Guest guest Posted June 12, 2003 Report Share Posted June 12, 2003 I also have to wonder how much greed and selfishness play a part ih this. We live in a very greedy and selfish culture where just about everybody seems to be out for themselves. I say this because I am wondering if the motivation behind some of these " disabled " groups is to get special accomadations just for themselves. Accomadating other disabilities would just take away resources from their cause. i dont know that it is about greed and selfishness for most people. i dont work for better accomodations for the visually impaired but it doesnt mean i am selfish. people who are involved in that know what they need. i know about autism. the other interesting thing about disabilities is that the things that are better for disabled people are often better for everyone. i was lucky in that the room where i work had to be renovated. the architect was really interested in my requirements and implemented all except the elimination of fluorescent lighting, which was out of his control. however, the natural lighing that now floods the room means that it is rare for me to have to use the fluorescents. He implemented my requests in other classrooms too, because they are fundamentally good design principles. one of the things i asked for was ramps, because i have difficulty with depth perception. injuries to children have dropped because stairs in schools are really dangerous. the person with cp has better access. ramps are better for visually impaired people too. mothers with babies in prams can access buildings more easily. something that could be seen as an unreasonable demand from one person, is actually beneficial to many. i suspect flow on benefits come from accomodations required by other disability groups as well. __________________________________________________________________ McAfee VirusScan Online from the Netscape Network. Comprehensive protection for your entire computer. Get your free trial today! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/computing/mcafee/index.jsp?promo=393397 Get AOL Instant Messenger 5.1 free of charge. Download Now! http://aim.aol.com/aimnew/Aim/register.adp?promo=380455 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2003 Report Share Posted June 12, 2003 gprobertson@... wrote: > one of the things i asked for was ramps, because i have > difficulty with depth perception. injuries to children have dropped > because stairs in schools are really dangerous. the person with cp > has better access. ramps are better for visually impaired people > too. But there are always drawbacks to any " one size fits all " solution, whichever one that is. I knew of an elderly woman with one arm and a prosthetic leg who could walk up a ramp, but not down one (she would fall and be unable to get up). If the place she went to only had ramps, it was inaccessible for her. She needed stairs to go downhill. It was one of the great ironies that this woman, who had a disabled person placard in her car, found that places that were " accessible " for physically disabled were the least accessible in real life. There is not one " right " way for everyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2003 Report Share Posted June 12, 2003 > ly, this thread is starting to veer into bashing of the > physically disabled, and I'm beginning to take it personally. Yes, a lot of the stuff hasn't seemed to separate out the *some* people who are physically disabled (in certain specific ways -- wheelchair users are the ones being talked about the most, and people who use wheelchairs for certain specific reasons -- I'm a *part-time* wheelchair user which throws a lot of people) part, on the attitudes being discussed. > I don't want accommodation merely to *appear* normal--I want it so I > can have a normal life. Big difference there. Without certain > accommodations, such as ramps, automatic doors, wide corridors in > homes and shops, and lifts on buses, I could not function. Literally. > If wanting to merely go to the store without encountering a dozen > different obstacles on the way is " selfish " , then I'm the most selfish > person on earth. What's more, I won't apologize for it. Exactly. > I have never felt that people with disabilities less visible than > mine deserved accommodation any less than I. Please don't assume we > *all* have an " I've got mine, so screw you! " attitude. Yes. That attitude is as prevalent within *any* group of people as any other. When you're in one particular group's " out-group " , you notice it in that group more. It doesn't mean it's actually more prevalent in that group, and I see it *constantly* in autistic people so I've got no illusions of our superiority in that regard. That said, the US movement in general for disability rights for people with certain specific physical disabilities has failed to take a lot of people into account who should've been. Ed , one of the big heroes we're supposed to look up to, had a slogan of " I'm disabled from the neck down, not the neck up, " which never inspired my confidence. And there's been a huge attempt to separate static disability from chronic and/or terminal illness. So I think it's fair to say that the movement in general has overlooked a lot of people in some really nasty ways, but that the human nature behind that is not different in autistic people (and if it had been an autistic people's movement, you can bet there would be other people left behind griping about those awful annoying autistic people). This is speaking in generalities. There are a lot of individuals in any group who won't fit this, but many big factions you hear about will fit it to some degree or another. In fact, there is one person who has worked really hard to define what's meant by " disability culture " . She's held up as someone disabled people should look up to, and her values of disability culture are considered so integral by some people that you're not supposed to question them or you're trampling on the self-esteem of a lot of people or something. But the problem is, they're all based on the presence of cognitive abilities. All the things she says are valuable about being disabled, are all things that many cognitively disabled (including autistic) people couldn't be. The person who did this, of course, is physically disabled and NT. (This doesn't mean all physically disabled NTs are that way, but that she did a hell of a generalization about it.) My only current offline friend summed some of this up once when he said, " Blind people are uncomfortable with me because I'm in a wheelchair and chair users are uncomfortable with me because I'm blind. " I have the same problem. I don't fit with the assumptions that physically disabled NTs have for me. And I don't fit with the assumptions that certain prominent subgroups of autistics have for me (some of those have nothing to do with physical disability, but just with me being different in unexpected ways related to autism). The autism stuff is something I'd love to write about more, but it's more complicated than my word-output section wants to handle at the moment. > And as for not wanting to be treated like one is retarded, who *would* > want that? (I define that as being patronized to and not taken > seriously--being treated as a child all one's life). Well the point is, it's not " being treated as if one's got a low IQ or however they measure that damn word " . It's being treated in a particular prejudiced manner that nobody would want. If you say " I've got a high IQ so don't treat me like I'm retarded, " you're basically saying that the high IQ is the *reason* you shouldn't be treated like a nonperson, rather than that nobody should be treated like a nonperson. And to equate the low IQ thing with the nonperson thing is just as wrong as treating someone as a nonperson. , rambling -- " [This] is a good example of what happens when you try to control how another person grows and learns. Really, monsters are made with the good intentions of wise doctor enstein to make a perfect man. " -Eugene Marcus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2003 Report Share Posted June 12, 2003 Sparrow danced around singing: >I still do know people who wear tie-dyes. It's hard to be involved >in hand-drumming and not! But I don't cultivate them as friends and I tend >not to let them get too close to me (close in an emotional/social sense, >not a physical sense.) What do you do when you unwittingly become friends with someone that wears tye-dye on a regular basis? (Like me, for instance... I love the swirly rainbow colors, and I'm in an old yellow-blue-turquoise Grateful Dead tye-dye tonight that I've washed so many times it's wonderfully soft.) DeGraf ~*~ http://www.sonic.net/mustang/moggy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2003 Report Share Posted June 12, 2003 At 08:02 PM 6/12/03 -0400, gprobertson@... wrote: > the other interesting thing about disabilities is that >the things that are better for disabled people are >often better for everyone. [snip] >one of the things i asked for was ramps, because i have >difficulty with depth perception. Ramps are one thing that aren't better for everyone. My partner has physical disabilities that make it impossible for him to walk on an angled surface so unless there are stairs next to the ramp, he's effectively excluded from a space. Unfortunately, I can think of no accomodation that is better for everyone. Different people have different needs and abilities and the best we can do is try to accomodate the largest amount of people possible. While I applaud laws that require accessability, at the same time I have seen small businesses go out of business because they couldn't afford the massive renovations required by new accessibility laws. We (as a society) try to accommodate everyone but it's inevitable that, no matter how hard we try, someone will always be left out in the cold. Sparrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 13, 2003 Report Share Posted June 13, 2003 At 09:35 PM 6/12/03 -0700, DeGraf wrote: >Sparrow danced around singing: >>I still do know people who wear tie-dyes. It's hard to be involved >>in hand-drumming and not! But I don't cultivate them as friends and I tend >>not to let them get too close to me (close in an emotional/social sense, >>not a physical sense.) > >What do you do when you unwittingly become friends with someone that wears >tye-dye on a regular basis? (Like me, for instance... I love the swirly >rainbow colors, and I'm in an old yellow-blue-turquoise Grateful Dead >tye-dye tonight that I've washed so many times it's wonderfully soft.) It's different when I already know someone and they show up in a tie-dye. But if I didn't know you and just saw you wearing the shirt (and you looked like an unkempt hippie) I'd probably never get to know you. It's not the tie-dyes themselves specifically, but an overall look of unwashed, uncombed hair, a certain body posture that I don't know how to define other than that I've come to recognize it, a certain speech pattern and an overall look. You don't strike me as that sort of tie-dye wearer, though. When I see a clean, neat, college-kid looking person in a tie-dye and clean, neat jeans, I don't have the same impression because that's not usually the kind of person who follows you home and refuses to leave or does something completely nonsensical like hitting you because they disapprove of your " violent nature " (which could be something as " violent " as wearing leather shoes.) At the same time, I don't go out of my way to introduce myself or get close to them because it was a clean, neat college-kid person in a tie-dye and clean, neat jeans who first told a couple of Rainbow People to come visit her sometime. That was what set off the home invasion I described earlier. So there's always the thought in the back of my head, " well, that doesn't look like someone who would invade people's homes or be abusive towards them for not having the same political views, but people in tie-dyes tend to know each other and there's always a chance that they know someone else who is that kind of person. " Just the tie dye alone isn't always enough to set off my internal alarms, but if the person wearing it is also calling me " sister " (or else saying insulting things about the way I'm dressed, what I'm eating, my politics, etc.) and saying a lot of things like, " well, hey, man, it's like, just be all mellow and stuff and don't go with that corporate poison that, like, destroys the world and love and light, man ... got any smoke? " and looks and smells like they haven't had a bath in weeks and lives in a vehicle covered with stickers endorsing illegal substances it all starts to add up into something I want to sneak away from quickly. In reality, I have friends of various descriptions including friends with tie-dyes because it's very rare any more that I meet someone and become friends with them by only meeting them in person. Since I meet most people online, I end up with friends with a wide variety of appearances because, other than setting off alarms in my head about past horrible experiences, I really don't care what someone looks like. I even have one friend who lives in a school bus, sometimes goes to Rainbow Gatherings, has a " hippie name " , and is one of those homeless (though by choice) and disgruntled Vietnam vets. .....but I quit letting him know my address and phone number after he brought several uninvited hippies to my home, wrongly thinking I shared the flophouse mentality. Fortunately, he made them leave again, but I was unhappy with that, too, because he had promised them a place to stay and then he just dumped them at the racetrack and told them to get jobs there to pay for further travels. (I was unhappy, but better that than me stuck with several strangers as houseguests.) He also infested my house with fleas a couple of times. But he's been a decent guy to me and tries to do the right thing and tries to make up for it when he does the wrong thing so I still like him but when he comes through town I meet him at the park and hang out with him on his bus. He's not the only person where I visit them but not the other way around, he's just the only one I keep that policy with because I'm afraid that he'll accidentally bring the inconsiderate hippies down on me again. And that's kind of how I feel when I see someone decent-looking but with a tie-dye: " this could be the opening in the floodgate that pours hippies on my head again. " So if I saw you (assuming I didn't know you), say at school or something, I'd be nice to you but I wouldn't really try to get to know you unless you were making a lot of effort to get to know me and I wouldn't let you know where I lived or what my phone number was because it's just too hard for me to trust people in the hippie community, even those on the very fringes of it. Sparrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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