Buffy and ableism
I like the works of Joss Whedon, honest to God I do. But there’s just this one tiny little line of dialogue from Buffy that really did me in:
“But you doubt her motives, you think Buffy’s all about the kill, then you take the little bus to battle.”
Sounds a bit like “ride the short bus”, which is – and I don’t know how I know this despite being British, since it seems to be an American thing, but I do- basically shorthand for “you’re mentally challenged.” Because if you went to a specially equipped school, you rode a smaller bus. So: you doubt Buffy’s motives- you ride the little bus- you have special educational needs- you’re wrong, kid, wrong. It’s not a million miles from that cruel word retard. You disagree with Buffy: you’re retarded.
Or that’s what I’m getting from it, and it infuriates me. Because I saw all this, my brother being kinda a SEN kid, and the other kids being cruel, and having complete strangers come up to me in the playground giggling about how our parents must have been brother and sister to produce a kid whose brain worked differently*, and having things thrown at us from moving buses, and not being invited to birthday parties and just all of it. And if even that attitude is reinforced even a little bit by Buffy and Whedon, that’s just plain wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
I’m trying to get a job working with SEN (special educational needs) kids. I want them to have a better time than my brother and kids like him did.
*Also a great deal better than most people’s
September 15, 2011 @ 3:45 am
The short bus is a way to separate special needs kids from the general population, who (being asshole kids) would likely give them a hard time. Or they require more than just the hauling from point a to point b that a regular bus driver can give while also dealing with 40+ rowdy kids. The number of special needs kids in a given school isn’t usually enough to warrant a large bus (50 seats), hence the short bus. I was a short-bus kid for a similar reason- there were so few of us way out in the country that it was pointless to waste gas on a huge bus when the whole 8 or 9 of us could fit in a smaller one. Anyway, what I take away from that line is a little less cruel than what you’re taking- namely, that if you walk into it with a narrow point of view, you’re going in with a deficiency.