trouble | Apparently people with disabilities belong in the uncanny valley, not on earth

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Apparently people with disabilities belong in the uncanny valley, not on earth

Hey Everyone! Let's play a fun game! Let's play "How much hatred towards people with disabilities can one location support?" A fun and exciting game that leads to wondering how many people sitting in the same room as you wish you would die.

(Exclamation Marks are Sarcasm Indicators.)

This comes from that awesome place to hang out, TV Tropes! Specifically, people with disabilities are being discussed in the "Uncanny Valley" section of "Troper Tales".

(Here is TV Tropes' definition of the Uncanny Valley:

Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori stated in 1970 that the more human a robot acted or looked, the more endearing it would be to a human being. For example, most lovable Robot Buddies look humanoid, but keep quirky and artistically mechanical affectations.

However, at some point, the likeness would seem too strong, and it would just come across as a very strange human being. At this point, the acceptance drops suddenly, changing to a powerful negative reaction.

When shown as a graph (like the one to the right), the acceptance on the Y axis and increasing X approaching human normal, there is a slow rise, then a sudden drop, then a sudden peak as "human normal" is reached. Masahiro Mori referred to this as the "uncanny valley"

)

So, just to make that clear to start with: People with disabilities are being discussed in a section where other people are discussing cars that talk and computer animation. Because they aren't people, see. They're almost people, but not quite. And it's creepy.

This troper has a cousin with severe genetic defects. On the surface, she looks like an ordinary girl of her age. But spend even a minute in her presence, and the defects become apparent. Not only is she unable to stand upright without support and has seizures, but she is mentally retarded to the point that this troper isn't sure if she's truly sentient. She's like an animal in a human body - and yet she is kin.

This troper has a great-aunt who's mentally retarded to the point that she has the mind of a four-year-old... despite being in her late 50's. Every time his family goes to visit her, he can't help but be really, really creeped out.
Two Words: Tear Jerker.

That's why I can't substitute teach in EC, (what used to be called "Special Ed") classes. My empathetic side feels sorry for them, but every other instinct is calling for retreat. The exaggerated cheerfulness of the other teachers in there doesn't help. They pretty much have to do that to register on the kids.

You too? I missed my last possible year to go visit a school in LA filled with the kids who are just too mentally impaired to go to a normal high school. He couldn't help but pity them when they'd come to perform for Christmas, and looking at a friend's field trip form, rule #1 of the trip was "YOU ARE NOT TO PITY THEM". How can I not, the poor souls...

This troper has been stuck in Special Ed, and HATES the overly-cheerful crap. I'm disabled, not stupid!

Aye, this Troper gets very creeped out around mentally disabled people. Not to mention birth defects and other things. *shudders*

I once saw a special on TLC about a girl who doesn't age. She was technically 16 years at the time of shooting, but she had the body of a baby. Here is an article about her. I find it almost too bizarre to comprehend.

This troper goes to a high school with a Special Ed class in it and has to walk by the classroom on her way to lunch as the disabled kids are getting ready to eat too. This troper has to keep her head down at the floor to keep herself from running away. It's not that I'm truly afraid of them (I really do sympathize for disabled people) it's just it frightens me to know that they weren't supposed to be that way, they could have been normal, yet somehow they weren't born right. It frightens me even more if they're mentally retarded as I don't know what to do in situations like that without feeling uncomfortable and scared.

This troper's nephews were burned in a car fire when they were young; their burn scars ranging from just a few here and there to one who bears an uncanny (pun not intended) resemblance to Jacqueline Saburido (both were trapped in their seats when their respective fires happened). I don't feel it's effects since I've seen them at least once a month (and have gotten used to it), but I only noticed this trope applies to him when I overheard a small girl who couldn't be older than eight at a high school football game say "mommy, that kid looks weird" or something to that effect.

Jesus Christ there's a shitload of ableism in this thread.

There's some ableism, yes, but there's also recognition that it's not socially acceptable to treat mentally impaired individuals differently - and yet many people have an irrational part of their brain repeatedly smashing the panic button every time they are around these individuals. This whole trope is about the fact that there is, for many people, an intuitive response of DO NOT WANT to things that seem human-but-not-right, and the fact that it is the exact same response to an extremely lifelike robot or puppet as to a child with, say, down syndrome makes it very clear that this is not society creating a stigma, but a built-in human reaction. (Not to mention, it is depressing to meet all the kids who are functionally retarded and will never be able to live on their own just because Mommy couldn't stay off the crack and booze while she was pregnant.) I learned from substitute teaching that while I handle just fine the high-functioning "special ed." kids who just have learning disorders, I need to stay away from the "sheltered environment" assignments, because I can't effectively hide my body language from the other students in the classroom when a kid who hits my own Uncanny Valley effect approaches me, and I don't want to encourage treating those students as different.

This teenage troper HAD TO LIFEGUARD, for the mentally and physically retarded. While I admit I was not effected by the uncanny valley here, do you know how pathetic it was to watch some of them swim? Half of them were in wheelchairs, and had to scoot around in the wading pool on their butts. Two in particular were really sad cases, both of them in wheelchairs. One was a boy and he was probably around my age, his hands and toes were curled into his body and it didn't seem like he had much ability to control them, although he wasn't flailing or anything, they stuck him in a neck brace (it looked like a life vest, but it didn't go on his torso, he was LITERALLY floating around by his head and neck dragged around by an aid). The other case was similar, although instead of being all curled up, she was flailing around and at times wailing or seeming to be very angry at being in the pool, she did not float around by her neck, and despite her nervous flailing I noticed she had some control over what she did. She seemed to be trying really hard to get away from her aid... Worst of all? I still see some of these kids around the high school, as it was the school pool.

...

This troper Has always had issues with pictures of birth defects. Not so much disfigurements from an accident or something, just anything congenital or genetic. There's just something about humans being born looking inhuman that makes me feel like nature isn't to be trusted, and the world is a really squicky place on a primordial level. I saw a commercial for some Discovery Channel show about The Elephant Man when I was around eight, and... Well, needless to say, I didn't watch Discovery for a while after, and that commercial was literal Accidental Nightmare Fuel for me off and on for years after. Which probably means this is more like Nightmare Valley for me.

This just goes on and on and on. OMG! People with disabilities are inhuman! And if anyone points out how you're describing people in the way you describe dogs, then OMG! You are being mean.

I don't even know how to respond to this shit because what is the point? People actually argue that being repulsed by bodies like Don's, with his caved-in chest and his long spindly fingers and his sunk-in eyes is a normal human reaction to birth defects. They don't think it has anything to do with ableism, with the messages society sends about people with disabilities, about how rarely people actually interact with actual disabled people so they never get used to us, they think it's all perfectly acceptable because people with disabilities are not quite human.

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Jesus Christ, a lot of people should stop goddamn working in special ed.

I know, right? Teaching and therapeutic fields in general -- not just special ed -- are jobs that I think most people who are doing them shouldn't be doing, because they have the totally wrong attitude about them.

If you don't truly care and love the people you work with and what you do, what the fuck are you doing there? Go find some job as a paper-pusher at a Fortune 500 and do less work for the same or more pay, Jesus Christ.

(Not to say that paper-pushers don't also face challenges at their work, of course, but having done paper-pushing before, I'm sure their challenges are more like "WE ARE OUT OF THE RIGHT TYPE OF FILE FOLDERS AND THE INCOMPETENT STOCKROOM GUY ORDERED FIFTEEN HUNDRED BOXES OF THE WRONG FILE FOLDERS AUUUUUUUUUGH" instead of "I am responsible for the educational and emotional development of this human being.")

Also, having pushed paper, no-one is harmed for life if you tell the photocopier it's a useless piece of shit. It doesn't matter if you express nothing but disappointment in your computer.

So it's not about the challenges - it's about how these bastards are handling real people.

(...why yes, I had some shitty teachers. I have Opinions.)

I never really thought before that a lot of my attitudes were formed when I was a kid, and my mom voluntold me as a scorekeeper for the Special Olympics--I just got it impressed on me that these are people with names and personalities and ambitions and emotions (and I had no power over them). By now I know that I respect people with mental disabilities as people, but working with them isn't a job that I find fulfilling in a career-ambition sense--I know I want to work with different populations. I do it anyway because it was part of a university program, I still do good work, and I'm at a workplace that really values me as a staff member. But that still doesn't mean seeing the kids I work with as less-than.

But a lot of people are in helping professions because they want to be-the-person-who-helped, and they get really frustrated when people don't magically blossom under their tender care.

Edited 2011-06-01 20:46 (UTC)

The Person-Who-Helped thing is so... there, all over the place, and I get it, but I also want people to stop.

I hate so much of this because I know teachers who work with kids with disabilities and they love their kids. They love their job. But they also get the financial support in the classroom to assist those kids. i wonder how much of this rage at disabled kids in the classroom comes from lack of financial resources to pull it off properly.

Oh, poor dears. Having to see and go to school with (in segregated classrooms) people with disabilities. How ever will they survive?

It's a hard life, being an able-bodied person in this society, but someone has to do it.

Ugh. Damn you, TVTropes, for appealing to my love of verbally labeling things while doing...things like this. (Some of the trope names are, like, WTF?)

Also, what

staranise said.

Yeah, I find that I can get really caught up in TV Tropes, it's a very useful resource, and then I remember why I hate it.

Yes I feel the same, it could be such an interesting and useful website if it was not so full of bigotry and especially ableism.
(But also so much other fails) what I find ironic is that I tend to find so much ableism in place essentially runed by geeks and nerds, I mean, these are the people who should know better, who for an important part have themselves been bullied and harassed for being different from the majority...
Most people seems to be so bad on intersectionnality and privileges.

You coudln't pay me to ignore these posts!

OH NOES TEH PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES! Upsetting the sensibilities of abled people forever, I guess.

You know who I feel the worst for? The people with disabilities who have to be exposed to these bigots on a daily fucking basis. The assumption that the PWDs being talked about are just too "backward" to notice such bigotry is pretty horrible as well.

Yeah, exactly. From family members, from teachers, from caregivers, from classmates.

Fuck. I know I should not be surprised, but I am actually pretty surprised. And appalled. And I would kind of like it if these people were not allowed to interact with the rest of society, because I'm sure people are picking up on all this shuddering and fear and loathing and being hurt by it.

Heck, just the things people say to me about Don as though somehow magically it's okay if they tell me that they find him "repulsive" or that they find people with disabilities "frightening" and then tell me how braaaaaaaaave I am.

!!!!! Perhaps they should wear "I AM AN ASSHOLE" stickers on their foreheads and save you the trouble. WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK THAT'S OKAY?

I don't get it--I think a lot of people sometimes have horrible thoughts that they know are horrible, but maybe...that's the point at which they should keep those thoughts inside, remind themselves that they are horrible, and try to get over them?

They told you they find YOUR HUSBAND repulsive.

Fuck, why am I even surprised.

Edited to add: an anecdote from my father, passed down from his mother. This would have taken place before WW2. My grandmother is on a train. The women sitting next to her, a total stranger, starts a long rant about how much she hates Jews. My grandmother says "Excuse me, but I think you should know that my husband is Jewish." The other woman replies "Oh, so's mine. He's a Polish Jew, they're the worst."

Edited 2011-06-02 06:02 (UTC)

oh ffs. I really want to go in there and punch a lot of people right now.

.... and it reads like they're trying to one-up each other. I saw freaky people for a day! Well I saw even freakier people, for two weeks! Yeah but I HAD TO LIFEGUARD them! LIFEGUARD!!! THEM!!!!!

It's probably not enough that I wear covering clothes, I should probably just keep my creepy repulsive disabled body in the house all the time so the nice non-disabled people don't have to see me.

It's the kind of thing that makes me want to go out in the least clothing possible. (Which wouldn't be particularly effective now - I no longer look disabled, most of everything has faded - but still.)

what the actual fuck

I can't even deal. Was that a see how bigoted I am contest?

I'm so sorry the existence of other people offends their delicate sensibilities.

Oh wow. Those people can all fuck right off. It's like a consciousness-lowering session.

It reminds me of the book I'm currently reading, Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity. The author, and the people he's interviewed, have way too many times experienced white people coming up to them and confessing all the awful, awful racist things they've said, done, and let pass. They don't want to change, they just want a Black person's forgiveness.

Oh my god. oh my god, this is appalling. The remarks from the troper with the disabled great-aunt made me physically cringe, because their situation is so bizarrely reminiscent of my own family - my great-aunt Marcia is in her sixties now, but she has about the same level of disability described, and imagining anyone saying something like that about her just -

incoherent heartbreak/anger.

I made the mistake of reading this page a while back. kjgdnhcjskaksehka.

Um... wow. What the fucking fucking fuck is this???

Let me tell you about the type of people who send my brain completely rationally smashing the panic button...

*incoherent*

Good gods. What.

I can understand (though not appreciate) these sentiments coming from teenagers who are almost physiologically incapable of empathizing with strangers, it seems, but adults, especially adults who are teachers saying these things takes me from zero to what the fucking fuck in 3.2 seconds. The othering, the endless, unstoppable othering... fuck.

Yes, as a starting point to "and then I thought about treating people like human beings" or a discussion on *why* some people have this reaction to other people, that's fine. But this self-congratulatory horror show by people actually responsible for the care of disabled people? Who chose that career? That's horrific.

And of course the website sees no responsibility to moderate people talking about other people as subhumans. Oh no, can't have that.

That was fucking vile to read. I hate people. :(

This post inspired me to make a new hat design for Zazzle:

Between the lines by Chimerigons
See more caps at Zazzle

Description:
Graphic of a cartoon style thought balloon in blue, with the words "Yeah, I get what you're saying (even between the lines)." The text has cast shadows in muted gold and shocking pink.

It's amazing what some people will say about the disabled -- even when we're right there. This hat can help remind them that we are not sack of potatoes or potted plants.

I was originally going to have the words: "I understand you perfectly (even your subtext)." But then, I figured that the people who need this message wouldn't understand all those multi-syllabic words... :-/

This is so disgusting, I couldn't respond earlier...
I had already seen the paralell between this uncanny valley thing and the way privileged people see us, (or some of us) but I thought of it the other way, people shoulden't see their uncomfortable feelings around people, beings or even things as an indication that these people, beings or things have something very wrong intrinsically, they should tink about it, put themselves in question.

The worst thing in this piece of garbage is the way they try to justify it, the "if we feel so uncomfortable around these people it must be that there is something intrinsically wrong with them", NO! it just mean that you are bigoted (I'm talking about the people who wrote all this shit of course, not you trouble) I so much hate this kid of attitude, and the way they seem to feel that this is universal, yes I have already been around disabled people of the kind they would find very uncomfortable to be around and I was not uncomfortable, in fact I was probably more comfortable than around a lot of non-disabled people.
I have recently read this: http://adeepercountry.blogspot.com/2011/06/fallacy-week-harder-fallacy.html from Amanda Forest Vivian and the "uncomfortable fallacy" can be quite a good definition (I hope she is okay if I quote):
"The uncomfortable fallacy is when you think that being uncomfortable around another person necessarily indicates something about the person."

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Apparently people with disabilities belong in the uncanny valley, not on earth

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Urgh!