[nabs-l] Blindness and Identity

Marc Workman mworkman.lists at gmail.com
Sat Mar 27 16:00:04 UTC 2010


For the record, here is exactly what I said about the ability to give birth.

Arielle called sex a mere characteristic.  As with blindness, if calling it
a mere characteristic is supposed to mean that it is as trivial as being 5
foot 6 instead of 5 foot 5, then I don't think it is a mere characteristic.
I don't have evidence of this, but I think I would feel differently about my
body if I had the ability to grow a human being inside of it.  My hunch is
that the ability, or lack of ability, to give birth probably affects how one
views one's body and thus one's sense of self in a non-trivial way.

The confusion here is that how one views one's body can be interpreted in
more than one way.  The way Jedi, I believe, interpreted it was that it
meant how one consciously views one's body.  In which case, if you don't
consciously view your body in that way, then what I said is clearly false,
but what I said does not have to be interpreted as how one consciously views
one's body.  Instead, what I meant, but didn't make clear enough, is that it
might affect the unconscious relationship one has with one's body.  I think
the pain example illustrates this.  I don't have to consciously view my
ability to feel pain as a significant part of who I am for this ability to
significantly affect the unconscious relationship I have with my body.

And this is what I said later in the exact same message.

Clarification, I'm not trying to suggest that women are defined by their
ability to give birth.  I'm only saying that to possess that ability might
shape how you think about yourself in a way that is more significant than
whether you have short or long hair.

Again, how you think about yourself can be interpreted in the two ways
mentioned above.

Does this really sound shovanistic or even semi-shovanistic?

I notice that of all the other examples I mentioned, being 60 pounds
lighter, being 7 inches shorter, being able to feel pain, being self-aware,
being able to sense infrared, having a photographic memory, possessing the
sense of smell of a dog, this one has received all of the attention.  I
realize that it was a bad example, not because I no longer think it's true,
but because women have been thought of for so long as baby producing
machines that my even mentioning it, as qualified as my statements were,
cannot be done without reminding women of that and bringing up a set of
issues that I really had no intention of bringing up.

Jedi said,
identity is the presentation of how we respond to those teachings in our
interactions with ourselves and others.

I don't understand what is meant by this sentence, but it seems to be at the
heart of the debate.  It sounds like question begging to me.  You want to
argue that identity is socially constructed, but there is no argument.  This
is just how you define identity.

I think Sean's definition makes more sense,
Your identity is just an exhaustive list of all of the characteristics and
attributes which make a particular person the particular person that they
are.

This definition leaves the question of where these characteristics come from
as an open one.  It could be entirely social, or it could be entirely
biological, or it could be some combination of the two.  Then the argument
is to say that it makes a good deal of sense to suppose that certain
significant bodily variations will have non-trivial affects on how one
perceives and experiences the world, which will influence the person's
identity.

Regards,

Marc


-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org]On
Behalf Of Briley Pollard
Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 6:56 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Blindness and Identity


Jedi,

I thought you handled the issue of giving birth quite capably. I am not a
mother yet, so no, I don't think about my ability to pop out kids as a big
part of who I am... or really ponder it as a part of identity at all. Do you
men see your ability to participate in making children as a part of your
identity? Probably not. So, it is semi chauvinist of you to assume we are
attached to our uterus as a part of us that gives us self worth.

Briley



On Mar 27, 2010, at 3:55 AM, Jedi wrote:

> Well, if we want to get down to brass tacks, we can all say that we will
never know just how our being is affects our perceptions, but the bottom
line still lies at the fact that our perception of our beingness is largely
determine by what our culture teaches us about it, and identity is the
presentation of how we respond to those teachings in our interactions with
ourselves and others.
>
> I think it's interesting that two men have been interested in whether or
not I see myself differently because I can give birth yet no women have
weighed in on the subject. I also think they're more interesting in my
birthing abilities than I am. Well gentlemen, you're welcome to those
abilities so long as you're willing to take the identity that comes with
them. *tongue in cheek*
>
> Respectfully,
> Jedi
>
>
>
> Original message:
>> The point is that without ever having had the experience of being a man,
you
>> cannot say for sure that your being a woman does or does not have an
impact
>> on how you see yourself or experience the world. I suspect it does, but
>> without any basis for comparison, you can't say. Just as my being blind
from
>> birth prohibits me from determining whether or not or to what degree my
>> blindness affects how I view myself and experience the world. My gut
feeling
>> is that my blindness has a fairly profound affect on at least a
significant
>> subset of the things I experience and the way in which I experience them.
>
>> Blindness is absolutely part of my identity, as is my height, skin color
and
>> love of the Chicago Cubs. Your identity is just an exhaustive list of all
of
>> the characteristics and attributes which make a particular person the
>> particular person that they are.
>
>> To what degree I identify myself as blind or identify with the greater
>> community of blind people is a completely separate question from that of
>> whether or not blindness is part of my identity.
>
>> I don't think blindness, strictly defined, is a social construct, while I
>> think the concept of disability is. I'm sure that to articulate my
reasons
>> for feeling this way would require more time than I am willing to put
into
>> it now, but that is my gut feeling.
>
>> Thought I'd throw my two cents into this interesting discussion.
>
>> All the best,
>
>> Sean
>
>
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