I'm not sure that including people with cybernetic enhancements that effectively make up for a physical impairment is the best course of action here. This category has a strong basis in reality, but the majority of Star Wars characters who use cybernetics to correct a physical impairment are essentially healed of that impairment by their cybernetics, which is not yet achievable in the real world. Skelly is one of the few exceptions. SilverSunbird (talk) 23:05, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
-
Expanding on my initial point, I think this category's scope should be limited to the following: Individuals who experience a physical impairment, such as blindness or missing limbs, but have not undergone cybernetic augmentation to compensate. Cyborgs whose cybernetic enhancements have limitations that are explicitly stated to be impairing, such as Darth Vader or Skelly, as mentioned earlier. People who did receive cybernetics that successfully resolved their physical impairment, but only after enduring a considerable amount of time in-universe without them, such as Wolf Sazen.
-
I understand that my suggestion doesn't cover the brain injuries mentioned on the main category page, but that's a separate issue, as my current focus is on physical impairments. SilverSunbird (talk) 23:41, 14 September 2021 (UTC) I don't think it should be limited by whether or not assistive technology is used, or how much help those devices provide. The goal is to make it easier for people to find Star Wars characters who have disabilities. To keep the category from getting too big, I was thinking more about dividing it up by type. I think trying to decide whether a character's disability is "cured" could lead to some tricky situations. I also want to stay away from the outdated term "handicap[ped]," which isn't used much in American English anymore; I'm not sure if it's different in Australia, Canada, or the UK. The category was started because someone brought up the topic of diversity in Star Wars. Immi Thrax (talk) 00:16, 15 September 2021 (UTC) In Canada, the term "handicapped" isn't outdated; we don't use "disability" nearly as often. I'm not suggesting that these conditions can be cured in real life, of course, but this isn't real life, and many science fiction stories have shown ways to get rid of physical impairments or disabilities. The problem is that these characters don't really seem to have any physical disabilities because they get cybernetics right away, which is different from what happens in real life. It might be better to put characters like Luke, Grievous, or Wolffe into a separate cyborg sub-category instead of this one. SilverSunbird (talk) 00:20, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
-
I have to agree with Silver on this point. People like Luke, who don't have any kind of disability because of their cybernetics, shouldn't be called disabled. The Oxford English Dictionary says that "disabled" means "Made unable to do something" or "having a physical or mental condition that limits what you can do," and neither of those things is true for people with advanced cybernetics. VergenceScatter ( talk ) 00:26, 15 September 2021 (UTC) Responding to both SilverSunbird and VergenceScatter: In the United States, many people with disabilities generally find that term offensive. While some people also dislike the words disability and disabled, they are generally considered neutral (unlike the patronizing term "differently abled"). Luke, in particular, has been very important to people who have lost limbs or have limb differences because he is a hero who isn't seen as weaker because he lost his hand. I don't like the idea of dividing categories in that way and thinking about disabilities in terms of suffering or making up for them, because different people make different choices. For example, Tenel Ka Djo chose not to get a prosthetic arm, but that doesn't mean she is weaker or suffering because of it. Characters with cybernetics would still not have that body part or sense if they didn't use those devices. Immi Thrax (talk) 00:34, 15 September 2021 (UTC) First, I disagree with the idea that a disability doesn't cause any problems for a person or make them weaker in some way. That's what a disability is. I see your point about Luke being important to disabled people—I hadn't thought about that, but I still don't think he can be called disabled if he doesn't fit the definition of the word, no matter how people see him. VergenceScatter (talk) 00:36, 15 September 2021 (UTC) It's definitely possible to be awesome with only one hand, as Tenel Ka, the character you mentioned, shows, and as others have shown. But it's not the same as having two working hands, which means it's a physical limitation no matter how little the character thinks of it. Advanced cybernetics change things. It's great that Luke and others are seen as positive examples for amputees. But that doesn't mean that Luke and the others are actually disabled in the Star Wars universe, especially since they got their cybernetics so quickly. SilverSunbird (talk) 00:41, 15 September 2021 (UTC) Vergence, I didn't mean to say that a disability has no impact; I'm just trying to make it clear that the impact isn't always seen as negative and can be seen as just a difference. Like with categories like Category:Unidentified individuals, there's an out-of-universe aspect to the categorizing; those individuals have names in-universe, but we're categorizing them partly from an OOU perspective. Luke's prosthetic hand makes up for the loss of his hand when the prosthetic is attached and working. Real people and characters have different experiences and feelings about their disabilities, like Tenel Ka's "so what?" attitude, Luke's preference for a prosthetic, and Legends Vader's painfully bad prosthetics, but they all lost one or more limbs. Maybe a child category could be based on something other than how well the disability is compensated for, like Individuals with disabilities > Individuals with lost limbs > Individuals with prosthetics for lost limbs? The last one could also be a subcategory of Cyborgs? Immi Thrax (talk) 00:59, 15 September 2021 (UTC) I agree that whether or not the impact is negative doesn't really matter to the topic at hand, but Luke's prosthetics mean that losing his hand doesn't have any impact. Because his prosthetics make up for it, he isn't limited in any way, and he can use his hand. So, he doesn't fit the definition of disabled. I'm okay with a category for individuals with lost limbs, but I don't think it should be a subcategory of this one because not everyone who loses a limb in Star Wars is actually disabled. VergenceScatter (talk) 01:03, 15 September 2021 (UTC) Looking at it again, I think your suggestion is actually a good compromise, so I'd be fine with doing that. VergenceScatter (talk) 01:05, 15 September 2021 (UTC) Let's call it Category:Cyborgs with prosthetics (including cybernetic eyes), and let's not include Grievous in this category. If we do that, I'm okay with it. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:15, 15 September 2021 (UTC) It seems like canon is very inconsistent about whether Grievous was injured like in Legends or if he just decided one day that "it would be SO COOL to be a cyborg!" Maybe that's just a problem with how the article is organized. (Ugh, consistency!) I'm asking our Grievous expert what they think. This is what I'm thinking now. Do we all agree?: Immi Thrax (talk) 01:44, 15 September 2021 (UTC) Individuals with disabilities > Individuals with lost limbs > Tenel Ka Djo, Luke Skywalker... Individuals with disabilities > Blind individuals > Kanan Jarrus, Gadon Thek... Cyborgs > Cyborgs with prosthetics > Luke Skywalker, Gadon Thek... That could work... but, just to add something I just thought of, we should NOT put people who intentionally replaced their own body parts with prosthetics in this category or any subcategories. That's not being injured; that's intentionally changing your body. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:52, 15 September 2021 (UTC) I definitely wasn't thinking about intentional "this would be AWESOME" body mods, either! Would it work to explain that in the description, or would a different term be better for conveying that in the name? Prosthetics are supposed to be replacements for body parts that were lost due to disease, trauma, or congenital conditions, not "I want to see ultraviolet" or "I want a blaster arm" or other Star Wars reasons. Immi Thrax (talk) 02:03, 15 September 2021 (UTC) I think it would work to just keep them in the main "Cyborgs" category. Honestly, "Cyborgs with prosthetics" could be a subcategory of this one, in my opinion. SilverSunbird (talk) 02:06, 15 September 2021 (UTC) I also think it might be best to only put people in the "prosthetics" category if we know for sure that they didn't deliberately lose the original body part. And it might be good to do the same for this category, given the extreme body modification we were just talking about. SilverSunbird (talk) 02:08, 15 September 2021 (UTC) That's what I intend to do: only include people if we know the cause for sure, not just guessing. Like with many things, not every editor will understand, but we can try to make that clear in the description. I'm going to make a new heading for reworking descriptions since this is getting complicated. (ETA: Now that I look closer, the cyborgs category is pretty full already and could use some subcategories.) Immi Thrax (talk) 02:25, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
- So, to make sure the description is clear in this main category and any subcategories, does anyone have any suggestions for rewording it? Immi Thrax (talk) 02:25, 15 September 2021 (UTC)