MNHQ .. Can we talk about disability bashing?

but the tone and context of her post were... okay, mouseface. not brilliant, but you shouldn''t be deleted for not expressng yourself perfectly first time if you later come on and say that you have been working with disabled children for years and take those types of shows kinda personally and you accept that BTBD is probably not the best target for your comment.

i know that, sickof, i've seen this series already, it's great. and i said so on the thread.

i'm not surprising that it hurt, and i am not for a second minimising it. but she DIDN'T mean it to hurt you, she did apologise and acknowledge that it was an entirely loaded term that she shouldn't have used and she was to my mind, despite that loaded phrase, actually speaking out in favour of poor families and disabled children that she feels are being exploited for the entertainment of the masses. i.e. a freak show.

that thread IS important in all this, btw. MN gave into mob rule and they deleted her, and they should not have done.

perhaps they could offer people like her a temporary edit facility, to clarify what she meant from the off? too many people were responding with fresh outrage and she got really arsey about it. (she did behave v oddly in response, i think. as i mentioned to her four or five or fifteen times)

But this is the point isn't it?

Each thread/case/word has to be treated as individual?

Freak show alone, maybe as in, 'the fancy party we were at last night was like a freak show', wouldn't get deleted but freak show along with horrid comments about SN children pretending to be normal or whatever that bloody poster said, are wrong and should be treated as such.

There are plenty or words and phrases out there that can cause harm and upset if chosen to. It's the tone and context that they are used in.

No, aitch, that wasn't aimed at you, sorry cross posted. I was looking back over this thread and I really object to people wrapping up prejudices in the freedom of speech flag. I wanted to point out that freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum.

I do actually agree about some of those shows on channel 5, but this particular show is very different and much more real.

It was the 'pretending to be normal' that hurt, can't explain it, it hurt a lot.

And i have sat at work while my colleagues have called each other 'r*s" and just thought 'silly wee girls', so not that oversensitive.

are you talking to me, sickof? i don't believe in freedom of speech. i believe in manners and kindness. but the MN massive is into freedom of speech, as has been amply demonstrated.

And I'm not sure waving a freedom of speech flag is really helpful here. In a civilised nation, even freedom of speech exists within a legal and societal context. We have laws against incitement to hatred or violence against minorities or those less able to defend themselves. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to say whatever the hell you like, regardless of its effect on others. Sometimes if you let the verbal abuse go, it leads to worse. Look back on the casual anti-semitism of the 1930s. Let's hope mumsnetters, had they been online then, would have objected to the use of the word "yid " for Jew.

but in truth she wasn't talking about that programme. she hadn't even seen it. use of 'normal' aside - do people not share her misgivings about the type of programming that Five do on their 8pm strip? i do. and bodyshock and all the rest. seems to me exploitative of poor people and their disabled children a lot of the time, and i personally find freak show an adequate description of that.

She sounds fairly crass to have posted that unthinking comment about such a sensitive subject, even if she apologised later. I would probably have called her a xxxxx C* rather than asking for her to be removed: perhaps she would learn more that way. The programme in question by the way is on at 9 and is one of the most rivetting and heartwarming docs I have ever seen on Channel 4.

It was 'really offensive' to people dealing with SN.

Yes.."pretending to be normal" is just as hurtful/offensive as saying effing r* IMO, just not as blatant

sickof, problem is though that loads of people on that thread found that post 'really offensive' and demanded it be removed.

You can't imagine what we all go through because our kids have difficulties doing 'normal' things.

But fair enough, if you feel so strongly you would leave over it, I think a lot of us will leave if we have to keep reading deeply hurtful things on here.

it is, threadie. it was about the only thing she held her hands up to getting wrong, iykwim?

Tha't a horrible thing to say ('pretending to be normal'). I only looked at the post in isolation and don't want to defend it or anything else on the thread, but I just wanted to express a reservation about the idea that MNHQ has dual standards on this.

i am so sincerely very sorry about that but you 100% wouldn't get 'pretending to be normal' deleted under normal circs, and she came back and acknowledged that wasn't the word she should have used and i believe gave one of her pissy apologies for it.

mrsdevere it was crystal clear to me from the minute she posted. i saw hers when it was the only post on there and didn't post because i thought 'oh, they'll point out to her that this programme isn't one of those ones'. by the time i came back a few mins later she was well under attack.

I didn't see the original post referred to on the other thread, but aren't we getting sidetracked here? I'm not arguing against the term "freak show" but against really offensive words - used as insults, let's clarify - such as mong, spaz and retard. We all know that the word nigger is now verboten not because of its meaning (black, in Latin) but because of its original hateful usage by racist, slave-owning wankers. Has anyone ever heard spaz, mong or retard used in any way other than abusive or derisory?

She also said they were 'pretending to be normal".

With all due respect if you don't have a child with SN you cannot understand how hurtful it was to read those terms used in relation to these children.

I am pretty tough and I cried

I tend to agree with aitch about the 'freak show' post. And I'm really not sure that MNHQ would treat 'my dh says I catch like a s' differently from 'So and so called me a pki'. I think in both cases they would start by making the point that the word was quoted not used; and then that they would delete just if the volume of complaints made that a politic thing for them to do.

Aitch at the time it was deleted it wasnt at all clear that the poster hadnt meant it as an insult.

I read that post over and over and it really did come across as some hit and run troll shouting abuse. Of course the poster came back and denied it and although I belived her she refused to accept that her post was poorly worded.

So if the context had been clear from the beginning I dont think it should have been deleted but, as it was , it caused a great deal of upset so was probably wise to do so.

i mean if 'freak show' is banned under the new regime i am out of here, i really am. and i broadly support the moves you want to make.

do you really think that the freakshow poster was saying the kids in that show were freaks, though? she palpably wasn't. john merrick was in a freakshow, he was much-disfigured and suffered terribly, but saying he was in a freakshow (a fact) does not mean that you are calling him a freak.
that poster, as utterly odd as she is, was making a statement in support of disabled children, against The Wrong Show. she was jumped all over, and she should have backed down. she didn't, so fuck 'er. but i think MNHQ should not have given in to mob rule and deleted that comment, i really don't.