Disablism seems to me slightly different to other -isms (eg. racism, chauvenism) because many people still don’t seem to recognise it as a set of negative prejudices which they should be ashamed of possessing. Most people in their right mind at least realise that other people are liable to be offended by their racist/chauvenistic views, and are thus prone to preface their exceptionally racist and chauvenistic comments with the phrase “I don’t mean to sound like a racist (etc), but…”. This doesn’t, of course, ultimately mitigate the offence of what they are saying, but it does at least serve to prove that they *realise* that what they are saying could be construed as not the sort of thing which is said by a nice person. For reasons I don’t understand, disablism still seems to be lagging behind somewhat in these stakes so that people who are otherwise perfectly lovely genuinely don’t seem to twig that there is anything potentially wrong with their somewhat warped and misguided points of view

I was talking to a relative of mine, whom I shall refrain from naming and shaming, a few weeks ago for example, and she was expressing complete consternation about the fact that the BBC children’s channel CBeebies was employing a disabled TV presenter. I have a little cousin who is about five and very much enjoys watching CBeebies, as often as his parents will allow him to. My relative was expressing abject horror at the thought that he could be forced to look at images of a disabled person on the grounds that he is “a sensitive little boy” and the sight of a disabled person was likely to traumatise him for the rest of his life. My relative was quite outraged that the BBC was allowing such a thing to take place, and declared that it was political correctness gone mad.

I was slightly surprised by the venom of her reaction, and asked why she was so convinced that my cousin was about to be traumatised. My relative explained, in a condescending sort of way, that children are very fragile creatures and can very easily be disturbed by “distressing” images. I queried quite how distressing the appearance of this TV presenter was (imagining all sorts of unspeakable horrors) and was assured that my relative had felt quite unwell when she’d turned the tv on to investigate. I didn’t have time to sit and watch children’s tv but I later googled it and discovered that the girl in question is a very pretty blonde who just happens to be missing half of one arm.

Hmmm. Okay, so it’s a little unusual to only have half of one arm, but is this something which is really going to upset a small child? It’s hard to tell because children can be upset by all sorts of random things. When I was a small child I went through a phase of being scared of men with glasses. This was quickly followed by a phase during which I was terrified of men with beards. Does this mean that all children’s tv presenters should be clean-shaven with contact lenses?

The idea is ridiculous. Yes, children can be frightened by things which are strange and unusual, but so long as adults behave rationally and demonstrate that the things they fear are actually harmless (as opposed to feeding their fear by proclaiming that all people with beards are evil and we should run away from them), children will outgrow the fear with time and grow to accept the feared characteristic as within the bounds of normality. I am now engaged to a person who has both glasses and a beard (it is a beard, Babel ) and I don’t (often) wake up during the night with an urge to run away from him. Principally only when he snores.

I had to discontinue the conversation with my relative at this point because it was clear they just weren’t getting it and I didn’t want to have a row. I hope that maybe with time they will come to see that my cousin has not been traumatised, and that he will perhaps develop a more positive attitude towards disability as a result of positive exposure to the concept at a young age. I really hope that he and his generation will do so, and I think there’s a good chance; personally, I think “In the Night Garden” is far more disturbing than an entire army of one-armed tv presenters… seriously, what is with that programme?!

It may also be worth noting today that Archbishop Vincent Nichols, soon to become Archbishop of Westminster, missed an excellent opportunity to say something interesting on the theme of disablism when he wrote a pastoral letter on the theme last month. His main concern appeared to be that vast quantities of disabled people were dying to come to Catholic churches but unable to do so because we have too many steps, followed only by his concern that there might be Catholic disabled children who the Church is failing to properly indoctrinate on account of them not being able to attend mainstream Catholic schools, and that steps should be taken to rectify this in the said children’s best interests.

Talking about disablism and religion, which we briefly appear to be, I was rather shocked on Easter Sunday by the behaviour of my parish priest during the habitual renewal of baptismal vows. For those who are not familiar with the concept, the priest processes around the church, sprinkling water on the congregation to symbolise the renewal of the promises made for them by their godparents during baptism. Needless to say, the opportunity to flick water in people’s faces is one of the few perks of being a Catholic priest these days! My priest was doing the rounds as usual until he reached a pew with one of our blind parishoners. He sprinkled the parishoner, hesitated for a moment, then grinned and applied a liberal sprinkling to his guide dog also. The poor dog looked most bemused, and I couldn’t help thinking that that was a bit of a cheek, all the more so because the owner clearly had no idea what he had done or why the surrounding pews were trying not to collapse with laughter. It wasn’t a deliberately malicious act, but like so many acts of disablism stupid and thoughtless.

As I said at the start, please visit Diary of a Goldfish for a full catalogue of today’s posts.

I took part in the very first Blogging Against Disablism Day two years ago, hampered somewhat by my technological limitations. About five or six days later, my life changed dramatically forever. This was not, I confess, a direct consequence of my participation in BADD. It may, however, have been a reward from a bearded old man on a cloud for taking part, so I would not advise anyone to take the risk of *not* taking part, for fear of what might happen to them

My own knowledge and experience of disablism is at best negligible, which means I may struggle somewhat for something pertinent to write and end up posting the same sentiment as in 2006. This time round, at least, I will have the benefit of proper line spacing and so people might be able to read it But I think it is important for non-disabled people to take part in days such as this to help spread what is a very important message as far as possible.

If you would like to take part, or even just read the variety of posts which other people will be making, please go to Diary of a Goldfish