One of the most profound ideas that I’ve come across and ultimately led me to Solheimar is the concept that disabilities are a means of discrimination. Often times in our society we use disability as a justification to treat others unequally and up until I took the course “Nature of Social Inequality” I didn’t recognize discrimination within the context of disability. Just some background information: discrimination stems from prejudice; prejudice is an inevitable part of being human. Prejudice is the judgment (ideas) of others before prior knowledge of that individual or group of people. If you take prejudice a step further, it becomes an action which treats people differently and this is called “discrimination.” The word “disability” in and of itself is a form of discrimination; the definition is “a physical or mental handicap, especially one that prevents a person from living a full, normal life or from holding a gainful job.” (Dictionary.com). Most people who have a “disability” are completely capable of living normal lives and the only reason that they are “disabled” is because society makes it so. An example would be door knobs. Door knobs are (usually) the same height on all doors and this is because people have calculated the average height of people and decided on a height. This method isn’t inclusive for individuals who are exceptionally tall or short. Obviously door knobs are very particular example but it’s easy to apply this concept to other day to day things. It’s important to keep in mind that there are accommodations for people who are differently abled to transform their lives so they can do the things we deem “normal” and” necessary” to function in our society. Thus, they are not disabled and shouldn’t be treated as lesser than what we consider to be the “norm”.
An example of disability being used as discrimination would be the phenomenon of female hysteria in the Victorian Ages. Female hysteria was thought to be a disease only women acquired, its symptoms ranging from sexual desire to anorexia, and it was once medically treated. Women who supposedly had female hysteria were often dismissed by doctors because they were “volatile adolescent girls that were considered particularly unreliable informants” (Brumberg, 143). Evidently, it was thought these women couldn’t be functioning members of society and even in medical facilities that were intended to be accommodating these women were unjustly treated differently because of their so called disease. Female hysteria is no longer a disease or something to be medically treated. Currently it’s obvious and we recognize that what went on in those medical faculties wasn’t just.
I think this is important because there are parallels between the consequences of female hysteria and the concept of disability in western society. Both groups of people have been abused, ridiculed, discredited, and I think we should recognize that the way in which we’re treating these people with “disabilities” is wrong. Seeing people talk to differently abled folks like their children or completely avoiding conversation with them purely because they’re “disabled” is discrimination. This has been important to me because I’ve been and to some degree probably still am a perpetrator of this and that’s something that I’m trying to work on. Coming to Solheimar has given me such a great opportunity to work on this, because in the past, I haven’t done a good enough job defending differently abled people. I’ve also been a complete bystander when people use the word “retard” as an insult, or treat differently abled people with a lot of disrespect, and as I said before I’ve perpetuated this inequality. I’m using “differently abled” because I think it’s more accurate, it’s not a perfect solution but at this moment I think it works for now. I imagine a world where we don’t have to put differential titles on these individuals and just call everyone “people”.
To find out more go to
http://www.pdhre.org/rights/disabled.html
Take care,
Savanna