Harelip

Do I have your attention?

One sec while I step up on to my soap box now.

Ahem.

The appropriate word that defines a birth condition in which facial tissues fail to fuse during gestation is "cleft", not "harelip". How many of us parents of kids with cleft issues have heard the term "harelip"?

The term "harelip" is now considered to be insensitive and offensive. In case ya didn't know.

Just like "cracker" or "gook" or "oriental" or "colored" or "wop" or "chink" or "reta**" or "ni****" .

Any of those make you bristle? "Harelip" makes me bristle. All those words are insensitive and inappropriate and offensive.

The history of the term "harelip" will help you to understand why it is so inappropriate. Check this out:

This one is about: "Harelip" - The Dark History of an Unfortunate Word
(c) 1996 Wide Smiles

In the 16th century, it was a French Doctor who, when discussing a patient with a cleft, first coined the phrase that would be translated, "Lip of the Hare". In English it was more comfortably shortened to "HareLip". It was an unfortunate pairing of similes. The good doctor was only reflecting that the lip was split, as is the lip of a Hare (and every other rodent). But unfortunately for those who were born with a cleft, the hare had also long been associated with witchcraft!

It was believed throughout the dark ages and even to relatively recent times that a witch would often take the shape of a hare. And if a hare were to frighten a pregnant woman, she would give birth to a child bearing the mark.

In the 17th century the hysteria surrounding witchcraft rose to a new and frightening level. And it was during that time that the hare had become a symbol of Satan himself. A woman bearing a child with the mark of the hare, or a harelip, at that time, was thought to have had to have had relations with Satan. And thus, the cleft-affected child born of a woman, say, in Salem Massachusetts during the mid 17th century, in the midst of witchcraft hysteria would have condemned his mother to a violent end. That baby would have constituted "irrefutable evidence" of his mother's unnatural liaison with Satan. 

Fast forward now to the 20th Century. Many people still use the term, "HareLip" when they mean to say, "Cleft Lip". Do they associate our children with Satanism and witchcraft? No, surely they don't. But it is nonetheless a term that has persevered in our language, long after a more accurate, more appropriate term has been coined.

At the very least, the term, "HareLip" likens our children to a common field rodent. It is not a soft, fluffy bunny. It is just a rodent. At the very most it harkens back to a darker past. A past that would never have happened were it not for massive hysteria on the part of a superstitious and almost militantly religious population. A past that condemned our children as the Devil's Seed, and condemned their mothers to death.


Please please please don't say "harelip" in front of my children. Don't compare them to rodents. They have to deal with enough stares and judgment and crap from meanie-mcmeanster people already. And we are always going to have to deal with racial issues too. Two of my kids are "cleft-affected" or have a "cleft lip". You can even mention their cleft palates, though most of you will never see that part of them. Thank you.

Stepping down now.

I do know most people say this term not in a malicious hurtful way, just out of ignorance.

Consider yourself educated on the topic.

Because I like you.

(((hugs))),
chris


So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. 
                      John 13:34-35