comment paper-week 3

Bibliography
Barron, Karin. "The Bumpy Road to Womanhood." Disability and Society 12.2 (1997): 223-39.
Priestley, Mark. "Disability and Youth." Disability: A Life Course Approach (2003): 88-115.

Comment Paper #3
The readings for week six provide a thorough analysis of the many obstacles that disabled youth must face as they head towards adulthood. Priestley and Barron discuss in great detail the numerous barriers that society places on disabled youth making it difficult for them to complete the transition to adulthood if at all. This paper will illustrate how the two articles support and contradict each other. Also, it will show how the articles add to ones understanding about what barriers need to be broken within society in order to allow youth with disabilities to have a more comfortable and less challenging transition towards adulthood. Adulthood as a path, and not a finite destination. A life 'course.'
Priestley and Barron analyze the problem surrounding society's barriers that oppress disabled youth and shake their confidence making it hard to move onto the adult phase of their lives. Priestley starts off by showing that disabled youth face the culturally structured idea that beauty is above all important. "The aesthetic normalization of youthful beauty, as a bodily ideal within consumerist culture, is thus a factor of oppression of disabled people of all generations, but has a particularly resonance for young people with visible differences" (Priestley, 96). Barron states that "having a physical impairment may mean having to come to terms with a body that departs from cultural norms of acceptability and attractiveness" (229). Since this ideal is so widely enforced throughout society disabled people have not only been labeled as "less attractive or desirable" but as well "their potential for expressions of sexuality has been both denied and heavily regulated" (Priestley, 97). Barron concludes from the women's experiences that disabled young women are being viewed as asexual (229). It is extremely important to realize that "despite the emphasis on agency and choice in the mainstream youth literature, young disabled people continue to experience significant forms of collective biography, based on ascribed roles and produced through social relations of production, that hinder the achievement of future adult status" (Priestley, 112).
Instead of focusing on the obstacles that affect all disabled youth, Barron's article explores the challenges that Swedish young women with physical disabilities face when moving towards womanhood. She explains other barriers that young women with physical disabilities have to overcome in society that young men may not have to experience. Young women are faced with challenging the traditional female role in society. "Dependence, passivity and non-assertive behaviour traditionally are viewed as appropriate and desirable behaviour for all women, but their affects are even more detrimental for disabled women because they are also stereotypes of persons with disabilities. Disabled women are confronted with preconceived ideas of what is appropriate behaviour for women as well as for 'the disabled'" (Barron, 227). Barron proves that the experiences of the interviewees with their doctors have not always been a positive one. For instance, "the knowledge, to which the interviewees have with regard to their own bodies, is not always taken into account" (Barron, 233). As well, disabled young women have many role models that enforce the ideal that women should be care givers. For example, Barron states that "disabled young women may have continual contact with a number of women who have the task of providing care" (235). However, it is important to note that "while the impairment can be described as dominating their social identity, or having become their 'master status', the young women do not view their experience of disability as a personal tragedy" (Barron, 227).
To conclude, it is clear that numerous barriers are created by society that young disabled individuals must struggle with in order to reach adulthood. Barron shows that "the young women reject the traditional role of subservience of the 'disabled', as well as of women generally" (237). This quotation proves that the women challenge labels in order to be seen as a human being that deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Thus, in order to eliminate the fight for equality that young disabled individuals face daily, society must begin to eradicate the idea of the norm. After all, what is normal? Lastly, Priestly shows that there is "an apparent contradiction between social investments in preparing young disabled people for adulthood and a widespread denial of their capacity to achieve an end" (112). Therefore, the "complex relationship between the individual agency, cultural expectations, and structural constraints" must be changed in order to better the transition that young disabled individuals experience when moving towards adulthood (Priestley, 112).