[nabs-l] Blindness and Identity

[Briley Pollard]

I, personally, wasn't disagreeing that there are differences between men and women, and that these may impact how one experiences the world. The problem was that simply being a woman wasn't the example used, it was our "ability to give birth" that was. Yes, I identify with being a woman, and I have no problem with that aspect of myself being a part of my identity. But the ability to give birth does not a woman make, and that was what I took exception with, personally.
On Mar 28, 2010, at 10:19 PM, Sean Whalen wrote:

> I hesitate to beat the proverbial dead horse, but I take exception to being
> directly or indirectly labeled as sexist or a chauvinist.
> 
> Yes, it was perhaps not the best example to select. No, maybe I shouldn't
> have jumped on board with that specific example when Mark provided several
> others that work just as well. But, the fact remains that what Mark has
> argued is 100% true. Nobody ever at any point claimed to know how being a
> woman makes one feel or how much anybody in particular does or does not
> think about the implications on their existence of being of one sex or the
> other.
> 
> We were talking about identity and the way in which individuals experience
> the world. Identity, in one sense, is just a description of a person which
> individuates that person. In this sense, blindness, sex, skin color, and an
> infinite list of other attributes are certainly part of one's identity. This
> is how I think of identity. What I overlooked, and think other people refer
> to when speaking of identity, is sense of self. I agree with others who have
> said as much that blindness, sex, etc... play greater or lesser roles in
> one's identity and that this can vary greatly from person to person. I
> certainly identify myself as being blind, but it isn't a dominant part of my
> identity or sense of self.
> 
> As for the way individuals experience the world, and back to the initial
> point that Mark made, none of us can know how or to what degree any of our
> characteristics influence how we experience the world. I'm blind, was never
> sighted, and therefore have no basis for comparison to experiencing the
> world in a visual versus nonvisual way. I can guess as to how being blind
> differs from being sighted, but I can't say with any certainty. Similarly,
> as a man, I can't say how experiencing the world as a woman differs from my
> experience. I completely agree that a large majority of the differences and
> supposed differences between women and men are socially constructed, but the
> fact remains that there are biological differences that exist. I would think
> that those differences have at least some affect on how men and women
> experience the world, but, of course, I can't ever know this. That is the
> point. If anybody can find anything sexist about that, please explain it to
> me. Maybe there is something in this point of view that I am overlooking,
> and if that is the case, I would sincerely like to understand it so I can
> reexamine some of my assumptions.
> 
> I really do apologize to anybody who may have taken offense to anything I
> have said, but in reading it back, I still agree with all of it.
> 
> To Arielle's point about the notion that some people seem to espouse, namely
> that blind people shouldn't spend too much time socializing with other blind
> people, I think she is spot on. Blind friends don't come at the expense of
> sighted friends and vice versa. Social relations with blind folks and
> sighted folks are not mutually exclusive. I am wary of anybody who thinks
> that associating with, befriending, or dating exclusively sighted people is
> a mark of success. This pretty obviously says something about how the
> holders of this point of view feel about blind people. Likewise, I think it
> is not good for a blind person to insist on associating exclusively with
> blind people. We are all part of a larger society, and it doesn't make a lot
> of sense to consign yourself to dealing with a small subset of it. I
> completely understand how it can feel more comfortable and one can feel less
> conspicuous in a group when being blind is the norm and not an anomaly, but
> getting outside of one's comfort zone is the only way to expand it. It's
> difficult to integrate into society on terms of equality with the sighted if
> we are not willing to take steps toward doing so.
> 
> Sean
> 
> 
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