If you were tasked with picking an impossible choice. What would you pick? I want to hear y’all talk about why you picked the choice you did. You don't have to but I would like to hear what you considered and your thought process.
This one particularly makes me curious because blind from birth people seem to be more inclined to pick blind from birth while sighted tend to pick sight than blind. This is not a wrong answer, but it makes me curious why people would be so afraid of experiencing something so foreign, unfamiliar and hard to conceptualize. A blind from birth person has no idea what sight is. They don’t know about things like colors (they may know the abstract concept if you say somethings green it’s green). People born with sight have trouble even conceptualizing that, not knowing things like direction and feeling completely disoriented. It's easy to get trapped in the thought of "but I can’t see the beauty in the world" but you must have to realize that blind from birth people do see beauty in this world it’s just that it’s not sight. They can vary from different senses, I mean let’s assume you can still smell, feel, hear, taste. While you might find beauty in certain colors a blind from birth person may find beauty in things like texture, feel. People who are sensory (I should know I’m a sensory person) I can relate to that because I like the soft feelings of blankets, smooth surfaces etc.
You know what my polls aren’t difficult enough. I’m going to expose the non visually impaired people to a bit of blind culture. I’m going to ask an uncomfortable question that I’ve personally asked other blind people and talked about it with them. Assuming you have no other choice, and you must select one of the following: Would you rather be blind from birth or develop blindness after being sighted? I want you to understand that usually this isn’t a choice people get to make, I still have no idea if my vision will rapidly deteriorate.
I will say that the two arguments I’ve heard on both sides of the coin. My blind from birth friend stated she would rather be blind from birth, this is all she ever knows about the world. Even though it’s hard for her she wouldn’t have it any other way, she enjoys the fact that she can’t see faces understand the concept of beauty etc. She would rather not have to lose something that she had prior, as it would be an excruciating experience knowing what once was. I agreed with her on this point the concept doesn’t exactly entice me. That’s why this poll is uncomfortable. You really have to think though because consider the second argument.
If you were sighted before you have an imagination still, you can understand dimensions, visualize things. You can have dreams as you once did. You have access to memories of when you were sighted although they may fade away. I get recommended yt shorts from someone who argues he’d rather not have it any other way. He’s able to remember his kids' faces by feel and see the memory. He’s able to do things that blind from birth people may. It be. It’s also important to understand that being blind does not mean just a lack of visual perception like you close your eyes. You may still see light, movement of light etc. it’s not a unified experience. So which would it be?
@kdj8 I have heard about orca for Linux… I’d really like to have a bigger thread with people using screen readers on various platforms such as iOS (whether they use the apple one or if there’s another solution), macOS, android, FreeBSD (yes). Linux with wayland (may be more difficult.) Although most of my blind friends fully disabled their computer’s screen. I assume a bare minimal tiling wm would actually be a great thing since you can navigate fairly easy with the keyboard. Mouse positioning is super hard. Maybe I ping @alttexthalloffame to start this thread. One of the hardest parts about this that no one acknowledges is the difference between blind from birth and sighted before being blind. Blind from birth folks typically have a hard time organizing things in their head as they have no concept of two or three dimensions while ex sighted folk may be able to understand dimensions.
@kdj8 by itself this doesn’t sound too bad until you realize blind from birth folks are expected to be taught the same concepts in schools. You’ll find they often times struggle heavily with math that requires you to visualize it. There’s little to no accommodations for things like IT work either. Windows Server is not exactly accessible, professors get frustrated with the noise of screen readers or people taking too long. It’s really sad. Describing CS concepts with hierarchy and all those visual representations means nothing to a blind by birth person. Despite this I know people who still make the best out of it but often times they have to spend a significant amount of time figuring things out on their own because nobody is patient enough to work through it with em. Imagine trying to explain something like an iterative loop to someone who doesn’t understand the very concept of top or bottom.
I’ve stopped using the term "reee" because of its negative connotation with 4chan, and in particular the notorious green texts that were always ableist in nature referring to autistic people as subhuman. Am I right in that stance? I was tempted to use the term for one thing but I thought back "hm I don’t want to stoop down to their level" because it’s usually used in reference to any neurodivergent they don’t like.
On second thought I can just replace that with "wahh ;( wahh" because that’s pretty much the same thing but isn’t related that much to chan. I mean I typically don’t like to call people crybabies but I was going to point out it’s usually the free speech type people who whine and complain when someone closes the door on them. Yeah you want free speech with a big glass of allowed hate speech? Find it elsewhere. Stop crying snowflake. Free speech doesn’t mean free from social repercussions.
If this was tumblr I’d actually get crybabies in the replies saying that it’s justified usage since it’s not directly making fun of autistic people struggling with speech and motor skills. Or alternatively people saying that I should "reclaim" the hate symbol. 🥴 Sorry but get better terms. Saying everyone who complains about an issue you don’t believe in is autistically screeching is really ableist and a stale joke on top of that. If you’ll even call it a joke to begin with, but that’s assuming it was ever funny at all.
The worst thing you can do if you want to be an ally is argue with us about semantics. Genuinely, because not only do you not know what it’s like but you’re being extremely dismissive of our experiences and our feelings. Talking over us, arguing with us about things is just not the way to show your support. You can ask questions, but be respectful. I’ve seen too many "allies" ask questions before trying to use the answers to contradict us. Even if you have the best of intentions saying things like "well are you sure that’s the real you?" is extremely disrespectful towards us. We’ve spent quite a lot of time pondering and exploring before being publicly queer, of course we are sure. Casting doubt on whether we are truly what we say we are is the easiest way to get us to not want you in our spaces. Asking us to speak on extremely triggering or heated political questions is not the way to go either. We understand you’re curious but don’t put us on the spot by asking things like "well how do you feel about transgender people in sports?". I’m sure there’s people who’d be willing to answer that for you but most of us would be uncomfortable especially being put on the spot like that publicly
If you wouldn’t bring up something like "How do you feel about Charles Manson" towards yourself or other straight people don’t bring up people who are terrible but just so happen to be queer as a gotcha. Pro tip you can be a horrible person and be queer, it doesn’t invalidate your queerness. It just makes you a horrible person much like you can be completely straight and a terrible person. By tying our queerness to your belief on us as a good person you are saying that we’re just one of the good ones. "I just don’t like cis people because $GENOCIDAL_DICTATOR exists. They represent the cis community as a whole" that just doesn’t work. Why bring it up? Especially don’t misgender people who you believe are bad because they haven’t "earned your respect". I’ve had enough of that toxic shit in my life in which someone was so attracted to me that they’d gender me and respect my gender identity but call other trans people slurs, make them uncomfortable and cry. That’s just fucked I would rather you be a consistent transphobic piece of shit
@Clover it’s such a minority of trans folks in sports. Genuinely I think that they should absolutely be encouraged because the entire notation regarding separation of man and woman in sports is entirely based on misogyny and the idea women are just inferior to men. Not all sports are as physically demanding as others, there’s so many different ways to categorize people by strength, other characteristics that it doesn’t even fucking matter
@Clover I also HATE HATE HATE the notation of "oh they’re not on HRT so they’re faking it to get better at sports" it’s like bitch, yeah we fake our entire identity to get a small "advantage" and to be needlessly shat on, hated on and harassed by adults with nothing better to do. You know how much genuine courage it must take for those people to be openly trans and playing sports? Dysphoria is a bitch. Being trans should not and does not mean you have to abandon your existing dreams, passions. If you want to be an athlete you fucking should be able to pursue that. It is what we mean by trans rights having the ability to just ducking exist without being thought of as an ongoing political issue. Imagine how much outrage there’d be if someone opened a debate about whether or not heterosexual people should be allowed to play in sports. That’s how you know it’s ASS BACKWARDS because suddenly when we want to be in sports it’s an issue and it’s political. This is not equality.
@Clover true true. I forgot that the people raising the question regarding trans sports are more often than not asking it out of genuine intent or concern
@sleepybisexual yeah it’s good for like one thing but most of the time it switches my words completely trying to anticipate what I’m about to say. Fuck right off I hate when that happens it drives me insane. Changing swear words or other things to different words also…
@sleepybisexual apple sincerely I meant FUCKING not DUCKING I have not said DUCKING in any context apart from here, yet you continue to replace that word.
anyway you can’t become a queer ally by putting “ally” in your bio. that is not how it works
but i don’t think that “you’re only an ally if you actively fight for queer people” is entirely accurate. what’s more important is making queer people feel safe around you
@starshine Final reply, but using neutral terms like "my partner" in order to make it common vocabulary so that LGBTQ+ people don’t have to oust themselves. Not asking them personally invasive questions in public spaces, not speaking to other people and ousting them against their will. Basic humanity really? That ensures that you don’t get pushed out of queer spaces. I don’t have a problem with non LGBTQ+ people in my queer spaces as long as they’re understanding of these basic boundaries. I’m all for it if they want to learn more about us, especially since I started off cishet and explored. If they don’t know enough about an LGBTQ+ issue they could just ask before talking about it like they’re an expert. We don’t just want people who "speak on our behalf" we want people that treat us normally. It’s nice if people speak on our behalf but only if they understand what they’re saying, as it’s quite common for "allies" to misrepresent our voices' unfortunately.