After Ann Coulter referred to President Obama as a “retard” in a tweet during Monday night’s presidential debate, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens penned her this open letter:
Dear Ann Coulter, Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult? I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night. I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have. Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next. Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift. Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more. After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV. I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.
We get asked all the time– what should I wear to the beach or the pool? We get this question from pre-op transguys, non-binary folks, androgynous individuals, tomboys, people who just don’t like their chests or just don’t like the options they have for concealing it, etc.
So, for a while now we’ve been throwing around the idea for a ftm/masculine swim top. Years of personal experience with heightened dysphoria during the summer and seeing others struggle to find an appropriate top to wear while swimming (or even in every day activities) and not seeing any adequate options have spurred us to create a solution.
Our solution is the Bareskin Top. We’ve combined the silhouette of a traditional half binder and compression sports bra to create a comfortable top that binds but still lets you get a tan and feel closer to being shirtless than anything else out there. We plan to offer this top in a range of skin tones so that the wearer can have a passably topless masculine aesthetic, this is less visually triggering than wearing a bikini top, sports bra, binder, or shirt and allows for more confidence and comfort.
Not only is this innovative because you can wear the top to swim in and feel shirtless, but it also comes in multiple skin tones making it less noticeable for everyday wear–allowing you to feel more confident from the gym to the bedroom. No other binder on the market provides you this option of something as simple and subtle as matching your skin tone.
We’ve created a prototype ourselves and had multiple created since, we are currently seeking manufacturers to mass produce the top (our release goal is Spring Break 2016) and are planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign in the coming months to fund this project. We appreciate your support and want to get the community behind this because everybody deserves to feel confident in their Bareskin.
