In the article about the conjoined twins Jodie and Mary 'Hate that dare notspeak its name' (Guardian Comment: Friday September 15, 2000) Kevin Toolis writes: "... the key premise around which this debate has largely centred has never been openly aired in public or on the airwaves by the "able-bodied". That premise is simply this: that we as a society know the lives of disabled people are so self-evidently worthless that most would be better off dead. It is such a shocking, hateful thing that we know it cannot be spoken, only thought. But even the contours of the debate, our very language, betrays our prejudices". Yet in the previous week the Guardian printed an article ('Two into One', Guardian Comment, September 8) in which the writer Polly Toynbee refers to Jodie and Mary as 'Fascinatingly horrible freaks of nature'. If the Guardian feels so strongly against prejudices towards us disabled people (and I'm not sure whether you do feel that way), perhaps it could start showing this by no longer printing such offensive articles which only reinforce these prejudices. Victoria Lucas Worthing ENGLAND |