Discuss.

  • JoBo
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    1 year ago

    The hell do you think you’re going to learn by asking other ignorant people?

    If you want to understand what it is like to have a given disability, search out materials written by and for people who have experienced those disabilities. If you get a chance to ask a disabled person about how that disability affects them, without being a boring, insensitive, dehumanising dickhead, do so.

    Don’t ask a bunch of people without those disabilities to debate which would be most awful. And do not pretend it’s about educating yourself when you’re addressing your question to people who are mostly as clueless as you are. You’re not going to learn anything useful at all and you can’t possibly have imagined you would. You’re just adding to the mountains of awful dehumanising bullshit that is already out there.

    • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I feel like you’ve just projected a lot of your own context onto OP’s question. I think I understand what you’re getting at, but there’s a of anger in there that feels misplaced.

      • JoBo
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        1 year ago

        You understand what I’m getting at but you don’t think it’s worth getting angry about?

        Yeah, sure.

        • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Let me rephrase:

          When I try to read between the lines of your unnecessarily aggressive rant, I believe what you’re getting at is that the question could be perceived as being insensitive to those that cannot read or are missing limbs.

          I however think that you’re communicating in a manner that displays very little control over your emotions, and a penchant for theatrics, and you are loading a lot of your own context onto a question that lacks it.

          • JoBo
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            1 year ago

            Can you hear yourself?

            • eezeebee@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              You may be illiterate, or have no legs, or neither, and be offended by the question. You feel your feelings and nobody can tell you they are valid or not, regardless on their opinions of those feelings.

              It’s not fair for you to decide for everyone that this is objectively offensive. It’s patronizing. People who are illiterate or have no legs have their own thoughts and feelings that are just as valid as yours, and you don’t get to speak for them or anyone except yourself. They may or may not be offended, and that is not a choice you get to make for them.

              It’s great that you are concerned for those people and have empathy - I believe, or at least hope that we all do - but nobody can speak for them but themselves. I think that is part of the reason for the pushback you have received in this thread.

              • JoBo
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                1 year ago

                OP is not asking people who are affected by these disabilities to talk about their experiences. He is asking randoms to discuss which is worse, from a position of near total ignorance, for entertainment.

                • eezeebee@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  I understand that.

                  Would you agree that the question isn’t making light of either, though? It’s not making fun of people in either situation.

                  I would argue that the question makes us pause and consider what difficulties people who are in either category must experience on a daily basis. How often does the average person with legs consider accessibility challenges? How difficult would it be to be illiterate in today’s world? OP’s got us empathizing here and having a healthy discussion. At least that’s how I see it.

                  • JoBo
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                    1 year ago

                    For some reason I cannot see your post in context or see it on the thread. So I don’t know exactly what you’re responding to.

                    But the question absolutely is making light of it. It doesn’t have to make fun of people to be making their lives harder.

                    How does having people imagine what it’s like do anything other than reinforce stereotypes? On a very quick skim I can see people saying illiteracy would be fine because it’s so easy to learn to read. And others saying they’ve had to spend time in a wheelchair so they reckon they’d be fine without legs. Shut the fuck up, all of you. Jebus.

                    There’s been quite a lot of output from disabled people speaking out against this kind of context-free ‘empathising’. Most recently due to some exhibit that has people walk around in the dark so they can ‘experience’ blindness. They can’t. They never will.

                    Disabled people don’t need a bunch of randoms cod-empathising in the middle of a bunch of other randoms speking their branes. They can speak for themselves. And they do. If only the rest of us thought they were actual human beings worth listening to, and could shut the fuck up for long enough to hear them.

            • Chozo@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              That’s a ridiculously offensive question. What if Wesker is hearing-impaired?

    • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      I think you’re maybe reading too much into it… pretty sure it was just intended to be a hypothetical for discussion, not an attempt to learn about disabilities. It’s like, “Would you rather have unlimited money but be perpetually depressed, or always be happy but be perpetually broke?”

      If someone who actually has no legs came in and offered their opinion, that’d be a bonus, but it doesn’t strike me as the intended purpose of the post.

      If there’s anyone here who actually has no legs who is offended by this, I’d be interested to hear from them, but… if you have legs (because you’re clearly literate), are you sure you’re not just taking offense by proxy where none should exist or was intended?

      • JoBo
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        1 year ago

        pretty sure it was just intended to be a hypothetical for discussion

        Exactly. How the hell you constructed the rest of your thoughts around that basic fact is beyond me.

        • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          I mean, you seem to have constructed your objection around a completely different premise, so… if this is a basic fact, than what is your objection, really?

          • JoBo
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            1 year ago

            I don’t know what the fuck is going on in your head but my objection is to dehumanising discussions of disabled people. How is that so very hard to understand?