[stylist] question

[Judith Bron]

John, You lost me.  Most of the blind people I know are working to perfect 
their skills, develop their interests and be the best person they can 
possibly be.  As an aside, my dad was left handed.  No one ever made 
anything of it.  Getting back to blindness.  We aren't going to change 
society.  We are not a subculture.  We do not have our own beliefs, system 
of power or any of the things that define a culture.  We are simply people 
who are trying to make it despite whatever physical limitation we might 
have.  Just people.  Stop thinking of yourself as someone who has to prove a 
point.  You are a talented person with the ability to go far.  Stop worrying 
about the world.  Like for all of us, making John the best he is capable of 
being is difficult enough.  Judith
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Lee Clark" <johnlee at clarktouch.com>
To: "'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: [stylist] question


> Exactly, Judith!
>
> There is absolutely nothing wrong about being left-handed.  I know this
> intimately because I am left-handed--and I do crochet!  Making an afgan 
> for
> my mother right now.
>
> However, societies have made, and continue to make, a big deal out of this
> difference in dexterity.  Our own country, until the mid-1950s, had 
> problems
> with left hands.  At schools, they'd force you to write with your right
> hand.  Churches said that the left hand was the devil's hand.  We shake
> hands with our right hand, not the left.
>
> Yes, in other cultures it is worse, the stigma is greater.
>
> But things are pretty good right now for left-handed people now.  It has
> mostly ceased to be an issue, to the point that most people don't notice 
> it
> or if they do, it doesn't change anything.
>
> The blackis, they're working on getting our society to take blackiness 
> just
> as much in stride.  Feminists are working on getting gender to be as much 
> a
> non-issue as possible and still trying to perfect the policies and fair
> accommodations surrounding maternity.  It's a work in progress.  Deaf 
> people
> are working on it, too, though we have a longer way to go.  Blind is the
> same.
>
> But it is entirely possible, because it has happened before, for the
> greatest stigma, the greatest curse, the greatest burden that was made 
> such
> a big deal out of, out of nothing, to fade into something the society
> absorbs as part of its index of normal diversity.  One day we could be
> living in a society that thinks nothing of people using wheelchairs or 
> canes
> or signing or whatever, for none of these things to stand out at all.
>
> We want society to gradually change so that differences are no longer
> differences in the same ways they were before.  We do not want society to
> stay the same while we try to repress or manipulate the differences, 
> because
> there's always going to be a gap and it's beyond our power to change.
>
> This is why I like NFB's philosophy, because it's about changing what can 
> be
> changed, and in healthy ways.  One thing we can change is society, however
> slowly.  Society would benefit greatly from this.  Another thing we can
> change is our skills, what we know, the extent of our resources, etc.
>
> This is why I am dead against organizations like the Foundation Fighting
> Blindness.  They might have a little control, by medical means, to change
> blindness itself, but this is a highly questionable premise, and a most
> expensive venture.  Twenty years of billions of dollars that make ten
> researchers wealthy may result in restoring a little vision to a few 
> people
> who have a specific condition, and the actual life improvements that they
> would experience thankis to it are going to be nil or nearly so.  And this
> whole thing is going to be very bad for society itself and make it latch 
> on
> false hopes of restoring people to the human ideal.  Tthis would impair
> society's maturity into one that is able to take blind people in stride.
>
> John
>
>
>
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