I know that you were suggesting that at the end of the post, but what I was saying is that B. now thinks it's ridiculous that anyone should consider the word 'disability' describing her bipolar offensive. She was also talking about the word 'retarded' or 'retard' as fjm said - it's offensive because of its misuse rather than its actual meaning, which is merely descriptive.
I think the completely right-on view that 'other than the norm' is *not* the same as inferior can at its extreme end lead to a tendency to blame 'society' for everything. Try telling B that the only problem she has is that society isn't able to mould itself to her fluctuations in brain chemicals and see if she reacts well to it. Of course many people need to know and understand more about mental illnesses, but it wouldn't make bipolar disorder less a disorder or solve the many problems it brings.
Similarly, the people who were most unhappy in our adult ed. classes were those who saw that nearly everyone around them was smarter than they were and could see a goal that might just about be possible (whether it was learning to read or passing the GED exam) but not actually achieve it. In many cases society had let them down in a variety of ways, but in others, that just wasn't the case. No matter how valuable their many other abilities were, they wanted to have more intellectual abilities or they wouldn't have been coming to the classes, and I think would have been pretty bloody irritated to have someone as intelligent as you telling them they had no deficiency or disability just because they were differently intellectually gifted.
no subject
I think the completely right-on view that 'other than the norm' is *not* the same as inferior can at its extreme end lead to a tendency to blame 'society' for everything. Try telling B that the only problem she has is that society isn't able to mould itself to her fluctuations in brain chemicals and see if she reacts well to it. Of course many people need to know and understand more about mental illnesses, but it wouldn't make bipolar disorder less a disorder or solve the many problems it brings.
Similarly, the people who were most unhappy in our adult ed. classes were those who saw that nearly everyone around them was smarter than they were and could see a goal that might just about be possible (whether it was learning to read or passing the GED exam) but not actually achieve it. In many cases society had let them down in a variety of ways, but in others, that just wasn't the case. No matter how valuable their many other abilities were, they wanted to have more intellectual abilities or they wouldn't have been coming to the classes, and I think would have been pretty bloody irritated to have someone as intelligent as you telling them they had no deficiency or disability just because they were differently intellectually gifted.