Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!202!114!Chita.Cazares
From: Chita.Cazares@f114.n202.z1.fidonet.org (Chita Cazares)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Kicking a Dead Horse?
Message-ID: <10133@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 90 05:35:37 GMT
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Index Number: 6724

Okay, I read the list you quoted from the Vermont Center for 
Independent Living. I've seen - and glided past - most conversations on 
three different echoes referring to "what to CALL the disAbled" because 
I don't really think it's a dead horse - it's a dead RED HERRING. By 
the time one gets through with this latest list, which is extensive 
indeed, one would like to know what, EXACTLY, is one to call the people 
for whom this echo was presumably intended?
 
Building a conversational mine field in this area is an ironic twist 
for a group trying to help a population they seem unwilling to name. 
 
Is it so disgusting to be blind that we must call it something else? Is 
it so humiliating to be mobility impaired that we must sanitize 
the very mention of wheelchairs? Is having special needs so gruesome 
that we must avoid asking - in fact, DEMANDING - that access should be 
part of every architecture school's curriculum?
 
Invisibility is one of the foundational problems of the disAbled 
community. Why spend time creating conversation impairment?
 
Like every other aspect of ANY decent human interaction, the people 
involved should lay down their own rules. A blind person who wants to 
be called a blink should be called a blink. A wheelchair user who wants 
to be called mobility impaired should be called mobility impaired. If 
they identify themselves as "a quad" then that's what polite people 
should use. It's up to the PERSON.
 
I also object heartily to the idea that people who must make special 
efforts to do X should not be singled out and admired. EVERY 
extraordinary effort by anyone else is admired, why should this 
community have its achievements ignored? 

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