Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Bring on the Labels: Why Teaching PFL and IFL in Schools is a Liberatory Act (medium.com)
submitted by rkingett
DrillInstructorJan 1 points 3y ago
I think anyone who has time to obsess about this stuff needs to find a hobby or something.
BenandGracie 2 points 3y ago
I agree. We have much bigger issues to worry about.
razzretina 1 points 3y ago
tl;dr: If you work in education, government, or any other public job, you're going to have to suck it up and use person first language. In all other instances, just ask how someone wants you to address their disability.
From the teacher side on the language issue, there's not much we can do. We have to use person first language at work, full stop, no exceptions made, personal opinions on the matter are irrelevant. But I do think it's up to the person how they identify. For instance, I have yet to meet an autistic person who is okay with person first language and all of my autistic friends call me on it whenever I say "person with autism" in their presence (although this doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people on the autism spectrum who do prefer person first language).
With the blind community, and serious physical disabilities, I find that the person first/disability first rules just go right out the window. Our disabilities are such a big, obvious part of us that it's a very individual choice how we want to be addressed. For example, I dislike being called visually impaired and prefer that people just say that I'm a blind person. However, I have many friends who want to be known as people with visual impairments and if I don't know somebody I will default to that language out of habit anyway.
Regarding the article itself, it feels a little disjointed and I'm not sure how personal identification would be helpful in a learning situation where a teacher doesn't want to interact with their own student. That's a whole other can of worms by itself.
From the teacher side on the language issue, there's not much we can do. We have to use person first language at work, full stop, no exceptions made, personal opinions on the matter are irrelevant. But I do think it's up to the person how they identify. For instance, I have yet to meet an autistic person who is okay with person first language and all of my autistic friends call me on it whenever I say "person with autism" in their presence (although this doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people on the autism spectrum who do prefer person first language).
With the blind community, and serious physical disabilities, I find that the person first/disability first rules just go right out the window. Our disabilities are such a big, obvious part of us that it's a very individual choice how we want to be addressed. For example, I dislike being called visually impaired and prefer that people just say that I'm a blind person. However, I have many friends who want to be known as people with visual impairments and if I don't know somebody I will default to that language out of habit anyway.
Regarding the article itself, it feels a little disjointed and I'm not sure how personal identification would be helpful in a learning situation where a teacher doesn't want to interact with their own student. That's a whole other can of worms by itself.
codeplaysleep 2 points 3y ago
Yeah, the article's a little disjointed, but I think the author's point is that maybe she would have been more inclined to stand up for herself if her disability wasn't always "hidden" behind person-first language and she'd instead learned at a younger age to embrace it as part of her identity.
I'm not sure that would actually make a difference, though, because in the situations she described, there's still the teacher/student dynamic and the imbalance of authority there to deal with.
Also, as a kid, I interacted with plenty of people outside of school and dealt with overcoming many things as a result of my vision loss and I'm not sure the words a teacher used to address me would have really had any impact on my own sense of identity, especially when those words weren't harmful or cruel.
As to the language itself, I may be in the minority, but I feel like person-first language kind of accidentally does the opposite of what it's intended to do, because we only use it for things that society considers negative or bad. No one says "<person> who is beautiful" or "<person> who is smart."
That said, it's all sort of abstract. I'll personally use identity-first language, but if someone addresses me with person-first language, I may correct them because the grammar sounds weird, but I'm not going to be bothered by it, because I understand that their intentions are good.
I'm not sure that would actually make a difference, though, because in the situations she described, there's still the teacher/student dynamic and the imbalance of authority there to deal with.
Also, as a kid, I interacted with plenty of people outside of school and dealt with overcoming many things as a result of my vision loss and I'm not sure the words a teacher used to address me would have really had any impact on my own sense of identity, especially when those words weren't harmful or cruel.
As to the language itself, I may be in the minority, but I feel like person-first language kind of accidentally does the opposite of what it's intended to do, because we only use it for things that society considers negative or bad. No one says "<person> who is beautiful" or "<person> who is smart."
That said, it's all sort of abstract. I'll personally use identity-first language, but if someone addresses me with person-first language, I may correct them because the grammar sounds weird, but I'm not going to be bothered by it, because I understand that their intentions are good.
razzretina 1 points 3y ago
Thanks for the clarification on the article! That makes a bit of sense out of it.
I know when I was a kid being referred to as "visually impaired" did do a lot of damage, but it was also coupled with the actions of the adults around me and I know I wasn't the only one in my peer group who felt very stigmatized by the phrase. The overall impression I had was that I was "better" or more of a person than my friends who were totally blind but not a full person or as "good" as a sighted person. When I got older and came to understand that blindness past the legal definition is a pretty wide spectrum, it made me feel a lot better and I did gain enough confidence early on to grow once I started referring to myself as blind. But that's not everyone's experience for sure. In that sense, maybe the person who wrote this article might have been able to handle things better with some added confidence, but it's hard to say. High school isn't exactly the place where anyone is confident and her teachers and aides are literally not allowed to refer to her in any other way but person first.
Yeah, I agree that person first language has become rather dehumanizing in the past few years. It's one thing to use it for paperwork and in a professional setting, but having to use it everywhere, ugh... It's exhausting. I think the general "woke" crowd got hold of it and ran, not realizing that person first language can deprive many people of their sense of identity (and be used as a bludgeon by bad faith argument types).
I know when I was a kid being referred to as "visually impaired" did do a lot of damage, but it was also coupled with the actions of the adults around me and I know I wasn't the only one in my peer group who felt very stigmatized by the phrase. The overall impression I had was that I was "better" or more of a person than my friends who were totally blind but not a full person or as "good" as a sighted person. When I got older and came to understand that blindness past the legal definition is a pretty wide spectrum, it made me feel a lot better and I did gain enough confidence early on to grow once I started referring to myself as blind. But that's not everyone's experience for sure. In that sense, maybe the person who wrote this article might have been able to handle things better with some added confidence, but it's hard to say. High school isn't exactly the place where anyone is confident and her teachers and aides are literally not allowed to refer to her in any other way but person first.
Yeah, I agree that person first language has become rather dehumanizing in the past few years. It's one thing to use it for paperwork and in a professional setting, but having to use it everywhere, ugh... It's exhausting. I think the general "woke" crowd got hold of it and ran, not realizing that person first language can deprive many people of their sense of identity (and be used as a bludgeon by bad faith argument types).
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