napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Jan 11, 2019 8:35:22 GMT -5
as a blind guy who is lucky enough to call a few devs friends, I always try and change perceptions within my friend group, when discussions of devs arise. So many of my disabled friends are reasonable once you humanise the dev for them. They're not a weird girl chatting with you across the internet, their a clever, lovely person with specific proclivities. I have even talked to a few blindness bloggers I know who would be willing to blog about the positive sides of devness. This is an important discussion to have.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Dec 3, 2018 4:45:54 GMT -5
birmingham UK here
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Mar 12, 2018 14:00:06 GMT -5
I shall try to respect the honesty in this thread with a brief recounting of my own. To be perfectly honest, one memory stands out, but it was a lot later - blindness, maybe, does not quite have the same transformative/existential power. Plus, I learned to advocate for myself at a young age, including doing charity fundraising at the age of 11, and making speaches to corporates about what I needed...so the idea of "difference" was never really there, because I spent so much time fighting it, that I never acknowledged its incidious presence in and of itself.
I was living in Spain, in central Barcelona, negotiating places like the Plaza Universidad, bus routes and my first actual job (teaching English) in the biggest city I had ever lived in. Keep in mind I'm from an island of only 65,000 people, so this was quite the jump. I had made a friend - a fellow teacher, and her husband, both Catalans from the local area, and agreed to meet them at a specific point in the city. I screwed up the bus route, and found myself somewhere amidst the insanity of the Plaza Universidad on a Saturday evening. I tried to find them, but could not, after an hour of asking strangers in faltering Catalan, Spanish, French or german (there are a lot of tourists in that city) for help. Part of the problem as that I couldn't describe them physically, so I was basically using the streets and hoping to be spotted. I eventually tried to retrace the route, and cross to find the bus back to where I lived, but got the cross angles wrong and lost track of it. At this point, 6 months into my stay in Spain, and one of the few times I dared venture out alone and unaided apart from my route to work, I basically couldn't deal, and experienced my first real panic attack in the bussling chaos of a Barcelona square. And I remember thinking "this should not be this hard." That enduring sense of "this should not be" has stayed with me for many such moments since.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Mar 9, 2018 11:31:06 GMT -5
well I come from Bermuda, so things are very different there, as a very small island. One irony was that I worked with a woman who was the head of the Bermuda Human Rights commission...and because she was in a chair, she could not go to parliament and see amendments being debated to bills which she herself had tabled. One of the reasons I left, in fact, was their lack of disability infrastructure. To an extent I don't blame them though...tiny island after all.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Mar 3, 2018 12:42:14 GMT -5
I feel like I'd like to learn this skill one day, as I said. A few people I know have learned it and found it useful, even if they don't actively click, as that is, frankly, weird as hell, they use the cane tip as a de facto click when they need to. I've done this myself, and its useful for hearing upcoming open doorways or obstacles - most of us can do that without training.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 28, 2018 9:42:05 GMT -5
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 19, 2018 5:49:51 GMT -5
I'm afraid I definitely would, and without a second's hesitation. yes it would be difficult to readjust etc but I am in the unique position that if I wished to revert to being blind, I'd just where blackout glasses or similar devices. I'm under no elusions, the job I have, the position I am in and the way I think have been shaped by blindness almost as much as everything else. I would not be where I am, doing what I am doing, if I weren't. Even through the months of therapy and adaptation that would certainly follow...of course I would, in a New York minute.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 12, 2018 11:13:40 GMT -5
don't worry mona I'm flying the dev flag for you guys every chance I get. And I have awesome friends. I've even convinced a close friend who runs a popular blindness-focused blog to do a post about devs and to portray them a little more justly. I'll keep you all updated on that one but she's been having health issues lately (how ironic) so has not yet completed it.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 12, 2018 6:50:01 GMT -5
Bringing the thread back on track a bit – I have had dev friends now for like 4 years, and have enjoyed great conversations in this community. But 00% of the disabled people I know, male or female, would shy away from being with someone who was a dev. As elbs mentioned, they find it creepy that a dev would be attracted to what is essentially a vulnerability. Please remember that disability is not something to be celebrated – like many of us, I am of the view that it brings almost no good along with it. So for someone to find that attractive is an odd concept to get their head around, and yes, there are fears of predation also. My closest friend yesterday said “but isn’t it like, devs just want someone to mother?” and that is the other perception – for PWDs, devs are either predatory and looking for easy targets, or want someone they can take care of. I know that neither of these are true – the devs I have been lucky enough to know well are, quite frankly, not in my league lol. Also, its different to what mona said about her accent, as being something she can’t control, because accents are not regarded as negative things generally. If she had a lisp, and her partner was sexually aroused by that, maybe the reaction would be different however. I think there is almost a perception of “how dare you” on the part of some PWDs. How dare you take a daily struggle of mine and use it for sexual gratification. For them, it cheapens what they go through in some indescribable way. I understand this, but over time have come to realise that the struggle will happen anyway – whether someone derives pleasure from it or not is consequentially unconnected to that fact. So…um…not to put too fine a point on it but…then they might as well enjoy! I guess…maybe I’m looking at it too simplistically in that sense though, I just don’t really mind. And any partner of mine will quickly realise that mothering will get you booted faster than basically anything else lol! So I’ve thought about this a lot and come to the conclusion that you’re all awesome, and yes, I do tell my closest PWD friends that I know devs, and have dev friends, and maybe, one day, if I’m lucky, I may be in a relationship with one. And they shrug, ask a few questions, and say they hope to meet her. The best way sometimes to get this out of the conceptual stage is to humanise it.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 8, 2018 4:24:54 GMT -5
no idea lol. But stare all you like
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 7, 2018 4:33:44 GMT -5
I admit. can't feel a thing when someone is looking lol.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 6, 2018 16:05:08 GMT -5
mona they were actually really nice. They came to my flat, asked a friend and I lots of questions about love and relationships and dating with a disability. I played guitar and they asked me to play a love song...I didn't know any, so that crashed and burned! Then one of the girls said she could sing so we ended up jamming for a few minutes lol. We then did some outside shots of me walking with a cane etc. As I said, never got used though.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 6, 2018 7:27:07 GMT -5
as a blind person, she can watch all she wants, I'll never know . And I love that, if she's a dev, I'm creating those sensations. I know a lot of VIs who are turned off by that but for me it heightens the experience. I know I'm giving her a thrill, and who doesn't want that for their partner?
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Feb 6, 2018 7:24:03 GMT -5
Ehh, can take it or leave it. I auditioned for it but I'm clearly too functional a disabled person.
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napoleon
Junior Member
Posts: 89
Gender: Male
Dev Status: Disabled Male
Relationship Status: Single
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Post by napoleon on Jan 28, 2018 12:09:39 GMT -5
oops! it was pointed out to me that my post above was actually from myrrh lol woops! sorry mona screenreaders suck sometimes!
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