Steps - Blogging Against Disablism 2013

[nightengalesknd]

My prior Blogging Against Disablism Day posts are (2006 - locked), (2007 - locked) (2008 - locked) , (2009), (2010), (2011), and (2012) Last month I climbed a step. A curb, actually. I put one foot up on it, tightened muscles to straighten the knee and swung up the other leg to join it. I wasn’t leaning on my car, and I was holding my

Comments

[nightengalesknd]

There are so many levels of "better" I think. There's better than we have now, and the better we can imagine the world to become some day. But in the short-term better, wouldn't it be good if people (and spell check) had heard of ablism?

You might appreciate this BADD post I just read by an insulin pumper who refers to it as her cyborg parts! http://prettypancreas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/reproduction-while-disabled.html

[nightengalesknd]

I had to choose between BADD, and Autism Positivity Day, which was April 30th. There was no way I could manage both, plus, you know, my day job. Since I had already done Autistic Acceptance Day, and since I generally lean towards pan-disability things over disability-specific things when given the choice. . .

By the way, they do take late submissions. I think I hit May 5th one year.

[kittenmommy]

While we may show improvement, he's right: the CP will always be there. He probably could have been nicer about it, though.

[nightengalesknd]

Yes but I think the question was whether read2781 had been accurately diagnosed with CP in the first place. A question which of I can't answer via the internet, but which hopefully a neurologist could back up with reasons one way or the other.

[kittenmommy]

Ah, I see. I misunderstood!

[tirerim]

"Better" is definitely complicated. While I had my hip impingement, there were a lot of things that were more difficult, mostly in ways that could be gotten around with the right accommodation. But I couldn't ice skate at all. Not that there simply wasn't an accommodation available: it's hard to even imagine an accommodation that could have made it possible. And then I had surgery, and I can ice skate now. So, is that better? From my subjective point of view, I think it is, but I also never particularly thought of myself as disabled during the three years when I couldn't. But without the surgery, it would have been a permanent state; 50 years ago, it would have definitely been a permanent state, because that surgery hadn't yet been developed.

In general, I don't think there's an objective definition of better, but everyone is going to have their own personal subjective definitions, and I think they should all be valid. And yet, those subjective definitions are always going to be influenced by the external environment as well.

[nightengalesknd]

The more I think about it, the more confused I get. . .

OK, everyone definitely define's their own "better," although not in a vaccuum, because we all are affected by the people around us and our culture, and can absorb or rebel against prevailing beliefs.

I think one problem is the moral baggage that gets hung on it all. Or maybe that's more my own visceral reaction to the word, that I percieve moral baggage is being hung on it.

[tirerim]

I think you're right, there is a lot of moral baggage. (If nothing else, moral baggage is largely perceptual to begin with.) Much of it probably comes from all the societal expectations that there is an objective better -- even if you are trying to just use your own subjective definition, there's going to be guilt when it happens to line up with the definitions of people whose business it isn't.

Interestingly, I think this has a lot of parallels with debates about societal definitions and expectations of things like attractiveness and gender.

[nightengalesknd]

Parallels with attractiveness and gender and pretty much everything else. Yay intersectionality?

[effrontery]

That better world you described is one I want to live in...

[queenlyzard]

I agree that climbing a curb is no better than taking a curb cut... but I think that I would consider improved balance and muscle tone-- and certainly lower anxiety!-- to be better: not in any moral sense, but simply more optimal for one's own body. I've been pondering a lot the difference between "impairment" and "disability," and perhaps what I'm saying here is that I think that there is nothing wrong with seeing reduced impairment as a positive, even while you argue that impairment should never have to imply disability.