SOCI-AT-EASE
(You Don't Need Hands)
7 March ‘91
You say you'd rather
die
Than end up looking like
me
You say you think I'm brave
Because you think life's worse for me
But let me tell you
That you don't need hands
To live on your own
Or be a beautiful man
You don't need fingers
And you don't need feet
To feel a lover's passion
Or a sexual heat
Now I don't need your patronising money
I don't think your jokes are funny
I don't care if you once knew a man
Whose mother's brother didn't have hands.
I don't care for the way
Soci-At-Ease is so unfair
Now I don't care if you can't see my worth
As Iong as you're absent from my birth
I don't care if you don’t understand
Until I come to you for your daughter's hand
Disability it’s a part of life
You can’t cut it out with a surgeon’s knife
You can’t keep paying to hide it away
Vive la difference, we like it that way
You don't need your limbs to break the law
Even if it ain't worth fighting for
You don't need me
To sing you the score
There's more to a man
Than a handful of lines
That'll give away the plan
These are the words of the oppressed
Victims of stigma and prejudice
So "vive la difference"
Don’t ignore your ignorance
Oppression it’s alive and well
The black man’s still in chains
While the cripple’s ring their bells
The women work so hard
For half the pay [Should it say no pay?]
While the TV tells us all it should be this way
Oppression it’s alive and well
With bread and circuses
Our souls we sell
Oppression it’s the law of this land
Written by and for the average man
You don't need a bunch of Nazis
When you've got misinformed
Political parties.
Accessibility, we need legislation
To see our brother’s and sister’s
On the streets of this nation.
Legislation means accessibility
Which in turn means social activity.
Integration is the best education
Which in turn means a better
Social situation.
Life is not fair goes hand in hand with
I don't care
People don’t go to the circus any
more
Because they feel so sorry
When the lions roar
But the freaks and the geeks
That brought the house down
Are escaping from their cages
To roam the streets of this town.
.