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8:18am February 24, 2015

Mouth Magazine on Help and Power, and what disabled people know that do-gooders never seem to grasp.

The pictures are GIFs, but they’re from a time when GIF was just an image format like JPG or PNG, it didn’t mean they had to be animated.  These ones are not animated.  Everything beyond here is an excerpt from Who’s In Charge? from Mouth Magazine.  If you’re interested, this is just the end of a lengthier article.  And this is only one page from their website, which has some pretty amazing stuff.

Here is one picture of helping.
Here is another.
Pictures of helping deserve a second look. The photo at right, from a cancer camp, shows a helper offering her hand.
Should the boy accept this offer, on the trajectory indicated, he will lose his wheels and dangle, helpless.
He can see it coming. She cannot.
He will, all his life, be the real expert on what help he wants or doesn’t.
That is exactly not what is taught to students at helping schools.
He will learn: (a) that not all help is helpful, (b) that he must find graceful ways to decline even ill-conceived help, and © that gratitude is required in any event.