Cancer 57

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but calling doesn’t hurt me.”

Why don’t we hear this any more? Why is it now assumed that calling does hurt, that the use of words in itself is damaging? It isn’t. Words are just words. We should be careful in the way we use them, but to use individual words per se is not a problem.

I got a really nasty look yesterday (I know, looks don’t hurt any more than words do), simply because as I got out of the car I commented that I didn’t need to use my disabled parking voucher. Is that the right term? I don’t know because I call it a cripstick. The people in the next car gave me such a nasty look that if I was one of these modern people I would probably need hospital treatment. OK, so they had a cripstick on display. So what?

I can use the term cripple and its derivatives because that is what I am, by definition, a cripple, and if I want to use that word I will. The difference between my attitude and the attitude of others towards words like this is that I don’t care what word people use. What is more important is the way words are used.

Limitations on speech have gone too far. If I say, ‘All Jews should be gassed.’ That is hate speech. I am suggesting that Jews should be killed, and killed in a way that has unpleasant connotations for people. If, on the other hand, I comment on the attractiveness of a girl walking down the street, perhaps with a wolf whistle added, that is not hate speech, that is often the best a man can do in terms of providing someone with a compliment (I know, I shouldn’t use girl in this context, wolf whistles are banned, and probably the word attractiveness is banned because it differentiates in a negative way between a pretty girl and a not pretty girl – there I go again). Actually, I never was any good at wolf-whistling. When I worked on building the children’s hospital in Derby endless pretty nurses walked past and many of the other builders wolf whistled and made comments. I just couldn’t, not because I couldn’t whistle but it just wasn’t the way I complimented a girl. I needed to talk to her properly, or at least I did when I got over my shyness.

I accept that there are changes in good manners and acceptability, but limiting the use of words is unacceptable. And it is not only during interaction between people. We have started book burning. Making changes to books because they might ‘offend sensibilities’ (in other words upset people who need to get a grip on reality) is abhorrent, and is equivalent to the booking burning carried out by the Nazis in the 1930s. Why should some people dictate to others what they should and should not read simply because a book uses certain types of language or words, or puts across certain ideas? Why is it that some people think that children and others are not capable of distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable behaviours by characters in books? We are not as stupid as some people make out. We can tell the difference between when a character in a book is doing or saying something acceptable versus unacceptable.

Using words such as cripple means nothing in itself, it is not a hate word. I don’t think there are such things as hate words. The hate is in the context. If you could get inside my body, feel the aches and pains, the times I find it difficult to keep walking, the need for so many drugs, then you might acknowledge that, compared to other, dare I say normal people, I am crippled. It is not hate to say so, it is a statement of fact.