Wendy McElroy's excellent column, Disability Must Be Defined Before Debated, leads me to wonder about the following. Disabled advocates always get offended if disabled people are treated differently; even acknowleding they are disabled is considered offensive, hence the emergence of the stupid term "other-abled." Well, I agree! But why stop with those other-sited or other-legged in wheelchairs--what about the dead? Just because the person's body is inert and mouldering in a grave is no excuse to "label" them as no longer part of civilization. Why don't the other-animated have the right to vote? It's blatant discrimination to not let dead people vote.
Why stop there? What about those who never existed? What about all the kids I could have had if I had mated with more women and/or used less birth control? Their (sadly, never-formed) voices need to be heard! I say: give dead and non-existent people the right to vote and all other civil rights, too. It is the conceit of the living to think we are special. It is living-ism, or... existing-ism.
Of course, I apologize for this observation.
1 comment:
It is offensive to refer to people who happen not to exist as the "non-existent" as if that characteristic completely defines them. The "dead" should be called, if you must bring up their deadness, people who happen to be dead.
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