Re: Can't (Re: graduated)

[Guest guest]

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.

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[Guest guest]

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.

[Guest guest]

> 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

[Guest guest]

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

[Guest guest]

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

[Guest guest]

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