Miho Iwakuma wrote in part:
> well, my question is this: recently, a popular notion goes to state that
> everyone has (some kind of) disability, no one is 100%-ablebodied, or
> disabledness is not a discrete category, but a deference in degree, which each
> makes sense to me. at the same time, however, i agree with the statement that a
> group of pwds has the disability culture due to their unique shared
> experiences. but aren't they contradictory? mutually exclusive? in other words,
> if everyone is (partially) a person with a disability, where is a boundary of
> the disability culture? culture, by definition, connotes conformity and
> solidarity among people, and in return, exclusiveness of outgroups. culture
> cannot include every person.
I think the problem you're struggling with is the assumption that because everyone
supposedly has a disability that everyone identifies as Disabled or having a
disability and the misconception that culture means conformity and solidarity. In
other words, these ideas are only mutually exclusive and contradictory if one
believes that identity conforms with reality and/or that culture means conformity
and solidarity and both just aren't true.
To give examples from other communities, Johnson & Johnson sex studies have shown
that most people who identified as heterosexual surveyed had had at least one
sexual experience with someone of the same sex and the same was found to be true
of most people who identified as homosexual (that they had had at least one sexual
experience with someone of the opposite sex). However, none of these people
identified as bi-sexual and that, according to the way society catagorizes
people/sexuality -- by who one has had sex with, is what the majority are. Then
there are the racial categories that most academics (and more than a few
non-academics) will admit are arbitrary but most of society when speaking of
individuals and groups and in some countries, the law pretend are absolute and
people are either this or that based, at least in part, melanin (sp) levels in the
skin and where one's family admits to have come from last.
As for conformity and solidarity within a culture, name a culture that has
conformity and or solidarity amongst its people. It can't be done because we
aren't clones, this is a global community, and we identify as whatever not based
upon conformity or solidarity but upon a feeling of kinship. We, individuals and
groups, act upon and are acted upon by other individuals and groups that do not
identify as we, as individuals and groups, identify and, consequently, cultures --
belief systems, rituals, languages, etc., mix and meld and, therefore, they are
not groups of individuals that conform with one another nor is it groups of
individuals who necessarily agree (are in solidarity) 100% of the time.
--
Carolyn
check out, "Passing, Invisibility and Other Psychotic Stuff" at
http://www.tell-us-your-story.com/_disc68r/00000003.htm
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