But her staff will start an education campaign and encourage the leagues to do the "right thing," she said. He said a switch to the term U16 under 16 will be discussed at a meeting this coming weekend. That decision comes after the Guelph Youth Basketball Association in Ontario agreed to stop using the term midget after the parents of a boy with dwarfism complained earlier this year. This article was originally published on Nov. On Nov.
This applies to all Hockey Canada programs. Some provincial hockey programs have already made changes to exclude the word 'midget. As a writer you are aware of the power of words. The use of the word midget is, for Little People, equated with any other hate word someone might use to describe a minority group. I simply ask you: if you were to see Little People children would you take away their humanity in the same way with the use of such a hate word?
I can respect a yes answer but I cannot respect the person who answers yes. I had no idea the word "midget" was considered offensive, and you are the only person who has ever written to me about it. In my mind it is a descriptive term, like "dwarf. If I am now informed that "midget" is offensive, I will no longer use it.
What is your feeling about "dwarf? Our newspaper's style book, based on Associated Press, does not consider "midget" or "dwarf" to be offensive terms, but perhaps we have not caught up. Most of us in the United States have been teased or harassed or otherwise had our personal space invaded "just because" we are members of the dwarf community. Our reactions can range from indifference to humiliation; from announce to outrage and sometimes perhaps even fear for our safety. Because of their connection to us, our average-sized family members, friends, and peers have more than likely felt the same things.
Somewhere around third grade, our average sized son Brandon started getting into schoolyard fights. Lenette always the more insightful parent realized what was happening. Kids would come up to Brandon and ask "aren't you the kid whose parents are midgets?
In his young mind he saw no choice but to defend his family's honor! I was devastated. I had spent over a decade of my life as a disability advocate and spokesperson for the dwarf community promoting "politically correct" use of terminology. I had helped make the word midget such a powerfully negative word that it was endangering my son!
And we had never actually talked about the word -- he just picked up the value from growing up with little people. So we sat him right down and began desensitizing the word midget. We also enrolled him in Karate class so he would learn that violence was a last resort. I had made a classic mistake. I had confused the word midget with the way it was used by people who intended to make me feel bad. Ironically, midget is the newest term for people like us.
It was coined by PT Barnum in the mid 's to describe members of the dwarf community who were the most socially acceptable, i. The rest of the dwarf community, those of us whose bodies are shaped differently enough to look more than just "really short," were relegated to the back stage or freak shows. In fact, even into the 's, it was still considered more socially acceptable to be a midget than to be any other kind of dwarf!
I remember hearing parents say "if my child has to be small, then thank god she's a midget, and not a dwarf. So what happened? First, LPA happened.
Originally to be called "Midgets of America," the folks who could afford to attend the early meetings were as likely to be non-midgets as midgets. So a compromise was made to call the group Midgets and Dwarfs of America notice who came first. It didn't take long, however, for the fledgling members to notice that the non-midgets by Barnum's standards were greatly out-numbering the midgets. So a second compromise was struck to call the group "Little People of America.
It was where people with bodies that exceeded normal expectations were put on display for others to stare at and often mock. I am often asked, what is the difference between a midget and a dwarf.
In the freak shows, a midget referred to a person with proportionate dwarfism. They were just short, as opposed to a person with dwarfism or dwarf who has a disproportionate body size.
People like me, who have a disproportionate body size, were seen as undesirable, as we were not as aesthetically pleasing as those who were just short. It seems that whilst freak shows began to fade away at the turn of the 20th century, much of their problematic legacy lives on. The use of the term on many branded items allows its presence to be maintained within society.
It is not hard to imagine that had these sweets been given another name associated with a derogatory term which refers to another minority group that they would have been either removed or renamed. The constant use of the word in the media and on products allows its popularity to flourish, which has implications for people with dwarfism in society.
As a person with dwarfism I have had to endure this word being shouted at me in the street. These experiences tell me that I do not belong and that whilst the freak shows may have disappeared the attitudes that popularised them still remain prominent within society. They will continue to remain the same unless we start to challenge them.
Hate speech includes words that humiliate and degrade different groups of people. To use a term that is from a form of entertainment that paraded people with dwarfism in order to provoke stares and laughter from the audience serves to humiliate and degrade people with dwarfism in modern society. Recognising the word as a form of hate speech will help to remove its use within the media and slowly help to diminish its use within society.
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