Are Words Only Words?

As in most other communities and subcultures, the blind community has terms it uses to denote in-group members and out-group members. Conceptually, this doesn’t bother me. On the ground, however, I am bothered, because the terms used are either demeaning in and of themselves, or they, to put it plainly, sound silly and reflect poorly on the user. Let’s start with two in-group terms, blink and blindy.
As with a lot of contemporary slang, users may disagree on the boundaries or limitations of a particular word, and there’s really no reliable documented source to go to. However, being blind myself, I hope I have some idea of what I’m talking about as I attempt to set up these terms. Blink is a slang word for a blind person. It is mostly used by blind people to refer to other blind people, but not always. In an online blog, one person, presumably someone who can see, refers to himself as “an honorary blink.” O … k. Blindy gets a little more airplay. Twitter has a page styling itself Blindy.Tv, described television for the blind. I’ve seen some anecdotal evidence that some blind users of these terms consider there to be a difference between blink and blindy. Namely, a blink can allegedly be anyone who is anything ranging from being qualified as legally blind on to totally blind, whereas a blindy is usually described as being totally blind or having no functional vision. Interesting.
Let me move on. Sighty and sightling are interchangeable words used to designate a person who can see, one who is not legally blind. They can be derogatory, but they don’t have to be. It depends on the attitude of the speaker. If someone is frustrated and says, “the damned sighty kept asking me whether someone picks out my clothes for me,” then obviously it’s being used negatively. However, if someone says, “so when I couldn’t figure it out, I decided to see if I could find a sighty to help me with it,” the word isn’t being used derogatorily, at least in so far as the intent of the speaker has anything to do with the meaning of the word.
As a linguist, I know that many groups throughout history have taken intended epithets and made them sources of in-group identity. We’ve seen it in both the Gay and African-American communities, to cite two modern examples. However, I’m not at all certain that the four terms I’ve talked about originated as out-group epithets. So far as I can trace them, which is not very far, they originated within the blind community itself. TO my way of thinking that makes a world of difference.
As a blind person, I have to start by asking this question: are words like blindy and sightling the best we can do? Really? I’ve heard everyone from blind college professors to blind high school-age students use them, and I find that no matter the user, they leave a bad taste in my mouth. They sound demeaning and silly to my ear, and as an in-group member of the community, being blind, I ought to be qualified to make that judgment call. Moreover, I know I’m not alone. Most of my blind friends also reject these terms outright.
So what is the blind community trying to do by propagating these terms? Is it trying to create an identity for itself? Let me close on a humorous note. If I find terms like these offensive and inane, overcorrection in the form of ridiculous political correctness is also silly. I am not visually impaired, for example, because I have no vision to impair. I’m not handycapable, differently abled or physically challenged. I’m blind. More specifically, I’m a person who is blind, the relative clause making all the difference. That said, I’m not a blink or a blindy, thank you kindly. So, you might ask, which terms do I use? When I’m referring to someone I know has some range of usable vision, I’ll say visually impaired. Otherwise, I’ll say blind, that is if the disability comes up at all, and there’s no law saying it has to.
In conclusion, I want to reply to those who would say that these words are just words, and nothing more should be made of them. On the contrary. Words are extremely powerful. The bible calls the tongue a two-edged sword, for example, and we should take care in how we exercise it. Words matter. What people say about a group matters, and what a group says about itself matters even more.

20 Signs That You Attended a Massive Public University

20 Signs That you Went to a Massive Public University

1. You spent your first two years taking classes and you rarely if ever met an actual professor.
2. You learned the Greek alphabet by driving down fraternity/sorority row.

3. The word Campus Town was used to describe the dozens of square miles occupied by university buildings.

4. "Is that on campus," was a frequently asked question because: A. you just didn't know when campus ended, and B. a lot of local businesses set up shop between classroom buildings and kitty-corner to dormitories.

5. Half of your town's local businesses close between May and August and for a month starting in mid-December because the town's population seasonally drops by tens of thousands and can't sustain them.

6. Once admitted, you have to apply to a department in order to declare its major as your own.

7. University departments are so big that most classes in the major are restricted to those majors, because in terms of enrollment figures, they can afford not to give a flying flip about what you're interested in if you're not one of them.

8. You went through your major courses and never had the same prof twice.

9. When it comes time for grad school, you have to remind your letter writers about you and your achievements, because they've forgotten who you are completely.

10. The university police force functions as a heavily manned police department in its own right, patrolling the town at large.

11. The question, "are you a student at U. of X" results in a "yes" in three out of four cases no matter where you are in town.

12. There are so many bars that they can be rated using a likert scale, and so many social sciences majors around that someone is likely to have done so.

13. New apartment complexes invariably target students before townspeople.

14. There are enough graduate students so that they either have formed or would like to form some kind of union.

15. Nearby eating and drinking establishments can be divided into graduate or undergraduate hangouts.

16. Your library, invariably a massive, sprawling edifice, measures its collection count using 7 or 8-digit numbers.

17. Your dormitories average five stories or taller, and there are a ton of them.

18. You need more dormitories, always.

19. You have your own memes, and everyone in your part of the state, possibly in the entire state, recognizes them.

20. Everyone you meet is automatically impressed when you tell them where you go to school. So you can leave out the fact that you're failing that course and dropping out anyhow.

Loaded Language, From "Communist" to "Homophobe"

Commenting on loaded language is a tricky business, because you run the risk of being called the very things you’re talking about if and when you upset someone. Still, in seems to me that every era has particular terms that can be used by one side against the other to stop the public discussion and turn it ad homonym i.e., make what might otherwise be a legitimate airing of political views into nothing more than a vicious personal attack. For this commentary, I selected two terms that particularly interest me, communist and homophobe. I have to say at the start that this essay isn’t about political systems. Nor is it an endorsement of or a philippic against homosexuality either in the public square or anywhere else. It is, however, a brief look at these two words and their power to alter public perception and/or derail discussion. For much of the twentieth century, the quickest way to trash your political opponent and start fist fights in bars was to refer to the person as a communist. Other fashionable terms for a communist included red, used as a noun, pinko, commie fascist, and other such charming descriptors. From the first Red Scare, 1919 to 1921, to the much more widely remembered McCarthy era and beyond, dissenters were effectively silenced or ruined through the application of the sobriquet “communist.” In the early 1920’s, the media made a regular habit of portraying labor strikes and other attempts at collective bargaining as threats to the American way of life. If you were pro-union, you could count on being called a communist by someone at some point. The government also got into the act. In alleged crackdowns against militant anarchism, which really was a threat back then, the government arrested and deported quite a number of what it considered “undesirable” persons, applying the labels communist, seditionist or anarchist, for they meant just about the same thing, to them all. Here, though, I’m less concerned with what the government does than with what the average person or the average journalist, some of them being very average indeed, does. Consider this. Do you think southern segregation was wrong? Now, who’s going to answer no to that, right? As it happens, southern dixycrats of the 1950’s and 1960’s, in their fight against desegregation, argued vehemently that desegregation would irreparably harm the American way of life. Those who favored desegregation were often called, you guessed it, communists. Never mind that the desegregationist’s didn’t believe in the tenets of Marxism-Leninism at all and could prove it. Calling your opponents communists, whether pro-labor activists or desegregationist’s, was an effective means of framing them in public discourse as a threat to society. It shifted the discussion away from the pros or cons of the particular issue and turned the discussion to topics like national safety, the American way of life, etc. In so far as the individual so named was concerned, it effectively stopped the original discussion. The word homophobe strikes me as interesting, because even though its history is shorter than communist (Mariam-Webster traces the word homophobia only to 1969) it’s doing the same thing today. Regardless of your sexual preference or point of view, I think you’ll agree with me that gay rights is one of the hottest issues in the American public sphere today. With recent supreme court decisions about laws concerning marriage, states passing, banning and then unbanning laws against same sex marriage—hello, California,--I would be hard pressed to find another issue that is more before the notice of the American public than this one. That brings me to homophobe. Let me say up front that I’m aware of the radical right fringe. I know there are those who identify themselves as conservatives and who espouse nothing less than hatred or deep-seeded fear of homosexuals. There are, in short, genuine homophobes out there, just as there were those comparatively few who got called communists and who actually were. What concerns me now is those who are not homophobes, but who are being so labeled in liberal media, which is to say most media. I’m avoiding mentioning particular names for two reasons. First, I’m not interested in defending or criticizing any particular person or publication. I’m talking about the broad picture here, and people should be free to apply what I’m saying to whoever or whatever needs the application within reason. Second, the moment I drop a name, the discussion will turn from the merits of what I’m saying to a defense of or an attack on that person or publication. So for both reasons, I’m steering clear of names. What is a homophobe? The Free Mariam-Webster dictionary defines homophobia as, “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals.” Fair enough. That definition brings to my mind the image of sign-waving radical chanting about how homosexuals are hell bound. I don’t have any tolerance for that sort of behavior and would agree with my liberal friends and colleagues in terming it homophobic. Having said that, if the term homophobe was being applied only to that sort of person, I wouldn’t be writing today. Alarmingly, I’m observing a tendency in a number of media outlets, particularly online media outlets, to use the word homophobe rather loosely, and it’s starting to have an effect. Pretty soon now, if you voice anything other than unqualified support of gay marriage legislation in your state, for example, you will be liable to a charge of homophobia. If you voice anything other than unqualified endorsements of homosexuality in your churches, you will be liable to a charge of homophobia. My question is this: are we coming to such a point in our discourse that no divergent views on homosexuality will be tolerated? Those on the left, whether they’re called liberals, progressives, whatever, have a reputation for promoting fairness, tolerance and diversity. I should know. Being blind, I can attest to the fact that I’ve been most successful in more liberal environments, and I’ve had the hardest time making my way in very conservative ones. That’s very ironic, considering my strong Christian values often align me with those in whose communities I find it hardest to live and work. So, I have nothing against an atmosphere of fairness, tolerance and diversity. However, what I’m seeing vis-à-vis the use of the word homophobe is a growing intolerance for those with whom the left disagrees. This is deeply ironic, because the left often styles itself as being open to divergent points of view. Yet, labeling someone a homophobe does not seem to be reminiscent of tolerance, fair-mindedness and diversity. So then the question becomes, are we as a society now going to tolerate only those who agree with us? Are we going to demonstrate fair-mindedness and openness just so long as the other person doesn’t disagree with our point of view? As I asked in a recent Facebook comment, can you disagree with anything having to do with homosexuality itself or homosexuality in the public sphere, no matter how the disagreement is voiced or what the disagreement may be, without being labeled a homophobe? I’m coming to the fearful conclusion that you almost can’t. In conclusion, if what I’m talking about sounds like public suppression of opinion, it is. And yet—and I know this won’t go down too well in some quarters—public suppression, which is to say societal suppression, of divergent opinion is part of the American way of life just as much as the first amendment and its guarantee of free speech. If you look at our history, you will find this truth played out both on the governmental and the personal level. The use of the term communist in our public discourse is one proof of that claim. Is the term homophobe starting to serve the same purpose in the public square? I’ve told you what I think. The question is what do you think?