Anybody who’s thinking about saying something hateful about
cripples on Twitter better think twice. The very first sentence of Twitter’s
hateful conduct policy says, “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or
threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste,
sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age,
disability, or serious disease.”
Violating this policy can get you banned
from Twitter.
It’s good that Twitter is cracking down on
hate speech against cripples. Why not? But now Twitter needs to stop cripples from
being brutalized by the opposite of hate speech, which I guess I’ll call love
speech. I think cripples have been victimized by love
speech a lot more than by hate speech. Like for instance, when cripples are
locked up with no possibility of parole in places like nursing homes and state
institutions, those responsible for locking us up never try to justify it by saying , “We need to lock
these cripples up because they’re all a bunch of predators and thugs!” Nope,
instead they say stuff like, “We need to protect these poor, fragile, most
vulnerable citizens from harm because we love them so much.”
So that’s all the more
reason Twitter needs to also crack down on love speech because that exactly how
love speech works. It dehumanizes. How about all that inspiration porn? Those
are those stories in the media where they gush about how courageous a cripple
is for doing a simple thing like going to the grocery store. Those stories are
feel-good because they make lots of people feel blessed that they’re not
crippled. And then there are those stories we see all the fucking time where
some cripple rises from their wheelchair and triumphantly walks across the
stage to receive their diploma or down the aisle to get married. These stories
congratulate cripples for putting so much of their heart and soul into proving
to themselves and everyone else that they’re not so abnormal, even if it’s just
for a few minutes.
That’s why inspirational
cripple stories inspire me to puke. I fear getting mugged by them most of all.
But if you engage in cripple love speech on Twitter, you’ll probably be all
right.
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