videos - and
to put themselves in their places. The students were encouraged to ask
questions, which their teachers passed along via e-mail." So first we make
sure there's no ACTUAL contact between the people with disabilities and the
students. The students are encouraged to behave like visitors at a zoo,
staring at the people with disabilities but not interacting directly with
them, and to pretend to be disabled themselves. All contact is carefully
moderated, presumably so that one of the PWD can't say something
uninspiring.
Because what did the students actually get out of this? Well, "Amanda
Muccio, 15, a ninth grader in a biology class, said she asked Ashley, also
15, whether she was embarrassed to meet boys because she had muscular
dystrophy and used a wheelchair. Ashley replied no, that if boys saw only
the wheelchair, that was their problem. “I’m so happy for her that
she can be so confident in herself,” Amanda said. “I envy that.”"
Oh and then there was the poet:
Creative-writing students who had signed up to write about their own
feelings found themselves trying to write poetry about strangers. “It kind
of took me awhile to get into it,” acknowledged Tony Boniello, a senior.
“Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to give writing about someone else a
chance.”
Then Tony started reading the musings of Rebecca, 21, a college student with
arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare condition that can cause joints
to be stiff and crooked. He fashioned a poem out of the sights that she
found most beautiful: a sunset, the ocean, dolphins, a rainbow, a person who
takes time to interact with someone with a disability.
Can I just repeat that last? "A person who takes time to interact with
someone with a disability." What. The. Shit. Sorry, people who charitably
interact with me on a daily basis, you are not beautiful snowflakes for
doing the decent thing and interacting with the angry cripple. You do not
get brownie points for not being an asshole. Not being an asshole is the
default fucking state.
But it seems like whether or not these kids learned empathy, they have
certainly successfully learned to be patronizing fuckers. Probably they
learned it from the guy who started this crap, a fashion photographer who
says "It’s our responsibility to steady our gaze to see beauty, and not look
away because we’re told not to stare.”
1) Don't stare. Seriously. Do not "steady your gaze" in an attempt to find
beauty. For one, with me it's easy to spot because beauty weighs 75ish lbs
and has a glossy black coat and is walking on my left wearing a mobility
harness. Me, I'm just fucking cranky.
2) I am not, we are not, your fucking object lessons. It's not our
job to fucking inspire and uplift and motivate and make you see beauty in
common fucking human decency.
3) Dear New Jersey Students: maybe instead of treating a group of strangers
with disabilities like zoo animals at the behest of your teachers, you could
get to know some of the students with disabilities who are actually going to
school with you and have probably had to put up with you popular poetic
types bullying them for the last few years. I'm just sayin. I know how
kids with disabilities were treated at my highly average midwestern high
school: they were invisible, or they were targets. Maybe, kids, you should
work on changing that at home and not work on othering, objectifying, and
being inspired by total strangers.
New York Times article, which has got to be one of the more nauseatingly
patronizing pieces I have seen in a while. Maybe I just haven't been
reading enough in the internet.
Anyway it's about the
Pearls Project which involves several young people with disabilities
having their pictures taken and then blogging about their lives so that
non-disabled teenagers can read their blogs and look at pictures of them and
send them questions about what it's like to have a disability.
Which is all very well and good and presumably the young people in question
want to be doing this except, you know, there are students with disabilities
AT THE SCHOOL IN QUESTION and no one has suggested that maybe they should be
invited in to talk about their experiences with the very students who are
supposed to be learning to be all empathetic and shit. Instead, you have a
group of strangers, and "Teachers created assignments requiring students to
get to know the Pearls subjects - read their blogs, watch their videos - and
to put themselves in their places. The students were encouraged to ask
questions, which their teachers passed along via e-mail." So first we make
sure there's no ACTUAL contact between the people with disabilities and the
students. The students are encouraged to behave like visitors at a zoo,
staring at the people with disabilities but not interacting directly with
them, and to pretend to be disabled themselves. All contact is carefully
moderated, presumably so that one of the PWD can't say something
uninspiring.
Because what did the students actually get out of this? Well, "Amanda
Muccio, 15, a ninth grader in a biology class, said she asked Ashley, also
15, whether she was embarrassed to meet boys because she had muscular
dystrophy and used a wheelchair. Ashley replied no, that if boys saw only
the wheelchair, that was their problem. “I’m so happy for her that
she can be so confident in herself,” Amanda said. “I envy that.”"
Oh and then there was the poet:
Creative-writing students who had signed up to write about their own
feelings found themselves trying to write poetry about strangers. “It kind
of took me awhile to get into it,” acknowledged Tony Boniello, a senior.
“Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to give writing about someone else a
chance.”
Then Tony started reading the musings of Rebecca, 21, a college student with
arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare condition that can cause joints
to be stiff and crooked. He fashioned a poem out of the sights that she
found most beautiful: a sunset, the ocean, dolphins, a rainbow, a person who
takes time to interact with someone with a disability.
Can I just repeat that last? "A person who takes time to interact with
someone with a disability." What. The. Shit. Sorry, people who charitably
interact with me on a daily basis, you are not beautiful snowflakes for
doing the decent thing and interacting with the angry cripple. You do not
get brownie points for not being an asshole. Not being an asshole is the
default fucking state.
But it seems like whether or not these kids learned empathy, they have
certainly successfully learned to be patronizing fuckers. Probably they
learned it from the guy who started this crap, a fashion photographer who
says "It’s our responsibility to steady our gaze to see beauty, and not look
away because we’re told not to stare.”
1) Don't stare. Seriously. Do not "steady your gaze" in an attempt to find
beauty. For one, with me it's easy to spot because beauty weighs 75ish lbs
and has a glossy black coat and is walking on my left wearing a mobility
harness. Me, I'm just fucking cranky.
2) I am not, we are not, your fucking object lessons. It's not our
job to fucking inspire and uplift and motivate and make you see beauty in
common fucking human decency.
3) Dear New Jersey Students: maybe instead of treating a group of strangers
with disabilities like zoo animals at the behest of your teachers, you could
get to know some of the students with disabilities who are actually going to
school with you and have probably had to put up with you popular poetic
types bullying them for the last few years. I'm just sayin. I know how
kids with disabilities were treated at my highly average midwestern high
school: they were invisible, or they were targets. Maybe, kids, you should
work on changing that at home and not work on othering, objectifying, and
being inspired by total strangers.