Derpy Hooves: 'NO RETARDS ALLOWED'

I'm going to say something. It's going to be ugly, and it's going to hurt. Like most truths.

You know who hates the disabled more than anyone else? Parents of disabled kids.


They hate being reminded of their sons and daughters, and what they have to go through. They're offended by portrayals of people with disorders, because they think it's a conspiracy, some dig at their and their child's struggle. Anything that can be vaguely tied back to their anguish is something they rally against.

You're not allowed to talk about them. You're not allowed to look at them. They're not allowed to join the conversation. We're not allowed to have opinions about them, and they're not allowed to have opinions at all. They're not allowed to be in our movies, our games, our books, our stories, our culture. If one of them does manage to squeak through the defenses, we will go back and scrub out any defining character flaws. All because parents with weak convictions are repulsed by the sight of a person with special needs.

They're not trying to protect kids. They're trying to protect themselves. Their mommies and daddies feel like they failed. Parents of disabled kids look at their offspring and feel like they were inferior somehow, or undeserving of a "real" kid. And they will invent any ridiculous reason to lash out against anyone who reminds them of that "burden".


If I were wrong about this, then these people wouldn't have sent Amy Keating Rogers hateful mail complaining about a freakin' pony.


A PONY

A HILARIOUS, UPBEAT, POSITIVE-MESSAGE, FEEL-GOOD, FAN-FAVOURITE, NON-EXISTENT CARTOON HORSEY

Believe me, I'm Autistic. I was in the SpEd class for the majority of my life. I know what I'm talking about. I've met these people, talked with them, gotten to know them. I'm friends with these people. I AM THESE PEOPLE! More than one has openly resented their over-protective upbringing. By PC'ing this character to "protect" people like me, and people like my former classmates, Hasbro and The Hub are insulting everyone they claim to be protecting.

It all started with a face that was never meant to be seen. The face that launched a thousand bronies. Were we laughing AT her? Yeah, at first. Were we laughing at disabled people? Umm... how could we? People are not four-legged magical marshmallow creatures. She wasn't an allegory, she was never a thinly-veiled metaphor for "ableism". She just made a stupid face.

Yeah, this whole situation seems like something small, something that shouldn't warrant any outrage from either side. But think about what this says about us. I never thought Derpy represented anything but Derpy. But if she did represent any group of people with special challenges or whatever the buzzword is this week, it would probably be people with Strabismus.

By caving into these pressures, Hasbro has decided that Derpy DOES represent a group of people. And by editing her, they're essentially telling me and a lot of people I care about that we are mistakes.

Is that the message they want to send? Is that really the place where we want to draw the line?


It doesn't even matter what you think "Derp" means. It was invented by the South Park guys for a one-shot character. Of all of the people who lovingly made fan-art and fiction of Derpy Hooves(who has also only ever had one speaking part), did anyone really think they were doing it out of a love for bashing the differently challenged? Or because we all make stupid faces sometimes? And like her, sometimes we mess up even when we're trying our best? How the heck is something that simple and endearing supposed to be offensive?

Can anyone name one disabled child who was offended by this character? Or a single way in which this character is an attack against those same kids? Is being clumsy a medical disorder now? Could someone explain to me how a story about her trying to help and be supportive of her town in spite of her disastrous ditzyness is somehow hate speech?

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Did anyone at Hasbro actually stop and ask themselves WHY Derpy Hooves became so popular? It's one thing to "think of the children!", but did anyone stop and ASK those same children how they felt about Derpy? Maybe they liked this character too! Maybe, just maybe, kids aren't as weak and uncomplicated as we want them to be?

We have so many fictional characters and heroes who are perfect. And it's not hard to see why, we look up to something better than ourselves. But perfect is boring. Sometimes, we just want to see someone we can relate to. Seeing a never-ending stream of perfectly-chiseled supermen loses its charm pretty fast. Where are the ugly heroes? Where are the overweight, dorky heroines who like Naruto and read Neil Gaiman? Where is the gangly black kid who's more into anime than sports? Where is the asian-american character who isn't the broken-sentence shouting, kung-fu-wielding math-wizard? Where are the guys who represent a life that's actually obtainable, or even surpass-able than the images Hollywood wants us to have of ourselves?

Where are the characters who don't HAVE to be heroes to be compelling?

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Where are the characters with special needs who aren't the punchline to a Seth MacFarlane skit? We all seem to agree that women and minority figures deserve more inspirational characters like them, right? So why not for disabled people? Why not for people with developmental disorders? Why is that off-limits? Is a bad portrayal of good people really worse than banning those same people from being portrayed at all?




Well, you might have had one good portrayal. And now we have one less. So, what, all of the "normal" people can have characters, but not people with disabilities? We couldn't even let this one minor background character earn a small moment in the spotlight? It might seem silly to think that a child would see Derpy Hooves and think: "Hah, I can relate to that!", because I don't know a lot of kids with wings.

BUT YOU CAN'T KNOW THAT! No one can truly know how many young viewers have had one of their heroes robbed from them, in some misguided attempt to "protect" them. Just because their parents, and the people who run a toy company have weak convictions.



Maybe this isn't a tragedy or anything, but think of the precedent this sets. We couldn't even have a background character make one small appearance in one episode of a tv show. Do you think this will make it easier for differently-abled characters to get a lead part? What does it say about a show that's supposed to be welcoming to everyone going out of its way to eliminate the one who's different? "Oh, but don't worry, we'll eliminate your disability so that you'll be like us normals now!"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the philosophy behind Eugenics?

I know the people who run this show are better than this. By making a program aimed at little girls without pandering to one type of girl, at the expense of all others, by inviting everyone to the party they've proven their worth. Jason Thiesson, the writers and animators there have made a program that wants to be inclusive and accepting of others.

This is supposed to be a show about learning new things, about learning new ways of life, and understanding and accepting people. It's supposed to be about tolerance, kindness, curiosity and forgiveness. If it was Hasbro's intention to protect its intellectual property, and the feelings of its fans, then they have failed all of us with their cowardice.



IF Derpy Hooves is totally representative of anyone with special needs(as has pretty much been decided by their desperate quick-fix "solution" to it), then we must ask this question:


How can a cartoon franchise claim to respect a group of people, if it goes out of its way to pretend they don't  or should not exist?



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~A.H.