Category: the Rant Board
The majority of people I know think it’s such an amazing accomplishment for a blind person to walk from point a to point b, for a blind person to cook a meal by him/herself, for a blind person to clean up after themselves, etc. etc. It’s frustrating to see 21-year-old blind students who have pretty much accepted that they can’t cook meals for the rest of their lives, can’t travel, etc. It’s such a disservice because then you get into the real world and no one’s holding your hand and there’s no way for all blind people to reach their potential if it’s just assumed what their potential entails. Even at some independent living camps that claim to be established to be a place for blind people to “learn skills,” food is served and travel is done with sighted guide most of the time so that students don’t really get a taste of alternatives. Those programs are great for some and I’m not knocking programs as a whole, but for others they’re not an appropriate fit. I don’t want this frustration to be pointless and directionless. It breaks my heart to see students who, for whatever reason, have assumed that blindness means nothing to offer and need for help all the time. I shouldn’t be seen as “amazing” just because I genuinely enjoy cooking, exploring, experimenting with hair and make-up, and learning. In high school, I kind of accepted some things that I now know I shouldn’t have accepted. I accepted that I was learning all of the skills I would need for later in life just by showing up to week-long independent living camps, but not pushing doing these skills at home, that I was learning all the mobility skills I’d need by attending weekly mobility lessons, but not going out on my own and practicing them. I did myself a big disservice by assuming that, but that’s in the past, so moving on. I am determined to make a difference in the perception that people, especially youth since that is where my passion lies, have about what is expected of blind people. Cooking, cleaning, traveling, child-raising, make-up, hair-styling, sports, etc. etc. are not sight-required activities. This may be obvious to some, but unfortunately news to many. They are only seen as sight-required activities because the majority of the world’s inhabitants use sight to accomplish them. To assume that they are sight-required activities is like assuming that someone living in Norway requires an egg cup to eat a soft-boiled egg just because that’s how everyone around them eats soft-boiled eggs. I am determined to make a difference, both in my life and in the lives of others. The end. I feel better now that I wrote that.
Just remember in your passion and zeal, there are a lot of non-blind-related reasons why someone may or may not do any number of these things. It's all well and good, but I have seen the very destructive other side, where every flaw, every minor failure, and every so-called (usually image-oriented) misstep is prioritized, punished and the real survival skills are left out.
The truth is, you may in fact end up at 40-something barely making it, working a ton of hours and far too much month at the end of the money, but it's not because yu didn't try hard enough, or that you so-called 'let your blindness keep you back,' etc.
Just wise up and see what other reasons there are for people doing, and not doing things. You say it's not about sight? I agree with you. My whole family does nothing with electronics, electricity, programming or anything similar, besides use their cell phone. If they were blind and I were sighted, some would claim that it is because they were blind or 'letting their blindness get in the way'.
I am not the woodworker my father is: i am good if I cut a perfectly straight line and don't have to fix the edge I just made with my pocketknife. And yes, I heard it all from the zealot types when I was near your age; "why can't you do it like your sighted peers?" well, I can, it's just done a bit differently, and the end product, fixed with a pocketknife or not, is nothing to be ashamed about. But it wasn't my lack of eyesight that kept me from doing woodworking, it was just interest.
My sister is an amazing classical pianist, no matter how stiff the competition is. Most of us would only dream of playing that well. But it wasn't because I let blindness, or so-called laziness about Braille music, prevent me from becoming that good: I studied for quite a few years, but I had your normal average young-man tendencies and as an early teen / pre-adolescent I spent more time out running around than I did practicing. And, in my later teens went off and picked up keyboards and got into rock bands instead. None of that had anything at all to do with eyesight, no matter what people said, struck or otherwise implied.
You may be right: there probably are caged individuals inside of institutions where they behave exactly as you describe. I've seen it on few occasions: one summer in high school comes to mind. But while some in my sphere of influence imagined and fantasized I would catch some sort of critters from 'those' people, I more saw a crowd of caged birds who'd never been out, or at least hadn't in a very long time. But you see that in any institutions: prisons, drug rehab programs, everywhere. I have seen the varied forms it takes but it all looks the same to me: institutionalized.
But if you unilaterally go the other direction, you will end up damaging people just as much, only differently. Fortunately, there are freethinking paleolithic types inside and outside these types of places, so they will make it happen one way or the other. The problem with the opposite extreme shows up later: when you get to your mid 30s early 40s, and not everything went according to plan, and you really start to feel like a class A fuckup. Fortunately, Man as a self-reliant, paleolithic, thinking being can and will survive. I hear you: I don't like institutions either, and am very wary when people I am even remotely familiar with want to go enroll in some lockdown so-called rehab or other. I'm one of the masses that's usually pretty happy to see them uncover some skam at a drug or a religion rehab place, and dismember the building brick by brick. But your opposite extreme, the zealous anti-blind-appearnaces and all, is another institution is all, whose only justification for existence is the failure of others.
I'm not one of these new anti-ambition fools: far from it. I encourage all our new guys in the Coast Guard to get out there and take some initiative on getting their training and all. I'm the same at work. But the zeal you're talking about is not ambition: it's all appearances, generally for the so-called group, which is artificially constructed anyhow. I'm not saying you are at that point yet, I don't know you and you don't know me. But I would say take more of a survivalist approach, a self-reliant approach, where you're not gonna end up hitting 40 someday and wonder what the fuck happened. But just remember while the industry you're talking about sells dependence to these poor saps, the zealots on the other extreme sell failure. In the first case you pay right away. In the second, you pay some right away, more of a deposit, and later you just pay up with interest. It's your typical fundamentalist type thinking: where they sell you first on what a failure you are, then once properly broken down they sell you on what so-called remedy they have for the situation, which of course is never enough. Any good drug dealer always leaves the customer coming back for more. And pushers they all are. Just take the self-reliant approach, I say. And you may not get others out of the institutionalized lifestyle, any more than either the zealot or the institutional would get some of us out of the self-reliant lifestyle. Sounds heartless to put it this way, but they aren't your problem: you are. Their success or failure isn't gonna help you put food on the table, shoes on the kids' feet, look to the needs of aging parents and everything else which comes along as life rockets forward through space and time. Those in your immediate influence, if they want to be influenced by you, will be.
But I'd be very careful before assuming someone doesn't do x or y because they're blind. That is a projection based highly on conjecture, stories about people who know other people who saw someone who ... and it usually gets more gross or more unbelievable as the teller retells it over the years.
Talk radio in the 90s was full of such tales about gays, and some sectors of society are equally replete with said lurid descriptions about the blind. I will give both groups of storytellers this, though: they are emphatic and fixated. But that doesn't make them at all believable. Just think about it.
the real problem here is not lowered expectations, but people making assumptions based on what they perceive others are thinking/feeling/acting out.
as Leo said, rather than assuming something is or isn't being done cause of x, y, or z, self-reliance is key.
once that's accomplished, people's lowered expectations won't matter cause you'll know relying on yourself is truly the only way not to feel disappointed/frustrated in life.
I know this is easier said than done for most, but I think it's fair to say it not only works, but takes away from those added stresses placed on us by taking things personally.
Cliche: You never know until you try.
I have learned that I feel safer having someone advise me on how to get to a new place, but that I can cook reasonably well on my own. It's different for every person regardless of sight. Anyone who tells you that you can't do something without a logical/practical reason is an ass.
Ah yes.I just went camping with a girl who I thought had serious significant other potential. Turns out I was qite right for once. Heck, the fact that she eveninvited me camping after learning I was blind was a major plus in my book. And while she did help me do some things it wasn't eccessive and she had enough common sense to make sure I wanted help first before stepping in. Her folks, however, were something of a different matter. Oh they didn't actually do anything to interfere with me anytime I so much as got up from where I was sitting and I definitely liked them, but both had at various times in the past worked in homes helping more severely disabled people and, as Happy Heart says, made assumptions that we blind folks would be the same. So I think I went against all their preconceived notions of us whenI went unaided except for Sandra's getting me headed in the right direction whenever the time came to use the shall we say, facilities. And of course up in the woods that meant a tree or some bushes to slip behind to do the deed. But even her six-year-old daughter, though she does have her moments, has the right idea more often than not. But her folks, while they were always unfailingly polite, seemed unnerved by the fact that I could crap without help. LOL.
LOL brian. I get that with my in-laws, too. It's incredibly frustrating when EVERYONE ELSE is helping with Christmas dinner and I am just sitting on my butt and not being permitted to help (there's too many people in the kitchen, etc.)
Sometimes I wonder if that's really true or if they're just trying to protect me...
This is a great topic. From my experience and what I've seen, it seems as though a lot of blind people have trouble finding that middle ground. In other words, they are rebellious with their independence and don't allow anyone to do much for them, or they are more passive about it and let things get done for them.
Personally for me, before I went to Louisiana for my independence training, I just figured that it's the way it is. I can't do things for myself, and if I do I always need some one to watch me. Thank God I learned otherwise.
I have finally adjusted and understood that middle ground, but it is an ongoing adjustment for my family. I am convinced that some family members may never adjust to it, no matter how hard I try to educate them and not allow them to do every little thing for me.
No matter how frustrating it is, people are always going to try and step over the line to do things for you, but it is your responsibility to let them know that it isn't necessary, without being aggressive or getting pisssed off about it. If you get angry, then more stereotypes and misbeliefs about blind people will arise.
Good points to the last poster.
Also to the original post: All camps for kids that I have been aware of provide food and necessities, chaperones for travel arrangements to and from the site, etc. This has been true for the daughter's experience anyway. Growing up I did not go to camps, but everyone knew about the good ol' KP, and yet now the daughter's camps have never had anyone do KP. Hers are not blind camps. Again, you're reaching: it has nothing to do with blindness.
And really, just because I do something nice for someone elderly doesn't mean that I think elderly people cannot be independent. Just because I bring food to a woman, or go outside and bring in wood, leaving her to sit there, does not mean I am a sexist pig and think women can't. I have a sister-in-law in the Marines, and a sister in the Army, who could demonstrate otherwise if I really thought that. Both of them shoot guns, run, and do missions. But if I were to do something for them, they would not imagine that I was doing it because I thought they couldn't, or thought they were helpless.
Admittedly, it does happen, and it's like anything else: you just make your trade-offs in life, and choose to associate, or not, with someone who is like that. It complicates when you have kids, because now mutual trust is required by, and between, adults. And people imagining fantasies about us being helpless don't trust us, and for me anyway, are themselves extremely untrustworthy. I could give examples but will save that for another time. Anyway quit blaming the blind people in question: any and every one of us is a failure in the eyes of the expectations / failure / blind-whatever industry. Otherwise, how could it exist? It's got to do the failure propaganda thing the way McDonalds does billboards on the freeway, otherwise, it would never be able to sell its wares.
to the poster who mentioned not being able to help in the kitchen, you have to be assertive if you want things to change.
if people say there isn't room for you, get up, walk to the kitchen, and search for something you can help with. or, if you hear someone say, "I need help peeling strawberries", for example, jump on that bandwagon.
in other words, don't leave room for anyone to limit you, or assume anything you wouldn't want them to.
HH, you are making assumptions that simply aren't there. I know the layout of the kitchen and it is small... short of basically telling someone else to get out of the kitchen and piss off, my options seem to be limited. You should've seen my MIL when I was cutting up eggs to make dviled eggs once... you'd think that I never cooked anything in my life, because cutting eggs involves a knife *rolls eyes*
well, then, you have no right to say it bugs you. obviously it isn't that big a deal, if you refuse to find a solution.
no need to be on the deffensive, though; I was simply sharing thoughts. *shrugs*.
No defensiveness here, just observations.
I, like Brian, amd mildly amused about the things thta people think we can/can't do
I'll say this much, at least my current GF's parents sem to be aking it better than my x wife's parents or more particularly her mother. She, no matter how many time I or Maria told her she didn't need to, would always insist that Maria ask me if I wanted something, even if she was closer to me than Maria. Indeed er response when presented with such explanations was to chuckle indulgently and say it wasn't true. So CM's statements do have merit. Even if her own kitchen is small enough that she might be in the way sometimes that doesn't mean she doesn't go to places for holiday meals where the kitchen would be big enough that she could help with preparation. But some people just won't listen to you no matter how assertive you are. You have to, I believe the saying is, pick your battles?
Self-reliance is going to be the downfall of the US of A. Believe me, I am one of the most self-reliant people you'll ever meet and have always been so. But we can't live in our world happily and with fulfillment without allowing others to be there for you, to aid you in life's happy and sad times, and to assist you with things. So self-reliance is good, but not that good. Blindness isn't necessarily the cause of a lot of blindness-related misconceptions. A lack of training and a lack of blind people with skills that choose to be active in showing off those skills is the problem. Stevey Wonder? What a huge rocker! And I have to wonder if he ever cooked a meal for himself... And many centers and organizations and camps are ran by sighted people that received training from other sighted people and their only reality is what their thoughts are about what blind people can and can't do, and unfortunately someone that is learning isn't ordinarily going to be able to shatter those misconceptions. Those camps are a disservice Dissonance, whether they be for sighted or for blind, especially if the goal of the camp is to learn life skills. Life skills aren't attained by sitting in a classroom, having a conversation or riding in a van to the store to be guided around and to pick up a boxed lunch that you then bring back in a van and place in a microwave and then you go lay down in a warm bed with the heat and bills paid for you without having to worry about a thing. Many people both blind and sighted end up going into the real world unprepared, and it's ten times worse for a blind person because a blind person often is not able to pick up on sighted cues that people give off such as roommates or something like that. Blind people don't generally get socially accepted behaviors especially if they've been institutionalized. And blind people can't just get up and look outside to find the nearest convenience store to find a frozen pizza, read the instructions and prepare it. So they end up relying on others for their entire lives not because they particularly enjoy it or because of their blindness, but because of the perceptions that are out there and because of the lack of training provided to those that are tasked with the nurturing and training of blind individuals. OK, hope this late night ramble made some sense, I think it's time for bed.
Aw c'mon young sports! I know far too many young hipster types who are fully sighted who can't cook, barely clean up after their little selves and can't manage a lot of things.
And do you want to know why the adult blind, at least some of the adult blind (myself included), aren't willing to be active in showing off those skills? Because once being a show dog was no longer required (aka you become a teenager or young adult), you just quit attempting to play clown monkey and do the demo for people. I just get 'er done, and leave Project Show-dog for some marketing type. If someone does attempt the demo-the-blind-thing business, you may amuse a few, you will make others resentful because they think you are trying to get attention, and you will be picked apart. Rather than Project Clown I should have just called it Project Failure.
What a ridiculous notion, this demo-the-blind-thing act really is!
You get one of two responses when you do it:
Response number 1 (likely the most common in humans): General anger and wild animal behavior from resentful humans who are angry because you are so-called getting special attention. Never mind this is not attention you wanted, like for doing something cool, or some daring stunt. But any time the attention lands on you for a reason that the other animal cannot get the same type of attention, that animal is likely to act out, and quickly.
Response Number 2: Best described as the mesmerized look a bird gives when gazing fixedly into the hood, face and fangs of the cobra who is attempting to hypnotize it: sort of a tepid acceptance coupled with wild fascination, and maybe horror or some other primal human / animal emotion. This one doesn't learn anything either: just experiences the mesmerizing effects until the show is over and then moves on.
In interest of supporting the local economy, I would suggest Responder Number 2 pay a visit to Barnum and Bailey, or other similar places.
So there you have it: That's why more blind people don't "Show off" or deliberately demonstrate how the blind do x or y. Who wants to pay when there are absolutely no results?
As a kid, I rode the fence on the blind magic show issue: sometimes complied and was rebuffed by Responder Number 1, sometimes refused / rebelled and took guff for noncompliance. Hey, everyone gets it for noncompliance, so had I it to do over again, I simply would have been always unwilling to put on said magic shows. The animal response from Number 1 is always the most difficult to manage, like capturing an escaped parrot without toweling them first. I understand it's just nature, and can't be helped, but definitely the prudent would avoid contact with it.
Ah yes. And anytime a blind person makes a joke, regardless of the subject but especially when the subject was blindness itself, the general reaction from the sighted in the vicinity is usually akin to what it would have been if the blind person had suddenly spoken in some alien dialect or in some extreme cases urinated right out in plain site. And then there's Voc Rehab, who more often than not seem to prefer to spend their time telling you what they think you should do rather than helping you get on the road to doing what you yourself would like to do. I'm referring to jobs and careers here mainly. I've often noticed that Voc Rehab counsellors and their superiors like to keep blind folks in career fields that are "safe," meaning that it's a field where they've had lots of success placing the blind. But they don't necessarily consider that not every blind person wants to work in those fields. Anytime a blind person expresses interest in a field of work that doesn't fall within Voc Rehab's safe box, the counsellor seems always to have what must in some cases amount to a moral obligation to do everything to persuade the client to go with one of the "safe" options. "It's not a stable job." they say. But to be quite honest I don't really think there's such a thing as a "stable" job anymore, regardless of disability. Besides I thought the idea was to find more things that we as blind people can do, not to keep us in little boxes?
I wholeheartedly agree with Leo's last post. it's about quietly living your life, doing whatever you have to do; no need to be a showoff, or try to prove things to people.
BryanP, heer's the way it works on the institutional front:
Where privately held companies, and publicly-held corporations are responsible to their investors, public institutions are responsible to their investors: the taxpayers.
Voc Rehab and services for the blind and any other employment service is designed to do one thing: Get the masses off the public tit and start them paying into the system via taxation. So, naturally, they will attempt the shortest path to that end, which will have the highest incidence of success, with a few casualties along the way. I experienced this also in college, where after earning a degree, a woman wanted to 'change my goals' after having known me for a total of 30 seconds, telling me telemarketing was a great choice. I asked, "For the technically inclined?" Admittedly with more than a bit of sarcasm there.
It was up to me to either go along with that program or do like the animals do, and get the ass out there and make it happen. Look at it like most short-term investors look at layoffs: We all know that a massive layoff often has long-term devastating consequences to a company's viability, product and scientific knowledge and other factors. But most stock trading happens in the short term and so layoffs, which produce short-term results / dividends, are the order of the day. Since institutions' financiers are the taxpayers, the mutual fund manager being your Congressman, they're going to take the shortest path to get people off the tit, into the contributing masses of humanity pumping money back into the machine which feeds them. That's all. Once you realize that, you expect no more and no less. Now, I will grant you, just like private companies, individuals working in those places will have varying degrees of customer service, and perhaps a majority of them would do things differently if their financiers were not expecting this particular outcome. But they've got to put food on the table just like the rest of us, so just like us in Corporate America / the private sector, they strip and hoe and so-called sell out for the man, if they have to. The public sector is no different than the private: engage with them if they have what you need, and you have what they need, and you are willing to compromise to meet their demands. Probably their biggest problem is they have no real competition. There aren't two services for the blind across the street from each other, vying for you as a customer, because the state will only support one. Would be interesting, and probably produce a very efficient set of results, if we did do that, still only granting the agencies peacemeal, aka they get so much dough per damned bat they provide services to.
But it's pretty funny how the lefties will claim that public institutions have ethics, or are human, and the righties will claim that corporations are people. Neither are true: They're both a bit like viruses: sort of alive but not quite, and you just have to massage them around some, tweak them a bit here or there, using both a carrot and a big stick to keep them going in the direction that serves actual humans best.
Competition often provides both the carrot and the stick, though there are other factors which do this as well.
I really don't let this sort of thing get to me. I find people's awe at my being able to do mundane things amusing, something to have a laugh with the wife about when we're by ourselves. I figure most folks are coming from the perspective of what if they went blind and tend to just not be able to imagine what the experience is like. So blind people who lack skills are not to blame for these misconceptions. And, as for those real or imaginary unskilled blind people, I don't give a damn. Really I have no business judging people I don't know if I can help it, and wringing your hands and saying "oh the humanity" over the poor education of the blind isn't worth a hill of jelly beans unless you will follow up your assorted beefs with action. You gonna get in there and get involved and risk disappointment or ya gonna wait around for the other guy to do things. My attitude is you can't fix people no matter how much you wish you could so just get on with your life and take care of yourself. Live and let live.
Oh, and let me add one more thing. For those of you who are either sick and tired of the disparaging attitudes the blind have about the blind, or you're one of these people with such an attitude and need a good laugh, go search for my satirical piece called "how to be an OK blind person."
Thanks for the last two posts and yeah I am on my way to look that up.
well said, poster 19. I completely agree. :)
Well I've already decided I'm going to do what I want regardless of what Joke Rehav thinks I should do. And what I wat to do is to try to become a writer, whether it be books or magazine articles or what have you.