Ambivalence for the Blind

Goffman's discussion of societal benefits that blind people have bestowed upon them, like being asked to endorse perfumes and being regarded as having heightened senses, reminded me of my travels to Southeast Asia in 2012.


That's me, circa January 2012, riding in a Tuk-Tuk through Siem Reap, Cambodia.

My best friend, Natalie, moved to Singapore in 8th grade, so in my senior year of high school I flew to Singapore to visit her over my holiday break. Once I got there, her family took me and her on a week-long trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Siem Reap, Cambodia. In Cambodia, it was common to find massage clinics advertising things like this:



My surrogate family for the week (Natalie's family) and I indulged in the cheap massages a few times for two reasons: our feet were sore from traveling and the massage clinics claimed to donate proceeds of their business to help the local blind community. However, when I went back to research these "Seeing Hands" massages today, I found that these massages are sometimes falsely advertised and the massage clinics are actually exploiting the blind workers.

As people from a developed country visiting a not-so-developed country, perhaps we were searching for ways we could participate in the rich culture of Cambodia and at least feel like we were giving back to a community in need. That feeling may be innocent, but the truth is our actions and our money could have easily been spent doing more harm than good.

This is the interesting thing about stigma - we can't seem to function as a society without it. Privileged, upper class, seeing tourists need blind Cambodian masseurs in order to make themselves feel better about the obvious wealth inequality staring American tourists in the face as soon as they set foot in a less fortunate place. This is just like the Saints in Medieval Europe who needed the Black Death to continue wreaking havoc on communities near them so they would have subjects to publicly nurse, kiss, and heal and add holiness to their name.


Saint Francis kissing the stigmata wounds of Jesus

Stigma creates a stratified social hierarchy in which the lines are not always so clear or so set in stone. Labeling theory has claimed that this hierarchy is necessary for societies to progress. If that is true, then it is also true that no society will be without order, class, or other systems of rank. If my experiences in Cambodia and the lessons from Goffman have taught me anything, it's that there will always be people labeled as "other," and there will always be people in the "normal" whose normality will rely completely on the existence of "the other."