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> Also i have a distaste of the author listing their "disabilities" in their twitter bio. There's a long history of silencing and rendering invisible the ident

> Also i have a distaste of the author listing their "disabilities" in their twitter bio. There's a long history of silencing and rendering invisible the identities of disabled people, to avoid discomfort on the part of the abled, and to divide and prevent the formation of community amongst the disabled. Putting one's disabilities up-front in a profile bio challenges both of these norms, and announcing one's "distaste" reinforces them.

zepto 5y ago
> There's a long history of silencing and rendering invisible the identities of disabled people, to avoid discomfort on the part of the abled, and to divide and prevent the formation of community amongst the disabled. Where is the history that supports the idea that there was a goal to prevent the formation of community amongst the disabled?
- mintplant 5y ago
  Deaf culture, for example, was deliberately undermined and suppressed for centuries to prevent its emergence as a distinct identity. Alexander Graham Bell, a central figure in the establishment of deaf education, opposed teaching sign language to children and insisted upon oral education, to push pupils to assimilate into the hearing world. He also argued against intermarriage between deaf people, to avert the "great calamity" of "the production of a defective race of human beings".
  - zepto 5y ago
    That seems like advocacy for eugenics, and integrated education, neither of which are good, but it’s not obvious how it would prevent the formation of community amongst the deaf.
    - danShumway 5y ago
      > opposed teaching sign language to children and insisted upon oral education, to push pupils to assimilate into the hearing world would go a long way to making it hard for deaf people to communicate with each other or form their own communities outside of hearing spaces. One of the first things you do if you want to integrate a community or break up a culture is you invalidate their language.
      - zepto 5y ago
        > would go a long way to making it hard for deaf people to communicate with each other or form their own communities outside of hearing spaces. True. > One of the first things you do if you want to integrate a community or break up a culture is you invalidate their language. This is affirming the consequent once again. You assume the goal is to break up a culture, and claim this is a tactic for that purpose, but that doesn’t actually tell us this is the intention. As a counterpoint, it is hard for autistic people to get accommodations in workplaces especially without strong legal support. Is this because bosses ‘want to break up a culture’? I would say not. I would say it’s because management culture has a ludicrously simplistic idea of what humans are in general, and what I’d like to think are false beliefs about cost/benefit of making accommodations.
        danShumway 5y ago
        Sure, I'll concede that theoretically all of this could happen accidentally. I'm not sure that changes much about the experience of the communities it's happening to though. Bell could have had perfectly innocent reasons for making it harder for people to learn sign language, but the end result still kind of ends up being the same, and it seems reasonable to me for people in those communities who do feel isolated to push back and to argue that they have a right to exist and that they aren't being given full voices[0]. ---- [0]: no pun intended with the deaf community, except yes pun sort of intended because sign language itself can be described as a voice that allows deaf people to more easily communicate and advocate for themselves, and I think that labeling is kind of accurate. So pun partially intended.
        zepto 5y ago
        I don’t think it helps to call the reasons ‘innocent’. Your description of Bell makes him sound like a eugenicist. Most people wouldn’t regard that as particularly innocent today. I think it matters a lot whether communities have the wrong idea of why things are happening to them, and what other people’s intentions are. It seems profoundly disempowering to not have this understanding. I understand that you don’t.
teakettle42 5y ago
> There's a long history of silencing and rendering invisible the identities of disabled people I've been diagnosed with both ADHD and autism. You would call that an identity; I would not, and find the idea patently offensive. > Putting one's disabilities up-front in a profile bio challenges both of these norms, and announcing one's "distaste" reinforces them. There's an inherent pathology in cataloguing your potential limitations (or your self-image of them) as a form of public introduction.
- danShumway 5y ago
  I don't have a problem with anyone who doesn't want to think of ADHD or autism as a part of their identity. I don't have a problem with anyone who feels strongly about it. People who don't like that kind of categorization should be respected. But I do have a problem with saying that other people can't view those categories as a part of their identity or talk about them, or that it's a pathology or weakness for someone to view something that has affected their brain their entire lives as being a contributing factor to who they are. Live and let live, people's understanding and internalization of disability can often be drastically different from other people's. This is something that pops up in almost every community of people with disabilities; just off the top of my head, I've seen fierce debate about this from deaf communities. If it upsets and offends you to hear someone call ADHD/autism a part of your identity, it also upsets and offends people who have come to terms with themselves in different ways than you to be told that they have a pathology for thinking of themselves differently. Identity itself is a fuzzy word that different people approach in different ways; it isn't rigorously defined, and it is actually possible to give both sides of the identity/attribute debate space to breathe and to consider their identity in the way that's most helpful for them personally. I think it's unhelpful to punch down on people for having different experiences.

zepto 5y ago

> There's a long history of silencing and rendering invisible the identities of disabled people, to avoid discomfort on the part of the abled, and to divide and prevent the formation of community amongst the disabled. Where is the history that supports the idea that there was a goal to prevent the formation of community amongst the disabled?

mintplant 5y ago
Deaf culture, for example, was deliberately undermined and suppressed for centuries to prevent its emergence as a distinct identity. Alexander Graham Bell, a central figure in the establishment of deaf education, opposed teaching sign language to children and insisted upon oral education, to push pupils to assimilate into the hearing world. He also argued against intermarriage between deaf people, to avert the "great calamity" of "the production of a defective race of human beings".
- zepto 5y ago
  That seems like advocacy for eugenics, and integrated education, neither of which are good, but it’s not obvious how it would prevent the formation of community amongst the deaf.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    > opposed teaching sign language to children and insisted upon oral education, to push pupils to assimilate into the hearing world would go a long way to making it hard for deaf people to communicate with each other or form their own communities outside of hearing spaces. One of the first things you do if you want to integrate a community or break up a culture is you invalidate their language.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > would go a long way to making it hard for deaf people to communicate with each other or form their own communities outside of hearing spaces. True. > One of the first things you do if you want to integrate a community or break up a culture is you invalidate their language. This is affirming the consequent once again. You assume the goal is to break up a culture, and claim this is a tactic for that purpose, but that doesn’t actually tell us this is the intention. As a counterpoint, it is hard for autistic people to get accommodations in workplaces especially without strong legal support. Is this because bosses ‘want to break up a culture’? I would say not. I would say it’s because management culture has a ludicrously simplistic idea of what humans are in general, and what I’d like to think are false beliefs about cost/benefit of making accommodations.
      - danShumway 5y ago
        Sure, I'll concede that theoretically all of this could happen accidentally. I'm not sure that changes much about the experience of the communities it's happening to though. Bell could have had perfectly innocent reasons for making it harder for people to learn sign language, but the end result still kind of ends up being the same, and it seems reasonable to me for people in those communities who do feel isolated to push back and to argue that they have a right to exist and that they aren't being given full voices[0]. ---- [0]: no pun intended with the deaf community, except yes pun sort of intended because sign language itself can be described as a voice that allows deaf people to more easily communicate and advocate for themselves, and I think that labeling is kind of accurate. So pun partially intended.
        zepto 5y ago
        I don’t think it helps to call the reasons ‘innocent’. Your description of Bell makes him sound like a eugenicist. Most people wouldn’t regard that as particularly innocent today. I think it matters a lot whether communities have the wrong idea of why things are happening to them, and what other people’s intentions are. It seems profoundly disempowering to not have this understanding. I understand that you don’t.

teakettle42 5y ago

> There's a long history of silencing and rendering invisible the identities of disabled people I've been diagnosed with both ADHD and autism. You would call that an identity; I would not, and find the idea patently offensive. > Putting one's disabilities up-front in a profile bio challenges both of these norms, and announcing one's "distaste" reinforces them. There's an inherent pathology in cataloguing your potential limitations (or your self-image of them) as a form of public introduction.

danShumway 5y ago
I don't have a problem with anyone who doesn't want to think of ADHD or autism as a part of their identity. I don't have a problem with anyone who feels strongly about it. People who don't like that kind of categorization should be respected. But I do have a problem with saying that other people can't view those categories as a part of their identity or talk about them, or that it's a pathology or weakness for someone to view something that has affected their brain their entire lives as being a contributing factor to who they are. Live and let live, people's understanding and internalization of disability can often be drastically different from other people's. This is something that pops up in almost every community of people with disabilities; just off the top of my head, I've seen fierce debate about this from deaf communities. If it upsets and offends you to hear someone call ADHD/autism a part of your identity, it also upsets and offends people who have come to terms with themselves in different ways than you to be told that they have a pathology for thinking of themselves differently. Identity itself is a fuzzy word that different people approach in different ways; it isn't rigorously defined, and it is actually possible to give both sides of the identity/attribute debate space to breathe and to consider their identity in the way that's most helpful for them personally. I think it's unhelpful to punch down on people for having different experiences.