Letter to the editor, the Village Voice, February 18, 1992:

In her review of Nancy Friday's most recent book on women's sexual fantasies ["Different Strokes," January 14], Judith Levine says of sex books she looked at as a child, "Some were even kinky, like the illustrated handbook on sex for the disabled."

Disabled people having sex is per se "kinky"? Sex "for" the disabled? (Rather than between people expressing their sexualness?) "The disabled"? (A phrase that objectifies, connotes radical differences and distance.)

Articles in the Voice specifically about disability (most recently, by Nat Hentoff and Mary Johnson) have tended to respect and understand disability. But frequently, offhand remarks appear in other articles and in reviews that demonstrate an absence of recognition that disability is political, not an oddity or an individual misfortune. This is a curious, harmful absence in people presumably on the left. I attribute it to the depth of terror disability arouses in non-disabled people, as well as the profundity of personal change needed to acknowledge that there is such a thing as ableism, and to learn about, recognize, and challenge its manifestations.

I'm not asking for censorship of such remarks, but I am asking for editing that sends a piece back to the writer pointing out ableism, and asking the writer whether he or she wants to stay with what they've written. As it is now, readers never know when they are going to be hit with a piece of flying mud.

—Eleanor Smith
Atlanta

Judith Levine Replies:
I regret very much having committed an offhand act of ableism. Ms. Smith is correct that prejudices of the body run deep, and I thank her for calling me on mine.

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World Wrestling Federation officials testified before New Jersey legislators that pro wrestling is fake and as entertainment should be exempt from state regulations governing violent sports. The rival National Wrestling Alliance insisted in its testimony that pro wrestling is a legitimate sport.

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Auditors from the Board of Education, while visiting Cook County Elementary School in Syracuse, Utah, noted what appeared to be a pattern of segregation by sex of students in the lunchroom. The children filed through the lunch line randomly, but when it came time to sit down, the girls chose to sit with other girls, the boys with other boys. Ruth Kunkel, Cook's principal, says "The little girls think: 'Sit with a boy? You've got to be kidding.' That's all it is." Subsequent experiments to try to get the children to sit together failed, so the board decided that the segregation was caused by the kids themselves, not by school employees.

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