Person-first feelings?
Jul. 25th, 2006 01:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
I just saw a comment by somebody where they said "I have a lot of bitterness and anger over this", instead of the more straightforward "I still am bitter and angry".
One of the goals of The Infamous Person-First Language is to deliberately separate the disability from the person. The person comes first. The person is separate from the disability.
Which works for some things, but not for others. I certainly wouldn't be me if my brain weren't the way it is. And, arguably, nobody who is disabled would be the same person without that disability - the experiences of our lives shape who we are.
The more obvious result of person-first language is, of course, to verbally make the disabled person even *more* different and stigmatized - we don't, after all, separate positive qualities in this way. I'm not a person with intelligence, or femaleness or even heterosexuality.
And the same goes for emotions. I've seen this usage before. And nobody would ever say "I have a lot of happiness about this". I don't think they'd even say "I have a lot of sadness". But anger, fear, these are bad emotions. So they get the special treatment?
It doesn't seem fair, and it doesn't seem right. I don't distance myself from my good emotions, the ones that are socially acceptable to feel. If I'm happy (and I know it!), I'm happy. If I'm sad, I'm sad. And if I'm angry, that anger is a part of me while I feel it - it's not something I can take away like a bit of luggage. I don't have anger, I am angry. And if I am, there's probably a good reason for it.
Moreover, why does anger get to be a bad one? "It's not good to be angry". Even I believe that, to an extent - but that's not true. It's fine to be angry, if the anger is deserved. It's great if your anger causes you to do something productive. Anger caused the civil rights movement. Anger isn't bad if we deal with it properly, use it to send us to fix the problem.
But I'm not sure you can do that if you treat it like something scary you should avoid. Something you have rather than something that's in you when you feel it.
Of course, it's also entirely possible that it's 1:41 in the morning and I am reading waaaaaay too much into this.
One of the goals of The Infamous Person-First Language is to deliberately separate the disability from the person. The person comes first. The person is separate from the disability.
Which works for some things, but not for others. I certainly wouldn't be me if my brain weren't the way it is. And, arguably, nobody who is disabled would be the same person without that disability - the experiences of our lives shape who we are.
The more obvious result of person-first language is, of course, to verbally make the disabled person even *more* different and stigmatized - we don't, after all, separate positive qualities in this way. I'm not a person with intelligence, or femaleness or even heterosexuality.
And the same goes for emotions. I've seen this usage before. And nobody would ever say "I have a lot of happiness about this". I don't think they'd even say "I have a lot of sadness". But anger, fear, these are bad emotions. So they get the special treatment?
It doesn't seem fair, and it doesn't seem right. I don't distance myself from my good emotions, the ones that are socially acceptable to feel. If I'm happy (and I know it!), I'm happy. If I'm sad, I'm sad. And if I'm angry, that anger is a part of me while I feel it - it's not something I can take away like a bit of luggage. I don't have anger, I am angry. And if I am, there's probably a good reason for it.
Moreover, why does anger get to be a bad one? "It's not good to be angry". Even I believe that, to an extent - but that's not true. It's fine to be angry, if the anger is deserved. It's great if your anger causes you to do something productive. Anger caused the civil rights movement. Anger isn't bad if we deal with it properly, use it to send us to fix the problem.
But I'm not sure you can do that if you treat it like something scary you should avoid. Something you have rather than something that's in you when you feel it.
Of course, it's also entirely possible that it's 1:41 in the morning and I am reading waaaaaay too much into this.
