Modes of Disability

[sqbr]

A bunch of interesting links and ideas seem to be coming out of the Feministe post Thoughts on disability and respectful language.

Reading the comments I finally had an answer to my niggling concern with the social model of disability glossing over the fact that some disabilities really do, objectively, suck, for reasons that have nothing to do with society:

But we need to break out of the model, which undoubtedly has a stronghold on the rest o society, as necessarily always in the negative realm. There is nothing INHERENTLY negative about disability. That doesn’t mean there can’t BE negatives — just that it isn’t necessarily, and always, negative.

Comments

[aris_tgd]

I was actually going to make a post about this, but perhaps I will just make a comment here, instead? My own reaction to reading about the social model over the medical model thing was defensiveness, since I'm a scientist, and my thought was first "But there is something wrong if you are not functioning at optimal performance, and there are ways to make that better."

But I thought about it, y'know, attempting desperately to check my privilege, and I think the big sticking point for me that might seem obvious but is never addressed is that the medical model isn't being dismissed in its place. If you want to go to the doctor and say "Give me medicine to make pain stop" or "Help me fit a brace for my leg" or whatever, the social model doesn't interfere there. The social model is for all the other interactions, which are not about individual action but about guaranteeing access to everyone. Which also helps with the problem that applying the medical model to societal interactions puts the onus on the individual to fix things, which is not always possible, especially since disability is closely entwined with class (either as a cause or an effect.)

[sqbr]

*nods*

Yes, I think it's easy to read criticisms of "the medical model" as criticisms of medicine (as an idea in principle, rather than pointing out flaws in the way it's done in practice), which would be absurd because medicine is obviously hugely important to helping deal with many chronic illnesses.

I'm still getting my head around the social model, especially as it applies to me, I think part of the problem with all these models is trying to describe all disabilities at once means not accurately capturing any one individual's experience and needs. Disability varies from being incurably Deaf where medicine offers nothing and the right social context means you might not want to be "cured", to chronic pain which goes away with a pill, plus there's the physical/mental divide etc.