Before you call yourself or someone else a retard, mong or spaz, imagine that you were using the N word, urges Nicky Clark.
“Humourless”, “politically correct” and “curbing free speech”. Since I’ve been struggling to turn the tide against the vogue use of the word retard, these are some of the nicer comments that have been made about me.
To me it’s really simple. Before you call yourself or someone else a retard, mong spaz, etc etc etc, imagine that you were using The N word.
A hateful epithet for stupid or foolish is just that. The fact that it denigrates disability not race or religion or sexuality does not excuse or explain it. Neither does it make it less damaging.
I never cease to be amazed at the hypocrisy of famous and not so famous people who see themselves as “right on” and yet comfortably use the word retard in normal speech.
I am accused of sensitivity over the issue, and to some extent, of course, this is true. But it’s not just my disabled children I’m thinking of.
The last time I battled a celebrity over their use of disablist language, Mencap staged an e-action and the chief executive of Ofcom found his email account deluged with hundreds of emails recounting harrowing stories.
Many disabled people can relate how damaged they have been by the abusive use of the word.
Hiding behind the right to free speech is not a defence. People gave their lives in the battle for free speech. I doubt they did so in order to give some hipster – claiming to be correcting myths and errors around disability through satire – the right to disabuse who they see fit.
Ironic use is also in vogue. However, when bigoted people hear disablist language they don’t necessarily trouble themselves to find the intricate subtext. When the people you are ironically abusing are people more than able to defend themselves then, please, be as ironic as you wish. However, when the person you abuse is likely to be mentally or actually harmed as a result of your coolness, it might be time to reconsider.
People not Punchlines is a campaign I’ve launched asking for the laws surrounding hate speech to be changed. Not created; we already have a hate speech law. It just needs to be amended because disabled people seem to have been forgotten.
Mind you, disabled people have historically been disenfranchised. During the Nazi rule of 1930s Germany, disabled people were labelled with a black triangle and exterminated. In fact, the persecution of disabled people began because the parents of a learning disabled boy asked Hitler’s permission to have their “defective” child euthanised. After that, the mobile gas vans began arriving at the institutions and the disabled children, who the press propaganda machines stated were taking the bread from the mouths of “decent Germans”, were “dealt with”.
So when it comes to human rights and human wrongs, disabled people have suffered. Isn’t it time we began to make things right by granting rights? I’m not referring to the Disability Discrimination Act. We can, every one of us, do something today that improves life for disabled people immediately. We can simply decide not to say something. Because compared to fashion speak, compared to being edgy, how cool is that?
• Nicky Clark is a disability rights campaigner, mother to two children with dissabilities, carer and blogger