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8:28pm May 2, 2014

➸ I just found a BADD post that tied my brain in a knot.

indigojo:

youneedacat:

It claimed that the word disablism or ableism is bad because it presumes that disability is an inherent quality of a person, when disability is the oppression we face and impairment is the inherent qualities, therefore it should be impairmentism, or… something like that.

I ended up writing an…

It’s a particularly dogmatic reading of the Social Model of Disability which is popular in the UK among some activists (particularly those with purely physical impairments, as that’s who it works best for): that disability solely consists of the oppression and exclusion of people with “impairments”, hence they become “disabled people”. You don’t hear the term “people with disabilities” much in the UK anymore, because of the effectiveness of this group of activists.

Oh yeah I’m highly familiar with that way of doing things.  I don’t particularly like the dogmatism, but I’m familiar with it.  What boggled my mind was the further leap where the person said that the word ‘disablism’ implies that (social-model)-disability is an inherent trait in the person.  And I can’t figure that at all.  (Not to mention that they got to that point by comparison with ‘racism’, which they thought meant that race was an intrinsic quality of a person.  Which someone else rapidly pointed out, is not so.)

I used to try to use social-model language but it was too much hard work for too little payoff, and I’m not a big fan of ‘models’ to begin with, so … meh.  Although I’ve heard that this rigid reading of the social model is actually a misunderstanding of what the social model is.  But I try not to get too involved in such discussions, they seem too impractical and unwieldy.

Personally I see disability as the interaction between a person and their social and physical environment.  I don’t think they have a model for that one.  And I don’t stick to any particular plan for how to use the words disability, impairment, or handicap, they all just come out of my mouth indiscriminately.  My meaning comes from context, not from rigid definitions for each word.

And if I say ableism or disablism, all I mean is disability oppression and discrimination.  I don’t say anything there about what is intrinsic to what else about whoever I’m talking about.  And I have trouble understanding a mind that can make those leaps so easily.