Insulting those who are intellectually disabled…
I am angry. I am incredibly angry. I am a member of Toastmasters who until this morning was working toward the distinction of DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster), the highest level of education and achievement in Toastmasters. “ Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs.” (Taken from Toastmasters International Website). “ The mission of a Toastmasters club is to provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every individual member has the opportunity to develop oral communication and leadership skills, which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth.” I was working toward DTM until I read this post on the Facebook page of the Achievers Advanced Toastmasters Club. Achievers is an advanced club of Toastmasters, meaning you must have completed 10 speeches and received your Competent Communicator (CC) Award in order to be a member of this club. Now I find myself questioning whether I want to earn DTM. To earn DTM one needs to spend one year in service of the local Toastmasters District, which is part of the requirements to earn DTM. I now find myself wondering if I honestly want to donate my time and service to an organization whose member clubs promote this kind of ignorance.
The following are my quick responses to this posting by the Achievers Advanced Toastmasters Club immediately after reading this most outrageously insulting post. I took immediate offense at this post because of the prefix “+tard” was added to the word “founded”. Any time the fix “tard” is applied to a word, which is almost always as a suffix and not a prefix, it offends me. For those of you who want to feign ignorance as to why I would be offended, “tard” is a truncation of the word “retard” or “retarded” which is a term that is often applied to those who have intellectual or developmental disabilities. To get this word the poster took the word dumbfounded and cut the “dumb” from it and added “tard”. As if dumbfounded was not a strong enough word, the poster thought it funny to make an even stronger word, one that mocked those who have struggles with intelligence. And so we come to the awkward moment when a highly educated and well spoken Toastmaster who happens to have Aspergers Syndrome reads a post like this by a Toastmasters club in his local area and wonders “how can I feel accepted in a group whose members obviously find this word funny?!” What makes this post even more insulting are two small items that might have gone unnoticed. First is the sideways smiley face, implying this post is funny. The second, however, is much more sinister. The word of the week in a Toastmasters meeting is a word that is encouraged to be used as much as possible during the meeting in order to broaden one’s vocabulary. Thus the poster wants other Toastmasters to begin using this insulting word in their conversations as much as they possibly can.
We live in a world where it is no longer socially acceptable to insult someone because they are not a heterosexual Anglo-Saxon male and yet it is still socially acceptable to insult someone because they are not “neurotypical.” It is no longer socially acceptable to use the “n word” when referring to someone who is not Anglo-Saxon, and that is right and just! Why should it be acceptable to insult someone simply because of their skin color?! In the same way it is no longer acceptable to insult someone based on their sexual origin. Something so personal as sexual origin is again something that is right and just to respect. And yet it is still ok for people to insult others for being intellectually or neurologically challenged?! For not being neurotypical?! If you are wondering what it means to be “neurotypical” it means to be what most people who do not have a developmental or neurological disability call “normal”. This insulting of those who are not “neurotypical” needs to end immediately. It especially needs to end in use by an organization who has in its mission statement that it is a “mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every individual member has the opportunity to develop oral communication and leadership skills, which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth.”
If I were to ask the readers of this post how many of you know someone who has ADHD, ASD (autism spectrum disorder), Aspergers (which is now considered part of ASD), another form of Autism or Downs Syndrome, I bet almost every single person would respond to the affirmative. Perhaps someone who you love is challenged by one of these conditions?! How would you feel if someone who you loved dearly and who struggled with such a neurological challenge as the ones I just listed was insulted by others? It might offend you as much as it offends me!
If you have been reading my blog at all in the past 6 months you will know that I have been very open about discussing the fact that I have Aspergers Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and the challenges which having ASD have presented me in life. And so now I read this on the official facebook page of a Toastmasters Club in my area. I had been contemplating spending the coming year in service to Toastmasters as an area representative, and yet now after reading this, I find myself questioning whether or not I want to serve an organization whose clubs promote ignorance and belittling of those who are not “neuotypical”.
Of course,the proper response to this outrageously insulting post will be to use the current Toastmasters speech manual which I am speaking from “Speaking to Inform” to do a series of 5 speeches (the number of speeches per Toastmasters speaking manual) highlighting what it is like to be neurologically challenged and highlighting the impropriety of anyone making insulting posts like this, especially when doing so in the name of Toastmasters and using their logo on your post. Speeches highlighting the need to treat everyone who has a disability with respect. Understanding that just because you fail to openly see a person’s disability, that does not mean that they do not have one which they struggle with every single day! When I make these speeches I will make sure to get video of them and post them on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. Hopefully they will go viral and help to educate the world on the impropriety of insulting those who have neurological disabilities.
