https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/3bc96a1eb8e896d0e876b80ca9b7eabe.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=UQsMljAnPYw4r1PbxuCk%7EK8muT1BZZ8uBjfZ6cWhKXHP9fSuG2vyMx1peZ2Px7YgVc5VmSI1XcVixfRf0vE5Jv8IWvm7RQkpvKmIIumWh3LvKZRy2JaDfcPlGXroygqSNiEsaGvO7FgG1W4-oh77Ys5rP4S93HRBbKRX9dz5PJ-gZn-7yiThuvxp04RakK3dIjavUVfAiQh1Xa8cMFSJeoTSSGky8yf3-MWBGS7Od7XWah6PNG3H25bT2e08ylXNiRDbrzm9Krl%7EcDa6Kr9ahUWObJpTjdHx1hK9txL%7E-zcEybrfFpWXyz9MHr41OJ1X0dDkPEN628OSEmWzir1F5A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2aec5dad0cb286ce5e0563d435f1bf2a PDF Text Text 12 Commentary The McGill Daily, Monday, October 20, 2008 Trib Blindness article uninformed Film critique a perfect example why the National Federation of the Blind continues to fight derogatory accounts of blind people in the media WMST 401 students and professor HYDE PARK L aura Tindal’s article “For you eyes only” (The McGill Tribune, Oct. 7) represented a valuable point of departure for those of us who are engaged in critical disability studies, and are interested in looking at the continued prevalence of disabledphobic attitudes in our society. To start off, we want to thank Tindal for providing such an excellent jumping-off point for relevant class discussion! This is not meant to be a critique of the film (Blindness) so much as one of the film’s critics and the article Tindal wrote, which is openly condescending toward the National Federation of the Blind’s (NFB) criticism of the film. We also are in no way trying to smother dissent, but rather, we’re attempting to point out the patronizing and derogatory nature of Tindal’s article, and the fact that it expressed open hostility toward and an obvious misunderstanding of disability issues. Tindal seems to be making the assumption that blind people would not be able to read her article, and therefore felt free to write in such a condescending tone. Even the title of the article itself, “For Your Eyes Only,” implied that this piece was literally written only for a sighted audience. Tindal also seems to assume that she had the privilege to see this film, while blind people would not have, and therefore, felt that she was more qualified to critique the movie than blind people themselves. As is the case with many marginalized Letter SSMU should grant pro-life group official club status Re: “Pro-life group seeks SSMU club status” | News | Oct. 6 I’m just writing to encourage Samantha Cook in her seeming inclination to support granting club status to Choose Life. Without knowing anything about Natalie Fohl or her organization beyond what is represented in the article, I think it is important, in evaluating Choose Life’s suitability, that SSMU not succumb to political pressure from the stridently groups, the idea that a member of a majority group has the right to define the views or identities of those in that marginal group is inherently disempowering and offensive. Supposedly, the point of the article was to critique the NFB’s critique on the film, yet Tindal does not directly refute or address any of the NFB’s points about the film. It would probably have been a much more interesting and enriching piece had she attempted to do so. We also question what Tindal thinks the NFB’s mandate is. She purports that “like a spoiled little kid throwing a tantrum when he isn’t getting enough attention, the NFB heard the word ‘blind’ and decided ‘Hey, we haven’t been getting enough press recently, let’s make a big fuss about this film and see what comes of it.’” In other words, that NFB hadn’t been getting enough attention, and so they just made a mountain out of a molehill for no reason. If Tindal believed the film was not, in fact, an assault on blind people, there is nothing wrong with expressing this. What was wrong was her blatant disrespect for the lives of people with disabilities and for refusing to even consider as valid the NFB’s claim that these images even might have presented the lives and identities of blind people in a derogatory manner. This is clear when she writes that the NFB “claims that blind people are as capable and smart as everyone else, yet they contradict themselves by creating such a controversy over something so irrational.” The implication that blind people must prove that they are as smart or capable as “normal” people is – ironically – one of the key reasons why the NFB exists and continues to fight back against derogatory images of blind people in the media! Her attempt to try and silence one of the few voices of advocacy that exist for blind people in our society is reason enough for the NFB to exist and continue to publish statements like the one it did about Blindness. The fact that this article was published in The Tribune sheds light on the importance of promoting a more informed community regarding the rights of persons with disabilities. Part of the NFB’s goals is trying to empower blind people, a good number of whom very rarely get a platform to voice their concerns. In fact, a blind person tried to post a response to this article on The Tribune’s web site, and was unable to, due to the CAPTCHA feature – which requires the user to decode a distorted or warped word set of letters – in order to post comments. This illustrates an obvious dichotomy in accessibility in terms of who gets to voice their opinions on these issues – how ironic that a sighted person could write an entire article on blind issues, while a blind person was not allowed to post even one comment on that article! People such as Tindal, who have the privilege of writing for a school newspaper – especially one run by the Student’s Society of one of the largest universities in Canada – should think about adopting a more critical approach when it comes to looking at disability issues in our society. pro-choice corner. I won’t address the notion that “we don’t like what this club stands for” is a good reason to deny Choose Life club status, because Cook is clearly aware that it isn’t. More likely to hurt Fohl’s chances is the castiron certainty that every activist group within hailing distance will noisily decry her club as hateful and regressive. The narrative will be some variant on Gilary Massa’s contention that a pro-life group is, prima facie, “sexist, or discriminatory,” because that’s really the only assumption that would make it possible to withhold club status and keep a straight face. What I urge SSMU council to keep in mind is that such contentions are essentially rhetorical and partial. No reasonable definition of “discriminatory” comes anywhere near describing the mere possession or propagation of pro-life views, and here the word simply encodes a closed-minded antipathy. Look, the pro-life position is hardly a maniac fringe (in fact, two thirds of Canadians support some level of restriction on abortion), and it’s disingenuous to behave as if the ethical questions surrounding abortion had been conclusively settled – which is precisely what SSMU council would have to suppose, if it were to bat away Choose Life on moral grounds. I hope the council is decent enough to avoid making an unfair decision for political reasons. Women’s Studies 401 studies is a Gender & Disability class. Stuart Wright U3 English The Daily received more letters than it could print. They will appear in the next possible issue. Send your letters to letters@ mcgilldaily.com. The Daily does not print letters that are sexist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise hateful. Ben Peck / The McGill Daily Why Harper didn’t win Clarke Olsen HYDE PARK A ll the parties are saying that they somehow “won” last Tuesday’s election. The Greens got more votes, the NDP has more seats, the Liberals are proud to be the Official Opposition, and the Conservatives have a new mandate. While all of that may be true, I think it’s fair to say that only one party lost. The Conservatives set out to earn a majority government just over a month ago, and they didn’t get it. As always, Canadian politics are simple and easy to understand: the winners lost. Get it? So as I sat down to watch the Prime Minister’s victory speech for a campaign he didn’t really win, I wasn’t expecting much. I certainly wasn’t expecting to have my conservative nature stoked into a frustrated disgust. But Harper managed to do so with only his first two words – the same tired greeting John McCain has been repeating to increasingly ravenous crowds across the U.S.: “My friends…” The first time he said the words, I cringed, the second offering exasperated me, and by the third, I had been driven to write this little rant. The media has been discussing all kinds of reasons why the Conservatives lost the election, but, my friends, let me tell you the real reason is much more simple. No, those elitists in their governmentsponsored ivory towers of opinion will over-think the point on this one. Sure the Conservatives thoughtlessly cut spending to sensitive Quebec arts programs! Sure they ran a gaffeprone, visionless campaign! But the real reasons are simpler than that; the Conservatives don’t have a majority government today because a few powerful people in the Conservative party wish that they were working for the Republican Party. And, my friends, most Canadians don’t much like Republicanism. Seriously Harper, I’m rooting for you here. My friends? My goddamn friends! You’re not my friend, you’re my Prime Minister. I find that kind of talk condescending, and I haven’t even been an adult that long. How must it make the rest of the electorate feel? I cannot believe that Harper’s entourage is blind to just how fake, awkward, and down-right creepy it sounds when McCain refers to his audience in such a friendly way. When Harper says it, it just sounds plagiarized. Perhaps I should be thankful it only sounds plagiaristic. What are you going to do next Harper, start saying God Bless Canada at the end of every speech? Oh…wait. I proudly cast a ballot for the Tory candidate in my Montreal riding. In fact, I’m a card-carrying Conservative. And yet the party itself never ceases to amaze me with its blunders. I believe that most of them are the result of its attachment to a weird strand of conservatism that has swept our ideological neighbours south of the border since the Reagan: neo-conservatism. Bright, rightward-leaning politicos have been in awe of the electoral successes of their American counterparts for years, and wondered why they haven’t been able to achieve similar results. With Harper they thought they finally had their chance, and they went for it with guns a’ blazing and life sentences for 14-year-old children. Conservatives lost the campaign because they lost Quebec. And they lost Quebec because they failed to adequately fumigate their party of its neo-conservative, evangelical, Reform past. There is a new – or should I say old? – conservatism brewing out there. It rejects the ideologically driven strictures of George W.’s neocon faith, and is beginning to find a voice in authors like Andrew Sullivan and W. Wesley McDonald. It is in the interest of the Conservative Party of Canada to pursue some of these new, more open forms of conservatism. It caught the last philosophical wave much after it had crested. For my party’s sake, I hope it doesn’t entirely miss the next one. Clarke Olsen is a U3 Political Science and Economics student, and the Events Director of Conservative McGill. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Coverage from The McGill Daily Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Volume 98 Issue 14 Page Number(s) 12 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource SSMU should grant pro-life group official status Description An account of the resource A writer urges SSMU to grant Choose Life club status, whether or not the organization agrees with its political stance. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Wright Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The McGill Daily Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008/10/20 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English reproductive health reproductive justice