It's Not Okay

It's the 4th (happy birthday, America!) and I hope everyone is having a good time. I was just reading over some blogs and read a new disability post at Feministe. Not an interesting analysis of what practical measures would aid the lives of disabled people but "Wah, these words make me feel bad" post. The post is by amandaw, who gives a run down on the social model of disability versus the medical. The medical model treats the person as a problem, she declares, when really the problem is society's. Spare me. The fact that I can't walk is indeed a problem. Sure it'd be nice if every building had a ramp, I'd even go so far as to say they should, but the walking thing is indeed a problem. See, the crusade of the social model proponents is to treat disabilities like race or gender. It's merely a construct that's in our heads and has no basis in reality. This is feel-good bullshit. Whereas there is little connection between race and genetics, disabilities are very really. Not to beat a dead horse, but my inability to walk is not a social construct, it's not just in all our heads.

amandaw is fighting for more respectful words. She writes:

When at all possible, I prefer to use the term “condition” rather than words like illness, disease, disorder — which require the assumption that something is wrong with the person. The word “condition” has a more-or-less neutral connotation, in my experience, which allows me to describe the condition (see what I did there?) of a person’s body and/or mind without loading them down with all the detritus attached to the medical model, which assumes deviance over variance.

But, there is something wrong. A person who has a cold is not in some variation of what a body should do. That person has an illness. A person who is deaf is not a variation of normalcy. The ears they possess were meant to provide them with the sense of hearing; they are not merely an adornment. My legs was supposed to conducting the commands of my brain to the rest of my body. There is actually literal deviation going on in all these cases. So, the use of the words illness, disease, or disorder is not just appropriate, it's apt.

amandaw then goes after the word "disability." Read:

Think about the word “disability.” There are so many problems to identify with using this particular word to describe a certain category of people. It uses negative language — the prefix “dis-” — to describe them, which sets the tone for all the discussion that follows. The word necessarily implies a lack of something, which is a screwy way to describe a set of people and leaves all sorts of trouble in its wake. And the assumption that people with disabilities do not have ability is kind of silly, isn’t it? Ability to do what? Maybe certain folks with disabilites cannot walk — or talk — or perform certain self-care tasks — or work for pay. But those people do have the ability to do a host of other things. Why is it only that-which-exists-in-opposition-to-abled-people which is important to identify? And why can these differences never be positive?

Not the prefix "dis-"! O Heavens, help us so that we my escape the prefix "dis-"! Of course the word "disability" implies the lack of something. In fact, it means the lack of something. What's wrong with using the defining characteristic of a certain group of people to refer to them? Is it wrong to refer to bald people as "bald people" because I'm using the word "bald" which necessarily means a lack of hair? Disability is the apt word to use in reference to disabled people because they are literally unable to perform a certain task that any able bodied person could. Why? Because our bodies were not meant to function this way. Our bodies are not functioning normally. There is literally something wrong with our bodies. amandaw's last question is quite easily the most ridiculous.

She asks "And why can these differences never be positive?" This to me is the ultimate stupidity of the social model proponents. The wish for disabilities to be thought of as a good thing. Like it's good thing that Stephen Hawking and everyone else suffering from ALS are slowly losing control of their bodies and will eventually be forced to use a respirator. Oh, but that's not a disease, it's a condition, it's variation of the human body. It's not a good thing that kids are born deaf or blind or that people go deaf or blind. It's not positive when a kid just on the ice in his first college hockey game breaks his neck and can never play hockey again. It's not positive when a child is born with spina bifida. These are not good things. And, here comes what will seem offensive to some: it's not okay to be disabled. Now, that is not a moral statement; it's a prescriptive one. People who take pride in being disabled are taking pride in the wrong thing. That's like taking pride in being the worst math student in your class. Disabled people face real problems that require practical solutions, but none of them will ever be solved by being psyched about being disabled. Disability is reality, don't blame it on society or yourself. It's a fact of life that must be compensated for, adapted to, and dealt with. To do otherwise is to live your life by your disability.