I personally don't see any harm in using "blind" in that case. It's just a figure of speech. I also would like to get an explanation if possible.

Your professor would have us remove all metaphorical meaning to language. I don't want to live in that world.

No.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt here. Perhaps he thought of a blind student when he said that word, and thought about how he/she might feel. I get it. He's trying to be sensitive. I can't say I'd be crazy about using that word around a blind person, either.

But calling it ableist and demeaning is PC-overkill. I understand his personal choice to refrain using that word - no one wants to be a dick. But when you make a general statement like that, you are silently judging everyone that uses that word. Lots of words have the potential to hurt or offend. "That joke is lame." "Put the TV on mute." "This song is so sick." I could easily apply the same logic to lame, mute, or sick, but I wouldn't, because I understand contextual usage and assume others do too.

i don't have vision issues. my disability is different. a good chunk of my career is built around understanding disabilities. people with disabilities are a little different from other protected groups. we are tired of *unnecessary* special treatment. we want to be treated harshly like everyone else, rather than treated like delicate flowers. the only people who are going to get bent out of shape over this sort of language are people without disabilities who want to prove that they are good and progressive.

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if your professor really wants ensure they are not being ablist tell him to make sure all his content in his course is accessible. if there are handouts, make sure they are available electronically before they are needed, not hard copy, and in an accessible format. make sure images have alt-text, large enough font size, proper colour use, proper use of formatted tables, ect.

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**tl;dr** - a person isn't going to care if a prof uses the word blind. they are going to care if their homework and lecture notes aren't accessible to people with disabilities

He would cringe in our household. We make all sorts of blind jokes. But, no, the term blind is not ableist unless you're a neo social justice warrior.

Blind in general isn't derogatory, at least not when used to talk about blind people. When it's used metaphorically like that to mean "insensate" or "ignorant," that does create bad associations about blind people to some extent and if people were thinking, they might avoid it. Still, it's not something most blind people would call you out on.

Talking about the blind as "a people" doesn't feel offensive but if someone used my blindness as a reason to single me out in conversation - I think I would not be offended by the actual word, just the insensitive way they used it.

I am not in a minority group and don't know if that's how minorities feel when ethnicity or colour words are used in the same 2 ways - if they do I guess it would define blind as derogatory.

I personally dont find it offensive. I do occasionally find the overuse of the word obnoxious, but not offensive. That's mostly because there's so many annoying girls on twtter etc who feel the need to post cutesy "omg i'm so blind without my glasses hee hee" things that search engines pull up insted of thigs that are actually interesting. But i think the metaphor your prof used was ok

Your prof's PC credentials are derogatory, and I am deeply offended.

There are two sides to this issue. "Blind" as a label for the disability that someone has is never derogatory; it's just a statement of fact. I'm blind, and I'm going to need my lesson materials in an accessible format. Similarly, "blind" to mean "unable to see" is not Derogatory, either. Someone can be blinded by the light, or the blinding reflection of the sun off the snow. Again, that's just a statement of fact.

However, "blind" to mean stupid or ignorant is absolutely derogatory. But at the same time, we can't police every single word everyone uses. If a sentence like "blind to the truth" was in a textbook, I might complain about it. A textbook should have gone through multiple rounds of editing; someone, at some point, should have noticed the unfortunate association. In a lecture, though? "Blind to the truth" could also mean that they were literally unable to see the truth, in some fashion. We could certainly argue that the colonists were culturally unable to visually perceive the truth of what they were looking at. A cultural or moral disability, as it were, rather than a physical one. Or it could just be a turn of phrase that your professor used without thinking. Either way, it's not a thing worth worrying about.

I read about this ableist thing about a year ago. I am blind and if you use the word blind in front of me I won't care. Perhaps ableism has its place, people being treated nicer than they are at the moment is always a good thing in my book but sometimes it's a bit to much.

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Nope. Blind doesn't offend me or anyone else I know that is blind.

I don't think it is derrogatory. We use it as a figure of speech in our family, "blind luck", "blinded to the truth", etc. We also make sll kinds of blind jokes and puns. Too much PC out there.

Not to me. May not be exact, if someone has some vision, but not bad.