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A few years ago, I was having a conversation with a coworker about her husband's passion for the television show CSI. "Did you know," I asked, "that the actor who plays the medical examiner, has a disability? His legs were amputated due to an accident." "Really!" she exclaimed, "I wonder if my husband knows that!" Read More
Humanity And Disability
I've followed this blog for a few months; and I really enjoy the intelligent and empathic discussion of disability issues, not limited to Asperger's, that you share with us. As a woman who is blind and has inattentive ADD, I have lived with the vast spectrum of attitudes toward disability my entire life, and even internalized some of them. I am always amazed that while people with disabilities, whether splintered into several disability-specific groups or taken together as a whole, are a minority, we are the minority that is universally present: people with disabilities exist in all walks of life, wherever one goes on the planet. The one thing we have in common is not disability; it is our humanity. Yet, though our existence as people with disabilities simultaneously demonstrates the vulnerability and adaptability of human beings, "nondisabled" people initially almost invariably see us through the lens of fear, negating our own and their humanity in the process of defining disability as threat, and disabled person as threat personified. Your reference to the abandonment of babies with disabilities being sometimes perceived as kindness really crystalized this for me. But what it also makes clear is that the people who would deny life to a human being solely on the basis of their own fear-based perceptions are more actively and decisively negating their own humanity as they invalidate that of another individual. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," never seems more appropriate than in a context such as this.
P.S.
some blind people have light perception and enjoy having the lights on! Smile
Thanks for your comment!
Exactly! The "Do Unto Others" reference is exactly it for me...I love your comment.
PS -- I made a small revision to the article in response to PS. In this case the two people I was visiting were congenitally blind with no light perception...I probably should have been clearer about that. :)
I think many people have a
I think many people have a kind of mind blindness when it comes to disabilities. And since they can’t imagine it, it must be bad right?
I also think that it is human nature to catalogue and categorize everything especially other people. Maybe it is only experience that teaches us that it is not the end of the world when we find something or someone different than the expected. Maybe some people will never get to that point.
Looking forward to reading part 2!
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