Lot of missing the point going on around here.
Which is maybe the point, after all.
No, actually you’ve *contradicted *yourself, but I’ll get my metaphorical dick out of your arse now:)
Thanks, I think.
Like I said, it was imprecise shorthand. I meant “people who are white who are also part of the cultural majority”, which hasn’t been contradicted by later statements. But I’m not that fussed either way.
OMG. 
I’m never attempting anything like this again. The willful ignorance is truly astounding.
Hey man.
I think you’re just making too much out of this.
People are trying to help and don’t really know how. As I said earlier we are not sure where the line in the sand is supposed to be. Don’t take it personally. Most of us have never known anyone is a wheelchair. We don’t know the rules. We’re fumbling through it while trying to respect your dignity.
Yes, I understand that better than you. THAT WAS NOT THE ISSUE OF THIS RANT! People read what their comfort levels allow them to read, apparently. I have, repeatedly, tried to discuss and dissect the issues at play here. AND I NEVER ONCE HAD AN ISSUE WITH SOMEONE OFFERING ME HELP!!! Why on gods green earth can i not make it clear to you people that my feelings came NOT, NOT, NOT from being offering to help me!!! It was assuming I needed help because she was “familiar with people in wheelchairs from being her 83 year old grandmother’s caretaker”, until she died.
For emphasis.
This thread has sure gone some bizarre directions, but some of us do get it.
Yeah, at this point I think I’m just going to say nothing more. Just a bit of the good stuff gets your social aggressive/eagerness so much stronger. Dis nigga out. 
Yes, a lot of (though not all) white people have no comprehension what it’s like to suffer discrimination. Especially if they’re able-bodied, Christian, male, and middle-class or higher although you don’t have to be that level of insulated from bigotry to suffer from the disease… And you know, it’s grand that they don’t have to suffer that particular evil, which I wouldn’t wish on anyone. However, it is NOT OK for those privileged people (for privileged they are) to impose their ignorance on others. They are not fated to do that - I have known plenty of such people who, somehow (probably through education and befriending people who aren’t exactly like themselves) learn empathy for others.
Over and over I hear “but I don’t know what to do!!!” And over and over the reply is - ask if help is needed and let the other person tell you what, if anything is needed. Is it really that hard?
I have to disagree - what is being discussed here goes beyond annoying.
Then they should ASK.
Try these lines:
- do you need help?
- can I help you?
- let me know if you want help?
WHY is this so fucking hard for people?
Well, OK - at work we have a regular customer who is a dwarf. When he asks me where something is and I know it’s on a top shelf I’ll go with him and bring a stepladder so I can get it down for him. But then, I do that for anyone my height or shorter, not just because he’s literally half as tall as I am.
There’s another rule of thumb: if you are in a situation where you would open a door for something identical to yourself then do it for the person in a wheelchair or on a cane or whatever. You’re doing it to be courteous, not because of X feature of that person. If the person in the wheelchair/on a cane/crutches/walker is halfway through opening the door ask them “would you like help with that?” and if they say no take them at their word.
That’s another reason to make public spaces accessible, so you have an opportunity to meet interesting and wonderful folks who just happen to be disabled.
Because people are really bad at empathy, as a whole. We’re selfish, almost all of us, and really terrible at thinking about situations or circumstances from another person’s perspective. (Especially someone that society has taught us, our whole lives, either overtly or through more subtle means, is inferior to us.)
We’re also really bad at dealing at situations where we don’t have adequate information. We dislike being ignorant, even when it’s not willful. We’d rather blunder through a situation making mistakes than admit straight out that we don’t know what to do.
This is a situation where lack of empathy and failure to accept and moderate our own ignorance intersect and create hurtful situations. And still, still, when someone says “hey, your lack of understanding and your refusal to ask or learn are hurting me” they’re told “this is your cross to bear” and “be nicer to people who are hurting you, they’re ‘trying’” and “people are going to hurt you, get used to it” and “you’re being an asshole about this.”
It’s hard work to learn to think about other people when you’re interacting with them. It’s hard work to learn that you don’t know everything, you never will, and that’s not a character flaw but an opportunity. Even people who try to live that way fail regularly. But most people never even try, not just because it’s more effort than they want to make, but because the idea never even occurs to them.
:smack:
Seriously.
That’s not the point at all.
True, most of us have never met anyone in a wheelchair. But you have “met” one–Ambivalid. And he’s telling you (general you) what the “rules” are. The same rules you use with everyone else, use with him.
Feel free to continue to post your rants, even if some people don’t get them. Lots of us do, I think.
Yes. And maybe one tiny crumb of information will creep in to those who seemingly don’t get them. Well, we can always hope.
Want get through unless you hold the door open.
Yes, Ambivalid, please keep bringing things up. Most of the time conversations around topics of disability happen in contexts where we’re all on the same page. Your posts here foster a broader, potentially enlightening discussion that can lead to the “new normal.”
I don’t think it ever occurred to me to not choose the handicapped stall when I had to take a shit – Ambivalid’s post is directly responsible for me saying “hmmm, I think I’ll leave that stall in case someone really needs it” when I go to public bathrooms. And it’s been worth it, even if only once in my life, that I know of so far, was I in another stall when a disabled person came in and used the handicapped stall.
So please, keep posting.
Harumph! I come by my ignorance naturally. There is nothing willfu…okay, in this one little case I might have chosen to misinterpret your message, the same way many actually ignorant people would. In reality I give gimps every bit of the same lack of consideration I do everybody else. Except Crips, who I respect because they scare me.
As for your OP, yeah, you were hoping that the hygienist would see past your chair and see you as the manly man you are, and it hurt you that she really saw you as enfeebled, like her grannie. Like all of us, she had taken what experiences she had and attempted to build a worldview around them. You didn’t fit in that worldview and it embarrassed her enough to that she tried to make nice with lame smalltalk and explanation. Get the fuck over it and quit bitching about this kind person who realized she offended you and who now has an expanded definition of disabled people.
Let’s say that I, being a woman, have heard most of my life, “Wow, you can do that yourself!” Usually from men but sometimes from other women, too. You know, regular stuff like knowing which screwdriver to use or fixing a leaking toilet or balancing a checkbook—things that, I don’t know…require a penis? But if somebody offers to move something heavy for me I appreciate it, even though if I’m alone I’ll figure out a way to do it myself.
Let’s say that medical issues have caused me to gain and lose weight several times over the past twenty years to the point of how could she let herself get that fat to she must be anorexic. And yes, obese people and too-thin people are treated differently from regular sized people, in different ways. When I’m at either extreme I ignore the looks and let the saleslady bring several sizes into the fitting room.
Let’s say that I use a wheelchair sometimes because I can walk a little, not far and not for long. Because I have intermentent (I think I’ve spelled this wrong because I had a stroke and sometimes my brain is Swiss cheese which doesn’t matter anyway because I’m also half blind so WTH) claudication, caused by clots stemming from an inherited blood disorder. My choice is to frequent stores with buggys I can use as a walker, stopping from time to time to study products I have no interest in so my legs can rest a minute while the circulation “catches up” or I can go somewhere in my wheelchair and have the temerity to stand up and get what I need from a higher shelf and more often than not hear a snicker or two, to which I turn around and grin and say, “It’s a miracle, huh?”
So let’s say sometimes I can relate to various ways of “not being in the (?)norm.” Sometimes it makes me sad. Sometimes it makes me mad. Usually, though, I “scratch my butt and get glad” and get on with it.