[log in to unmask] writes:
> Not all "disability" is loss this is a fundemental difference between those
> who have impairments from erly on and those who aquire them later, both
> gruops can lern from each other.
I agree Larry. For example, I have what could be called a facial
disfigurement or a facial difference. I was born with a genetic condition
that greatly changed the shape of my face from the age of five. Before then,
I had a 'normal' face and was considered 'pretty' by conventional standards.
Some may consider my condition to have caused a 'loss of good looks' or at
the least, a 'loss of a normal face'. However, I just think of it as a
different looking face. I cannot remember a time when I didn't look this way
and for me, any surgery that would change my face to a more conventional
standard would be a loss of my identity.
Michael Morgan writes: The vast majority of disabled people simply do not
have a problem with a definition based on bio-medical impairment, and are
also keenly interested in the medical side of disability. Moreover they
experience disability at
this level in exclusively pathological terms: as loss, as something which is
inherently and unavoidably negative. They are, in a phrase, grown-up about
it, and moreover view insistence on the social nature of disability with
suspicion, as evidence of psychosocial denial.
In my experience, a disabled person who experiences disability as a loss, as
something negative are usually experiencing depression and for two reasons:
their own personal feelings about being ill, in pain, looking different etc.
The other reason is usually because they are fed up with staring, abuse,
hostile reactions, discrimination, prejudice and inaccessibility. They blame
themselves and their impairment for not letting them get up the stairs into
the building. They don't realise that they should blame the people for
creating the steps.
When I replied to a person on list who was requesting information that
compared the Disabled People's Movement with other civil rights movements, I
emailed him an article by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian who said that
disabled activists wrongly compare themselves with other civil rights
movements. You then emailed me offlist to say you agreed with her but gave no
explination as to why. Is this because you see disability as solely a
negative physical loss? Do you think all our problems are caused by our own
faulty bodies? When a person harasses and abuses a disabled person because of
their disability, don't you think this is something worth fighting against?
Perhaps we shouldn't bother campaigning for accessible transport, mainstream
education, decent housing etc etc anymore. We should use all our energies in
finding cures for our disgusting bodies!
Vicky
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