Theme
10:27pm October 4, 2014

into-the-weeds:

That is not what the social model means.

The social model does not say that, with proper accommodations and in the absence of stigma and discrimination, impairments, pain, and medical conditions will go away.

The social model separates what we collectively refer to as “disability” into 2 different things: impairment, and disability. Impairments are our raw set of abilities, needs, medical conditions, etc. This is not socially constructed, this is just how we are. Disability is how society views and values various abilities, interacts with people who have specific impairments and, through a variety of ways, disables us from participating. So the social model defines “disability,” basically, as ableism—as what happens when a group of people interact with a set of abilities and decide to leave some people out. This is socially constructed, and this is what the social model wants to talk about and change. 

The social model is emphatic that “disability” is separate from pain, impairments, or inherent abilities. Under the social model, I am autistic, I am visually impaired, I experience pain regardless of the society I live in. But the society I live in can either accommodate those things, or disable me.

The social model is so fucking careful to establish the difference between “disability” and “impairment.” It never claims that acceptance negates impairment. If someone is saying that, they are not doing the social model.

We get fucked over by language—in English, “disability” can mean, essentially, ableism, OR it can mean impairment. And we usually use it in everyday speech to mean impairment. I think this is slightly less of a problem in the UK, where the social model originated and where they use “disableism” instead of ableism? But it’s a huge problem, and it’s very confusing, and it’s not very smart or effective to have a movement predicate on such ambiguous language use.

But.

The social model does not mean that impairment is socially constructed. Impairment is very, very real, and the social model acknowledges that. Emphasizes that. Individual bloggers don’t always get it right—what else is new? The same can be said for any concept. It doesn’t indicate an inherent flaw in the concept.

Notes:
  1. sxizzor reblogged this from kforshort
  2. luvlylexy reblogged this from kforshort
  3. kforshort reblogged this from blue-author
  4. agnostic-gnostic reblogged this from passermortuusest
  5. passermortuusest reblogged this from withgoldenfire
  6. alexisalexei reblogged this from legend-of-siena
  7. legend-of-siena reblogged this from neurowonderful
  8. tranarchy-and-chaos reblogged this from into-the-weeds
  9. morphios reblogged this from wheeliewifee
  10. sp00kyblue reblogged this from queerlypsychoticsiriusblack
  11. thingsineededtoknow reblogged this from blue-author
  12. moregeousbdffs reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  13. treadingthepath reblogged this from adventures-in-asexuality
  14. the-nth-angel reblogged this from raginrayguns
  15. ihaveamightyrage reblogged this from chaotic-awesome
  16. mattersprogressed-old reblogged this from into-the-weeds
  17. ineloquent-tumbling reblogged this from wheeliewifee
  18. raginrayguns reblogged this from ozylikes
  19. floralandfemme reblogged this from ofthemilkyway
  20. 1lg-prvbs3-5-6 reblogged this from alliecat-person
  21. lesbianlegbreaker reblogged this from bubonickitten
  22. autisticmatilda reblogged this from olddisabledautisticmofo
  23. myforget-me-notsandmarigolds reblogged this from wheeliewifee