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In today’s society we view the disables as people who are not capable of living a “normal” life because based on the history of human existence, we have built a world upon not being disabled or meant for the disabilities. However, in recent years we have tried to built a world where anyone like the disabilities can live like “normal” society by adding laws like American Disabilities Act of 1990, Individual with Disabilities Education Act, and Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act and so on. By doing so, we have unintentionally created a sort of segregation and discrimination towards the Disabilities by comparing the Disabilities to the “normal” people. Two compelling writers and authors Richard Senelick and Rod Michalko sets …show more content…
out to reveal the stigma of disability. Richard Senelick is a writer who published an article in The Atlantic titled, “Reconciling Life and Quadriplegia”. Rod Michalko however, is one of the author of “Rethinking Normalcy: A Disability Studies Reader”. Both Richard Senelick and Rod Michalko challenges the common cultural assumptions and stereotypes of disability; about how they are perceive negatively in life and in society and how we can change our perception. We as a society are on a downward spiral when we choose to make the misconception that people with a disability could not experience quality in their lives making it not worth living. In Richard Senelick’s article, he explains a situation where a 32-year-old husband and father fell 16 feet from a tree while hunting, broke his neck and was left paralyzed from the neck down. When he awoke, his family including himself told his healthcare providers that he would not want to live as a disabled person. The doctors then discontinued life sustaining measures and he died about five hours later surrounded by his family and friends. According to that article his wife said, “The last thing he wanted was to be in a wheelchair” and “His quality of life would’ve been very poor.” Richard Senelick further comments on how Healthcare providers tend to think paralyzed people have a very low quality of life when in fact, actual spinal cord injury survivors tends to beg a differ. His argument continues by saying what the Healthcare providers and doctors are doing is disturbing since they are supplying the information to patients and families about what it will be like to be paralyzed and how their remarkably negative attitudes are only based on personal opinions. Specifically in the eyes of a “normal” person, they would see this as “your life is over” but Richard Senelick challenges that common assumption by stating that is not true. Your life is not over; but rather, it will be adjusted with time and patience. He claims people in Western cultures assume that being disabled would not be worth living and your quality of life is ruined. But in response, Richard Senelick explains that quality of life means different things to different people at different times in their life and gives an example of our perception of quality life and how it will change overtime from being young to old and that the same is true of a person who becomes disabled. Overall, with these sets of mindsets and attitudes it only further enhances the common cultural assumption and stereotypical view of disability having a negative impact on life. Truth be told, disability is perceived negatively in society; however in reality, disability is a social and political construction and we need to respond and address this issue in our work and in our lives.
In Rod Michalko’s “Disability Matters” he exposes the constant rejection of disabled people from the common understandings of humanity and what symbolizes the “good life”. He argues that the cultural assumption of “normal” being the good life and only life worth living is not true and that the word itself cannot be fully defined but based on personal preference. Rod Michalko goes deeper of what disability is and what it defines. He brings up an issue saying that Western culture is without some sense of what disability is and that is why no one is without some thoughts or feelings about it. However, the common stereotype about disability are typically negative and usually understood as a misfortune. He implies that it is precisely this “personal tragedy” conception of disability of what everyone thinks resulting in negative perception of being labeled disable. Furthermore, he claims disability is a personal tragedy wrought with problems, problems for which solutions must be sought. This misconception he challenges by substituting the word “disability” with “abnormal conditionings.” By doing so, he hopes that it will minimize the negative effects of disability and to help disabled people “fit” into “normal” society. “Michalko demonstrates that the Disabilities do not suffer our impairments so much as we suffer our society.” —Rosemarie Garland Thompson. The social and political construction of disability is an ongoing, changing process that people decipher based on the person’s knowledge and awareness of it. With that said, because the social and political construction of disability has no real defined answer, it creates change overtime and with that, we need to start accepting and seeing the Disabilities as the same human beings as us “normal”
people. "Disability is part of the human condition. Almost every one of us will be permanently or temporarily disabled at some point in life. We must do more to break the barriers which segregate People with the Disabilities, in many cases forcing them to the margins of society." -World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan. With the knowledge and comprehensive understanding of both Richard Senelick and Rod Michalko, it is agreed upon that it is very dangerous when society views the disabled as not worthy of the same treatment of able bodied. There will be great danger if we allow ourselves to view the disabled as people whose lives are not worth living. As a society we must act now moving onto the future to promote, embrace, and accept disability not as a negative viewpoint of life but as Christopher Reeves puts it; a difficult, but LIVELY “extraordinary journey”. With this simple yet accurate mindset, maybe then the future of Western culture’s negative perception of the Disabilities will change. A society in which everyone accepts and understand will grow and thrive, creating a better world for our children. So become aware of this stigma that haunts the Disabilities by changing your perception of the Disabilities or else we will not progress but rather devolve into a passive, ignorant, and apathetic society.
What comes into one’s mind when they are asked to consider physical disabilities? Pity and embarrassment, or hope and encouragement? Perhaps a mix between the two contrasting emotions? The average, able-bodied person must have a different perspective than a handicapped person, on the quality of life of a physically disabled person. Nancy Mairs, Andre Dubus, and Harriet McBryde Johnson are three authors who shared their experiences as physically handicapped adults. Although the three authors wrote different pieces, all three essays demonstrate the frustrations, struggles, contemplations, and triumphs from a disabled person’s point of view and are aimed at a reader with no physical disability.
With Lisa I.Iezzoni’s reading, it showcases how disability is a without a doubt attached to discrimination of disability by separation of identity, people. It adheres to the moral reflection that people need to garner which emphasizes “cultural perspectives on health and illness, social justice, and the moral dimensions of patient encounters.” (Jones, Wear, Friedman, 2014) In turn, health and illness as depicted in a narrative can uncover the truth and contentions of a phenomenon through repeated phrase, metaphor and perspective as with the case of “Stand
Disability in our day in age is seen as being worse than death. People with disabilities should not feel like they don 't belong. They are just like everyone else and want to be treated like everyone else. Many without disabilities think that it can be contagious and stray to even look at people with disability. This is not the case for it 's not contagious and one should not be seen as a different person just because of their disability. They didn 't choose that life and shouldn 't be mistreated for what they are. “People with disability should be treated equally to everyone else.”
Gender has been broadly used within the humanities and social sciences as both a means to categories dissimilarities, and as a logical concept to give details differences. In both the humanities and social sciences. Disability studies has appeared partly as a result of challenges to give details gendered experience of disability and partly as a challenge to contemporary feminist theory on gender which fails to take description of disability. Disabled people have frequently been standing for as without gender, as asexual creatures, as freaks of nature, hideous, the ‘Other’ to the social norm. In this way it may be taking for granted that for disabled people gender has little bearing. However, the image of disability may be make physically powerful by gender - for women a sense of intensified passivity and helplessness, for men a dishonesties masculinity make by put into effected dependence. Moreover these images have real consequences in terms of
Culture and disability takes at its starting points the assertion that disability is culturally created and stands as a reflection of a society’s meaning of the phenomenon it created. This includes the fact that disability is a cultural reality that is both time and place dependent: what disability means is different from one social group to another and different from one historical period to another. (p. 526)
Disability is a ‘complex issue’ (Alperstein, M., Atkins, S., Bately, K., Coetzee, D., Duncan, M., Ferguson, G., Geiger, M. Hewett, G., et al.., 2009: 239) which affects a large percentage of the world’s population. Due to it being complex, one can say that disability depends on one’s perspective (Alperstein et al., 2009: 239). In this essay, I will draw on Dylan Alcott’s disability and use his story to further explain the four models of disability being The Traditional Model, The Medical Model, The Social Model and The Integrated Model of Disability. Through this, I will reflect on my thoughts and feelings in response to Dylan’s story as well as to draw on this task and my new found knowledge of disability in aiding me to become
Historically, we have been taught that people with disabilities are different and do not belong among us, because they are incompetent, cannot contribute to society or that they are dangerous. We’re still living with the legacy of people with disabilities being segregated, made invisible, and devalued. The messages about people with disabilities need to be changed. There needs to be more integration of people with disabilities into our culture to balance out the message. Because of our history of abandonment and initialization, fear and stigma impact our choices more than they would if acceptance, community integration, and resources were a bigger part of our history.
The medical model of disability describes fixing and curing impairments as ways that will closer align the individual with normality (Milton, 2004). By placing individual blame on the stigma and stereotype so often associated with straying from the norm, a medical model of disability in society can continue the cycle of ableism though hegemonic normalcy. The standards of normalcy in relation to disability culture are often related to a medical intervention that brings the individuals impairment closer to a societal ideal. The label of normal is determined by a dominant privileged group. The dominant privileged group often spreads the standard of normality through representation in the medical field, media, and
The two essays “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs and “A Plague of Tics” by David Sedaris are excellent pieces of work that share many similarities. This paper would reflect on these similarities particularly in terms of the author, message and the targeted audience. On an everyday basis, people view those with disabilities in a different light and make them conscious at every step. This may be done without a conscious realisation but then it is probably human nature to observe and notice things that deviate from the normal in a society. In a way people are conditioned to look negatively at those individuals who are different in the conventional
According to Lennard J. Davis, we live in a world of norms. However, these norms have roots that stem from historical and societal perspectives we do not acknowledge in our studies. There is a psychological source that creates the normality in every culture and destroys the outliers in them as well. In Chapter 1 titled “Introduction: Normality, Power, and Culture,” we see a combination of concepts that have established a way of living and perceiving, especially for those with disabilities. In this essay, Davis discusses the powerful impact normality has over the way we process the relationship between body and mind. For those who battle disabilities, normality has created a condescending and dangerous society, disconnecting and distancing troubled
It could be said that in modern industrial society, disability is still widely regarded as a tragic individual failing, in which its “victims” require care, sympathy and medical diagnosis. Whilst medical science has served to improve and enhance the quality of life for many, it could be argued that it has also led to further segregation and separation of many individuals. This could be caused by its insistence on labelling one as “sick”, “abnormal” or “mental”. Consequently, what this act of labelling and diagnosing has done, is enforce the societal view that a disability is an abnormality that requires treatment and that any of its “victims” should do what is required to be able to function in society as an able bodied individual. The social model of disability argues against this and instead holds the view that it is society, not the individual, that needs to change and do what is required, so that everyone can function in society.
However, since the 1900s, research indicates that there occurred transformations in the way the disabled were treated and perceived (Baynton, 2013). Primarily this was as a result of the demands of the people, mainly the handicapped, for a change in the people in the society viewed them. For example, it is evident that the disability rights movements are no different from the civil rights movement, whereby both have a long history as early as the 1800s (Nielsen, 2012). There were challenges in these movements that involved numerous events, laws, as well as people. Fortunately, unlike the civil rights movements that were faced with a lot of rebellion, police brutality and even assassinations of the group leaders, the people with disability’s resistance was not faced with hostility rather, by legal measures when some groups with vested interests felt their rights eroded. Even so, as Baynton, (2013) notes, the efforts of the activists, and disability rights lawyers, among
Disability is an topic that has produced conflict, and is viewed very differently from either side. For able-bodied people to truly understand what disabled people go through they need to see disabled people more; see their lives. If seeing disabled people more often became reality, they would be viewed as normal more, and it would make interacting easier for both sides. Disabled people have a hard life, but it does not mean it is not worth living. Nancy Mairs, Andre Dubus, and Harriet McBryde Johnson all have physical disabilities, and have written about their experiences and views. In their writings, they touch upon both similar and different points. A very present similarity between the authors is they all play to the same audience. In their messages, both Mairs and Johnson agree that able-bodied people automatically assume that disabled people have a lower quality of life or are unhappy. The strategies used by each author plays to their message, and aids them in getting across their position. Disability isn’t always easy to understand, and these authors help illustrate that.
In the essay “Disability,” Nancy Mairs discusses the lack of media attention for the disabled, writing: “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anyone’s life.” An ordinary person has very little exposure to the disabled, and therefore can only draw conclusions from what is seen in the media. As soon as people can picture the disabled as regular people with a debilitating condition, they can begin to respect them and see to their needs without it seeming like an afterthought or a burden. As Mairs wrote: “The fact is that ours is the only minority you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” Looking at the issue from this angle, it is easy to see that many disabled people were ordinary people prior to some sort of accident. Mairs develops this po...
Disability: Any person who has a mental or physical deterioration that initially limits one or more major everyday life activities. Millions of people all over the world, are faced with discrimination, the con of being unprotected by the law, and are not able to participate in the human rights everyone is meant to have. For hundreds of years, humans with disabilities are constantly referred to as different, retarded, or weird. They have been stripped of their basic human rights; born free and are equal in dignity and rights, have the right to life, shall not be a victim of torture or cruelty, right to own property, free in opinion and expression, freedom of taking part in government, right in general education, and right of employment opportunities. Once the 20th century