Sarah Nielsen on Cerebral Palsy Discrimination in a Progressive City

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

The April 30, '14 issue of "The Stranger" includes "It's Like You've Never Seen Someone with Cerebral Palsy Before" by Sarah Nielsen.

She begins:

I was born with cerebral palsy, and though I'm 30 years old, I didn't really accept that until I moved to Seattle last June. It was something I hid from, something I denied, and it was relatively easy to do so, because a lot of people seemed to notice other things about me before they noticed that. ... In Seattle, though, a lot of people seem to be a little unnerved by my disability, ... But I was caught entirely off guard by this sudden understanding that being alive in the only body I've got apparently makes some people uncomfortable in 2014, in one of America's most progressive cities. I moved here for books, coffee, writing, nature, food, even rain—not a daily crusade.

Ms. Nielsen contrasts other cities:

I'm from New Orleans, where anything goes, and I spent a long stretch in New Mexico, where anything goes but less flamboyantly so. The other side of my family is from the Midwest, where nobody really focuses on bodies one way or the other. Even when I walked around for long stretches in fitness-obsessed San Francisco, no one flinched at me or explained me away from their kids.

It would be good to know what others from these areas have to say about tolerance in those places. In A Dissenter's Notes, it is argued that a difference between progressives and liberals is that progressives are generally influenced by social standards, while liberals are influenced by more universal standards of justice. To the extent that disability seems to offend social standards of conforming appearance, progressives may indeed react in the way that Sarah Nielsen describes. While progressives are careful to avoid offending members of a protected class, the exclusion of disability in general from the list of protected groups can leave the disabled unprotected from disability discrimination by progressives.

As Sarah Nielsen concludes her article:

To accept someone is to listen to them. In Seattle, I've felt dismissed as confrontational, or been outright ignored, when I've tried to correct strangers' assumptions about myself. I would love to feel listened to, and to know that the questions I get come from curiosity, not fear.