Natasha wrote:
>>These [physical v. cognitive] are definitely communities that not only need
to work together, but frequently overlap. But the (physical and cognitive)
disabilities rights community often wants to distance itself strongly from the
mental health rights movement for fear of being lumped in with those
"crazies".<<
Hi Natasha, and welcome to the list. There are many significant issues in your
eloquent post, but I first wanted to counter the notion that it is "fear of
crazies" that separates phys. disabled identities from groups more concerned
with cognitive impairments.
Couldn't it be, rather, that the borders arise from:
1) ignorance of each others' unique concerns and experiences,
2) the general (but artificial) border between apparent disability v. "hidden"
disability,
3) the ever-increasing literature on physical disabilities v. scant writings
available from/about cognitive disabilities?
Your point that there is *overlap* is certainly true, and here is where I see
"fear of crazies" operating--but it is the obsessive fears of the public-at-
large, I think, that are of concern. The media and common opinion easily
conflate any and all features of "deviancy" under the label "crazy."
Prisoners, prostitutes, paraplegics, paupers, and absent-minded professors--ALL
of these have been seen as "crazy" because they are different. And for all the
controversy over Cartesian dualism--mind being SEPARATE from body--it is ironic
how quickly and easily some people are able to COMBINE the mental with the
physical in order to posit body and behavior as one unit.
If defective in physical appearance, the entity under our gaze must be mentally
defective as well. Such thinking underlies the impulse to raise one's voice or
speak slowly or use a child's vocabulary, when meeting the obviously physically
disabled person in any contact zone. This response to physical appearance is
unnerving and yes, the phys. disabled person must resent it--but they resent
the *objectifying response* and the generalizing assumption, not the population
who IS actually cognitively impaired.
So, to claim that it is fear that excludes cognitive impairment from being
discussed here on the list, or in the Movement in general, is only partially
true: the fear is society's, of which we are all a part. Isn't it that *fear*
of all things/people different, that the Movement should be countering?
Regards,
Dona
Dona M. Avery
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0302
http://www.public.asu.edu/~donam
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/ParentsOnFrontlines
"If you want to demolish a card house, you attack the bottom card, not the top. Remove the foundation, and the structure collap
ses."
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