John Swain and Colin Cameron, “Unless otherwise stated” Readings Package #20
Carol Thomas “Narrative Identity and the Disabled Self” Readings package #21
Nick Watson (2002). “Well, I know this is Going to Sound Very Strange to You, but I Don’t See Myself as a Disabled Person.” Disability and Society 17(5): 509-527
It is reading through writings like this that really get you to think about the short comings of our society. In an ablest perspective, all is well. Quite frankly I was one of those people who thought that disability was a tragedy. I used to believe that it was something that the disabled person needed to overcome to be more like the rest of us. Why I felt like this is totally beyond me. What is so great about blending in with the typical North American society anyway? I guess that there is this sense of “perfection” that we deem normal, and feel like everyone is striding in that direction.
I find it particularly interesting to define the disability as the ME. It is totally true. For the person with the impairment it is not something that happened to them, it is there life. The disability does not run their life, they run their life. Living in an ablest society it is apparent that the values and morals of the ablest person seem to take a negative effect on those with disability. Understanding that you have a disability and accepting it as part of you it a big step at tuning out society’s thinking. Sad but true. It should not be necessary to even have to come to terms with you disability, ideally it should be seen no different that anything else that makes us unique. We do not balk at brown, red, blond or black hair yet we cannot help looking at someone in a wheelchair or using a cane. Seems odd to me that in this day in age we still feel the need to look at someone for the disability they possess not the person they are.
The story about the women with one had was a very good example of someone trying to fit into this ablest society. Being born with only one had she did not feel that this was a problem. She was used to it and accepted it as her “uniqueness”, something that we all possess. Only after visiting a rehabilitation facility where the ablest framework prevailed did she feel the need to consider hiding it. Affixing prosthetic hands to her arm she could then “fit in”. Fit in you say? Ridiculous! Still we refer to fitting in as conforming to the ablest view of normalcy. If normalcy is defined as being normal, then who is going to define normal? Before we can even begin to define it we need to understand what its characteristics are, and depending on your stand in life will affect the definition of normal. So ideally no one can be normal because normal does not have a definition.
Being in society and being part of life just like “everyone else” is a severely ablest view. Yes to the lesser extent the ablest view dominates society’s understand of the world, but instead of accepting it we should be striving for changing it. The articles this week denote a sense of pride when referring to disability. Each of the stories discusses how “normal” it feels to be themselves. And normal it should feel. Everyone has uniqueness about themselves and this specialty needs to shine. If we were all exactly the same then this would be a very boring world we live in. Hitler tried to build his utopian world of sameness and look where that got him, not somewhere good to say the least. In looking at disability we need to assess individual persons because everyone has some sort of impairment which makes us all unique. And it is this uniqueness that makes our society function properly.
Comment Paper by - Yvette Cuthbertson
No comments:
Post a Comment