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"Sehnsucht" is still one of the catchiest, infectiously groovetastic Rammstein tunes, and I'd dance to it if I wouldn't wind up facedown on the floor, ass twitching feebly to the beat.
Speaking of all things German, while Googling "disability in Germany", I stumbled across the word "Spastiker." According to my German dictionary, "Behinderter" is the word for a disabled person. So I'm curious. Is "Spastiker" the official word for Cerebral Palsy, or is it a formerly mean-spirited slang term that has wormed its way into the common discourse by purportedly shedding its uglier connotations? I'm hardly sensitive and have used such pejorative terms as "cripple" as self-descriptors because I don't find them so much pejorative as unkindly bald in their honesty. I am, whether I like it or not, "crippled" according to Mr. Webster's definition, and no liberal, hippie, well-intended language-masking will change that. Calling me "disabled" or God forbid, "differently-abled" will not cure me, nor will it make the societal stigma of my disability easier to bear. It will just make judgmental, ableist assholes feel enlightened and progressive as they blithely dismiss me from social discourse.
So, I don't object to words like "crippled" or "retarded", nor do I flinch from their use. I do, however, have issues with the attitude held by a lot of folks who use the latter as a mocking epithet hurled at the monumentally idiotic; I've used it at times to refer to the heroically stupid or legendarily oblivious, but on the main, I've tried to eliminate it from my vocabulary in favor of such equally apt and succinct phrasing as "screaming fucktard". It has the same zip as "finger-chewing retard", and hey, if you combine "finger-chewing" with "fucktard", you've got alliteration. That's insult hurling with class and education.
But back to my point proper. "Spastiker" sounds so brutishly dismissive, and the pages I've seen did little to dispel that impression. It sounds very much like a politer, more gussied up version of "retard", and while I know Germany is woefully lagging behind the rest of the Western world in disability awareness(only 12% of handicapped students are mainstreamed in regular schools; by contrast, 79% are mainstreamed in the U.S.)and has a sordid history of euthanasia, genocide, and reproductive eugenics designed to purge itself of "useless eaters", I find it hard to believe that such a progressive nation would blithely sanction the gross stigmatization of a segment of its citizenry with the officially recognized label of "Spastiker." "Behinderter" is clinical, I suppose, but it's better than the bilious sting of "Spastiker", which screams out ignorance and unapologetic disregard for the humanity of those it affects.
So, Deutschespracherinnen on the flist, is "Spastiker" the official nomenclature of Cerebral Palsy auf Deutsch?
Speaking of all things German, while Googling "disability in Germany", I stumbled across the word "Spastiker." According to my German dictionary, "Behinderter" is the word for a disabled person. So I'm curious. Is "Spastiker" the official word for Cerebral Palsy, or is it a formerly mean-spirited slang term that has wormed its way into the common discourse by purportedly shedding its uglier connotations? I'm hardly sensitive and have used such pejorative terms as "cripple" as self-descriptors because I don't find them so much pejorative as unkindly bald in their honesty. I am, whether I like it or not, "crippled" according to Mr. Webster's definition, and no liberal, hippie, well-intended language-masking will change that. Calling me "disabled" or God forbid, "differently-abled" will not cure me, nor will it make the societal stigma of my disability easier to bear. It will just make judgmental, ableist assholes feel enlightened and progressive as they blithely dismiss me from social discourse.
So, I don't object to words like "crippled" or "retarded", nor do I flinch from their use. I do, however, have issues with the attitude held by a lot of folks who use the latter as a mocking epithet hurled at the monumentally idiotic; I've used it at times to refer to the heroically stupid or legendarily oblivious, but on the main, I've tried to eliminate it from my vocabulary in favor of such equally apt and succinct phrasing as "screaming fucktard". It has the same zip as "finger-chewing retard", and hey, if you combine "finger-chewing" with "fucktard", you've got alliteration. That's insult hurling with class and education.
But back to my point proper. "Spastiker" sounds so brutishly dismissive, and the pages I've seen did little to dispel that impression. It sounds very much like a politer, more gussied up version of "retard", and while I know Germany is woefully lagging behind the rest of the Western world in disability awareness(only 12% of handicapped students are mainstreamed in regular schools; by contrast, 79% are mainstreamed in the U.S.)and has a sordid history of euthanasia, genocide, and reproductive eugenics designed to purge itself of "useless eaters", I find it hard to believe that such a progressive nation would blithely sanction the gross stigmatization of a segment of its citizenry with the officially recognized label of "Spastiker." "Behinderter" is clinical, I suppose, but it's better than the bilious sting of "Spastiker", which screams out ignorance and unapologetic disregard for the humanity of those it affects.
So, Deutschespracherinnen on the flist, is "Spastiker" the official nomenclature of Cerebral Palsy auf Deutsch?
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