no such thing
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| bhuot Feb 03, 2009 7:38 PM EDT |
There is no such thing as a disabled community as there is no such thing as an African American community or Gay community. People don't organize themselves around being disabled any more than people organize themselves around which soap they use or what race they are. |
| azerthoth Feb 03, 2009 7:46 PM EDT |
Define community and I am sure we will discover where the disagreement comes into play. I tend to disagree completely with your thesis, I suspect that is from the definition that I use. My dependent mother is disabled and trust me she is part of a community and mutual support for each other of individuals in similar circumstance. OSS is another community (read dysfunctional family) and mutual aid society. So I am curious as to your definition of community that brings you to say (to paraphrase) 'There ain't no such varmint'. |
| bhuot Feb 03, 2009 8:36 PM EDT |
Well, I am mentally ill and I do not belong to any community based on my mental illness. Most people do not even realize that I am mentally ill when they talk to me. Disabled people can be parts of different communities but everyone who is disabled is not part of an exclusive community that is about disability. If a disabled person want to be part of a community based on that is fine. The difference is in the article - a disabled community and the disabled community are 2 different things. Another thing is that disabled person is a very large category. I have little in common with my illness with a developmentally disabled person or a blind person. |
| azerthoth Feb 03, 2009 8:43 PM EDT |
Thank you, I see the differentiation between 'the' and 'a' more clearly now. I retract my disagreement. |
| gus3 Feb 03, 2009 9:02 PM EDT |
bhuot: Well-put, and I will file that one for future reference/debate. |
| tuxchick Feb 03, 2009 9:18 PM EDT |
Quoting: Six projects, two days and one cause: creating open-source software to improve the lives of members of the disabled community. It's not improved by changing it to "a disabled community"; it doesn't make sense that way. I suppose finding different words than "disabled community" might improve it, but I bet money that no matter what anyone suggests it will bother someone, and by the time the quibbling over terminology is done the people involved in the actual coding will have given up and gone on to something else, where they don't get crabbed at for not saying the exactly correct things. And all the time the real problem is changing the words doesn't change the disabilities. Blind is still blind, deaf is still deaf, and lame and halt are still lame and halt no matter what you call them. Which is all a distraction from the actual point of the article: finally some attention is being paid to disabled computer users in FOSS-land, which is an area that has long been neglected. It's a good thing and it's long overdue. Anyone who actually read the article would have seen that the students are addressing several different types of disabilities. |
| Scott_Ruecker Feb 04, 2009 1:42 AM EDT |
Quoting:Which is all a distraction from the actual point of the article: finally some attention is being paid to disabled computer users in FOSS-land, which is an area that has long been neglected. It's a good thing and it's long overdue. Anyone who actually read the article would have seen that the students are addressing several different types of disabilities. I agree Carla, it is a good and long overdue, it was in my mind when I came across this article to post.. |
| bhuot Feb 05, 2009 2:28 AM EDT |
Here is a related article that talks about Linux communities. I also get upset when people think that there is just one Linux community that everyone who uses Linux belongs to, or implies that. And vocabulary does matter - that is why we use certain appropriate terms for different races and try to avoid mention of race all together. http://linux-blog.org/a-new-user-guide-to-linux-communities/ |
| jacog Feb 05, 2009 7:36 AM EDT |
It's an interesting topic. Your assertions are true, but people's brains tend to generalise in all the wrong ways. There have been one or two stories in the news over the past year of incidents where angry Linux users posted really nasty forum comments and even made threats of violence towards whomever they were angry at. This makes me angry, because automatically this taints what is generally perceived as "the Linux community", and suddenly I am in the same group as these jerks. And before you know it, there is an unfair stereotype associated with the group. |
| theboomboomcars Feb 05, 2009 10:03 AM EDT |
I think people tend to use community when they really mean population. Probably because community sounds nicer. |
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