This post contains mentions of the Holocaust, ableism, and eugenics. Please do not read if you are sensitive to these topics.
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There have been conversations regarding whether the term Asperger’s should still be used in the autism community. This post will explain the biggest issue I and other people have with the label. There’s no way to gently segue into this so I’m just going to start.
The term Asperger’s was coined by an actual Nazi. Hans Asperger worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. He saved some children who he deemed intelligent enough by giving them the label of Asperger’s and sent the rest of the kids to die.
Some people call him a hero for saving kids during the Holocaust, but he sent children to be murdered because he saw them as genetically inferior. He saw some of us as a “hardly bearable burden” to our families. He believed that they should be put out of our misery.
I do not believe allistics should use the term Asperger’s to describe an autistic person. I do not believe that autistic people should use it for themselves either. However, I’m not saying that you should assume someone is a bad person for using it. I figure that most do not know the history. There are autistics who use the term for various reasons even knowing the history, which I heavily disagree with.
And I’m not the only one who feels this way. I learned this from listening to Jewish autistic people speak on the subject. If you are not Jewish, it is best to listen to those who have the authority on the matter.
Here is a video of a Jewish autistic person explaining how use of this label harms not only Jewish autistics, but autistic people as a whole. She also makes a very good point about Asperger’s being a functioning label.
Here is an article about Hans Asperger being a Nazi.
Mailakei isn’t afraid of no pandemic. She is afraid of vaccines though. Oh and also fuck the immunocompromised - they can just die already because she will not be wearing a mask.
You’re worried about the global pandemic currently killing millions of people? You want people to wear masks so as not to kill their neighbors with a deadly pathogen? Well fuck keeping actual people alive - Mailakei is going to spend her time “worrying” about a pile of conspiracy theories and dog whistles.
You’re right bitch - we are not the same.
Mailakei “cares” about a pile of cells but fuck the actual babies - you know the real, live ones - who are too young to get vaccinated. And fuck the elderly and the immunocompromised too while you’re at it.
I see we’ve reached the prayers stage.
Whoops, there it is. Bye Mailakei! At least her husband will miss his “ladybug” right? She was a strong woman! She cannot be replaced! She will not be forgotten! Right? … Right?
That’s four weeks to the day from when Mailakei died. Somebody keeps a calendar.
And Kenneth has her fully replaced in a record 9 weeks. Speedy work!
Great news for you antivaxxers - when you inevitably kick it your spouse will not be sad forever. In fact the whole sad phase may last as little as a month! No worries Mailakei I’m sure she’s just as good of a cook as you were.
[ID: Facebook posts by Mailakei LaVergne: Jul 30, 2020: “I’m sorry for the language, but this guy is a jacka**! I’m not wearing a dang shield and goggles and I sure as heck am not getting the flu vaccine!!! When I get the vaccine it is always worse than when I get the actual flu virus! So Fauci and anyone else who doesn’t like what I am saying can cram it in your cram hole LaFluer!!” Aug 20, 2020: “You’re worried about me not wearing a mask. I’m worried about the global elite and their fetish for children. We are not the same.” Aug 11, 2021: “For a country who killed an entire generation in the womb but tells adults to wear masks to ‘save lives’, Your words are a joke and an embarrassment.” “All. Day. Long!!” Sep 4, 2021: “Ok. So last week COVID hit my family. Knocked me down hard but three days later with my precious wife’s nursing my son and I were back on our feet and fever free! Then my wife went down. She has been unable to get back up as of yet. She was just admitted to Baptist in Beaumont with extremely low oxygen and BP! If that isn’t bad enough these hospitals for some unconscionable reason won’t let me be with her! I’m sitting in the parking lot because they won’t let me stay in even the waiting room. Please pray for my ladybug!” Photo of a woman with strawberry blonde hair lying in a hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask. “Mailakei Ann LaVergne, 44, of Orange, passed away on September 30, 2021, in Port Arthur.”Kenneth LaVergne, Oct 28, 2021: “Used husband for sale! High mileage but everything still works! Currently in the shop trying to get some body work done but the engine is still good! REAL CHEAP!! Test drives available. Inquire in the comments!! ” Nov 30, 2021: “If you have lost your rig or another removed one, just know, I’d you are still breathing, GOD has a new chapter for you. GOD has a new mission and a new journey for you! My new chapter is just beginning! My heart is beating again! Been a great few weeks. Forward we go! Photos of a man with a grey beard hugging a woman with dark brown hair in a living room. “Orange County marriage licenses issued 12.6-12.10.21. The following couples were reported to have obtained marriage licenses in the office of Brandy Robertson, Orange County Clerk, during the week of December 6 – December 10, 2021: Kenneth Lavergne and Juanita Gonzalez-Oyervides”]
« There is a direct line connecting early 20th-century eugenics with 21st-century transhumanism. The link is clearest in the eugenicist and “scientific humanist” Julian Huxley (1887-1975). In 1924 Huxley wrote a series of articles for the Spectator, in which he stated that “the negro mind is as different from the white mind as the negro from the white body”. By the mid-Thirties, Huxley had decided that racial theories were pseudoscience and was a committed anti-fascist.
He had not abandoned eugenics. In a lecture entitled “Eugenics in an Evolutionary Perspective”, delivered in 1962, Huxley reasserted the value of eugenic ideas and policies. Earlier, in 1951, in a lecture that appeared as a chapter in his book New Bottles for New Wine (1957), he had coined the term “transhumanism” to describe “the idea of humanity attempting to overcome its limitations and to arrive at fuller fruition”.
Huxley is a pivotal figure because he links eugenics with its successor ideology. [H]e illustrates a fundamental difficulty in both eugenics and transhumanism. Who decides what counts as a better kind of human being, and on what basis is the evaluation made? The fundamental ethical objection to eugenics is that it licenses some people to decide whether the lives of others are worth living. […]
[Transhumanism] is not normally racist, and typically involves no collective coercion, only the voluntary actions of people seeking self enhancement. But like eugenicists, transhumanists understand human betterment to be the production of superior people like themselves. True, the scientific knowledge and technology required to create these people are not yet available; but […] someday they may be. [And] the likely upshot of transhumanism in practice – a world divided between a rich, smart, beautified few whose lifespans can be indefinitely extended, and a mass of unlovely, disposable, dying deplorables – seems to me a vision of hell. »
Welcome to part three of my mini-series on Helen Keller. I took a Disability in Literature class in Spring 2022 that focused heavily on her legacy. In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.
In this post I’m going to be discussing some of the controversies surrounding Keller–because there are a lot. Some of these are well known and publicized, and others have been brushed under the rug.
It is important to discuss the controversies around Helen Keller, particularly how internalized ableism can impact a person and disabled communities. I wanted to share this video by Deaf and disabled creator, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, in which she discusses the topic of internalized audism and eugenics from a Deaf perspective. I tried searching for things that discussed her privilege more in depth and found this that includes the following:
“Helen Keller was a socialist who believed she was able to overcome many of the difficulties in her life because of her class privilege – a privilege not shared by most of her blind or deaf contemporaries. “I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment,” she said. ” I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone.”
I wonder if the other part includes people like Anne Sullivan, part of the community who helped her, which was, in the end, afforded to her through class and white privilege because her family was able to afford to find and pay Sullivan in the first place.
“It is not just in the arena of negotiations over immigration that we can find eugenics operating– we need to remember that none of the current research in genetics, pharmacology, aging, wellness, even agriculture is “simply scientific,” and that all of these fields of research may simply be camouflaging their eugenic roots. […] It is this diversity and interdisciplinarity that Turda and others note, again and again, about eugenics all over the world– it is at once social and medical and legal and political, literary and visual, strident and gentle. Eugenics could leverage and utilize nearly every avenue of persuasion. Thus, eugenics also gathered all sorts of actors and spokespeople from every station of life.”
— Jay Timothy Dolmage, Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability
Fun and relevant reminder that the guy who invented the BMI (founded upon fatphobia, racism, antisemitism, and ableism) directly influenced the foundation of phrenology and eugenics as sciences*. We’ve never stopped practicing them, and we’ve never dealt with the underlying causes.
*it’s right there on his fucking wikipedia page, like it’s something to be proud of. Look up Adolphe Quetelet
Welcome to part three of my mini-series on Helen Keller. I took a Disability in Literature class in Spring 2022 that focused heavily on her legacy. In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.
In this post I’m going to be discussing some of the controversies surrounding Keller–because there are a lot. Some of these are well known and publicized, and others have been brushed under the rug.
Before I get started I’m going to set up my content warnings: this article talks about racism, white privilege, ableism, internalized ableism, eugenics, child abuse and The Miracle Worker(1963)
Captain Keller of the Confederate Army
Fifteen years after the American Civil War ended, Captain Arthur Keller of the Confederate Army and his second wife, Kate Everette welcomed their first child into the world–Captain Keller’s third child, his first daughter.
Arthur Keller was the owner of Ivy Green, a plantation located in north-west Alabama. The plantation was built decades before Helen Keller’s birth and until the 13th amendment it had always relied on the exploitation of of black slaves. If you read the wikipedia article for Ivy Green you will find that the page erases nearly every mention of slave holding. The closest mention to its history is the mention that the cottage Helen was born in was once a plantation office. The article focuses on it being the birthplace and childhood home of Helen Keller and has a section dedicated to The Miracle Worker, a deeply flawed movie about Anne Sullivan’s first month as Keller’s teacher.
In her biography, Keller acknowledges that both her parents had connections to the confederate army (her mother was the daughter of a confederate general). Keller writes this matter-of-factly with no clear distain or pride for her heritage in her tone.
The family on my father’s side is descended from Caspar Keller, a native of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. One of my Swiss ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a book on the subject of their education—rather a singular coincidence; though it is true that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
My grandfather, Caspar Keller’s son, “entered” large tracts of land in Alabama and finally settled there. I have been told that once a year he went from Tuscumbia to Philadelphia on horseback to purchase supplies for the plantation, and my aunt has in her possession many of the letters to his family, which give charming and vivid accounts of these trips. My Grandmother Keller was a daughter of one of Lafayette’s aides, Alexander Moore, and granddaughter of Alexander Spotswood, an early Colonial Governor of Virginia. She was also second cousin to Robert E. Lee.
My father, Arthur H. Keller, was a captain in the Confederate Army, and my mother, Kate Adams, was his second wife and many years younger. Her grandfather, Benjamin Adams, married Susanna E. Goodhue, and lived in Newbury, Massachusetts, for many years. Their son, Charles Adams, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and moved to Helena, Arkansas. When the Civil War broke out, he fought on the side of the South and became a brigadier-general. He married Lucy Helen Everett, who belonged to the same family of Everetts as Edward Everett and Dr. Edward Everett Hale. After the war was over the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.” (The Story of My Life, Chapter 1)
Keller does describe her relationship with some of the servants working on the plantation. The most significant was her childhood friend Martha Washington, the daughter of a servant who was a few years older than Keller. They played together, with Martha playing the role of both friend and baby-sitter to Helen. Keller shares these memories with fond sentiment, but you cannot and should not ignore that there are elements of racism and ignorance to privilege in her work.
I do not have the words, knowledge base or experience to give this passage the critical race theory analysis it deserves. What I do have is months of research into Helen Keller, reading her books and essays, reading scholarship from other disabled writers.
And if I’m going to write about her and recommend you read her works and develop your own opinions about her, I’m going to make sure you know the ugly, unflattering aspects too.
“In those days a little coloured girl, Martha Washington, the child of our cook, and Belle, an old setter, and a great hunter in her day, were my constant companions. Martha Washington understood my signs, and I seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished. It pleased me to domineer over her, and she generally submitted to my tyranny rather than risk a hand-to-hand encounter. I was strong, active, indifferent to consequences. I knew my own mind well enough and always had my own way, even if I had to fight tooth and nail for it. We spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, kneading dough balls, helping make ice-cream, grinding coffee, quarreling over the cake-bowl, and feeding the hens and turkeys that swarmed about the kitchen steps.”
“Martha Washington had as great a love of mischief as I. Two little children were seated on the veranda steps one hot July afternoon. One was black as ebony, with little bunches of fuzzy hair tied with shoestrings sticking out all over her head like corkscrews. The other was white, with long golden curls. One child was six years old, the other two or three years older. The younger child was blind—that was I—and the other was Martha Washington. We were busy cutting out paper dolls; but we soon wearied of this amusement, and after cutting up our shoestrings and clipping all the leaves off the honeysuckle that were within reach, I turned my attention to Martha’s corkscrews. She objected at first, but finally submitted. Thinking that turn and turn about is fair play, she seized the scissors and cut off one of my curls, and would have cut them all off but for my mother’s timely interference.” (The Story of My Life, Chapter 2)
While reading Chapter 2 you will find that when Keller talks about her early years before Anne Sullivan became her teacher and taught her how to communicate, she describes her young self as an unruly child who was apathetic and incapable of love. In the editor’s supplementary account of the autobiography you will also find that Keller does not actually remember her childhood much, and she is repeating a lot of the stories she was told. In a later section I’ll explore some of the reasons behind Keller’s outbursts as a child, but right now that isn’t the focus.
The focus is that Keller came from a privileged family, and though her family had lost some of the power it held before the Civil War, those advantages still helped her go far in life. Her family was able to pay Anne Sullivan a salary, able to pay for Keller to travel to Boston to study at the Perkins School for the Blind. After her father died when Keller was a teenager, it seems a lot of her education was also paid for by generous donations.
The woman writing the above excerpts is twenty-two years old and she’s still learning the world. Because of that privilege it doesn’t occur to her that Martha Washington put up with Helen’s behavior because her mother worked for their family and she couldn’t retaliate.
A few years later, after discovering socialism and beginning to advocate for labor rights, the way Keller wrote about minorities began to change. Along with joining the International Workers of the World Union, she also openly supported the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) both in writing a public letter of her support as well as sending them a financial donation.
She also co-founded the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) in 1920 with several others.
Southern states, especially her home state of Alabama, did not react well to this. Her hometown especially, because despite the fame she had brought Tuscumbia, she was no longer welcome among them.
After her death, however, Tuscumbia cashed in. Using the recently released movie The Miracle Worker to rewrite Keller’s legacy. The movie reduced Keller to her seven year old self, many years before she would develop her political opinions, making her more palatable to racist tastes. Ivy Green became a museum in honor of Keller, attracting tourists from all over the country. They opened a gift shop and every summer they would hold a theatrical production of the play The Miracle Worker was originally based off of.
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell is most famously known for inventing the telephone, but his legacy left scars on the Deaf community. Bell came from a family business of elocutionists. Elocution is the study of pronunciation, grammar, tone, etc. The overall aim of elocutionists was to standardize the English language and improve how native speakers used it. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, invented the Visual Speech System–which was a method of lip reading taught to deaf students. In the 1870’s, A. G. Bell visited several schools for the deaf to teach the Visual Speech System.
In 1886 Arthur Keller wrote to Alexander Graham Bell to ask for advice in educating his daughter, and later met Bell in person with Helen in tow. Bell had recommended Keller reach out to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, but he took a liking to young Helen and became invested in her education. In her autobiography, Midstream, she describes him as one of her oldest friends.
“Someone has said that a beautiful memory is the most precious wealth one can possess. I am indeed rich in happy memories of Dr. Bell. Most people know him as the inventor of the telephone; those who are familiar with his work for the deaf, believe that what he did for them was as important as his great invention. I admired him for both, but I remember him not so much as a great inventor or as a great benefactor, but as an affectionate and understanding friend.
I could almost call him my oldest friend. Even before my teacher came he held out a warm hand to me in the dark; indeed, it was through him that Mr. Anagnos sent her to me, but little did he dream, or I, that he was to be the medium of God’s best gift [Sullivan] to me.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend, pp. 107)
Helen was a child when they met, but Bell was a renowned inventor in the middle of his life. He valued himself as an educator and believed that helping the Deaf was what his real calling was. He was wrong, put plainly. Bell tried to replace sign language with lip reading and oralism. He believed it was better in the long run to insist on integration of the Deaf and hearing worlds, rather than risk Deaf communities becoming isolated and unable to communicate with hearing people.
Decades later we have the research to prove that Deaf/HOH students need sign language for their best chance in success. Early access to sign language helps with brain development in small children. Forcing Deaf/HOH children to rely on speech only negatively impacts their language development.
“All his life Dr. Bell earnestly advocated the oral method of instruction for the deaf. Eloquently he pointed out the folly of developing a deaf variety of the human race, and showed the economic, moral, and social advantages that would result from teaching them in the public schools with normal children. He regarded the sign system as a barrier to the acquisition of language and insistently urged its abolition. He deplored the segregation and intermarriage of deaf mutes, and felt that so long as their only way of communication was through signs and the manual alphabet, they would be isolated from society and very few of them would ever rise to the position of the average intelligent man or woman.
Yet the manual alphabet and the sign system have zealous defenders. They are both easier to acquire, but the ultimate results are not comparable to those of the oral system by means of which the pupil is taught to read the lips and answer in his own voice. In my case there was no choice : my additional handicap of blindness made the use of the manual alphabet essential. Later I learned to read the lips, but I think my education would have been greatly retarded if I had begun with the lip reading in the first place.”(Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 113-114)
Because of the social capital A. G. Bell had as the inventor of the telephone, his power stretched far. And because Keller was only a small child when they first met, his philosophy left deep impressions. Keller adopted his stance on teaching oralism and sign language. In some of her writing, Keller expressed a belief that deafness was a worse disability to live with than blindness. From her perspective, blind people had a much easier time at connecting to the world through communication. She believed deafness was much more isolating and lonely.
“You who see and hear may not realize that the teaching of speech to the deaf is one of the divinest miracles of the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps it is impossible for one who sees and hears to realize what it means to be both deaf and dumb. Ours is not the stillness which soothes the weary senses; it is an inhuman silence which severs and estranges. It is a silence not to be broken by a word of greeting, or the song of birds, or the sigh of a breeze. It is a silence which isolates cruelly, completely. Two hundred years ago there was not a ray of hope for us. In an indifferent world not one voice was lifted in our behalf. Yet hearing Is the deepest, most humanizing, philosophical sense man possesses and lonely ones all over the world, because of Dr. Bell’s efforts, have been brought into the pleasant social ways of mankind.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 115)
Peter Fagan: Love and Sexuality for Women
In chapter seven of Midstream, Keller relates two different conversations she had with Bell on the subject of her falling in love and getting married.
“It is not you, but circumstances, that will determine your work,” he said, “We are only instruments of the powers that control the universe. Remember, Helen, do not confine yourself to any particular kind of self-expression. Write, speak, study, do whatever you possibly can. The more you accomplish, the more you will help the deaf everywhere.”
After a long pause he said, “It seems to me, Helen, a day must come when love, which is more than friendship, will knock at the door of your heart and demand to be let in.”
“What made you think of that?” I asked.
“Oh, I often think of your future. To me you are a sweet, desirable young girl, and it is natural to think about love and happiness when we are young.”
“I do think of love sometimes,” I admitted; “but it is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”
He sat silent for a minute or two, thought-troubled, I fancied. Then his dear fingers touched my hand again like a tender breath, and he said, “Do not think that because you cannot see or hear, you are debarred from the supreme happiness of woman. Heredity is not involved in your case, as it is in so many others.”
“Oh, but I am happy, very happy!” I told him. “I have my teacher and my mother and you, and all kinds of interesting things to do. I really don’t care a bit about being married.”
“I know,” he answered, “but life does strange things to us. You may not always have your mother, and in the nature of things Miss Sullivan will marry, and there may be a barren stretch in your life when you will be very lonely.”
“I can’t imagine a man wanting to marry me,” I said. “I should think it would seem like marrying a statue*”
“You are very young,” he replied, patting my hand tenderly, “and it’s natural that you shouldn’t take what I have said seriously now, but I have long wanted to tell you how I felt about your marrying, should you ever wish to. If a good man should desire to make you his wife, don’t let anyone persuade you to forego that happiness because of your peculiar handicap.”
I was glad when Mrs. Bell and Miss Sullivan joined us, and the talk became less personal.
Years later Dr. Bell referred to that conversation. Miss Sullivan and I had gone to Washington to tell him of her intention to marry John Macy. He said playfully, “I told you, Helen, she would marry. Are you going to take my advice now and build your own nest?”
“No,” I answered, “I feel less inclined than ever to embark upon the great adventure. I have fully made up my mind that a man and a woman must be equally equipped to weather successfully the vicissitudes of life. It would be a severe handicap to any man to saddle upon him the dead weight of my infirmities. I know I have nothing to give a man that would make up for such an unnatural burden.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 133-135)
Anne Sullivan married John Macy in 1905 and they lived together with Helen in a farmhouse in Wretham, Massachusetts. John Macy worked as a lecturer at Harvard University. Meanwhile Keller wrote and published essays and went on lecture tours with Sullivan at her side. Somewhere between 1913 and 1914 the Macys’ marriage fell apart. They never divorced, but John Macy did move out of the house. Keller hired Polly Thompson as a secretary to reduce the workload as Sullivan’s health grew gradually worse. In 1916 Thompson went home to Scotland for a vacation and Keller temporarily hired on a friend of John Macy’s as her secretary. His name was Peter Fagan, he was a socialist like Macy and Keller, and twenty-nine years old.
In Chapter 11 of Midstream, “In the Whirlpool,” Keller describes the upset of recent life events (Macy moving out, Sullivan being ill, the war in Europe souring the moods of audiences) had caused her daily life and how in the middle of that chaos something new had happened–she fell in loved and was loved in return.
In Midstream, she only ever refers to Peter Fagan as “the young man” and describes him as vaguely as possible. However, there are newspaper articles which identify him later.
“I was sitting alone in my study one evening, utterly despondent. The young man who was still acting as my secretary in the absence of Miss Thomson, came in and sat down beside me. For a long time he held my hand In silence, then he began talking to me tenderly* I was surprised that he cared so much about me. There was sweet comfort in his loving words. I listened all a-tremble. He was full of plans for my happiness. He said if I would marry him, he would always be near to help me in the difficulties of life. He would be there to read to me, look up material for my books and do as much as he could of the work my teacher had done for me.
His love was a bright sun that shone upon my helplessness and isolation. The sweetness of being loved enchanted me, and I yielded to an imperious longing to be a part of a man’s life. For a brief space I danced in and out of the gates of Heaven, wrapped up in a web of bright imaginings.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 178-179)
Helen and Peter kept their relationship a secret because they anticipated Kate Keller (Helen’s mother who was staying with them at the time) to react very poorly to the news. They planned to tell Sullivan first, believing she would be sympathetic and help smooth tides. Afterall, Sullivan was blind in her youth and then had her vision restored with surgery (though she was slowly going blind again) when she was about twenty years old. Sullivan knew what it was like to be disabled and knew the highs and lows of love and marriage.
In the interim they spent their time together and applied for a marriage license in secret. The marriage license is what let the cat out of the bag, because suddenly the press was firing up with articles about Helen Keller getting married. The newspapers were how Kate Keller found out and she immediately confronted Helen about it.
“As we parted one night, I told him I had made up my mind definitely to tell my teacher everything the next morning. But the next morning Fate took matters into her own hands and tangled the web, as is her wont. I was dressing, full of the excitement of what I was going to communicate to my loved ones, when my mother entered my room in great distress. With a shaking hand she demanded, “What have you been doing with that creature? The papers are full of a dreadful story about you and him. What does it mean? Tell me I” I sensed such hostility towards my lover in her manner and words that in a panic I pretended not to know what she was talking about. “Are you engaged to him? Did you apply for a marriage license ?” Terribly frightened, and not knowing just what had happened, but anxious to shield my lover, I denied everything. I even lied to Mrs. Macy, fearing the consequences that would result from the revelation coming to her in this shocking way. My mother ordered the young man out of the house that very day.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 180)
Kate Keller then took Helen to Alabama where Helen’s younger sister Mildred was living with her husband. Peter Fagan attempted to talk to the family in Alabama but Helen’s brother-in-law chased him off with a shotgun. They were forced to separate.
A little more than ten years later Helen relates all this in Midstream and reflects on what could have been.
“The brief love will remain in my life, a little island of joy surrounded by dark waters. I am glad that I have had the experience of being loved and desired. The fault was not in the loving, but in the circumstances. A lovely thing tried to express itself; but conditions were not right or adequate, and it never blossomed.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 182)
The circumstances in question were an ableist society. Although there was no specific law against a disabled person marrying, there were a lot of societal pressures preventing it because society feared disabled couples would produce disabled children. This led to “great minds” like Alexander Graham Bell firmly believing that Deaf people should not intermarry. It is why he brought up that Keller’s disabilities were not hereditary when they spoke of marriage in the section I provided earlier.
Keller’s family might have objected to the marriage specifically because Keller was the breadwinner in her household and if she married suddenly a man would have control over that.
Eugenics and Internalized Ableism
If you look back on her writing, you’ll notice threads of internalized ableism. She viewed herself as a burden because all her life she’d been dependent on someone else to translate for her, someone to guide her. No matter how accomplished she became, she would always be aware of how much she needed others.
Look again at that moment where Helen tells A. G. Bell that she’s decided she’ll never marry:
“I have fully made up my mind that a man and a woman must be equally equipped to weather successfully the vicissitudes of life. It would be a severe handicap to any man to saddle upon him the dead weight of my infirmities. I know I have nothing to give a man that would make up for such an unnatural burden.”
That is a shitty way to feel about yourself, as if you will be nothing but a curse to those you love. And when Keller describes how Peter declared his love for her, she focuses on his promise to help and assist her as well as love her.
“He was full of plans for my happiness. He said if I would marry him, he would always be near to help me in the difficulties of life. He would be there to read to me, look up material for my books and do as much as he could of the work my teacher had done for me.”
At the time when Midstream was written, Anne Sullivan was living with poor health and everyone in Keller’s circle was watching with bated breath because they believed Helen would fall apart after Anne died. And the death of a life-long friend is debilitating in its own way. Helen had a best friend of fifty years who she spent most of her day every day with, but the grief of losing a best friend wasn’t what others feared. Even Helen herself had doubts about how she would manage when Sullivan died.
Keller was a eugenicist herself and that fact complicates a lot of her advocacy, especially her stance on being pro-birth control. Keller was also in favor of euthanizing infants deemed too disabled to live an enjoyable life, although she firmly believed that no one person could hold that kind of power and that the responsibility must fall upon a board committee of qualified professionals.
She also thought poorly of people with intellectual disabilities, sometimes throwing them under the bus while justifying her right to be heard because she had an analytical mind. The cause of this ableism I think stems from the fact that Keller’s mind was her saving grace. Her hunger for knowledge, love of reading, are what made adults pay attention to her as a child. It’s what got her through college. I think in the same way that sighted and hearing people cannot imagine living a happy life without sight and sound, Keller couldn’t imagine enjoying life if she had an intellectual disability.
It doesn’t make her right, far from it. She isn’t justified or forgiven for her eugenics and ableism. It puts her in the same light as every other major historical figure- she did some things right, some things wrong. Her opinions are not always agreeable. She made mistakes.
I highly recommend checking out this podcast “The Helen Keller Exorcism” by Radio Lab, especially if Keller’s stance on eugenics stymes you. The podcast interviews several disabled scholars, including two deaf-blind women, Elsa Sjunneson and Haben Girma. Along with eugenics, it explores Keller’s internalized ableism and her relationship with Peter Fagan. The podcast is nuance and insightful.
The Miracle Worker
In 1957 William Gibson wrote a play about Helen Keller called The Miracle Worker. It was inspired and sourced from Keller’s autobiography The Story of My Life (1903). Included in the autobiography were letters Anne Sullivan wrote to a friend describing her experience teaching Helen in the early years. Some of the scenes in the play and movie are direct references to events described in the letters. However genuine the source material is, the play dramatizes the events for entertainment value. The greatest example comes from a letter where Sullivan described trying to teach Helen table manners and how it resulted in a food fight and a temper tantrum, but eventually Helen sat down and ate with a spoon. The movie version turns this into a ten minute scene where food and plates are thrown and furniture is knocked over.
The play first premiered on October 19, 1959 on Broadway in the Playhouse Theatre. The play was directed by Arthur Penn. Seven year old Helen Keller was played by thirteen year old Patty Duke. Anne Sullivan was played by Anne Bancroft. In 1963 there was a film adaptation of the play, with Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft resuming their roles. Patty Duke was sixteen when the movie was filmed.
Some problematic details I want to point out:
If you have any experience with child abuse, this movie will be incredibly uncomfortable to watch. The viewer’s first introduction to it is the scene where Helen’s parents have said goodbye to the doctor who treated her for a fever and, turning back to their nineteen month old daughter in her crib, realize she is not responding to their voices or movement. Kate Keller’s actress lets out a horror movie type scream and the father runs in. They should and shake the crib, trying to stir a reaction from Helen. There is no baby on screen but the camera looks up at the parents almost like it’s from Keller’s view point.
Throughout the film, viewers must watch adults regularly shout and scream at Helen, usually out of frustration at her, losing their patience with her inability to communicate or understand what they want. Anne Sullivan’s actress physically shakes and drags Patty Duke through the dining room scene. Plates are thrown and shatter loudly in that scene. Furniture is turned over.
Patty Duke also performs a caricature of a Deaf-blind child rather than an actual person. Picture every stereotype you know of, Duke performed it. She stumbles through every scene with her hands held out, head tilted back. She makes loud whining noises in an imitation of the deaf-child caricature. She has loud temper-tantrums
On the subject of temper-tantrums, I feel the need to state that yes, young Helen Keller did have a lot of those. They happened because she was trying to communicate a need or want and the adults responsible for taking care of her couldn’t understand. Or, the adults were trying to make her do something, but they did not have the tools to explain the how and why of what they were doing, and young Helen grew frustrated. There was a natural reason why Helen had episodes like this and after her communication needs were resolved, they decreased to the point of nearly disappearing. The problem is that the play was over-dramatizing this to portray her as an unruly, feral child that Anne Sullivan saved.
Which brings me to the language heard in the film: multiple members of Keller’s family insist she’s more animal than human. The half-brother watches Helen repeat the hand-signs Sullivan tears her and tells Sullivan that Helen is only imitating her like a monkey because it’s a game. At the beginning of the film her family talks about sending her to an asylum, until Kate Keller convinces her husband to write to the Perkins school as a last ditch effort to find a solution.
The movie features flashbacks to Sullivan’s own childhood, where she lived in a filthy, neglectful and abusive asylum between the ages of 8-14. The scenes themselves are too dark and blurry to distinguish anything, which is a directorial choice to represent that Anne was nearly completely blind during those years. After she graduated Perkins School for the Blind, Sullivan was able to receive surgery to restore some of her sight. In one scene, Sullivan has a nightmare where she hears her younger brother’s voice, Jimmy. Jimmy was also disabled and left in the asylum, but he died within a year or two from an illness he caught while playing in the morgue with rats with Anne.
AndThe Miracle Worker is the most famous representation of Helen Keller in history.
It is the movie that at least two generations of children grew up on, being introduced to disability through the movie’s deeply flawed and inaccurate portrayal. This movie won awards and has been remade at least twice. The Ivy Green museum performs the play every summer and sells merchandise associated with the movie, including DVD copies of the movie.
For the record, Helen Keller was still alive when the movie was released. She was eighty-three years old and had retired from public speaking due to her health failing, including a few small strokes. There is no published response to the movie, I cannot even say if she ever viewed it or had the plot described to her. What I can tell you is that before she was even thirty years old, she was exhausted with the public’s fascination with her childhood. She longed to talk about her life goals as an adult, her opinion on politics, anything other than a told-to-death story of the water pump.
But while other self-recording creatures are permitted at least to seem to change the subject, apparently nobody cares what I think of the tariff, the conservation of our natural resources, or the conflicts which revolve about the name of Dreyfus. If I offer to reform the education system of the world, my editorial friends say, “That is interesting. But will you please tell us what idea you had of goodness and beauty when you were six years old?” (The World I Live In, Preface)
TikTok and #HelenKellerwasfake
In 2020 there was a series of TikToks posted by a handful of different creators claiming that Helen Keller wasn’t real–and “wasn’t real” here could mean many different things. Some claimed that she was a real person who faked her deafness and blindness for attention. Others claimed that she was just a puppet and someone else was writing her speeches and books. Some believed she was just a character in a story, as though someone wrote multiple books about a character in an autobiographical narrative style.
Someone claimed that there was no way she wrote a dozen books because nobody could write that many books, and that even one book from a deaf-blind woman would have been impressive. Nevermind that authors like Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett and many others did not exist and publish prolifically.
Someone pointed out that Helen Keller once piloted a plane, with a smug “got’chya” attitude.
Oh no, you go me (*sarcasm*) blind people can’t fly planes. Neither can the ten year olds pilots sometimes bring into the cockpit and allow to hold the steering wheel while their co-pilot takes control.
Did I ever tell you that I once captained a ferry? And by captained, I mean I was five years old and my uncle brought me aboard the ferry he was employed at and let me blow the horn a few times.
But it’s true actually and there is video evidence of it. Helen Keller actually flew a bi-plane with a co-pilot. She did it while filming Deliverance in 1919, a silent film about her life. I found a clip of her flying the plane if you’d like to see it.
[Video Description: “And isn’t everyone flying these days” a radio caster says while a silent clip plays.
Helen is surrounded by her loved ones (Anne Sullivan, Polly Thompson, Kate Keller, and her younger brother) as they fuss about her, buttoning her coat and securing her helmet. Keller turns with a smile, accommodating them.
“Helen knows the scene is absurd,” the radio caster says, “and her mother, brother, and Anne Sullivan consider the flight hazardous. But there is no stopping the producers whose inspirations change daily. Helen Keller herself has never feared physical action.”
Helen climbs aboard the plane, struggling a little.
“As a child she learned to dive into the ocean with a rope around her waist tied to a stake on the shore. She has enjoyed tobogganing down steep New England slopes. And she knows to that if it will serve to rouse public interests about the capabilities of the blind, almost anything she can do to get attention can be justified.”
Keller settles into the front cockpit, getting comfy and roaming her hands along the surface to familiarize and orientate herself with this new environment. The camera angle zooms out as someone gives the plane propellor a big push to help it get started. It whirls and swirls up a cloud of dust on the now visible field.
The plane takes off the ground while the radio caster says, “But the plane ride, though pointless itself, still thrills the onlookers.”
The camera switches to watch Keller’s loved ones watching the plane fly with baited breath.
Over clips of the plane in the air, the caster says, “Helen is in the air for half an hour and says she feels more physical freedom than ever in her life.” A clip of Keller and her copilot in the plane plays. Keller is smiling as the wings of the plane sway from side to side.
The plane begins to approach the ground to land. “Only later does she learn that in this landing she and the pilot are in genuine danger of motor engine failure.” The plane lands smoothly despite the weighing danger.
“Helen’s good humor is taxed much more than her courage,” the radio caster says. “There will be scenes [in Deliverance] where she dresses herself just to show the public she can, and in which she sleeps to prove to the curious that she closes her eyes.”
The plane comes to a stop, engine shutting off, and the crowd of loved ones and flight crew approach the plane. Helen is given a hand by her brother to keep her balance as she climbs down. As soon as both feet are on the ground she turns to hug Anne Sullivan first. The clip ends and shows a portrait of Helen Keller from when she was in her twenties. End of Video Description]
Here is what I want you to know about the TikTok controversy: It wasn’t new. All through Keller’s life there were skeptics who thought she couldn’t do all the things she was doing. There were people who believed insane things about her like that she didn’t close her eyes to sleep, as you saw in the video. There were people who believed someone else wrote her speeches and she was little more than a puppet.
But that was never the lasting narrative. Those dissenting voices were disproven by everyone who actually spent time talking to her, who experienced both her witty and insightful conversation and the day-to-day struggle she had.
The TikTok creators saying these things now do so for a few reasons:
One, they genuinely don’t understand anything about blindness or deafness, they have never been given the chance to learn how disabled people navigate their lives. If you know someone in this position, I genuinely recommend sending them a link to one of my other Keller posts in which I explore and explain all the tools and accommodations Keller used to navigate her life [link].
Two, controversy generates views. Sensationalism has been the marketing strategy of the media for decades, stirring up emotion instead of informing. TikTok thrives on views, generating money for the handful of creators with enough of a following to enter the creator’s fund (although their earnings are a pittance compared to what the app makers get).
I encourage you to do your own research in cases like this. Don’t just take my word for it, look at the sources I’ve linked for you. Read Keller’s books. Enter your arguments fully armed.
About the author of this post:
Hello, I’m Mimzy. I run a writing advice blog and my most popular subject is teaching writers how to better write blind characters. This includes helping them build interesting blind characters, determine the limits and skills of their characters, brainstorm accommodations for them (especially in fantasy and sci-fi stories) and avoid ableist tropes and phrasing. I am a visually impaired writer and currently I’m in university studying English literature and Disability Studies.
* CFP: Folk Horror. CFP: Current Research in Speculative Fiction 2022.* Four Tiny Essays on SF/F.* The Future Is Black, Not Bleak: On Afrofuturist Poetry.
* Notes on Contemporary University Struggles: A Dossier.* The Great Faculty Disengagement: Faculty members aren’t leaving in droves, but they are increasingly pulling away.* Hustling…
[Image description: a series of tweets. The first is from Victoria Holmes, @spyturtle96, timestamped 3:06 PM, 04 May 22, with text as follows:
“Adoptees have been saying non-stop for months if not years they’re getting ready for another baby scoop era and no one listened to us. And now "domestic supply of infants” is in a draft and people still won’t listen to us.“
It is tagged ”#adopteevoices".
The next two are from Kim Penn, @kim_penn The first is timestamped 10:08 PM, 02 May 22 and contains the following text:
“I’m a very small Twitter voice, but I am begging my non-adoptee followers to educate yourself about what adoption is, what it does, and how evil and corrupt the adoption industry was and is. Listen to #adopteevoices. And then get your asses in the fight with us to end the system.”
The second is timestamped 9:58 AM, 03 May 22, and contains the following text:
“I promise you, adoption is absolutely NOT the win/win, fucking fairy tale, happy ending you’ve been led to believe. For every #adoptee, our story begins with loss. That’s our baseline. Any "happy ending” without acknowledging that is empty and an illusion.“
It is tagged ”#adopteevoices".
The final three are a Twitter thread from Laney (followed by three Chinese characters), @Lane_Xue, timestamped 8:55 PM, 03 May 22. The first contains text as follows:
“My parents faced reproductive, economic, social, & political injustice. I was relinquished because they could not keep me & I’m an adoptee. I am not a fucking (chess pawn emoji). Do not use my family separation to justify your desire to control others reproductive health care.”
The second contains text as follows:
“Abortion is a reproductive decision.
Adoption is a parenting decision often made by poor, young, economically disenfranchised people not given the resources or support to raise their children.
Do not conflate the 2 to justify feeding the adoption industries demand for (baby’s face emoji).”
The third contains text as follows:
“Do not fucking ask adoptees if they’d rather have been aborted. Adoptees are already 4x more likely to attempt suicide than non-adopted people.
The reason someone needs an abortion is none of your business.”
All three are tagged “#adopteevoices”.
After the final tweet there is a link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov with the beginning of a title, “Risk of Suicide Attemptin Adopted and Nonadpoted Off…”
I did my thesis on eugenics and forced sterilization in Canadian history (indigenous specific) and the next cis woman to say that men should collectively be forced to get vasectomies for points on some kind imaginary scoreboard of rights is getting sent a copy of the records I had to sift thru of men, mostly indigenous, racialized, developmentally disabled, or poor men, being sterilized against their wills and often without their knowledge.
I once again must remind people that “don’t like abortion, get a vasectomy” isn’t the gotcha you think it is, and that reproductive justice means supporting people who are targeted by the state both for forced birth AND for sterilization and child apprehension, as they’re linked closely.
The Satanic Temple’s Lucien Greaves: “I’m an Aryan king!”
In 2018, audio surfaced of The Satanic Temple co-owner and co-founder Lucien Greaves engaging in a conversation of grotesque Jew-hatred.
CW: antisemitism
In lieu of closed captions, here is the transcript of that exchange, starting at “I think it’s okay to hate Jews if you hate them because they’re Jewish, and they wear a stupid fucking frisbee on their head and walk around [thinking] they’re God’s chosen people.”
Greaves, whose real name is Doug Misicko, was then using a different pseudonym of “Doug Mesner”, and is the first person you hear in the clip. He was co-hosting a 24-hour Internet radio stream with his friend Shane Bugbee and Shane’s wife Amy Bugbee, the other primary two voices in that clip. The laughing person is a caller, one Gerod Staaf.
20:02:23Doug Misicko: Well, I tend to feel that racialism can be too general, at times. I think there should be eugenics policy, population control policy, something that ensures quality reproduction. But on racial grounds, I really don’t see it because you got to admit you meet some Black people are smarter than a lot of white people you met and vice versa. And all the rest. And if through the top notch, were the ones breeding, carrying on, that would be the best way to go.
20:02:54Tom Metzger: Yeah, there are gray areas, there’s overlap. But on the other hand, I’m, you see, you might see a white crow sometime too. But most crows are black. [laughter] I mean, if you judge the Black race by it, by its whole, you got you must come up with the idea that the def- definitely an inferior race.
20:03:13Doug Misicko: Well, if that was being the case…
20:03:15Tom Metzger: You’re saying that there’s mixed race, Blacks- mulattos that are sharp and smart. Once in a while there’s a jet black Negro, that’s very smart. Sure there is. And there’s a lot of stupid whites.
20:03:26Doug Misicko: But that being the case, you still wouldn’t have to enact racial laws, you just have to enact intelligence laws. And if that was being the case, then that good segment of the population would have to drop off, you could still do it on an equal level around the board.
20:03:41Tom Metzger: Well, we’ll leave you the project of raising the IQ of the Black race till about 140. And I’ll be standing by when you’re successful.
20:03:51Amy Bugbee: It’s going to be quite a task. I think.
20:03:54Tom Metzger: That’s gonna keep you busy for a long time.
20:03:56Doug Misicko: I don’t think the average white IQ is anywhere near 140.
20:04:01Tom Metzger: That’s true, but on the par, they’re higher than Blacks by probably 20 points. Most of the Third Reich, people, including Hitler, they were all above 120. And most of them are about 140.
20:04:18Doug Misicko: They actually took IQ tests?
20:04:20Tom Metzger: Yes, they did while they were in Nuremberg prison, awaiting trial. And the lowest IQ in the whole bunch was Julius Streicher. And he was 120. So I think if you do a, you know, an IQ test in Europe, among the educated whites, and then try to compare it to Blacks going to any university in the world, you’re going to see a difference. Already, they’ve already done that to where they have upscale Blacks going to these schools down in Maryland. And they were doing worse than a white kid is doing an Appalachia. So no, don’t ever forget race is a very important thing.
20:05:01Amy Bugbee: Absolutely, I know my sister always says how Blacks have only been civilized for a few 100 years so, they’re never going to catch up. You know, my, I’m never gonna be older than my older sister. So…
20:05:15Tom Metzger: I’ve heard that. Some estimates are that they are supposedly around 250,000 years behind, as a race. And of course, I’m not convinced we even come from the same source. I have, I have a very hard time believing that.
20:05:34Amy Bugbee: I agree with you. I think that there’s different species of humans or human related beings. I don’t think that we’re necessarily the same species as Blacks or Asians, you know, or any number of other races.
20:05:52Tom Metzger: If you’ll read the works of Carlton Kuhn, he pretty much brings forth the idea of separate development of the races in different areas of the world. Not all in Africa. We may have come from another planet for all I know,
I did my thesis on eugenics and forced sterilization in Canadian history (indigenous specific) and the next cis woman to say that men should collectively be forced to get vasectomies for points on some kind imaginary scoreboard of rights is getting sent a copy of the records I had to sift thru of men, mostly indigenous, racialized, developmentally disabled, or poor men, being sterilized against their wills and often without their knowledge.
I once again must remind people that “don’t like abortion, get a vasectomy” isn’t the gotcha you think it is, and that reproductive justice means supporting people who are targeted by the state both for forced birth AND for sterilization and child apprehension, as they’re linked closely.
The NHS is rejecting to save a 17 year old cause he’s autistic fuck the NHS
They hate me and want me to die, and that’s why I want to fucking strangle every single person who speaks to me about government health care :’)
Yeah I get why people shit all over American health care issues, but like, universal health care has its own issues. AKA, they regularly and loudly deny care to people who are not “good enough” for it. AKA, EUGENICS. the NHS regularly lets children die and refuses to let them transfer to other facilities willing to treat them.
Content warnings for discussion the recent racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, NY, and of eugenics in American history, and also for sustained eye contact.
Auto-generated closed Captions in English.
(It’s not just a belief among the “uneducated;” “uwu, they just don’t know any better” is not a valid defense to anyone spreading these ideas)
people be like “oh so killing disabled people because there should be less disabled people in the world is EUGENICS now? smh what has the world come to”
three hundred notes later and people be like “no no let me explain how killing disabled people because there should be less disabled people in the world isnt eugenics: there should be less disabled people in the world because i think they have bad lives and make the lives of others worse. thanks.” like they made a point
People will reinvent eugenics in a #woke way sooner or later. The idea that people should not be attracted to the disabled because it’s fetishizing the power you have over them, the idea that dating someone short is at all comparable to pedophilia, the idea that no one outside of your own race can ever truly understand your experiences and therefore no one outside of your own race could ever truly love you… like, we’re not there yet, but every so often I’ll see a truly rancid take and think “Now why does that sound familiar?”
People will reinvent eugenics in a #woke way sooner or later. The idea that people should not be attracted to the disabled because it’s fetishizing the power you have over them, the idea that dating someone short is at all comparable to pedophilia, the idea that no one outside of your own race can ever truly understand your experiences and therefore no one outside of your own race could ever truly love you… like, we’re not there yet, but every so often I’ll see a truly rancid take and think “Now why does that sound familiar?”
And if someone in your own demographic is telling you that only someone in your own demographic can ever truly love you, from what I’ve heard, there’s about a 70% chance that they are recommending themselves, personally. Like, this is a seduction technique. You’re being hit on.
People will reinvent eugenics in a #woke way sooner or later. The idea that people should not be attracted to the disabled because it’s fetishizing the power you have over them, the idea that dating someone short is at all comparable to pedophilia, the idea that no one outside of your own race can ever truly understand your experiences and therefore no one outside of your own race could ever truly love you… like, we’re not there yet, but every so often I’ll see a truly rancid take and think “Now why does that sound familiar?”
One recent trend saw users analysing their side profile, by covering their nose with an index finger to appear small and straight and then revealing what their nose really looks like. The trend led to many people, especially non-white creators, decrying in their videos that they disliked their nose shape from the side.
“Beauty has always been political despite how innocuous appearance-based Tiktok trends might seem”
The popularity of the golden ratio hashtag on TikTok with 404.1 million views, also reveals to me how the app might be driving standards of beauty – which is a social construct – down to the millimetre. The Greek golden ratio is a mathematical model said to be found in nature and in the human body, and is still used by plastic surgeons and ordinary people alike to determine what constitutes the ‘ideal face’. This idea of being able to scientifically calculate the beauty of facial dimensions which favours white faces is incredibly harmful, blatantly suggesting that some bodies are right and others are wrong in a clear continuation of eugenics.
Other damaging trends include teeth checks, with praise for straight natural teeth, or the inverted filter that encourages people to micromanage their facial symmetry, provoking shame if there is any visible asymmetry.
it fucking destroys me how many people casually support eugenics and like, don’t even seem to REALIZE it’s eugenics
RIGHT??? like – it’s like they’ve internalized the idea that eugenics is a thing Bad People like, but literally sterilizing people they don’t like against their will unless they have special dispensation from the government – that’s some other word that isn’t a bad mean word like eugenics :D!!!!
nope sorry still morally indefensible, even if it’s against people you personally dislike h t h
I feel similarly about complaints about “stupid people.” It’s one thing to criticize bad judgment, but when I hear someone indict anyone who wasn’t as lucky as they were in the genetic lottery, or who didn’t get the education they got, their privilege shows. Complaints that stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to breed tend to come right after.
Trying to enforce a world without disabled ppl bc you find us too inconvenient, like… what’s your end game? Unless you die quite young/healthy, everyone will experience disability. It’s just a ✨part of life✨ (you should be LISTENING to us if you want to be prepared for when your body/life changes)
What’re you gonna do, play eternal eugenics whack-a-mole for every newly disabled person and then still act surprised when we say, hey, if we made basic things more accessible, we’d live longer, some of us may be able to work (but if not that should also be okay), we’d be able to participate more in just everyday stuff—contributing to your dear economy you sacrificed us to save. Sooo… like, what is the plan, man?
