{"id":932,"date":"2007-05-19T07:03:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-19T07:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2007\/05\/unnatural-selection\/"},"modified":"2007-05-19T07:03:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-19T07:03:00","slug":"unnatural-selection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/unnatural-selection\/","title":{"rendered":"Unnatural Selection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Got into an interesting discussion with Max yesterday, about South African amputee runner Oscar Pistorius. Pistorius is aiming to get into the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, even though the IAAF<\/a> (International Association of Athletics Federations) is seeking to ban him because of his prosthetic super legs. They are actually just well-made prosthetics, that he has learned how to master to a great effect. His time is already at the level of Olympic women runners. He is very close to the men’s records. Dose Bastards<\/span>, as my grandma would have said. The Body Impolitic <\/a>is a blog I love to read, and they present a very good discussion of this topic, the concept of what is natural and what is normal. <\/p>\n

Max’s opinion was that the IAAF needed to have standards of what sort of prostheses were kosher in the Olympics. He thought that Pistorius’ legs should be allowed, but that there was this new Japanese exoskeleton product that was so powerful that it would make someone into kind of a superman were they to adapt it to one’s legs, and so something like that should be banned. We talked about chemical enhancements as well: steroids versus SSRIs. What if, I aksed, someone took an SSRI to brighten their mood so that they could perform really at their best? Is that different from taking a steroid? What about the beauty contestant who uses surgery to enhance her natural appearance? Should that be allowed? Where do you draw the line? False eyelashes vs. false breasts? Hair extensions? Makeup?<\/p>\n

Of course I started to think about other disabilities and how they were or were not accommodated. Why is it that the law requires the construction of ramps so that physical disabled people can get into places and participate in activities, but there is no requirement to provide Nat with an aide so that he can participate in activities? I have often chafed at the sign that says, “handicap accessible,” in a movie theatre because I feel that, NO, it is NOT accessible to Natty, who needs to make noise to feel comfortable but would be scorned were he to do that in a theatre.<\/p>\n

Where do I start in fixing this unfair, mixed-up world of ours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Got into an interesting discussion with Max yesterday, about South African amputee runner Oscar Pistorius. Pistorius is aiming to get into the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, even though the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) is seeking to ban him because of his prosthetic super legs. They are actually just well-made prosthetics, that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-f2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}