BATTLE OF THE MODELS!

Hi. I know I missed a few weeks. I’m sorry about that, but I’m a busy person. Busy with what?, you ask?

School. It has now become more than a full time job for me. Also French Horn, because hey, when you can audition for another festival, why shouldn’t you?

So, I was thinking this morning about the medical and social models of disability, which I mentioned in a previous post. I think they say something about our culture as a whole, and they widely shape the way we interact with people. Unlike my other posts, this one is specifically about MDCs in the West. I’m planning on doing another about disability perceptions on LDCs and cultures that are less Westernized, but I’d have to do more research first.

Let’s begin with the medical model

The medical model of disability is pretty much saying a person’s disability is what is impeding them from participating in society.

Think of it like the environmental determinism of disability issues — environmental determinism claims that culture is determined by the environment. For example, an environmental determinist would say that the people in America are prosperous because our climate changes with the season, and that motivates us to work, and that people in Nigeria live in poverty because the hot climate makes people tired and lazy.

I hope that it’s obvious to you how incredibly racist (and simplified) this theory is, which is why it is mostly discredited these days. We learn it so that we can understand how the field of geography has changed over time.

The medical model, in a way, has a similar ableist connotation. It expects that the disabled person is in some way inferior because they have a disability and for no other reason. It expects disability to be a limitation, and makes it seen as something to be fixed.

Unlike the theory of environmental determinism, this model is seen on a much smaller scale — within society itself, not on other large continents or lands being discussed in a book on development. The medical model can be seen shaping views in our society on a personal level when I am told that, perhaps my difficulty making friends is based on the fact that I must sit at the front of the class to see the board. After all, no one wants to sit up front.

This thinking can encourage people to internalize ableism, reinforcing patterns of segregation. People may believe they shouldn’t participate in certain activities because of their disability. The medical model may encourage practices and policies of physically separating students with disabilities from their abled peers, keeping people with disabilities out of more visible positions in their careers, and making disability something to be ashamed of, which it should NEVER be.

Another sinister undercurrent of this model is that it may encourage abled people to believe they can speak for the disabled in what they want, because they believe everyone with a disability must want to be as normal as possible. Look at Autism Speaks, which has no actual Austistics in their organization and encourages research for a cure, not inclusion of people with Autism or awareness about the disorder actually is. Yet most people will happily donate, believing that a life with Autism must be a sad existence — without ever actually asking someone with Autism how they feel about it.

I hope you can see how problematic this kind of thinking can be. So…

The New Possibilism.

The social model states that individuals with disabilities are not so much impaired by their physical or mental restrictions, but by the way society is structured.

And the way society is structured can always change.

Environmental possibilism is a theory that says that, although countries’ development may be restricted by their environment, but people can rise above these limits. This is the theory that is accepted today because it simply isn’t racist. A possibilist would say that inventions like GMO seeds can help produce more food in countries that are less suited for growing it because of harsh weather conditions or a large number of pests. The seeds help them overcome an environmental restriction (harsh conditions).

A determinist would say that no one would ever live in a land with conditions under which crops could not grow easily.

So, why is possibilism more accepted than the social model of disability?

The social model of disability works on the same scale that the medical one does. At a personal level, the social model says that the reason I sometimes have to sit out of activities is because accommodations have not been provided or considered beforehand, and not because my poor vision was never fixed (well, they tried, at least).

The social model is actually encouraging, because impairments are not seen as faults to be fixed. A person can still be disabled, but is also still able to be included in activities and can be accepted as a whole person. The only reason the person faces difficulties is because of barriers society has in place. These barriers can be many things:

• Buildings without wheelchair access
• A sign language interpreter not being provided
• The fear of ‘looking weird’.
• no braille/magnification/audio description
• An unwillingness to accommodate because ‘it’s too much trouble’.
• Not understanding what it means for something to be accessible
• Prejudice
• A lack of understanding of the impairment in question
• And more.

This list is in no way comprehensive, and I wrote it after sitting down for a minute and thinking.

If we remove these barriers and promote accessibility for all things, we will be one step closer to further integrating the social model into our lives. However, no number of laws can stop the patterns of ableism that have been present through the course of human history. Through my studies of disability geography so far, one thing has stuck out to me: a lot of the problems people with disabilities have are caused mostly by a lack of knowledge.

In order to better understand disability, and what disabled people need and want out of society, I suggest you do the following.

1. Talk to people about their disabilities. As long as you’re polite and open minded, I’m pretty sure no one’s going to bite you. But don’t do it because they’re disabled. Do it because you have a genuine interest in the person themselves. Doing it for the disability turns the person into an object and their story into inspiration porn, which is seen as a negative phenomenon by people with disabilities because it showcases inability, perpetuates the idea that disabled people need able bodied people to help them with everything, and does not actually encourage society to change its thinking about access. Along that same line of thinking, ask before filming or taking a picture of someone with a disability. You wouldn’t want someone taking a picture of you without your permission so they could post it on the internet for feel good points, would you? Let me tell you, it makes you look rude and ignorant instead of like an angel.
2. Read what disabled people have written. Seriously, it’s how I got on this whole beat. I recommend, at the moment, the hashtag #ableismexists, started by Dominick Evans. I also think #filmdis is a great tag as well, but that might just be because I am interested in film. The other posts on my blog here are a good place to start, but they’re researchy. Well, this blog began as a research project, sort of.
3. Remember you are an ally. We can speak for ourselves. I refer you to number 2 on this list if you doubt that, and a message to me would have me recommending many sites and twitter accounts for you.

I think that’s all I have to say. I hope my comparisons were good enough. I had to get geography in there somehow, and I think the metaphors worked nicely. Either way, you start thinking about the way society works, right? Always a good thing. Also, at some point, expect something on #cripthevote.

-M