OH YES, five hundred geek points please. Kthx.
More pensively:
Here's a murder trial ruling that has escaped the usual "disability panic" defence.
People are slowly, slowly starting to get the idea that murdering a disabled child is not a "mercy killing" or "for the best" - comments that have been everywhere after reports of similar murders; not just in the more fascist corners of the internet and in the more fascist newspapers, but everywhere.
However, the progress of this understanding that disability is not the end of the world has come too late for the little girl in question, Naomi Hill.
And over in the US, a "trans panic" defence has been (almost, this is a preliminary hearing) thrown out, ensuring that the killer of a young trans woman named Angie Zapata will be charged with first-degree murder (anyone who assumes that a murder charge for the murderer of a trans woman is normal needs to do some extensive reading on the thousands of similar cases).
Two signs of real progress, and two reasons to hope. Maybe the world, after all, is becoming a more humane place.
But, again, too late for Angie Zapata and Naomi Hill.
I'm not sure what to think.
2 comments:
It's so sad that the only thing really unusual about Naomi Hill's case is how strongly people (particularly her father) have spoken against her murder.
IMHO, the main reason that the reaction has been different in the Hill case to similar previous cases is that the mother has a history of psychiatric treatment - ie, is disabled, or at least has the stigma of being disabled, herself.
If she had been neurotypical and without psychiatric history, i very much doubt that the tone of reports would have been any different from previous cases...
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