Mairian,
Thank you for your confidence. My concerns are not easy to explain but I
think are valid.
I do think that under the social model, impairment can exist without
socio-political disability. Exampling are people who need glassing, in
growing toe nails and so on. These has personal difficulties but do not
generate concepts of 'other' or other oppression.
Therefore, I am concerned that people with minor impairments are
mistaking symptoms of impairment as symptoms of disability and attempt
to align themselves as disabled activists.
This has three problems. Firstly, because of the social skills gained
through not having suffer the oppression of special schools, people with
minor impairments has more ability to dominate the movement and be vocal
in describing their difficulties in a way other impairment groups do not
have. This can generate a sense of superiority and arrogance.
Secondly, people with minor impairment can pass themselves off and can
be considered as acceptable forms of disability, resulting in their
viewpoint being more focus. Due to the discreditable rather than
discredited approach, this viewpoint can often be cure focused which can
be opposite to other impairment group who have a strong discredited
identity.
Thirdly, people with minor impairment will often fail to have the shared
disability experience of other impairment groups. This will therefore
distance themselves for other disabled people and may often have no
general disability understanding.
I have witnessed the rise of awareness and power of minor impairments
and it has been watching doctors feeding the seals at the zoo. In a
deseperate effort to medicalised everything in sight for expansion
purchases, doctors have create new impairments and then made people feel
grateful for the labels they been given. It is often a false celebration
of what was everyday life.
To argue it is not the revival of the medical model to its extremely is
a falsehood. And now this new impairments are being self-dianoged, it
further turns the idea of impairment upside down as people fight for
labeled.
Neorudiversity is the fish thrown by the doctors, or often scraps, being
fried and adopted into culture. It is a re-enforcement and valdation of
the new impairments which does not exist.
The new impairments are indeed more social constructed than more
tradiational. Physical impairments like lost limb is the most real and
actual impairment. Learning impairment can be valided to lesser degree.
The validity of mental illness has be questioned for decades. Now we
have these impairments based on academic skills in a social environment
which devalues other manual skill bases. We have shifted from a diverse
individual skills base, to poor education and onto blaming the
individuals for being medically incapable of certain academic skills
like reading, writing and maths.
I therefore have a difficulty accepted this sudden increase in
impairments numbers where impairment did not previously exist.
The 2 mains issues are therefore the true validity of the impairments
within an social model definition and the compatibility in terms of
attitudes from people with neorudiversity (will someone tell me why CP
is not included) and other impairment groups.
Many Thanks, Simon
PS: My spelling/grammer is crap because of the way my brain and hands
don't work together! Whenever I can, I do take responsibility for this
and just consider myself a crap speller.. like the good old days!
--
Simon Stevens
Managing Director, Enable Enterprises
[log in to unmask]
NEED INSTANT ADVICE?
CALL 247 INSTANT ON 090 904 80000 (£1 PER MINUTE)
PO Box 1974, COVENTRY, CV3 1YF
Tel: +44(0)24 7644 8130 (Sales 0800 358 8484)
Fax: +44(0)870 133 2447
IM: enableenterprises (Yahoo/AOL) simonenable (MSN) 155158793 (ICQ)
Personal site: www.simonstevens.com
Company shop: www.enableenterprises.com
Free Newsletter: www.contactexpress.biz
Join our FREE newsletter, send blank email to [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: The Disability-Research Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mairian
Scott-Hill
Sent: 20 January 2003 13:38
To:
Subject: Re: An open debate to neuro diversity! No Labels
Sarah wrote:
>
> I feel very strongly about the 'hierachy of disability' thread that is
> present in this current debate. Indivdual impairment and experience
are
> indeed unique, but collectively we can all empathise with issues of
power
> oppression and difficulties within our lives, neuro diverse or not
>
With reference to Simon's and Larry's comments and to what Sarah says
above,
could we maybe try looking at this issue from the other way around. My
understanding of the social model is that you can only be 'disabled' if
you
have an 'impairment' - disabled people are oppressed on the grounds of
impairment. Whichever we we look at it, and whether we like it or not,
'having an impairment' depends on 'medical diagnosis' of that impairment
by
medical professionals who are 'experts' in the field of that particular
impairment.
I don't want to get back into the debate about how various forms of the
social model actually define the relationship between disability and
impairment, but one thing all these forms do seem to say is that
disability
and impairment cannot be separated: it is nonsense to talk about
disability
without talking about impairment. Therefore, I feel that discussion of
impairment is important and should not be excluded from this list. The
point
about 'social' and 'political' definitions of disability, as Sarah says,
is
their emphasis on collective responses to oppression. The collective (it
is
said) empowers 'powerless' individuals. Uniting under the
"neurodiversity"
banner is a collective and empowering response to disabling medical and
social practice, which in the lives of neurodiverse people is very
'real'.
But how can a cross-impairment movement be 'really' collective when, if
we
are to believe the vast quantities of literature on this topic over the
last
two decades, it continues to be perceived as excluding groups of people
with
particular impairments and to organise itself on the basis of
hierarchies of
visibility or otherwise? This is surely important from a political
perspective because it means that the movement claims to 'speak for' a
very
large number of people whilst distancing itself from these people -
exactly
the same thing that non-disabled people are criticised for. This feels
like
double standards to me.
I know from personal experience that Simon works hard to think across
impairments and generally puts what he says into practice. He is
certainly
one of the very few people who has attempted to communicate with me in
my
preferred mode in settings where disabled people and their allies take
spoken communication for granted. Thus it intrigues me that he has
difficulty with the concept of neurodiversity and, whereas I don't agree
with him, I feel that rather than scapegoating him for his views, I want
to
understand why he feels so strongly about this particular issue. This is
particularly so given that, to my knowledge, he has not expressed
similar
views in previous debates on this list on, for example, 'learning
difficulties', 'brain injury', M.E. (and other forms of chronic
illness),
and 'madness and distress'.
Mairian Scott-Hill
________________End of message______________________
Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List
are now located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.
________________End of message______________________
Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List
are now located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.
|