magicaddict | "Oh, We Don't Talk To Him...

...he's got a dodgy face".

In BBCi News Magazine today, there is a feature on people with facial birthmarks and other highly distinguishing facial features. It tells the story of a woman born with a port wine stain across her nose, and how she has come to terms with it and set up a website called Love Your Mark, an online community for those who don't want to hide themselves any more.

Two things royally piss me off about this article:
1) There is still sufficient prejudice in this day and age to cripple these people's esteem.
2) They feel they need to bind together to do something about it.

Maybe it's due to the way I grew up, but very quickly I learned how to see beneath someone's skin. When you were never sure who would be doing you over in what way today, reading people's intentions through their actions and demeanor became part of the process, so how someone looked played very little, if any, part in how I saw them.
As such, someone's name became my best way of describing them - the tall guy, the short girl, the pie, him with the spots and strangely yellow weren't particularly descriptive. I was one of the few to use 'Lanky' John Hayden's actual name, and the complexion of Phil Davidson was never particularly an issue, in contrast to the way that my name, weight and complexion was abused along with everything else.
As my concept of nominal description has evolved, I have come to value the principle of the name very strongly indeed (God only knows), and to always take care to refer to someone as they refer to themselves. Others, without this grounding, may not see the reasons that referring to someone as something that isn't their name may well lead to offense.

It is the gross minority of these people who, in their youth and possibly later in life, will fail to see why pizza face, weirdo and shortarse are not, in any sense of the word, reasonable forms of naming someone - they are also the ones who this woman feels compelled to publicly stand against and the ones who will drive me to (perfectly justified) violence if I ever come into contact with them again.

A further point about them is the fact they they are considered worth counteracting by something more overt than quietly beating them senseless in a back alleyway. This is a mistake made by those who flaunt their differences to those who oppress them.
To glamourise the way you are, as Love Your Mark does, is to acknowledge those who bully and belittle you for what you are as people who need to be fought against.

They do not.

The British public as a whole is ostensibly reasonable, and have no problem with a black man, a fat man or a woman with a birth mark on her face. If this majority would use someone's name rather than a descriptive of their size, weight, skin tone or unique feature that the minority that vilify it and are not worth the publicity this glorying in 'imperfection' creates, there would be no need for such 'awareness' raising and the minority would be reduced to what they should be: Utter obscurity.

Don't turn the tables, don't fight fire with fire, and don't go around saying how you're proud of the way you look. If you wish to be the normal people you physically are, do as the rest of us do and stop claiming to be different. She's not a woman with a birthmark, nor is she someone with nothing to hide. She's Beverley. See? It's easy.

The sooner people realise that, the sooner the oppressive idiots will realise they aren't having any effect.