Someone please tell me this is a joke ?

[a_reader2003]

--- In HPFGU-Catalogue at yahoogroups.com, "Dicentra spectabilis" 
<dicentra at x> wrote:
> 
> Would it help to understand her if you knew she was blind?  

Sometimes the visually or hearing-impaired don't pick up on all of the
> subtleties of socially acceptable behavior, 
> 
> --Dicey, who found that tidbit of info in our Good Posters database,
> to which y'all don't have access and so couldn't know

Carolyn:
With the greatest respect, I think this is bringing an entirely 
different issue to the table. My understanding and knowledge of 
disabled people is that their primary desire is to be treated as far 
as possible in the same way as the able-bodied. An on-line discussion 
group obviously gives good scope for this, and she seems to have 
found a way of successfully overcoming her disability in order to 
debate with us. 

Naturally, anyone would have the greatest sympathy with the extra 
effort which this involves, but as she has not chosen to make her 
blindness public, I can only infer she prefers us to take her 
contributions on merit in the same way as anyone else's.

The only respect in which it may have a bearing is if she has no idea 
what names other people are using on the list, and only knows the 
posts by their numbers, for instance. She is replying using people's 
list names in the body of her posts, so that doesn't appear to be the 
case.

I think it is more a question of cultural dissonance than anything 
else. The public avowal of faith seems to be far more acceptable in 
the US than in the UK. Just a whiff of it makes our toes curl, 
borderline likely to make us very angry. We have an almost visceral 
determination to think what we *** well like, and to reject any 
attempt to suggest there is a common orthodoxy to which everyone 
generally subscribes. 

In a discussion group of this type, where one of the central themes 
is the battle between good and evil in the books, a chosen name like 
this creates an immediate prejudice in the Brit mind, at least, as to 
where she is coming from in her arguments. It may not be correct, but 
it raises the hackles.