Noah Buchholz's strange encounter with a mute person

[tuatara]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K--Mu74FLDY"]My Strange Encounter with a Mute Person - YouTube[/ame]

For non-ASL users:

(This is just the gist of his message. I watched it, then started typing - I didn't try to describe every detail of how he said things.)

Noah Buchholz is on a train and a woman sitting next to him writes him a note. (He's thrown for a second, because how would she know he is Deaf?) But she's asking him for help - she is mute. she needs to ask someone to pick her up and wants to know if he could make a call for her. He makes a VRS call and sets up her ride for her, and she thanks him.

It leaves him with mixed feelings. First, he feels empowered. He thinks back to when he had to have hearing people in his life make calls for him. And now he's helping a hearing person make a call.

At the same time, he starts to think about disabled communities. Many Deaf people don't think of themselves as disabled and don't want that label. Noah feels the same way, but he considers that the process of vehemently arguing against getting labeled as Disabled/Handicapped (depending on how one does it) may leave people in disabled communities feeling very put down. (Like "I AM NOT DISABLED! UGH! DON'T GROUP ME WITH THOSE DISABLED PEOPLE!") He doesn't want to do this. He supports Deaf pride, but has started thinking about how he can be supportive of disabled communities at the same time.

 

[deafdyke]

Is the label of disabled being a stigma due to thinking that disabled= mental disabilties,mental stuff ,or other conditions that truely do render a person unable?

 

[tuatara]

Is the label of disabled being a stigma due to thinking that disabled= mental disabilties,mental stuff ,or other conditions that truely do render a person unable?

It's a weird thing, classifying people as disabled and the stigma around it. In a way I feel like almost everyone's disabled in one way or another. Like, how many people are able to get to work entirely on their own? Most people I know use a car (or a bus, etc) to assist them because they couldn't possibly walk that far. (A friend of mine referred to cars as "souped up wheelchairs" ha!) How different is that from using VRS? (Drivers pay for their cars, but VRS users pay for cell phones and broadband connections, and drivers don't individually pay for highway maintenance.)

Then there are people who are truly unable to function in ways that society deems important, like functioning well enough in a work situation to earn a living. But those people may be contributing to the world in other ways, maybe by being an emotionally supportive friend to someone who has nowhere else to go, or by helping out in other ways that don't pay.

I understand the need for the classification so that people who need it can get financial support, but I really hate the stigma. It doesn't do anyone any good.

Where the stigma comes from is tricky. What I see in the Deaf world is mostly just a desire from working people to be seen as capable, and not classified as incapable just because they can't hear. But there are also attitudes (and I'm speaking here of people in general, not focusing on the Deaf community) of resentment, that people don't want their taxes to support people who don't work. And part of the problem with that is that it seems so easy for some people to quickly judge *why* people don't work. I know lots of people with serious disabilities that just aren't obvious from looking at them, and unless they have reason to tell you their stories, you could easily think they ought to be working. So I hear alot of misplaced "I work so hard to support bums who just don't feel like working!"

And then there's just the herd factor. Society forms a big herd. The herd (not individual members) comes to a notion of what's normal, and being normal isn't optional. People who don't fit the mold are seen as unacceptable, and treated with cruelty. It's a really ugly side of humanity - I suspect that we'll never really get past that.

Getting back to the idea of disability. I think for a whole lot of people, it's more of a mismatch between them and much of the world around them. Whether or not they can function/contribute to society depends on how much is available to them in the way of accommodations. Cars, VRS, ramps, physical therapy, psyche support, placement, etc. Many people get labeled as disabled (and maybe get financial support) primarily because accommodations aren't available (either in that they don't exist or can't be accessed), not because they have nothing within themselves to offer.

Heads up not directed toward anyone in particular: I'm open to analyzing/discussing stigma in this thread, but not contributing to it. If posts start appearing that put people down, I'll request a lock.