Quick Hit: Parents of Disabled Children

blaming, deaths, justice, representations, social attitudes, violence, , , ,

This is gonna be short ’cause I hurt and it’s hard to think and type and all that shit what’s good for writing.

Another parent of disabled children has killed ou children. Ou regrets having done it and immediately notified police of ou actions. Responses of shock and horror from media and across internets.

But. It doesn’t take long before there are articles like “Parents of Children With Autism: We Struggle Alone” at the Dallas Morning News. This is bog-standard parent of autistic child shit and not worth reading. (Y’all may consider yourselves warned about clicking through and especially about reading any comments that may be present.) It is easily summarised: Parents say, “Oh that was so horrible I’d never ever never even think for a moment of harming my autistic child. But…” There’s a lot of subtextual sympathy for the person who murdered ou children. Just as there always is. In the midst of all the parents-are-on-their-own there are blithe assumptions that help is available. It costs a lot of money but is available. All the accompanying photos are of apparently white people in nice homes.

Nothing we’ve not seen before.

It’s notable because I happened to come across it in the print edition of the paper and its placement there. On the front fucking page of the Sunday fucking paper. Below the fold and tucked into the bottom right corner but still. Being parents of disabled children is so hard that killing them is an option many people will sympathise with is news big enough for the front page. Of the Sunday fucking edition. This is prime newspaper real estate.

The Dallas Morning News uses it for this shit. And my wife wonders why I’m so ‘hypercritical’ of news about disabled people.

About kaninchenzero

Kaninchen Zero is a woman-focused social justice activist, queer, trans, poly, kinky, atheist, socialist, a gamer, happy in a legal interracial same-sex marriage in Texas, and nearly forty. She has an overlookable physical disability (she can walk but slowly, painfully, and with a limp) and mental illnesses she can't hide any more. Other blog-ish type stuff can be found at her LiveJournal, her Dreamwidth, and her Tumblr. Short-form fiction is mostly at her story blog. The official short form of her handle is k0, pronounced kaynull or kaynought. The avatar is her own drawing.

3 thoughts on “Quick Hit: Parents of Disabled Children”

  1. This is awful! It’s frustrating how disabled kids *especially* seem to be seen as nothing more than a burden. They’re not real people; they’re a different species altogether. What makes it more frustrating it that they’re kids, so they can’t speak for themselves (officially or legally) so it’s doubtful that they would be listened to by anybody.

    Thanks for the warning about the article. I think today I’ll skip it.

  2. The worst part of this article, for me, was: “Naturally, the future [of autism / of autistic children] hangs most heavily on the parents of autistic kids.”

    I think obviously this is not the case. It’s like saying that the people who are most concerned about the future of women are their male relatives.

    Did Akhter actually express regret? I haven’t read that she did, though I’m not sure why else she would call 911.

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