We Are More Than Something That Needs to Be Fixed
“I don’t think disability arts would have been possible without disability politics coming first…Our politics teach us that we are oppressed, not inferior…Our politics have given us self-esteem. They have taught us, not simply to value ourselves, but to value ourselves as disabled people.” Allan Sutherland, “Disability Arts, Disability Politics,” 1989.
To effectively look at disability in the arts, one must first be able to understand the history on which the critical lens of disability theory stands.
Despite the disability civil rights movement beginning in the 1970s, an additional two decades would pass before adequate policies in government legislation were established to prohibit discrimination in social, professional, educational, and medical settings under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Following events in sociopolitical culture, core leaders of the disability rights movement constructed models of disability as a way to categorize the differences in how people view disability, including the medical model, the social model, and the moral model.
Today, we will discuss the medical model of disability.
Under this model, it is believed that someone’s disability can be “fixed” and returned to a “normal” functioning state. Instead of the disabled person being provided the necessary accommodations needed to thrive, the disability itself is seen as a problem to be solved. The medical model, too, asserts that a medical professional is the expert, not the person actually living day-to-day with a disability. By focusing on disability = issue, a burden to society, such harmful, stereotypical views are promoted and lead to discrimination and a lack of proper awareness.
Despite the ADA, discrimination persists. It persists in educational, social, and medical settings. I want to end this post by sharing a few of the many personal examples of how ill perceptions of disability and discrimination in these settings have impacted my own life.
In educational settings, I was forced into lower-level classes because of a reading disability, despite above-average math scores. My entire middle school education was compromised because of the education system's failure to place me at an appropriate academic level with services. No one understood my medical conditions and I suffered due to their ignorance and negligence. I missed a lot of school due to symptoms of my condition and fought tirelessly with staff for make-up work. This continued throughout high school, which I spent largely on homebound. There, teachers failed to honor my disability accommodations. My disability could not be fixed and then it could not be accommodated either. After high school, I set my sights on something bigger and better and went to college, where no one expected me to fix my disability and where accommodations were fair and honored. There, I thrived. Today, however, despite graduating summa cum laude from college, I still experience some education-based anxiety, too often second-guessing my academic and intellectual abilities.
In social and public settings, it is not uncommon, if I am with someone, to be spoken to through the accompanying person. The assumption that people with physical disabilities must also have intellectual difficulties is another false perception of disability that leads to discrimination. In similar settings, the belief is that a wheelchair user’s legs simply do not work is another misperception that leads to discrimination.
In a medical setting, a nurse who was putting my sister and I in an exam room to see a specialist (we both have genetic neuromuscular disease) said to my mother in front of us how sorry she was and how unfortunate it was that both of us have it, going on to say that my mother must not have known when she became pregnant with the second child. It was a terrible thing to say, as if being disabled made us any less wanted by our parents, any less worthy of a life, any less of a contributing member of society.
We are more than something that needs to be fixed.
