» Too Normal Revisited

It appears that I’m not the only one in the universe who’s “too normal” after all. As you can see from a recent BBC News Online article, stupid and totally idiotic prejudice exists within the disabled community as well.

I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea how anyone can sit there and say that someone with no feet and missing half their fingers isn’t “disabled enough” to be a paralympian. I’m pretty sure that the Olympics themselves aren’t going to consider this guy for entry to their games, and now he’s been told he can’t be a paralympian either.

That’s one of the sickest concepts I have ever seen, it makes the Lobster Liberation Front look positively sane. Come on people!

Don’t we have enough with governments being bureaucratically inept, such as the case in the UK where a blind woman was fined because she put her parking placard up the wrong way around? Isn’t it sufficient that we have such blatant bigotry that someone can told that they’re just “one head, one bottom, and a torso” by people who think that somehow that attitude is acceptable?

Does the disabled community have to start running into the arms of those same bigots and validate all those things that we, ourselves, despise to hear from the able-bodied, and start discriminating as to what constitutes an “acceptable” level of disability?

I’m not talking about cultural separation or definitions here, such as Deaf and deaf. I’m talking about any sort of “system” that’s used to define just how disabled someone is, used to qualify them for anything, whether it be paralympics or benefits or home help or whether you can sit upright on an airplane. What’s next? People with mental health issues are going to be excluded from the definition of “disabled”, because they have all their limbs, and can use them?

It’s actions like that of the International Wheelchair Rugby Federation and the International Paralympic Committee that feed the prejudice of others. Their actions, I think, are downright prejudiced and bigoted, and they need a radical wake up call sent to them reminding them that we object mightily when the able bodied try to classify our disabilities as they have done, calling foul and prejudice on it, so just where do they get off thinking that they’re doing the disabled community any favours by following the same prejudiced mindset?

The paralympics is already separating us from the able bodied. Now there’s no guarantee that even if you’re disabled, you’ll be considered disabled “enough” to participate. That’s exclusionary, right there. And last time I checked, anything exclusionary was illegal and immoral.