Good for Dr J. - I like his message. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> But I still think that he's waffling when he talks about "current effete sensibilities". He asks for equal treatment, and he got it - I criticised him, and I'm not about to be intimidated by his blindness, or patronise him by changing what I say because of it.
I still think he's grandstanding somewhat (a not uncommon indulgence that many of the disabled activists that I know will sometimes slip into. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ). Perhaps I've just seen too many activists switch seamlessly from complaining about the way the community talk about them, to moaning about being patronised when people actually DO make an effort to change their language and attitudes. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sad.gif" alt="" />
There's a slogan doing the rounds at the moment which says "See the person not the disability" which seeks to shift the focus back to the bits that work and away from the bits that don't, which he may or may not have approved of.
However, for all the fine words about "true equality" and not seeing the disability, the fact remains that the blind cannot see. They will therefore never be fully equal in all respects, just as the old (no matter what you call them) do not have the capacity of younger people, and intellectually disabled people do not have 'special gifts' or whatever and mostly just don't have the same capabilities that most other people do.
Dr J accuses people of "continu(ing) to cling to the outmoded notion that blindness (along with everything associated with it) connotes inferiority and lack of status..." But who is being Politically Correct here? The blind do have inferior vision, inferior capabilities in many areas of mobility and so on, and the functional status of a blind person in many everyday situations is quite clearly going to be behind that of a fully functioning person, all other attributes being equal. They do not mesh easily into a predominently sighted world, unless considerable effort is made (by the sighted majority) to accommodate them. He's not really anti-PC, just some aspects of the language. I think that he does want us to be PC, but on his terms. He wants blind people to be treated 'just like anyone else', but unfortunately they aren't the same, so a division will always exist.
The key is probably in Womble's word - "respect". We need to try and respect and accept our differences.
Unfortunately though, we are all a bit embarassed around people with disabilities, so we act awkwardly until we get to know them a bit better, and get some cues on how to behave. There is nothing new or Politically Correct about that - it's always been that way, even in the pre PC days when I used to do work for our own local Blind Institute.
And now that I work with intellectual disability, every day I see the same reactions that your friend talks about (and good on you for being as rude as ever!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> ). But again, it's not a new or PC phenomenon.
I'm old - I deal with it. I'm getting forgetful, and physically I'm losing many of the skills that I had, but I don't expect anybody to pretend otherwise. I fully expect that I will be gradually regarded as 'inferior' and 'of lower status' because I'm old and because DAMMIT - it's true, I'm less 'equal' than I once was! But if people want to call me a Senior Citizen, or refer to me as 'an Older Person' instead of a geriatric, then that's fine by me - I'm pleased that they are at least trying to be kind. "Living National Treasure" would be acceptable too. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
On a lighter note:
After watching the Melbourne Cup on TV earlier today, I noticed that one of the horses in the race after the Cup was called Shellshocked.
It ran close to last – but I’m sure it would have done MUCH better had the owners known that they should have called it PostTraumaticStressDisordered! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />
