[nabs-l] Philosophical Terminology

[T. Joseph Carter]

I've expressed my (admittedly pilfered) theory before that blind people 
hate each other.

We seem to compare ourselves to one another to determine who is more or 
less independent or well-adapted.  Those who are less adapted are as an 
embarrassment to us because they make us look bad.  Those who are more 
adapted are equally embarrassing because we feel inadequate by comparison 
because we're not some kind of super-blind person who can do the things 
they do.

Most of the responses I've gotten to this theory indicate that there 
appears to be something to it, anecdotally at least.  Given that, I had to 
wonder if the reason why we have a deaf culture, but not a blind culture, 
is that we're too busy comparing our differences to notice our sameness.  
This seems to be something we would want to change, in my opinion.

Joseph

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 11:30:04PM -0800, Ben Moore wrote:
>Okay, here my take on what to call yourself if you're Blind/Legally Blind, etc.: when you hold out a cane, sighted people, on most occasions, will see you as Blind. Do you think the sighted stop to think about what the terms "Fully Blind, Legally Blind, Visually Impaired" mean? I doubt it! If you're out in public using a cane or have a guide dog, most sighted will instantly think, "he/she must be blind". Point here is that it doesn't matter what you call yourself; I walk the streets using a cane (sometimes w/ a sighted person guiding me if I'm in a location I don't know by heart)... but I wear glasses. Even though I'm Legally Blind, a lot of people think that cane equals blind.
>
>Sorry if this is offensive, but this terminology debate on what you should call yourself (in terms of amount of vision) is total BS. Yeah the NFB has pretty, uh, descriptions on what you should call yourself, but are you gonna let some orginization tell you how to feel about your level of blindness? Hell NO!!!
>
>Seriously, it feels to me that all this talk over how to describe your blindness is seperating us, not uniting us as one...
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