I have acquired a new heroine. Cerrie Burnell is an actress and TV presenter who has recently been given a top job on the BBC’s children’s channel, CBeebies. Parents are outraged. Does no one think of the children? Surely vulnerable little minds must be protected from such a monster? This is political correctness gone mad!!!
So what exactly is wrong with Ms. Burnell? Is she a terrorist? A drug addict? A lesbian? A transsexual? As far as I know, she is none of these – particularly not the last two as she has a young daughter. No, Ms. Burnell was simply unlucky enough to have been born without a hand on one of her arms. She has been talented enough and determined enough and brave enough to make a successful career for herself nonetheless, but, as The Guardian reports, her refusal to hide her disability has resulted in a stream on unpleasant comments on BBC message boards from angry parents who believe that disabled people should be hidden away so as not to upset them or their children.
As Ms. Burnell points out, children are rarely upset by her disability. It is the parents who are the problem.
As I am sure I have said before, there is very little point in having laws against discrimination if people continue to despise those you are trying to protect. Diversity only works properly if people actually accept difference, not if they are just told to do so. And if the objects of their hatred are forced to hide away from view, how will they ever get used to them?
Mitch Benn did a post about this, too http://www.mitchbenn.com/blog/724/mostly_armless.html.
It’s really interesting to read some of the posts on the message boards at CBeebies (I had a look after first seeing this story) – lots of parents of small children commenting that whenthey (the children) talk about other kids at nursery they tend not to pick out things such as colour or disability as ways of identifying who they are talking about.
Very glad to see that the BBC shows no sign of caving in to these complaints.
Well, admittedly artificial insemination is more likely to result in a son, but I never heard that being a lesbian prevented one from having a daughter. And I wasn’t aware that (particularly pre-op) transsexuals were necessarily condemned to childlessness either.
🙂
But a good post!
Farah:
Dear me, of course not. Lesbians and transsexuals can have families too, as the good folks at COLAGE make clear (thank you for giving me an opportunity to plug them). I know of transsexuals who are very proud parents and love their kids dearly, even if in many cases the law prevents them from having any contact with those children. However, if Ms. Burnell had been a lesbian or transsexual with a child, I’m sure that at least one tabloid newspaper would have managed to kick up a fuss over that fact. Given that no one has, I think I’m pretty safe in my assumption.
Marjorie:
Thanks for the link. Interesting to see that back on Thursday the number of complaints was very low. I wonder why the broadsheet newspapers picked up the story today? I guess either someone has been stirring, or that the newspapers decided that this was something worth “bigging up” (and the modern vernacular would have it).
Looks like there has been a lot of positive feedback on the cbeebies chat board now by parents horrified by the idea that there is anything wrong with having Cerrie as a presenter except of course that they miss the old ones and think the new ones a bit wooden but probably likely to loosen up over time.
Good to see
Heh, was just skimming through the blog in response to Scalzi’s link and, on seeing this post, thought I’d post a link to Mitch Benn’s little essay on the subject, which I quite enjoyed, figuring that Benn isn’t all that huge a presence (especially as a blogger) and, with five comments, it probably hadn’t been linked to yet. And then I see it’s comment number one. Small internet, I guess.
It’s astonishing that people would be upset by this. Are they aware that Edward Lord Halifax – the 1930s-40s Foreign Secretary, Ambassador to the U.S., and Chancellor of Oxford University – was also born without a hand on one of his arms? He didn’t publicize the fact, but it wasn’t a hidden secret either. Nobody claimed that he was unfit to be seen.