In the introduction of Dissonant Disabilities: Women with Chronic Illnesses Explore Their Lives the authors touch on the subject of women with disabilities. People with disabilities should be treated the same no matter what their gender, race etc. Women already get treated differently in today’s society; there is no need for disabled women to have to go through even more unfairness. “Compared to their male counterparts, women with disabilities have lower rates of participation in the labour force, higher rates of unemployment when they are in the labour force, lower employment earnings, less access to the more generous income support programs, and higher rates of poverty overall.” (Driedger and Owen 4) If disabled women were not discriminated against so much then the government would not need to have so many income support programs. The money could be spent better elsewhere if disabled women could get equal rights in the workforce. It is not that they are un-willing to work it is just that the work conditions are so unfair that it is not worth their time and effort to enter the workforce. In Lecture 3 Prof. Owen talks about disability and sexism. This was a key lecture to elaborate more on the introduction of her book. It was interesting to learn that sometimes disabled people do want to be treated differently, but that they want the same access to everything in society as everyone else. Most likely this is different for all disabled people. For example, everyone wants to take the bus. One disabled person may want access to a seat at the front, while another may not care or ask someone to move. The point is that they both get to take the bus; they have access to the same things as “normal” people.
There is a major difference between a disability and an illness. Doctors become doctors because they are the type of people who like to help other people. “The problem arises when doctors try to use their knowledge and skills to treat disability rather than illness. Disability as a long-term social state is not treatable medically and is certainly not curable.” (Oliver 22) Originally I thought that it was very kind of doctors to try to cure a disability. Doctors are so loving, and if they cannot cure a patient then they feel they have failed. That is why they need to realize the difference between their disability and their illness when a patient comes in. Trying to cure everything causes more pain in the end. It gives hope to patients that their disability can be cured when they had already come to the realization that it could not. Oliver states: “When confronted with the social problems of disability as experts, they cannot admit that they don’t know what to do. Consequently they feel threatened and fall back on their medical skills and training.) (Oliver 22) Doctors need to have more training to help them deal with situations like this. During doctor’s schooling it probably does not seem important compared to everything else they are learning but in the end this is a very important aspect of a doctor’s job.
Disabled people have certain things that are important to them. School is very important, as it is to everyone else. The topic of segregated schooling arises in Disability by Barnes and Mercer. This is an intense topic that still to this day has no real answers. “The prevailing argument has been that it is both more efficient and effective if expensive and scarce resources such as specialist teachers and equipment are concentrated in segregated school environments.” (Barnes and Mercer 44) This is a bold statement for the authors to make and I disagree. Segregated school can be very beneficial for certain disabled people. For others, it can make them feel left out, dumb, different, or un-normal. It can have a negative effect on a person’s attitude towards learning and therefore will affect their overall education. I would like to learn more about this topic as I feel education is important to disabled people and everyone else’s futures. I do not know how people decide whether or not to go into specialty classes or regular classes. Is it up to the parents? The teachers? The child? The government?. There needs to be more research done to provide information on who should or should not be in segregated schooling.
Throughout the course Theorizing Disability I have learned so much. I feel I can use the knowledge to help disabled people feel more comfortable in society. I realize now that it is society as a whole that creates distress for disabled people. If everyone would accept them and treat them “normal”, then they would fit into society much better. One of the young adults that I do respite work for, just graduated high school and is now entering the workforce. In the discussion board for Oct. 4 Randi makes some good points about the workforce. This helped me learn what this man is going to be dealing with in the near future. I feel that he should be able to take the bus to work, do his job, go out to a movie and then go home just like anyone else. His mother thinks that he is not able to do this. This is a perfect example of why disabled people should not be treated differently. This man has taken the bus before on his own for a half hour ride. Now that his mother says she does not think he can do it, he believes her and wants to take a taxi to work instead. I hope that I can use what I have learned so far in class to help this situation. I am making it my goal to show this family how this problem arose, and how it can be fixed. I really enjoy the guest speakers in class and hope to see and learn a lot more in the last half of the course: theorizing disability.
Works Cited
Barnes, Colin, and Geof Mercer. Disability: Key Concepts. Second Edition. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008.
Driedger, Diane, and Michelle Owen, eds. Dissonant Disabilities: Women with Chronic Illnesses Explore Their Lives. Edited by (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc./Women’s Press, 2008).
Oliver, Michael. “The Social Model in Context.” In Rethinking Normalcy: A Disability Studies Reader. Edited by Tanya Titchkosky and Rod Michalko. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2009), 19-30.
The Sociology Writing Group. A Guide to Writing Sociology Papers. Sixth Edition. New York: Worth Publishers, 2008.
