That decision comes after the Guelph Youth Basketball Association in Ontario agreed to stop using the term midget after the parents of a boy with dwarfism complained earlier this year.
This article was originally published on Nov. On Nov. This applies to all Hockey Canada programs. Some provincial hockey programs have already made changes to exclude the word 'midget.
Some dwarfs want sports organizations to stop using the M word For some, the word midget is just a boring sports term.
The Ontario Basketball Association has also promised to make the change next year. First Known Use of midget , in the meaning defined at sense 1. History and Etymology for midget midge. Learn More About midget. Time Traveler for midget The first known use of midget was in See more words from the same year. Statistics for midget Look-up Popularity. Style: MLA. English Language Learners Definition of midget. Kids Definition of midget Entry 1 of 2.
In recent years, however, some people have come to find the word hurtful, and you may offend someone by using it. Kids Definition of midget Entry 2 of 2.
Medical Definition of midget. Get Word of the Day daily email! Lenette always the more insightful parent realized what was happening.
Kids would come up to Brandon and ask "aren't you the kid whose parents are midgets? In his young mind he saw no choice but to defend his family's honor! I was devastated. I had spent over a decade of my life as a disability advocate and spokesperson for the dwarf community promoting "politically correct" use of terminology.
I had helped make the word midget such a powerfully negative word that it was endangering my son! And we had never actually talked about the word -- he just picked up the value from growing up with little people.
So we sat him right down and began desensitizing the word midget. We also enrolled him in Karate class so he would learn that violence was a last resort.
I had made a classic mistake. I had confused the word midget with the way it was used by people who intended to make me feel bad. Ironically, midget is the newest term for people like us. It was coined by PT Barnum in the mid 's to describe members of the dwarf community who were the most socially acceptable, i. The rest of the dwarf community, those of us whose bodies are shaped differently enough to look more than just "really short," were relegated to the back stage or freak shows.
In fact, even into the 's, it was still considered more socially acceptable to be a midget than to be any other kind of dwarf! I remember hearing parents say "if my child has to be small, then thank god she's a midget, and not a dwarf. So what happened? First, LPA happened. Originally to be called "Midgets of America," the folks who could afford to attend the early meetings were as likely to be non-midgets as midgets. So a compromise was made to call the group Midgets and Dwarfs of America notice who came first.
It didn't take long, however, for the fledgling members to notice that the non-midgets by Barnum's standards were greatly out-numbering the midgets. So a second compromise was struck to call the group "Little People of America. Second, PT Barnum was so good at showmanship that the term midget became common vernacular, and used for almost anything smaller than usual.
As a result, It became the word that most people learned and used. Which meant that when people wanted to call attention to short stature and body differentness, midget was the first word to come to mind. Those of us raised in this country from the fifties and after came to associate "midget" only as a bad and hurtful word. In the 's, perhaps as a parallel with the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement, some of the younger members of LPA began using the term "dwarf" and "dwarf power" as a symbol of self and group pride.
At first, the older little people and their average sized families and friends were horrified! To them, "dwarf" was as negative as "midget" seems to be today. However, the intent of the people using the term was empowerment. The message was strength and unity. When the Dwarf Athletic Association of America was formed in the mid 's, there was still quite a stir about the use of "that" word.
But again, the intent was empowerment and pride; the opportunity for people like us to excel in athletic competition, to be America's best at something. It was pretty hard to resist that kind of positive appeal. As a result, I can refer to us as the dwarf community today without raising too many eyebrows.
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