Choking Planet • Net

The term, “birth defects,” is a troublesome one. Presumably a person born with them is defective. Strange concept: defective people. Is there a specific register you take them to, or can you get a refund from any cashier? Everyone has things that push him or her out of the normal range. What makes one thing a birth defect and the other—well, just a thing?

It boils down to what the needs of society are at the moment, and that is always subject to change. What at one time seems to be a defect of birth, changes over time, and sometimes, back again. Left-handedness was once considered a defect that had to be overcome. So too were critical reasoning, large feet on women, and homosexuality—which, it seems, continues to some degree today.

How seemingly useless was someone with the ability to write good code, but born fifty years before computers? There had to be some of them around in the seventeenth century. What the heck did they do for a living? Maybe they were locked away in the asylums, left to scribble away at their mad and meaningless modules and subroutines.

There was a girl born recently with a functioning third arm and hand. It was reported that doctors successfully removed the offending appendage. In truth, that girl might’ve had a big advantage over others, yet the societal disadvantage of being a freak made it seem a good thing to remove that extra arm. So it seems that the gene for third arms is among us. Will we ever get them, or will we keep hacking them off?

We proudly serve most people.*

Ah! For the days when a business could deny access of service on any one of a dozen or more preferences of race, gender, reproduction, or religion. Now, the only people who can be legitimately left on the other side of the door are the ones who aren’t even noticeable unless you happen to have one in your family. (Well, they’re noticeable, but it’s not polite to stare if they can see you doing it.)

There’s no arguement that updating a bathroom with disabled access is an expense. In the same way that repairing broken waterlines, replacing outdated equipment, and coping with supply costs eat into the profit. In the case of the last three, the expenses can’t be avoided; they’re necessary costs of doing business. But as long as normal customers remain focused on their needs and keep the registers ringing, there’s little necessity or incentive to cut any further into the bottom-line by widening toilets.

Maybe it’s too late to go back to the days when a business could hang their “Whites Only” shingle out, or politely tell Mr. Spielberg that there were no rooms “for him” in the hotel. We’re probably even past the days when you had to tick either the “married” or “single” box on an employment application. (Although if you’re past 25, people are not going to ever stop wondering why you don’t have kids.) But until more than just people with disabilities start to favor businesses that offer service and access open to all, there’s no need to start welcoming the lame into places they’re not wanted.

It’s harsh; still, the blind, the people in wheelchairs, the people with missing arms, the short, the disfigured and the rest of the disabled need to begin to realize that it’s tough world we live in.