Entry tags:

political-ish

So, there's this thing at the Feministing blog. They've been criticized before for ableist language, and someone wrote them an open letter about it, and then someone at the blog posted her agreement with the letter, which led to a gazillion comments.

And the thing that kills me about the comments is that all of the participants are regular visitors to the blog, and are quite adept at addressing the subtle ways that sexism invades our culture and our speech - but when confronted with a different issue, i.e., ableism, they hit every bingo square on the card. It's actually kind of painful to read.

Also, for me personally, an object lesson - because (unsurprisingly) I am far more sensitive to issues of sexism than to issues of racism, and I'm probably not very sensitive to issues of ableism, and so there's a real "there but for the grace of God..." feeling as I watch it unfold from a distance. Yikes.