Mind your language
SCOPE is a 'national disability organisa- tion whose focus is people with cerebral palsy'. It used to be called the Spastics Society. The word spastic refers to uncontrolled movements; unfortunately it was used by children as a term of abuse — recently, like cool, it has seen a revival. Scope says that instead of spastic you should say person who has cerebral palsy. I agree, except that since cerebral means to most people 'brainy', cerebral palsy might make it appear that spastics are stupid, which is not usually the case.
It is a big field, this business of what you should call special groups — or do I mean normal groups? Ian Dury, who was not a spastic or, as it happens, autistic, only a cripple with a withered arm and leg, called one of his records `Spasticus Autisticus', which neatly epated almost everyone.
Now Scope has put out a 42-page booklet called Stop Press! on the way newspapers portray disabled people. In the main it is fine. But suddenly I came across assertions that are breath- taking, and some that seem dangerous and nasty.
Stop Press! says that 'using an adjec- tive as a noun', with the definite article, as in the disabled, shows a lack of respect. Perhaps so, though what about the Welsh? But people in some group- ings define themselves by a substantive adjective — lesbians, blacks, for exam- ple. My opinion is that it is daft to sug- gest that a person is limited to a description of her sexual preference, but I would not want to persecute les- bians for calling themselves lesbians.
Scope does want to persecute journal- ists who, for example, report that a member of the cast of a play was 'men- tally handicapped'. Scope sets out in Stop Press! how to write a letter for pub- lication to a newspaper that offends; how to organise a local campaign if that letter is not published; how to boycott that paper; and then how to take it to the Press Complaints Commission.
Among the pejorative or negative terms that Scope denounces is one- armed. Should I be sacked for using the term one-armed? Isn't it a shame to turn the press into 'the Enemy' in this matter? If the press are the new objects of unreflecting derision, I shall encour- age my daughter to shout 'Journalist!' instead of 'Spastic!'
Dot Wordsworth
Previous page
