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Again, I am not sure what it is that is depicted there that is disgust-inducing. Disgust is an awfully strong emotion, after all. And, the OP used the term "ugly" -- I took that as an aesthetic comment, rather than as a synonym for disgust, but perhaps that is indeed what they meant. I can certainly understand if someone found certain elements of the scene objectionable, such as the Antifa reference. Or even the LGBT-adjacent couple. But the overall scene of people going about their day -- walking the dog, flying a kite, going to work, hanging out with friends, etc, is a pretty regular street scene.
Again, I took the OP to be saying something other than "I disagree with the Greens' political vision," but perhaps that is indeed all they were saying.
If you want to look at the picture purely as an abstract piece of visual art, divorced from its context and implications, then fine, it can get away as being merely not pretty. But visualizing the scene and its constituent elements with some degree of fidelity should present an image that requires some ideological or at least aesthetic buy-in for the viewer not to be repulsed. See some of its elements:
Cripples
Fat people
Squatters
Graffiti
Transsexuals
Piercings
Tattoos
Antifa
Stoners
BLM
And I don't mean this as a jab against these categories, but I do mean to observe that someone who is not already inured to their sight would almost certainly feel some level of disgust were he to encounter their average representatives. Certainly those who are already on board will imagine more presentable examples instead, or idealized versions, and the poster is almost certainly simply an in-group signal aimed at them in the first place.
To rephrase: All of the elements enumerated above are, if not categorically then at least with most of their real-world examples, fit to cause disgust, and ugliness is merely description of the visual qualities that lead to the more visceral reaction in the viewer.
To be even clearer: Crippled limbs are ugly. Rolls of fat are ugly. Squats are, most of the time, ugly. Graffiti is ugly. Transsexuals are ugly. Piercings are, if not ugly in themselves, viscerally disgusting. Tattooed people are ugly. Antifa tends to be fairly ugly. Stoners often become ugly. BLM activities tend to be ugly. Yeah, there are probably counterexamples, but I'd wager they're rarer than those examples that prove my point. And yes, ugliness is subjective, so I posit some neutral human observer who sees any of these things for the very first time and has never heard of them before.
Really? People will feel disgust at encountering a disabled person? Not empathy?
You of course, are not the OP, but it seems to me that the Green position on these matters is that disabled people, nor any of those other types of people, are not inherently ugly. So, if that is the basis of the claim that the scene depicted is ugly, then that answers my question: That calling the scene "ugly" is just another way of saying "I disagree with the political positions espoused." Which is fine; like I said, I thought the OP was making a different type of claim.
The disgust is what makes the empathy sincere. It is no great love to love the beautiful, the abled, the pleasant; that is natural, and all people love them. But love the leper -- disgusting, oozing, broken, repulsive, dangerous? Well, now that's a shining soul.
The crippled are innately worse people. They are crippled. Those who rise above their limitation through hard work and grit warrant a certain respect, but for the most part, the broken are gross. Being hovered over by a super autist is uncomfortable. Watching a kid with a Downy stroke-face flip his shit is uncomfortable. Seeing some strung-out junkie piss himself on a bus arouses disgust.
If you can't acknowledge that the dregs of society are in fact viscerally repulsive, then tolerating them is no sign of virtue. Of course you tolerate them. They're fine, apparently!
And I have not said otherwise. OP's claim was completely different: " someone who is not already inured to their sight would almost certainly feel some level of disgust were he to encounter their average representatives." In other words, that the normal reaction to seeing someone in a wheelchair is one of disgust. That is the claim that I am taking issue with, not with the obvious fact that someone who uses a wheelchair is unable to walk.
The OP explicitly referred not to "the dregs of society" but rather to average handicapped persons.
I have not claimed that tolerating them is a sign of virtue; in fact, I have claimed the exact opposite: That tolerating them, or at least not being disgusted by them, is normal. That which is normal is, by definition, neither particularly virtuous nor particularly lacking in virtue. In contrast, if someone reacts with disgust at seeing someone in a wheelchair, that does seem to me to be indicative of a lack of virtue.
I feel like maybe we're not using terms in the same way.
In my view, disgust is an emotion that one feels, that rises unbidden and cannot be easily extinguished. One can be disgusted by an aspect of someone else's person but still tolerate them. In fact I'd say that most people I know really well have some aspect to their person that causes me some amount of disgust when it becomes salient. The more salient that aspect of their person is to me at a particular moment, the more disgust I feel at that particular moment. This is true of my favorite people in the world, and of me too. No one is perfect, and imperfections by their nature arouse some element of disgust. That disgust doesn't mean that I've written off the person, or don't find other elements of their person to be valuable, or even that I don't like them very much or even love them dearly.
Likewise elsewhere on this thread you protest that it is normal to feel empathy rather than disgust when one encounters someone who is disfigured or whatever. But again, these are not incompatible. Severe physical deformity is innately disgusting, however blameless the person is for having that condition, and however we might empathize with their plight.
Of course, if you create an image of a fictitious person in which the only salient element of their person is an obvious imperfection -- e.g. they are ugly -- then I don't know how a normal person could feel any natural reaction but disgust in response -- even if one is well socialized (even oversocialized) to immediately try to lecture themselves about how the person presumably has various other redeeming traits. But those other redeeming traits are entirely hypothetical, whereas the feature arousing disgust is directly evidenced and centralized by the illustration.
No, we are using the term "disgust" in the same way. But, again, the OP referred to the average disabled person, NOT to someone with a "severe physical deformity" or even any deformity.
As for reacting to a fictitious person whose only salient element is being ugly, one can say that about a stranger on the street. Like the fictitious person, you know nothing about that person other than his or her appearance. Although there might be extreme levels of ugliness bordering on deformity that might be exceptions, I am skeptical that you actually respond with disgust at every ugly person you see on the street. Again, the OP referred to the average example of the class, not an extreme example.
Finally, the person in the illustration is not presented as having only one salient element of their person. She is the owner of what appears to be a happy dog, she herself is smiling, and IIRC she seems to favor brightly-colored clothing. Yes, she is included because she is disabled, not those other attributes, but that is not relevant to how viewers respond to her.
Average disabilities also inspire disgust, and how could they not? Being disabled is awful compared to being fully abled. So does transgenderism -- surely it is far afield from even most liberals' conception of the category to think that having an intractable incongruence between one's body and gender identity is a good thing. Any condition that tips one's cost-benefit analysis in favor of a dramatic and life-altering series of surgeries and permanent medicalization must have a pretty terrible cost to make that dismal path preferable over the status quo, and on that basis alone, we have to conclude that being transgender is innately awful.
Well, contemplating awful conditions, and seeing them in others, naturally arouses disgust. It can also arouse empathy (if we can imagine ourselves having been dealt a hand that put is in a similar position) and sympathy (if we believe the person isn't fundamentally to blame for their condition). Those can inspire charity and the desire to make accommodations. And none of that is inconsistent with also feeling disgust.
But again -- this poster clearly went out of its way to centralize disgust-inspiring conditions in its illustration. Sure, the person is smiling and walking a dog and wearing brightly colored clothing. But any political poster attempting to depict a utopia is going to feature that latter stuff. This one went out of its way to illustrate ugliness and disability, to centralize those and make them the salient element of its depiction. So of course the natural reaction that it inspires is going to be disgust.
Well, I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one. I just don't think that the average disabled person arouses disgust in most people. Disgust is a very specific emotion.
As for the poster, I would suggest that perhaps not all persons, perhaps not most persons, would have a natural reaction of disgust to what is depicted there, or at least that those who produced the poster do not think so, because the poster is meant to attract people -- specifically, to attract voters -- not to disgust them. "Vote for us, and we will create a disgusting world" is not a message that a political party is likely to adopt. So, I would suggest that many people see the world depicted there very, very differently than you do. My initial reaction was a bit of eye rolling at the "kumbayaa, isn't diversity wonderful, 'I'd like to teach the world to sing'" messaging, because it is a bit banal. But certainly not disgust. Nor can you assume that everyone thinks that anyone there is ugly, except perhaps the person with the pink-haired woman. But to me, the pink-haired woman looks pretty attractive, while others specifically singled her out as ugly. And, in real life, some people can carry off purple hair or mohawks or piercings, and others can't, in my opinion. Others find them inherently unattractive. That is what makes horse races.
Anyhow, the idea that Greens or whomever prefer ugliness, which is bandied about quite often here, is rather silly, although I am sure there have been "edgy" people who claim that ugliness is really beauty. People have different aesthetic preferences. I personally like this even though the person depicted therein is not attractive. And, were I to open an art museum, there would be a lot more of stuff like that than works by Rembrandt. That doesn't mean I prefer ugliness to beauty, but rather because I value other things in art in addition to pure aesthetics. In fact, as I understand the left idea of utopia that is captured in that illustration, it is that utopia is a place where people who have traditionally been deemed ugly or weird, or even people who are in fact objectively ugly or weird (to the extent that is possible) are free to live their lives like everyone else. It is not a world where physical ugliness is celebrated; it is a world where physical ugliness is irrelevant. Of course, I am sure that most people here think that is not a utopia. But that is not an excuse to refuse to understand what the claim being made is.
Frankly, it is no different than people claiming that a parent who doesn't want a book with sex scenes in school libraries MUST be motivated by homophobia, just because the book has an LGBTQ theme, or just because the author happens to be gay. Nor it is different from claiming that everyone who opposes affirmative action must be motivated by racism, or that everyone who opposes abortion is trying to oppress women.
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