who.com.au
06.10.2022 / 09:35
Disability advocate Hannah Diviney slams ”ableist” Kyle Sandilands
WATCH: Kyle Sandilands reveals crass text to Karl StefanovicSpeaking during a panel at The Australian Women’s Weekly’s Women of the Future Awards on Wednesday, Hannah recounted his shocking comments to the crowd.“Kyle Sandilands took it upon himself, a couple of days ago, to express his displeasure with the Kyle and Jackie O Show’s performance in the breakfast radio ratings by calling his team a ‘bunch of spazzes’,” she said.“He also decided to refer to Ben Fordham’s audience as ‘a bunch of fake fibreglass half-dead looking people who are flops in wheelchairs’.”She explained that “spaz” (which is widely regarded as a slur but used here to articulate Hannah’s comments) is “often used as a cultural shorthand having a lack of control, not being good at what they do”.Disability advocate Hannah Diviney with Dylan Alcott.However, the phrase is derived from the word spastic, a legitimate form of medical terminology that applies to her and many disabled individuals."My disability Cerebral Palsy is literally classified as Spastic Diplegia (where spasticity refers to unending painful tightness in my legs),” she has tweeted in the past.On Wednesday she added that the word “doesn’t reflect on my intelligence or anything like that”, but should no longer be used to attack or disparage people.She also announced an opinion piece about Kyle’s comments for The Daily Telegraph, where she called out Kyle's "eight minute rant ...