# A new Blind/VI skinhead movement? Is

Category: Let's talk

## Post 1 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Friday, 27-May-2011 15:13:43

Well now that I've been on here for two years, I am amazed at the apparent symmetry between some people on here and the skinheads I went to school with in high school back in the 80s. If the shoe doesn't fit, you know what not to do.
What many claim as the blind and vi community comes from what amounts to halfway houses and correctional facilities.
The descriptions of the blind on here remind me of the skinheads we used to fight as teenagers before a very normal locker room fight was deemed politically incorrect.
They, like you, took their supposed majority from public institutions, halfway houses, and correctional facilities. Said places are, of course, replete with misfits of all sorts, and if you poll your data from said places you can indeed come up with some interesting anti-&LT;insert-favorite-group-here>-rhetoric.
And they, most probably you also, have never been to said facilities: you know a guy who knows a guy who read something or saw something. As a tangent, said boys have subsequently done their turn at several facilities, by now well-acquainted with the six-by-nine.
Unfortunately, we were stupid and called them wannabes: anymore I don't think they're wannabes, they tend to blow things up and otherwise terrorize innocents.
So how long till people gaining their understanding of the alleged blind community from halfway houses and correctional facilities also start blowing things up?
Oh, I realize you probably don't have the boots, the chains and other 1980s-style skinhead garb but definitely got the propaganda machine down pat. Only instead of black you say blind, instead of guns and crack houses you say other things.
Of course those things really do exist. If they didn't exist in some form or another, the story would not come off so well. I just strongly doubt they exist nearly to the proportions said by people who make their observations at public institutions, correctional facilities and halfway houses and / or the blind equivalent.
After all: we're blind. We're on subways, buses, etc. and don't know whether the person across the aisle is blind or not, has a cane or a dog or not. Like the skinhead boys of the 1980s, the extremes are taken, and usually from public institutions comprised of incompetent, derelict or otherwise institutionalized people.
Like the boys in the 1980s nobody can give real numbers, cite sources, provide real data. It is nothing more than slapped-together pseudo-statistics that sound good enough to get the masses excited.
The fact one wouldn't want to associate with someone displaying a given set of behaviors is well understood. But, like the skinhead boys of my youth, many of you establish the conspicuous and defective as the norm, and paint a picture where you either have the defective bunch running everything or you cleanse the population from its cancer. You haven't gone quite that far, but give it time.
And here is where you divert from the skinheads of my youth:
At least the skinhead boys didn't get all high and mighty. Unlike you, they were not sensitive to the groups for which it was fashionable to be sensitive for.
Some of you would get seriously out of shape when someone used a derogatory word on another race, group or sexual orientation. You'd call it racist, homophobic and any number of other terms if the same broad brush you apply were being applied to other groups.
When that brush gets applied to those groups, usually the appliers are every bit like you: taking their statistics and numbers from public institutions, halfway houses and correctional facilities. In other words, taking their statistics from a fraction of the population.
Ironically, it's usually those of you who get the most upset about that who are most likely to immitate the skinheads and play your Hail Hitler games against the blind, just as they did against the black and others, drawing from correctional facilities and public institutions you've probably more often heard about than been to.
The skinhead boys were at least consistent.
But at least you can call yourselves fashionable: it's fashionable to jump to the aid of certain groups like gays and blacks. When it's no longer fashionable, I think we know based on how you are with the blind, just where you'll be.
Since now the 1980s is retro, and among some quarters retro is cool, perhaps some of you all can make the shaved head, the boots, and the chains a bit of a fashion statement? May as well: You apply the skinheads' principles to at least some groups. You are proof we have not elevated as a species like we may have formerly thought. In other words, the only reason you'd get upset as I mentioned earlier, has everything to do with the fashionable nature of being upset at racism, etc., and nothing at all to do with the principle. Otherwise the principle being ethically defective wouldn't be applied by you against another alleged kind.
Perhaps the skinhead boys couldn't be proud on account of the pretentiousness. Then again, maybe they could be: Great cover.

## Post 2 by Grace (I've now got the ggold prolific poster award! wahoo! well done to me!) on Saturday, 28-May-2011 10:49:12

I won't get into conversation right now regarding the retro era
only to say, you've really
shared here in your thots and give one,
well, me, anyhow some thots to think upon.
Thanks Leo, much appreciation~

## Post 3 by dj outrage (I can't call it a day til I enter the zone BBS) on Saturday, 28-May-2011 12:15:48

You know what? you have a point there
I've been to blind college and there were sertenly a lot of people there who would have blown the place up just as soon as they'd got something to do it with, however most of the blind comunity are, sadly, not so interested in starting anything a kin to a revolution. It's kind of ironic that me and my fairly hippie ways would say this, but if the blindies ever get together to start something i'll happily join in.

## Post 4 by Miss M (move over school!) on Saturday, 28-May-2011 14:51:04

Most of the blind community, like most of the sighted community, is apathetic and otherwise incompetent to start a movement about anything.

## Post 5 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Saturday, 28-May-2011 19:29:33

But looking at many board topics you will notice that many who supposedly stand up for the rights of gays, blacks and others, deriding the use of stereotypes against these people, will equally use stereotypes against the blind alleging people poke out their eyes and things, - one of your far more ridiculous claims. The skinheads of my youth had equally funny and ridiculous claims also.
If I were gay or black or any other group currently supported by fashion-oriented turncoats like you I'd be scared: once it's fashionable again to despise gays / blacks / etc. we have the proof of how you'll respond.
After all, if one group can be stereotyped to such amazing proportions as is done here against blind people, then why not just freely go ahead, use the N word, be the homophobe that only fashion is preventing you from being.
It'll happen for ya as soon as fashion dictates you can. I hope any gay, black, bi, or anyone else in a targeted group who gets a message from an alleged supporter on here checks out to see how said supporter responds to these sorts of stereotypes placed on the blind: Then they'll know if the person in question is a real supporter of their rights, or just a turncoat fashionable Nazi-wannnabe-coward. I would never conceive of trusting my lesbian friend's daughter with such people.

## Post 6 by louisa (move over school!) on Sunday, 29-May-2011 9:42:55

Don't know much about skinheads so can't comment.

## Post 7 by Miss M (move over school!) on Sunday, 29-May-2011 10:26:50

Looking at many board topics is precisely the issue: People sit on The Zone BBS posting and replying to board topics instead of actually affecting the world. Nobody outside of the Zone knows about these ping-like discussions, and few people outside of the Zone know about the Zone period.

## Post 8 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Sunday, 29-May-2011 16:46:43

Is that not true of a majority of interest-specific forums?
I'm one of those members of not only a birding forum, but one specific to my geographic region, and yet many of us go out side, take pics, or capture audio, then post it or related topics to boards. Some spazzes have gone on there too claiming we have no life, etc.
Just like here, most topics are precisely about what's happening elsewhere: just like the way humans have always interacted, except now it's online instead of at the coffeeshop.
And that bird group is one example only.

## Post 9 by Miss M (move over school!) on Sunday, 29-May-2011 22:59:04

Yeah, but birdwatchers aren't in danger of becoming skinheads. :P

## Post 10 by Godzilla-On-Toast (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Monday, 30-May-2011 18:32:25

Leo, if what you're talking about is this biggotry amongst the blind, yeah, I do think this needs some serious examination at least. I do have to wonder about a few things. First of all, is this attitude something held exclusively by blind folks, or do other minority groups do this as well. Don't African-Americans judge one another, for example, by who's ghetto and who isn't? Second, I wonder if this is how some people think they are supposed to identify with sighted folks, by writing off their own as freaks who don't know how to act normal. Granted, I think the assorted rockers or eye-pokers and unskilled and all these other things exist, but I think they are the exception and not the rule. Shit, the way people go on about it in topic after topic you'd think the goddamn unwashed eye-poking blinkie apocalypse broke out. Hahahaha!