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Interesting, I wonder what else this might lead too! Encouraging we might be getting somewhere. I used to live near a Down syndrome center where a bunch of fol
by puppycodes 1y ago
Interesting, I wonder what else this might lead too! Encouraging we might be getting somewhere.
I used to live near a Down syndrome center where a bunch of folks lived and I remember this one lady who was kitted out with Britney Spears everything, lunchbox, t-shirt, hat, and headphones. Everyday I passed by the bus stop she would be dancing her heart out to a Britney track waiting for the bus and it made my world a little brighter.
- mathgeek 1y ago> Everyday I passed by the bus stop she would be dancing her heart out to a Britney track waiting for the bus and it made my world a little brighter. As someone who absolutely loves to "be weird", I often wish the world was so much friendlier to folks like this (other than in a token manner).
- creakingstairs 1y agoIs it just me or do I feel like the society is way more accepting nowadays? I had to pretty much hide who I was during school due to fear of bullying/ not fitting in but most kids these days seem to be able to be themselves in many ways. I agree we can be friendlier though!
- OJFord 1y agoIt's just fashion I think - for the last 10-15 years the idea of being a nerd who works for Google or whatever has been relatively cool.
- hilsdev 1y agoYou’re right the world is a lot more accepting. No matter how much things improve and how positive the trajectory though, there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough
- phs318u 1y agoYes, and there will be others rolling their eyes and calling out all this "woke" acceptance. On a serious note, if the world is a lot more accepting, it's mostly because the youngest generations are a lot more accepting, and the more bigoted among us (which tend to skew older) are slowly dying off.
- r14c 1y agoGenerally that's because they're in the group (or have some sympathy for the group) that still isn't being accepted and may otherwise face obstacles that make it difficult to live a fulfilling life. tolerance is a peace treaty, but there are a ton of gaps in how we implement it because our default socially and politically is more-so based in privilege than co-existance.
- mynameisvlad 1y agoAs someone that lives as multiple minorities, both visible and not, this is very much untrue. And that applies for many definitions of "normal". A person outside the "norm", in whatever category, is accepted far less than you claim. Sometimes it may not be visible or even intended, but it's there.
- samplatt 1y agoThe whole world (not just America) has polarising hateful propaganda aggressively pushed at them for... oh about 2-3 generations now. There's a lot of people that have woken up to this and are loving and accepting, and sometimes it can feel like this is becoming the norm when you're able to surround yourself with that kind of person... but you're right. It isn't "the norm" it just normal enough for some lucky people.
- apwell23 1y ago> Is it just me or do I feel like the society is way more accepting nowadays? yes for sure. I make sure to teach that to my kids and model that behavior. Lot of my peers are doing that too. I like the 'differently abled' terminology and mindset so much better. When i was growing up the prevailing mindset among parents was that their kids will trampled on if they teach them to show kindness. Now we want our kids to be kind.
- supplied_demand 1y ago== When i was growing up the prevailing mindset among parents was that their kids will trampled on if they teach them to show kindness. Now we want our kids to be kind.== I’m 41 and have noticed the exact opposite movement in my lifetime. Today, we celebrate the meanest people in society (we even elect them President). Kindness is considered a flaw and means you aren’t taking advantage of every opportunity to move yourself forward. If I compare the rhetoric of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, it doesn’t tell me that we are more kind as a society.
- stickfigure 1y agoI do think people - and especially kids - are generally nicer and more accepting than they were back in the 80s when I grew up. I wonder if this is related to the fairly dramatic drop in violent crime statistics we've been seeing over the last several decades?
- vanviegen 1y agoThere may be a connectedion to reductions in lead-poisoning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...
- pbhjpbhj 1y agoLead-free petrol helped.
- rbanffy 1y agoIt’s fun to imagine that an alternative reality where lead was never added to petrol. We’d be colonising neighbouring solar systems by now and living in a post-scarcity society.
- esseph 1y agoThat really depends on where you are in the world right at this minute.
- fennecbutt 1y agoProbably in general, but not as much as you'd think. For example as a gay dude, people still hate gay guys (lesbians are far more accepted). But they're just much more quiet about it now, and even if they don't hate us we still "gross" many people out, which affects their decisions due to perception of us.
- exe34 1y agoUnfortunately I think lesbians are only "far more accepted" in the sense that they turn on straight cunts rather than repulse them. The objectification and othering is the same.
- wvh 1y agoMaybe, but we can't blame people for what they are/are not attracted to on either side of the fence, just their rational responses to "the other". And I'm not sure lesbians are "far more accepted", perhaps as long as they fit a traditional heterosexual idea of beauty and femininity and associated behaviour.
- exe34 1y ago> but we can't blame people for what they are/are not attracted to That's an odd thing to bring up randomly.
- topato 1y agoI think it's because you said "cunts" lol
- exe34 1y agoAh the "straight" was the adjective to qualify the noun, not the other way round! I.e. the same cunts who will get disgusted by two men kissing and try to harm them, will get turned on by seeing two women kissing and therefore it appears that the latter are more accepted. It's not kindness or open-mindedness, it's pure sleaze.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoI want to say yes, but there's a lot of regression happening right now, with right-wing rhetoric, manosphere influencers, and various regimes pushing the other way - the Trump admin firing people, removing symbols and renaming things that they consider "DEI" for example, or teenagers thinking women are property thanks to people like convicted sex trafficker Tate. The latest is that the Trump admin wants to institutionalize the homeless and "people with mental disabilities".
- jemmyw 1y agoI notice that some of the teens my kids are friends with are pretty weird in ways that would have invited extreme bullying when I was their age and they don't seem to have the same troubles. However, I still hear about some bullying cases. Maybe that's changing for the better too though, when I was their age we seemed to actively hide that we were bullied from adults and now adults are often (ineffectively) involved.
- SamPatt 1y agoI have two teenagers, and bullying is still extremely common in school. Perhaps the range of acceptable weirdness has broadened, I'm not sure, but it's discouraging to hear their stories of just how mean kids can be.
- maxtaqo 1y agoOne thing I know for sure is that the person I pass on my way to work always greets me cheerfully, even though I am a stranger to them.
- squigz 1y agoThis person has the support they need (institutional and otherwise) to be healthy and happy and they have something they can connect to and express themselves with. How is that a token manner?
- jaapbadlands 1y agoThat's not what they said.
- eleveriven 1y agoThere's something genuinely beautiful about people who live with that kind of unfiltered joy
- Henchman21 1y agoAnd frequently we decide they’re damaged. Seems like its really the rest of us who are damaged.
- yadaeno 1y agoThere’s another side to this. They place a large burden on the people taking care of them. Many parents also report that they regret conceiving children with Down syndrome.
- david38 1y agoSo why are we taking care of them? They can go get their own jobs, housing, manage food, health, etc. Being happy doesn’t mean you ok. They require extensive care throughout their lives
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- foolfoolz 1y agowe are going to become very good at this. eliminating genetic errors, choosing to be straight, tall, etc
- phs318u 1y ago...blonde, blue-eyed, round-eyed, strong-jawed, big-dicked, big boobed, you name it, you can have it!
- irrational 1y agoFive out of six ain’t bad. Though, if my man boobs get a bit bigger…
- ben_w 1y ago> big-dicked, big boobed And Facebook is already, with no ironic self-awareness, showing me ads for both.
- conradfr 1y agoThe irony will be that once everybody is that, it won't be attractive.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- WA 1y agoHomosexuality is not genetic.
- ghurtado 1y agoSee, it's stories like this one that make me really question just how ethical it is to completely eliminate Down's from the gene pool. I understand it's the correct medical and scientific thing to do, it's just that it sometimes feels a little bit like eugenics for me.
- shadowgovt 1y agoFWIW, since Down's is caused by (we're pretty sure) mitotic error, it can't be completely eliminated from the gene pool. 99% of cases did not occur on hereditary lines. With or without the existence of the treatment, Down's cases would continue to surface. So it's in the category of "treatments parents could choose to apply to their offspring," and generally parents get pretty broad leeway there in choice of the kind of offspring they're aiming for (starting with dating the guy with pretty eyes or the girl with the cute hair thing). ... Whether society is mature enough to recognize that in the presence of that treatment, Down's people will still be born and they have every bit the same dignity-of-human-life as the rest of us is a very important question.
- vtbassmatt 1y agoAs the parent of a child with Down syndrome, I really appreciate the way you and the parent comment approached this topic. Thank you. Tiny nit, in the US it’s “Down syndrome”, not “Down’s”. Apparently we name conditions with a possessive if named for someone with it (“Lou Gehrig’s”) and without the possessive if named for, say, the person who first described the condition in a medical journal.
- suslik 1y agoI don’t think this is true. Two counterexamples: Huntington didn’t have Huntington’s; Wilson didn’t have Wilson’s.
- vtbassmatt 1y agoI had to look both of those up, and you’re right. The rule is inconsistently applied for sure. This got me curious about where the so-called rule came from. Wikipedia says: > Auto-eponyms may use either the possessive or non-possessive form, with the preference to use the non-possessive form for a disease named for a physician or health care professional who first described it and the possessive form in cases of a disease named for a patient (commonly, but not always, the first patient) in whom the particular disease was identified. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_diseases#Autoeponym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_diseases#Aut... This is sourced by a link to the American Association of Medical Transcriptionists, which is not a body I’d heard of but I guess have some skin in the game when it comes to the intersection of medicine and grammar. https://www.mtstars.com/word-For-eponyms-AAMT-advocates-dropping-the-possessive-form--7011.html https://www.mtstars.com/word-For-eponyms-AAMT-advocates-drop...
- Daub 1y agoI run the risk of being downvoted on this issue, but there is a personality type associated with downs syndrome. My experience of living in a community of down syndrome young people certainly supported this, but there has also been quite a bit of research on the matter... search Google Scholar and you will see a ton. In brief: very social, positive minded and very creative. Importantly, this seemed not to be effected by puberty, unlike the autistic kids I have known. The year I spent in there company was a gift. Edit: user smeej has cited a few papers on this matter.
- cornholio 1y ago[flagged]
- go_elmo 1y agoYoure right, its a though question. Then again free will and the concept of "self" is an illusion. Lets see where the world will go in this regard, only time will tell
- potato3732842 1y ago>Then again free will and the concept of "self" is an illusion. You don't need to follow this line of thinking very far to justify a hell of a lot of evil.
- tptacek 1y agoWhat a hostile and uncharitable thing to say.
- SarahC_ 1y agoWith this new gene information, we may be able to make every Down's. The world would be a much nicer and happier place.
- lukan 1y agoUntil food runs out.
- eleveriven 1y agoThat kind of joy, personality, and presence is somethin5g you can't quantify in a lab. Whatever this research leads to, I hope it's always guided by compassion
- damion6 1y ago[dead]