Day: June 15, 2017

naamahdarling:

theconcealedweapon:

Differently Abled:

Person A has some skills that person B doesn’t have. Person B has some skills that person A doesn’t have. Society respects the existence of both of them, and considers both of their skill sets to be useful. Society does not require either one of them to use skills that they don’t have.

Disabled:

Person A has some skills that person B doesn’t have. Person B has some skills that person A doesn’t have. Society treats Person A’s skills as default skills that everyone’s supposed to have, while considering Person B’s skills to be useless. People who don’t have Person A’s skills are expected to learn those skills or be left behind, while people who don’t have Person B’s skills are given the tools to not need those skills. 

…

“Differently Abled” is not just a nice way to say “Disabled”. It erases the fact that society actively causes certain people to be disabled.

This is an excellent post.

This is a foundational part of what is called the “social model” of disability. The social model of disability is a framework for discussing disability that centers the role of society in actually creating disability where there otherwise would be none.

In the case of many physical disabilities, they would not be disabilities at all if it were not for society’s failure to accommodate them.

The “medical model” centers the effect that the disabling condition has on the disabled individual. Some conditions are inherently disabling in that they are inherently disruptive to the well-being of the disabled individual to such an extent that no accommodations can render the disabled individual equally productive or equally happy.

Both models are valid, and accurate. Both models are necessary for in-depth discussion of disability, society’s role in disability, and the happiness and well-being of disabled individuals.

And both models may affect individuals simultaneously. They often work together, with society’s failure to accommodate a condition making a situation that would be disabling but bearable into something insurmountable.

A good example of this would be in the case of depression, where the condition itself is unavoidably and sometimes intractably unpleasant, but which would be much more bearable if the burden of supporting oneself alone under such circumstances were removed.

My disability, bipolar, is occasionally an inherently nightmarish state, and much of its psychological effects on me can only be mitigated by medication. The social model of disability however, still applies. If society did a better job of supporting me, a great deal of the pressure this places on me would be gone, and it is highly likely, that because my condition worsens under stress, my condition would actually improve if I were properly provided for. I do not think it would vanish, but I do believe that my situation would be much more bearable.

It is absolutely imperative for society to support the disabled. We have relatively little control over the medical aspect of most disability. What we can control is how Society responds to the presence of disabled people. We as a society have the ability to largely mitigate the social cause of disability comma if we wanted to.

It is, however, first necessary that the lives and well-being of disabled people be valued enough for this to take place, and our ability to advocate for ourselves is, by definition, much reduced. The unfortunate truth is that many of us rely on the non-disabled to advocate for us, or on people whose disability does not cause issues with their executive functioning or affect their ability to advocate for themselves.

In order to help and understand disability and disabled people an acquaintances with both the social and medical models of disability is absolutely required.

Do not leave the disabled out of your activism. We must be lifted up along with the rest of you. If you do not help the helpless, you are merely replicating and furthering the systems that put us here in the first place.