The Wolfe Pack

Oh hey, I can post this here too. I keep forgetting I'm back on the fediverse after giving up on firefish.social coming back from the dead.

Does this use of the word "blind" bother you?

Also, one thing to note about our hiring process. A lot of it has evolved because resume-blind hiring is actually harmful to diversity efforts. This is what orchestras found doing blind auditions. We promote jobs differently as a result, offer up specialized help to underrepresented communities, etc. This is the thing that’s given me the most agony over the last like 4 years.

For context, that's from our CEO, and he DMed me to ask if it bugged me. I gave him my answer and will paraphrase it in replies, but there's a genuine desire here not to be offensive so if it hits a button for whatever reason then just let me know, I'll share your perspective, and something will almost certainly change. But let's not make it a dogpile, hopefully goes without saying.

I really, really, really despise "blind" as a synonym for ignorant or stupid or casually unaware. E.g. "I pissed off my GF when I said those pants looked small on her. How could I have been so blind?!?" I think it bugs me because I routinely do have people treat me as if I'm by default unaware in ways and contexts that genuinely pose a threat to me. Which of us blind folks hasn't had someone yell at them that it's safe to cross a street, and has had to shut them down because their yelling distracts you from making that assessment yourself and puts you in a situation where you have to trust them. So in situations where it is synonymous with stupid, I do feel harm and try shutting that down where I feel I can.

But, I don't know. I think there's a difference between "I'm ignorant of something" and "I just don't see it/am not aware of it." One has very clear connotations about a solution/desire direction, while the other simply expresses a statement without as much judgment attached. And "we're choosing to be blind/not blind to certain factors" may feel a bit stilted, but it's not someone picking a more poetic way to call themselves stupid.

And of course, there are the folks who miss something in chat and call themselves blind, as if missing a casual detail is somehow equivalent to an entire disability. That bugs me too, but that's not happening here in any form. 😀

That's my long way of saying that Kurt's use doesn't really bother me here, but I don't want to be the token blind person at Fly and no one else wants that either, to LMK if there's some aspect of this I'm missing.

@nolan doesn't bother me at all, blind is multiple things and its all based on the context. It seems like context seems to be quite lacking in terms of the inability for people to understand it.

@nolan Did you not migrate your followers when you went to Firefish? I haven't seen you post in forever!