Re: Inspiration or Objectification
It should also be noted that, in the specific case of blindness, even very basic education is new for us. People in wheel chairs or with any of a variety of physical ailments often do not need major accommodations. I'm referring specifically to things like Braille that have to be invented out of whole cloth. I think that, at least as regards intelligence, we're fighting an older stereotype that we couldn't overcome because others needed to invent things for us first. Basically, large numbers of people with disabilities could be effectively educated as soon as "everyone should be educated" became a thing, but blind people and others in similar situations are only now getting there (we certainly are not yet), and primarily because of the computer-an invention of the last 50 years. Couple this with the fact that humans are, as a whole, very visual beings who have difficulty even comprehending understanding basic concepts without
seeing them and stir. Out comes the "blind people are clueless idiots" stereotype.
I think that the message she was trying for is not that being disabled is okay if society makes it okay, but that being disabled can be dealt with if society makes it okay. Society has thus far failed to do this. Ask yourself this: if you had the educational opportunities of a sighted person, if people believed that you could do things and stopped telling you no for fear you would get hurt as a child, and if employers actually worked with us and didn't make snap judgements that we obviously can't even do basic things, how much better would blindness be? I'd still want my sight, of course, but it would certainly not prey on me so much.
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