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Hello everyone, as a newcomer to the group I thought I would put my 'twopennyworth' in. I fully agree with Amaryllis and I have not heard of any spinal injury person distancing themselves from other disabled people because they belong to the fit side of disability and not the sick/ill side. I personally know a lot of disabled people through a national charity that I am heavily involved with. We (in the organisational sense) do not differentiate between disabilities and our annual conferences are testimony to the many different impairments that there are in the disabled world. We refer to ourselves (tongue in cheek) as either stiffs or floppies...I will let you work it out, but the point I am making is that we have many spinal injury members and muscular dystrophy/atrophy members as well the 'walking wounded' hard of hearing etc, you name we have it! In my personal experience when I have met a 'wheelchair' disabled person, I haven't a clue why they are in the wheelchair and as a disabled person myself, it does not matter. I have always been amused by the AB world who when meeting me will often ask 'who is that person over there in the .... what is wrong with them?' They look at me in amazement when I say I haven't got a clue but he is a miserable......! Having said the above about spinal injury v sick/ill disabled side, I do know of many disabled people who will not mix with other disabled people in a group setting...due to many various reasons and prejudices. Bye for now Denise In message <[log in to unmask]>, "A.Elphick" <[log in to unmask]> writes >Hi All >Well now we have all agreed on the spelling of 'Here Here' and the meaning >of the same..anyone like a stab at defining 'Epistemologies' ? > >People to reitterate that there is a 'tendency for disabled people to >distance themselves from the community of mentaly ill people/cognitively >impared people/sick people' or whatever. I think this is an easy throw away >which is difficult to support in practice. 'Communities' of people with >different disabilities do not decide to distance themselves from one >another, it's more that we are socially cultured to see people in groups >and then respond to individuals who we see as being in that group as being >representative of a whole 'community of others'. > >To get away from all this, and to empower ourselves and others we should >surely accept that we are all disabled and not disabled, male and female, >black and white, gay or straight geriatric or paediatric etc etc FAR MORE >ALIKE ONE ANOTHER THAN DIFFERENT FROM ONE ANOTHER. And that everyone we >meet sees themselves (as do we all) primarily as an individual and not as a >representative of a group. > >I have been told that there is a dislike within the community of spinal >cord injury wheelchair users to distance themselves from tose of us who are >sick, since such spinal cord injured people have finally suceeded on geting >recognised the fact that they are not ill, and do not need nursing care but >full access to society. We..the sick ones just confuse things for them the >spinal cord injured ones. > >I have never heard or seen written down a single attributable statement to >this effect actually made by a person with spinal cord injury. Whenever I >have mixed with other disabled people with different impairments 'clinical >diagnosis' has never been discussed. In fact I could not categorically say >I have met anyone with a spinal cord injury as this is not externally >obvious and there are numerous reasons why an individual might chose to use >a wheelchair, especially at a conference. > >Surely we must be careful to sort out the difference between what is said >to be true and what we actually find to be true? > >Amaryllis > > > > -- Denise Webber %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%