Tom's Love Quest

Dear [Joel],

Yep, I must get back to my writing.  Today, I’m working on a book of letters.  The current letter is written to the women who would refuse to date me because I don’t drive.  Put succinctly, it tries to elicit pity for me in them.  Needless to say, this idea has met much controversy in the blind community, which believes that it’s never right to accept someone’s pity, much less to ask for it.  But I tell them that as handicapped people, we have much injustice to overcome which [perhaps] may only be overcome through radical measures.  Among these injustices, one is prejudice. Prejudice as you well know, can be conquered by the induction of compassion into those harboring the prejudice.  For instance, consider the bigotry against the blacks which has seen some decline in recent decades.   Racism only began to recede when its perpetrators began to see the violence and hurt such attitudes heaped upon the Negro.  After all, it’s easy to hold a belief as long as you don’t encounter any hurtful effects of it.  But really show a man the consequences of such beliefs, and only the most stubborn and hateful can remain unmoved.  Likewise, I suppose that the women who so quickly reject the handicapped really haven’t stopped to consider the pain they cause.  If they did, then I suspect that more of them would not be so hastily say no.  They might at least give us a first date.  Or at the very least, they’ll view the handicapped with a more open mind.  So my theory is that if I can punch a hole in that prejudice and get a lady to take a longer look, perhaps she’ll learn of my good features that aren’t visible in an initial encounter.  Indeed, many women say that they can’t immediately determine how loveable a prospective mate. They must take many months sometimes.  So perhaps those who think this can be made to see that their too-quick rejection of a blind man is ludicrous. 

I believe that most people truly care, and that more would actually display this if they weren’t so laden with prejudice and ignorance.  The Civil Rights act came about largely due to the incitement of collective compassion by folks like Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Abraham Lincoln to name a few.  Lawmakers during the preceding decades, heard over and over about the nasty plights of minorities; the glass ceilings, the beatings in back alleys, the relentlessly hard economic times they experienced, the double standards in the justice system, and the prevalent yet static feelings of dejection and exclusion, dooming so many of them to lives dotted by deviant behaviors and lawlessness in general.  The congressmen felt sorry for them.  So, they  legislated change, the complete acceptance of which has yet to occur that’s true.  But much progress has been made. 

However, the civil rights act does not extend to mating practices.  In this day and age, government cannot   force   people to date the handicapped, due to the curtailment of the freedoms this would imply for the healthy and thus more powerful mainstream population.  Like in the Civil War, people would not accept such a rule without spilling much blood.  Don’t worry.  I’ll not lead this revolution.

So, with neither legislative nor warring means to forcibly remove this final form of accepted discrimination, this virtual prohibition of the handicapped from the mainstream mating arena will likely not improve much anytime soon. It’s possible though, that getting people to see the sorts of hardships they force upon others through these ignorance-biased mating practices, might make them rethink their positions and demonstrate a bit more compassion.  After all, consider that people resist helping beggars when the person appears healthy. But put a homeless person into a wheelchair or find one who has no legs that must propel himself down the street using his hands as we do our feet, well then,  people react far more charitably, falling all over themselves to aid this unfortunate soul. So I suggest that if we make visible the sadness that rejection based on prejudice causes, this might help to reduce it.  When I finish the letter, you may see it if you wish.

At any rate, I must get going.  So long, and do write back soon.  [Emmy] and I both love hearing from you.

Take care.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Avoid Distracting Compassion
• Compassion, Empathy, Pity
• Compassion Questing
• Cruel Better Judgement
• Dating Blind Men
• Dating Blind Women
• Defending Pity-Gets-Love Idea
• Enthusiastically Compassionate Love
• Getting Love By Seeking Pity
• I Love You Emmy
• Love Born From Pity
• Pity-Born Love
• Seeking Pity, Getting Love
• Seeking Pity to Get Love
• Using Emmy
• Weather, Pity, Liars, Weight

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Acceptance, Concepts, Emmy, Giving Rejection, Pain of Rejection, Pity, Receiving Rejection, Rejection, Special Ladies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.