{"id":266787,"date":"2010-02-01T10:48:21","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T15:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/childrenshospitalblog.org\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2010-02-01T10:48:21","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T15:48:21","slug":"you%e2%80%99re-an-ava-%e2%80%93-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/266787","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019re an Ava \u2013 what?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

\"Avatar\"By Brian Skotko, MD, MPP<\/a>, Clinical Genetics<\/a> Fellow<\/p>\n

Some enthusiasts of the popular film by James Cameron are calling themselves \u201cAvatards<\/a>.\u201d They are not the first to coin the term. The term has existed for a number of years, self-applied by fans of an anim\u00e9 series, Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/em>. For many people with disabilities, the term bears chilling echoes of another word\u2014the \u201cR word\u201d\u2014that has come to haunt them in recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n

While health care professionals are accustomed to the clinical terminology \u201cmental retardation,\u201d music artists and movie moguls have since popularized its pejorative playground usage. Ben Stiller mockingly used the \u201cR word\u201d in the 2008 movie, Tropic Thunder<\/em>, and the Black Eyed Peas originally named one of their hit songs, \u201cLet\u2019s Get Retarded.\u201d White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has come under<\/a> fire recently<\/a> for his use of the term “f—ing retarded” during a strategy session with White House staffers.<\/p>\n

In response, thousands of individuals with disabilities have launched the \u201cSpread the Word to End the Word<\/a>\u201d campaign, spearheaded by the Special Olympics. Celebrities like John C. McGinley, the popular Dr. Cox on Scrubs, says that \u201chearing the \u2018R word\u2019 makes people with intellectual disabilities\u2014and those who love them\u2014feel like less valued members of humanity.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Even the government is taking notice. Last year, Massachusetts officially renamed its former \u201cDepartment of Mental Retardation\u201d as the \u201cDepartment of Developmental Services.\u201d A federal bill is currently working its way through Congress hoping to remove \u201cmental retardation\u201d and \u201cmentally retarded\u201d from federal laws, replacing the term with \u201cintellectual disability\u201d and \u201cindividual with an intellectual disability.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, while the enthusiasts of Avatar<\/em> have chosen a peculiar name for themselves, our patients with disabilities have not. Their voices are now united asking all of us to think carefully about the next time we are tempted to use the \u201cR word.\u201d You can join the more than 50,000 people who have pledged support here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brian Skotko, MD, MPP, Clinical Genetics Fellow Some enthusiasts of the popular film by James Cameron are calling themselves \u201cAvatards.\u201d They are not the first to coin the term. The term has existed for a number of years, self-applied by fans of an anim\u00e9 series, Avatar: The Last Airbender. For many people with disabilities, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":481,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/481"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}