Pity's Scrap Heap

I recently came across a forum post by a young autistic man who wrote that he did not believe he was fit to be a father because he had "bad genes." Unfortunately, that wasn't the first such post I've seen. Over the past few years, as the autism epidemic propaganda has spread across the landscape like a noxious fungus, I've seen many posts in which autistics described themselves in such terms. One woman wrote that the Autism Speaks awareness ads left her feeling like a heap of genetic scrap metal. There is a mock awareness poster on the autistics.org website that puts it this way: "Odds of having an autistic child, 1 out of 166. Odds of an autistic person feeling like garbage when reading autism epidemic hype, 64 out of 83."

When you're a target of pity-mongering cure charities, it can be hard to keep your self-respect and to look at what's going on from a broader perspective. The truth is, society's privileged elites have been describing various minority groups as having "bad genes" ever since genes were discovered in the 19th century. Back then, doctors and scientists authoritatively proclaimed that anyone who wasn't white had "bad genes." Now it's autistics and other people with disability labels. Same prejudice, different minorities.

The pity industry is big business. The infamous Labor Day muscular dystrophy telethon, which has been spewing rivers of disability prejudice for over 40 years, raised $61 million last year. Some people think that the telethon's condescending attitude is excusable because it has raised so much money for a cure. Well, no, treating people as pity objects instead of human beings is never justified; and the cure is, of course, nonexistent, so where has all that money really gone? To pay the salaries of fat-cat charity executives, to further inflate Jerry Lewis' already gargantuan ego, and to fund the development of prenatal screening tests that become more accurate every year in identifying fetuses to be aborted.

No doubt, over the years, well-meaning contributors to the telethon didn't intend that their money would be used for purposes of eugenic abortion; but it is an inevitable result of the attitude that certain kinds of people belong on the scrap heap unless they are cured.

It's time to send the telethon off to the graveyard of old prejudiced TV programs, bury it six feet under, and pull the plug on pity.

Edit, September 3: The Anti-Telethon Blogswarm is now up at Kara's Place. Check it out and join the protest against pity!