Laurence Bathurst wrote:
> I certainly agree with the statement that conceptualisations of
> *disability* when talking about the nature of oppression can be different.
> The experiences of the person with a disability will be different to
> non-disabled advocates or more specifically, parents. I don't agree that
> it is only a professional vs amateur power struggle specially seeing we are
> trying to avoid falling into the 'explanation by dichotomy' syndrome.
True, it isn't just a power struggle in terms of everyday life -- I was speaking
in terms of the relationship between parents and professionals. However, the
examples you've given of how familial relationships, partnerships, etc. and how
they are effected/affected supposedly by disability also exist for parents no
matter what the child is or isn't. Yes, certain factors appear to exasperate
these relations -- white parents who've adopted a Black child, poor single moms,
Gay and Lesbian parents, etc. -- and, yes, these factors appear, on the surface,
to be about what society says they're about. In other words, it's the child's
having a disability or the parent(s) being homosexual or an interracial adoption,
etc., that is causing the problem when in actuality it has more to do with
society's non acceptance of reality, difference, whatever you want to call it.
Thereby, creating a lack of support for the existence of the reality of
difference which, in turn, is seen or exhibits itself as a lack of parental,
familial, and child support. And yes, this type of oppression can and does get
internalized by some (parents and/or family and/or child).
However, it is still not really about disability or impairment or, even, about
the child per se. It's about the parents and their beliefs and society and it's
beliefs about a third party (the child) and how they are reflected in everyday
life. For all intent and purposes, the third party could be a purple dog because
the stressors would be pretty much the same and for the same basic reasons --
society says purple dogs don't/shouldn't exist, parents know purple dogs
don't/shouldn't exist, and, yet, they've got this purple dog that, for any one of
a number of reasons, they've decided to keep and society doesn't like that
because purple dogs don't/shouldn't exist. And yes, this is an
oversimplification -- mainly because I don't feel like writing a dissertation on
purple dogs, parents and society today. Just as the reality of the stressors of
having a Disabled child are not about disability or children or even, the
Disabled child, the stressors of having a purple dog are not about purple or dogs
or, even, purple dogs. It's about prejudice and societal resistance to
difference and what, according to society, shouldn't exist.
Blaming disability or impairment (i.e. disability affecting other people's lives)
for a societal problem is as problematic as insisting upon examining a mother's
role in a child's life instead of the parent(s) role in a child's life, because
it perpetuates a miseducated belief. In other words, this misrepresentation of
reality perpetuates the notion that disability, not society, is the problem --
perpetuating the medical model while supposedly trying to debunk it -- just as
constantly siting mothers as the primary care giver perpetuates the notion that
this is not only "the way it is" but also "how it should be" and both -- given
the rise in single parent homes where the father is the head of household, the
increase of stay-at-home dads, not to mention Gay men adopting, widowers with
children, two income households, etc. -- are, at best, steadily . . . aging modes
of thought and, at worst, misrepresentative of reality and it perpetuates another
societal problem -- the idea that to be a good mother is to be chained to your
children.
If we wish to change the way things are perceived, it might help if we start
naming them what they are instead of what they've been believed to be. ". . .
for the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." -- Audre Lorde
--
Carolyn
check out, "Passing, Invisibility and Other Psychotic Stuff" at
http://www.tell-us-your-story.com/_disc68r/00000003.htm
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