http://threeriversblog.com/2008/09/conceptualizing-disability.html Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:12:21 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://threeriversblog.com/2008/09/conceptualizing-disability.html#comment-9676 three rivers fog » On mental illness Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:48:32 +0000 http://threeriversblog.com/?p=304#comment-9676 [...] with mental illness still have agency. They are whole persons, not diminished by their difference. Their illness is not simply a disruptive module overlaid on a “normal” person’s br.... It is their brain. It simply works in a way that a normal person’s brain [...] [...] with mental illness still have agency. They are whole persons, not diminished by their difference. Their illness is not simply a disruptive module overlaid on a “normal” person’s br…. It is their brain. It simply works in a way that a normal person’s brain [...]

]]> http://threeriversblog.com/2008/09/conceptualizing-disability.html#comment-537 AnneC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:24:58 +0000 http://threeriversblog.com/?p=304#comment-537 amandaw wrote: <i>At heart of society’s approach toward disability is the assumption that there is a standard template for the human body, and if any one body turns out to be different, it is a deviation from that standard. As such, the solution to any problems resulting from said differences is to attempt to make up for that “deviation,” to attempt to make the “defective” body more like the standard template in whatever way possible. Put this way, it is obvious that this approach is misguided at best. The solution is not to change the individual body to fit the narrow, faulty expectations, but to adjust those expectations to include the range and diversity of the human experience.</i> Yes, yes yes.  Thank you.  It is heartening to know that at least some people "get" this sort of thing.  I am glad my post came across clearly -- that particular one had been brewing in my brain for close to a year, and it is nice to have finally gotten it out.  I have never understood the drive to standardize people at all. And you are right that it IS scary and unsettling to observe how many people rely on misinformation and stereotypes in conceptualizing disability (not just autism by any means; autism is just something I tend to focus on because it's personally relevant to me as an autistic adult).  One thing I have had to fight for, which I never expected to have to fight for until it came up, is the right to determine what my own priorities are in life.  I had a psychiatrist a while back try to tell me that I was "not as high-functioning as I should be", simply because I was more interested in practical functionality (which entails, for me, things like utilizing text-based communciation more frequently) than I was in "looking and being more normal".  It was like I was supposed to hate being autistic in order to be considered to have any ambitions whatsoever.  And it was only really because I'd read a bunch of disability-rights pieces that I was able to see that situation as unhealthy (rather than just collapsing into self-loathing). Anyway, again, glad you found my article comprehensible. amandaw wrote: <i>At heart of society’s approach toward disability is the assumption that there is a standard template for the human body, and if any one body turns out to be different, it is a deviation from that standard. As such, the solution to any problems resulting from said differences is to attempt to make up for that “deviation,” to attempt to make the “defective” body more like the standard template in whatever way possible.
Put this way, it is obvious that this approach is misguided at best. The solution is not to change the individual body to fit the narrow, faulty expectations, but to adjust those expectations to include the range and diversity of the human experience.</i>
Yes, yes yes.  Thank you.  It is heartening to know that at least some people “get” this sort of thing.  I am glad my post came across clearly — that particular one had been brewing in my brain for close to a year, and it is nice to have finally gotten it out.  I have never understood the drive to standardize people at all.
And you are right that it IS scary and unsettling to observe how many people rely on misinformation and stereotypes in conceptualizing disability (not just autism by any means; autism is just something I tend to focus on because it’s personally relevant to me as an autistic adult).  One thing I have had to fight for, which I never expected to have to fight for until it came up, is the right to determine what my own priorities are in life.  I had a psychiatrist a while back try to tell me that I was “not as high-functioning as I should be”, simply because I was more interested in practical functionality (which entails, for me, things like utilizing text-based communciation more frequently) than I was in “looking and being more normal”.  It was like I was supposed to hate being autistic in order to be considered to have any ambitions whatsoever.  And it was only really because I’d read a bunch of disability-rights pieces that I was able to see that situation as unhealthy (rather than just collapsing into self-loathing).
Anyway, again, glad you found my article comprehensible.

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