It makes no more sense to me that one should be proud to be deaf than it does that one should be proud to be able to hear. One can hear or one cannot hear; these are facts, not moral achievements.
>The whole point is not to be defined as less than or not whole or any
>of those other presumptions.
>Read The Ragged Edge, Mouth: the voice of disability rights. You
>will see we really don't view things in the way you lay this out.
>
>We are "disabled" by society not by impairment. You are stuck it
>seems in the old welfare policy model of thinking of disability. We
>have moved on to disablism.
I don't think I mentioned the word welfare; I spoke of civil rights, which include the right to participate in society and which require the social body to support those who cannot participate fully without such support.
I don't know what "disablism" is. I know that instinctively I protect myself from deafening noises, blinding lights, and falls. Those reactions are not socially constructed; they are autonomic responses to a threat posed to my physical functioning.
Suppose that one of the side effects of a chemical used in the production of circuit boards is blindness, would you support a worker's refusal to be exposed to that chemical?
Joanna