“ Ellie’s words are a sledgehammer blow to my chest. We’ve shared homework assignments, secret nicknames, jokes, and drunken, laughing nights. Do they
really think I live every day in darkness and suffering? Do they think I’m faking my happiness, my love of life?”
“I want my sisters to understand that being blind isn’t the apocalypse.
Researching cures for blindness is all well and good, but it can’t happen at the expense of our dignity and our truth.”
“I do what society has trained women, especially disabled women, to do: assume that the
fault lies with how I raised the issue, not the response of those in power. The world may think blind people live in eternal darkness and suffering, but
ironically, it wants to see happy, nonthreatening, nonchallenging blind people.”
How do you cope when a member of your chosen community makes a speech demeaning members of another beloved community? On this week’s post, Sophie Trist writes about the experience of attending a sorority function where one of her Greek sisters spoke about the imperative to cure blindness as part of the sorority’s philanthropy. It can be hard to know how to cope, and even harder to know if you have done the right thing, or even if you can continue to hold the same level of trust after such a microaggression.
People Would Rather Get Cancer Than Be Like Mehttps://spreadsecondstories.org/sophie-trist/?fbclid=IwAR2bq9UQrX82eB6MQ6vvx1v7O2m2aBZL_4VlkeRi8sXgeVcaBSCSYBMjL4M
