My Photo
Buy Your Copy Now!
Blog powered by Typepad
Member since 12/2003

« A Great New Resource to Combat Denialism | Main | Dennis Fermoyle Solves The Academic Performance Problem »

Tuesday, May 01, 2007


Vicki Forman

Powerful. Thanks for linking to me and offering these statistics. Bravo.

Liz Ditz

Lisa Williams had a great observation:

Increasingly, even our public spaces are highly segregated by how controlled a person’s behavior is: there are an increasing number of public places such as stores, restaurants, museums, where it is now considered okay to pressure children displaying normal behavior, and people who are different in ways that might express itself as impulsiveness or an occasional squawk — to begone and shut themselves away so they don’t bother The Real People.

Yes, there have always been places restricted to only adults, or that required quiet. It’s just that it has now spread to Papa Gino’s and the supermarket. This creates the market for kid-ghettos like Chuck E. Cheese’s. And people over 4 feet tall who are different? Where are they welcome?

But do we really want an age-segregated society? A neurologically segregated society? How has that worked out for children and elders? — who we have all been, and with luck all will be? What about the people who care for children and elders? How has this enforced isolation worked out for them? How has that isolation worked out for people who aren’t neurotypical and the people who care for them?

Voting no against a society that’s segregated by age and neurobiology doesn’t mean letting infants into the symphony. It means hearing a kid wailing in Target — and refraining from the dirty look. It means getting in line behind someone who needs reading glasses and help with their supermarket cart and shrugging it off if it takes more time for them to check out than a teenager on crank. It means making space for people who are not neurotypical of any age.

The comments to this entry are closed.


What I'm Tweeting

    follow me on Twitter