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Had this conversation with someone who chose to no longer be at my table after meeting a blind NPC
(files.catbox.moe)
Another player who was at the table during the incident sent me this meme after the problem player in question (they had a history) left the group chat.
Felt like sharing it here because I'm sure more people should keep this kind of thing in mind.
In the United States, millions and millions of people walk around with conditions we can treat with our own kind of magic: modern medicine. So why don't they get that prosthetic arm, treat that chronic pain, get that surgery, or take those pills? They can't afford it. Why don't they get that vaccine? They don't believe in it. If magic exists to eliminate all disabilities, then there should be no smart, rich people with disabilities in your world building, certainly. Plenty to go around otherwise though.
There could be magic, but not magic capable of curing diseases. If the extent to which your mages are capable of manipulating the elements is spewing fireballs or perhaps summoning a storm, treating an infection might be beyond their capabilities. You might also have a setting where disabilities are the result of curses that only mages of exceptional capabilities are able to treat.
Also could be a warhammer fantasy/40k situation where magic is kinda unstable and a good chunk of mages are batshit or kinda weak. Sure nobody would complain if Teclis or Malcador offer you healing but neither are insane or weak. Also the reason for that comparison is that I suspect the two are roughly comparible to eachother in their respective settings.
Also the Emperor is the 40k equivelent of Nagash. I will take no questions.
As a Bright Wizard, I take offense to this. I am not weak. My flames purify entire hordes of filthy rat men. Now, if you can excuse me. There is a horde of Northmen at the gate and my tea is getting cold.
Thank you!
Likewise, if fantasy magic did exist in our world that could cure illness we would have a large percentage of our population calling it fake and saying it doesn't work.
It is easier and cheaper to pretend it doesn't exist and they want that to extend to fantasy as well. They don't want to think about real problems.
There is also another dimension to this; millions are still direly ill because they can't afford treatment.
And even in our modern world, with all our magic, there are some diseases and conditions we haven't been able to cure. There is more than one problem that has the same output (blindness) so maybe in the fantasy world they have magic to fix someones macular degeneration but not their optic nerves
I disagree. I know plenty of smart people with disabilities who wouldn't take a cure if it was possible. Most of them are autistic. Autism is a disability in a world that doesn't accommodate it, but it doesn't have to be. It's a disability politically, not intrinsically. And deafness is pretty undeniably a disability, but I've read about deaf people not wanting to join in on hearing society because they think the deaf community is better.
This might sound hard for you to understand if you're fully abled, so I'll put it in terms you can understand. Imagine if tomorrow scientists invented a cheap, painless procedure to install a third arm in your chest. Everyone's getting them because they're so useful, and clothing stores are quickly switching to shirts with three arm holes. It's getting hard to find shirts with only two arm holes, in fact. Even if everyone you knew said they preferred having three arms, would you get one?
I am disabled. I would take a magic cure in a second, as would the vast majority of disabled people.
I'm disabled and I wouldn't. I don't think I'd be me if I wasn't autistic.
I think if you do not want or need a cure, it's not a disability. Doesn't make sense to call it a disability then.
Autism is a disability mostly for social reasons, not for intrinsic reasons. I guess you could say that I do want a cure, if the cure is society becoming more tolerant. But I don't want a cure that changes my intrinsic nature, because there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being autistic.
What is a disability "for intrinsic reasons" or that is "intrinsically wrong"? Only disabilities that cause direct pain?
Per definition, a disability is something that gives you a handicap for living in how the world is.
A disability for intrinsic reasons would be something like paraplegia or deafness. There is no social relativity to whether people with these conditions can do less things. But whether something is intrinsically wrong with that person is up to their own judgement. They are free to set their own standard in that case, and determine whether they really should be able to walk or hear, just as I'm free to determine whether I really should be able to make eye contact or process speech. (It is my opinion that the loudness of public spaces is unnatural and unjust, and that people need to fucking speak clearly instead of being lazy and making me do the work of listening closely)
But I think you've ignored my point. Which is that I don't want to be cured of my mind's nature, but I do want to be free of a society that disables autistic people. My question to you is, do I want to be cured? Is social acceptance and accommodation a cure?
I don't care. The definition of what a disability is, is clear. When all people would be deaf, would deafness be a disability? No.
It doesn't matter whether you personally want to be cured or not. If someone has no legs and they like it, it's still a disability because the person has a clear handicap in the current world. It doesn't matter that, in a hypothetical world where heaving legs doesn't matter, it wouldn't be seen as a handicap.
I was having a conversation about this thing you said. Did you change your mind and decide you don't agree with it anymore?
No, it's something else than (instead of autism). Perhaps it a-symptomatic or someone has overcome it.
Imagine someone has a broken leg. It would not make sense to say they still have a broken leg but it's not a disability because society could just change and make it a non-problem. It's irrelevant whether it wouldn't be seen as a problem when everyone had a broken leg or no one would care about it.
I disagree. Michael Phelps is double jointed. He's the best swimmer in the world because he has a mutation that makes his feet more effective flippers. You said a flaw is still a disability even when everyone has it. Nearly everyone is single jointed, and that makes us worse at swimming than Phelps. Your argument would imply that single jointed people are all disabled.
You can't define disability in absolute terms, or you'll run into problems like that. You have to define disability in socially constructed terms.
Where did I wrote that?! I wrote that the hypothetical situation where everyone has a broken leg and therefore then it would be considered normal, doesn't invalidate that a broken leg is a handicap in our (non-hypothetical) real life.
Also, being double jointed is not considered a disability.
And further, the word is clearly defined (this is translated from my language to English):
And what we categorise as a disability is grounded on the definition above. Since autism is categorized as a disability, it wouldn't make sense to diagnose someone with autism if the above is not true.
I don't see how this can not make sense. It seems so obvious that you do not have a disability when nothing is disabling you. When someone says "I have disability X but it's not disabling" then congratulations, you are cured.
Nobody thinks being double jointed is a disability. You misunderstood the point I was making. So I'll make it in clearer terms:
I can understand complex hypotheticals and you can't. Does that make you disabled, because you can't participate in this conversation as my equal? Or does the fact you're not much worse at it than the average person make you normal, and therefore not disabled? Are we measuring disability against the average person, or against the most capable person in the room? Or the most capable person in the world, for that matter? Are you intellectually disabled by the fact that someone better at reasoning than you exists?
I wanted to ask this question using Michael Phelps as an example instead of myself, but you didn't understand, so it's clear I need to make the situation more relatable for your benefit. That's why I ask a more personal version of the question. Are you disabled because of my existence?
I think you have trouble understanding the difference between definitions for words or the context of general terms and your own personal experience.
You're not even pretending to have a conversation anymore, are you?
You didn't answer my question ("Where did I wrote that") and your answer doesn't make it clear to me if you even understood my point. So I am not sure why you think it's me who isn't having a conversation.
You didn't answer my question first. I'm still waiting.
Do you mean the question where you tried to paint me as dumber than you because I do not agree with your reasoning?
Yeah, I won't answer to your narcissistic ramblings because your premise is wrong. I have no trouble understanding your reasoning, I just think it's wrong.
What is and isn't categorized as a disability isn't subjectively decided randomly. It's a decision based on our current real life situation. Not your head cannon.
Autism is considered a disability because of the definition of what makes a disability I provided above. While you personally can say that you feel not disabled, a claim that "autism is not a disability because when people were different it wouldn't matter" isn't rational reasoning.
No, I mean the question where I asked if you changed your mind because you directly contradicted yourself
Also the reason you're dumber than me is that you think I think being double jointed is a disability and you think I think I'm not disabled. You don't understand what I'm talking about at all.
I didn't contradict myself, you didn't understood what I was writing. Otherwise, please provide where I contradicted myself.
You tried to substantiate your claim that the question whether or not something is a disability depends on (social) context with mentioning that the "flaw" that Michael Phelps has supposedly aided him in being a better swimmer.
My point is that, for the definition whether or not something is categorized as a disability, it doesn't matter whether it is not disabling in certain contexts for certain individuals. Or whether you can imagine a society where it's not disabling.
"Intrinsic" and "non-intrinsic" disabilities, this differentiation does not make sense.
No I didn't. You've got it all backwards. I didn't say being double jointed is a flaw, I said being single jointed is a flaw. You didn't understand the hypothetical. You're so used to hearing people say deviations are disabilities, your brain filtered it out when I proposed that being normal is a disability. That's why I think you're worse than me at understanding hypotheticals. But the conclusion that being normal is a disability is precisely what your definition leads to. Which is why I think you don't agree with your own definition.
I pulled out what you wrote earlier:
And none of it has anything to do with my point or the definition of what makes something being categorized as a disability.
I never wrote a flaw is still a disability when everyone has it. I actually wrote the opposite but you didn't understand it.
Phelps mutation is not classified as a disability. So it is a moot example for the discussion. Even when using as a hypothetical example.
You also did not understand the definition of what makes a disability. Just because certain disabilities can lead to a benefit in certain areas for certain individuals, that neither makes the disability in general not being a disability anymore. Nor does suddenly everyone else should be classified as disabled.
I try to give an example that's perhaps easier to understand.
Blindness is considered a disability, because most people are not blind and our society, most of it's appliances, etc. are therefore build around non-blind people.
That is already part of the definition of what makes something a disability.
A (permanent) blind person will not be able to live a life equally to how they would live their life when they were not blind. And the negative effects (!) of it will be present for longer than six months.
Even when the whole world would make effort into building accommodations for blind people, it would still be seen as a disability. Although other things would change on how blind people are treated in our society.
When in a parallel universe there is an earth with humans where everybody is naturally blind, blindness wouldn't be a disability.
When suddenly superman-esque humans were born it doesn't suddenly make everyone who isn't superman-like a disabled person, but being susceptible to the negative effects of kryptonite could possibly be seen as a disability, when kryptonite was somehow part of our daily lifes.
Until the superman-like people become the defacto standard human, then the odd one born without supermanpowers would start to be seen as disabled, even though they are immune to kryptonite.
What does not make sense it to try to draw a line between intrinsic and non intrinsic disabilities. And claim that something is not a disability anymore just because people could potentially start to accommodate it better.
I mean, some people literally just don't view their conditions as disabilities. We don't even need to talk about ability to afford something.