Tanis wrote:
>You see, school yard taunts of cripple, retard, and
>faggot, are just that- teasing.
I don't agree with this point Tanis, not least because it suggests that
children are not competent social actors who do not know what they do
(sorry but our research with disabled children suggests otherwise). School
yard taunts injure as much as adult taunts do, especially if they are
allowed to go on unchecked. The law gives no protection (although this may
soon change in the UK) and the education system, for the most part, allows
stereotypes to proliferate unchallenged.
When we grow up we can claim our own
>identities and define what we want our language to mean. If you do not
>want to use disabled because it implies defective, then do not use it.
I don't think it's quite as simple as this because some meanings tend to
become fixed and more 'acceptable' than others, so using the term disabled
to mean a particular thing ourselves does not guarantee that our meaning
will be understood by those who listen/read. This sounds picky, but when we
use that term, do we *always* explain what we mean by it and, if we do, is
our meaning always wholeheartedly accepted? Collective pressure might
dictate (and does dictate) which terminology we use, and on occasions makes
it a condition of 'full' community membership. I have yet to hear of a
'deaf' person who has gained full membership of the Deaf community since
'Deaf' implies particular things. As you know, I don't do in for
capitalising things since most of the 'things' we are talking about are
characteristics which may or may not grow to master/mistress status in
terms of 'identity' - why has it never been necessary to capitalise male
and female, and yet we have to cope with the 'woeful inadequacy' of Black,
gay and Latina (as Simi suggests). Actually, I think the ambiguous meaning
of the term 'identity' (and our tendency to see it as something which is
fixed)is why they are woefully inadequate.
I use 'disabled' to signify my personal allegiance to the disability
movement in the same way that I use queer to signify my personal/political
orientation. I do not use 'Deaf' as a self-descriptor but that does not
mean that I don't feel good about myself as a deaf person (sometimes, and
when I feel bad it's not always related to 'deaf') nor that I reject people
who wish to use the term 'Deaf'. What it does mean is that I grew up with a
whole load of expectations on me to be not-deaf - I learnt a lot about
conditional love - and I'm not about to change who I am and how I describe
myself for another set of conditions which say 'we will accept you if...'
What it also means is that others do not stop at imposing labels and often
do not see that they do it because they don't think about language in the
same way. Telling me that I *must* use sign language interpreters for
communication access is the same as labelling me as 'Deaf' and it injures
me because it threatens my linguistic survival as a textual deaf person
(which also sets me apart and marks my difference).
>Some of us find impairment offensive in the same way. I personally, like
>to think that my claiming of Disability makes it (constructs it) as a
> apositive and bounces all the negative energy away.
The point I'm trying to make is not that 'positive' is necessarily 'wrong'
but that we perhaps need to ask questions about why some people, and
sometimes we ourselves, have this huge compulsion to feel positive and
whether we may be colluding with this *at the expense of* self-definition -
that positive can also be a false consciousness, as you suggest when you
say:
If I allow others to
>decide and define how I should feel about being disabled, or living with
>differences, then I am injured and feel powerless.
Yes - and my mother's favourite phrase was 'laugh and the world laughs with
you, weep and you weep alone' - except that she wasn't very good at
laughing when I was around! And no, that wasn't a snipe at Gill's 'private'
thoughts, though Gill's sharing them with this list does make them rather
'public'. You're right about one thing Tanis - meaning is incredibly fluid
and almost always contextualised - so why do we have this compulsion to
pretend that it's otherwise, and why are we back to language yet again and
at length if we are not in some sense 'linguistic beings'?
Best wishes
Mairian
*********
"To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
*********
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow in Deaf and Disability Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Postal Address:
111 Balfour Road
Highbury
London N5 2HE
U.K.
Minicom/TTY +44 [0]171 359 8085
Fax +44 [0]870 0553967
Typetalk (voice) +44 [0]800 515152 (and ask for minicom/TTY number)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|