Models Of Disability Quotes

People with chronic illness, pain, and fatigue have been among the most critical of this aspect of the social model, rightly noting that social and structural changes will do little to make one's joints stop aching or to alleviate back pain. Nor will changes in architecture and attitude heal diabetes or cancer or fatigue. Focusing exclusively on disabling barriers, as a strict social model seems to do, renders pain and fatigue irrelevant to the project of disability politics.

The multiverse model offers an elegantly postmodern solution to character stasis in a market-driven serial publishing system which privileges constancy over major change.

Masking also obscures the fact that the world is massively inaccessible to us. If allistics (non-Autistics) never hear our needs voiced, and never see our struggle, they have no reason to adapt to include us. We must demand the treatment we deserve, and cease living to placate those who have overlooked us.

Manifest Destiny anticipated nearly all the ideological and programmatic elements of Hitler's Lebensraum policy. In fact, Hitler modeled his conquest of the East on the American conquest of the West.* During the first half of this century, a majority of American states enacted sterilization laws and tens of thousands of Americans were involuntarily sterilized. The Nazis explicitly invoked this US precedent when they enacted their own sterilization laws.'' The notorious 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of the franchise and forbade miscegenation between Jews and non-Jews. Blacks in the American South suffered the same legal disabilities and were the object of much greater spontaneous and sanctioned popular violence than the Jews in prewar Germany. To highlight unfolding crimes abroad, the US often summons memories of The Holocaust. The more revealing point, however, is when the US invokes The Holocaust. Crimes of official enemies such as the Khmer Rouge bloodbath in Cambodia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo recall The Holocaust; crimes in which the US is complicit do not.

I do think my story is very unique because having a partial disability, you are deemed by society as someone who is born to fail. This alone had made me more determined to succeed not just for myself but for the Deaf community as well. Hence my motto in life is to live a purpose driven life, be an example to the lost in the world and to leave a legacy.

Autoimmunity is internalized by patients as an opportunity for the ultimate self-management project. But in fact it is a manifestation of a flawed collective project. If it is an indictment of anything, it is an indictment not of our personhood but of our impulse to see social problems as being about our personhood, instead of a consequence of our collective shortcomings as co-citizens of this place and time.

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but the official Home Office superhero team is going to have to conform to public expectations of what a superhero team should look like, or it’s not really going to work terribly well. There’s room for one person of color, one female or LGBT, and one disability in a core team of four – if you push it beyond that ratio it’ll lose credibility with the crucial sixteen to twenty-four male target demographic, by deviating too far from their expectations. Remember, reasonable people who acquire superpowers are not our target. This is a propaganda operation aimed at the unreasonable ones: disturbed hero-worshiping nerd-bigots who, if they accidentally acquire superpowers, will go on a Macht Recht spree unless they’re held in check by firm guidance and a role model to channel them in less destructive directions.

Today, the public mindset is beginning to shift away from a medical model of disability towards a recognition that context and self-awareness as a learner both play a huge role in whether any given condition is disabling or not.10

In a social model [of disability], the interaction between the conditions of the body and the shapes of the world that makes disability into a lived experience, and therefore a matter not only for individuals but also for societies

In a social model [of disability], the interaction between the conditions of the body and the shapes of the world that makes disability into a lived experience, and therefore a matter not only for individuals but also for societies.

When I would later ask her, What makes someone beautiful?, she would tell me: 'I think it’s what’s inside someone. I think it’s kindness in someone’s heart that makes them beautiful.' And she would add, 'And it’s how they treat others.' Compassion is beauty, too.

Disability scholars Andrienne Asch and Erik Parens, in their seminal discussion of the problem, wrote,'Pre-natal diagnosis reinforces the medical model that disability itself, not societal discrimination against people with disabilities, is the problem to be solved.

Inequality has long been built into the core fabric of the American business model. Pitting Black workers against white workers against immigrant workers has been a particularly potent, tried-and-true tactic of employers to drive down all wages. But the cursory sketch laid out here does not even begin to discuss the very many oppressions—of people with disabilities, of gay people, of transgender people, of Native peoples, of elders, and more—that play an integral role in upholding the profitability of US capitalism. In fact, any place where bosses can hold down the wages of one section of the workforce not only ensures a cheaper labor pool among the oppressed demographic, but also, in the words of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, divides both in order to conquer each, so that everyone’s wages are pushed down.

„Klara, you're a new model of Artificial Friend. You're designed to be a companion to a child who's been chosen by their mother and father to be an Enhanced Child. That means they have illnesses or disabilities of one kind or another. You're a specialist in helping such children.

When abled people get ASL and ramps and fragrance-free lotion but haven’t built relationships with any disabled people, it just comes off like the charity model once again—Look at what we’re doing for you people! Aren’t you grateful? No one likes to be included as a favor. Inclusion without power or leadership is tokenism.

There is a persistent belief amongst abled people that a cure is what disabled people should want. To abandon our disabled selves and bodies and assimilate into a perhaps unachievable abled skin. Pushback to this idea often comes in the form of the social model of disability, which states that we are disabled by society and lack of access rather than by our bodies. For many, the social model can be liberating: by locating the cause of our problems outside our bodies, we can begin to love ourselves again. Tackling systemic ableism may feel like tilting at windmills, but it is still easier to address than some kind of failing within ourselves. There is a criticism of the social model of disability, located in the idea that some disabled people may want a cure. Particularly with matters like chronic pain/chronic illness, a cure is seen as something that can itself be liberating: a way to simply be in one’s body without feeling pain, for example. There is a danger in the cure mentality, as it can be a slippery slope toward eugenics when it is applied by abled people. Many in the Deaf and autistic communities do not want a cure and feel that those who advocate for a cure are advocating that they not exist anymore. Sometimes it comes down to how we see our individual disabilities: Are they an intrinsic part of who we are? Or are they an identity that comes with a side of agony we would gladly give up? How do we feel when abled people start advocating for “cures”—which may come in the form of eliminating our people entirely—rather than when the desire for a cure comes from disabled advocates?

As the Model S neared completion, he got in the car one day and pulled down the passenger-side visor. “What the fuck is this?” he asked, pointing to the government-mandated warning label about air bags and how to disable them when a child is in the passenger seat. Dave Morris explained that the government required them. “Get rid of them,” Musk ordered. “People aren’t stupid. These stickers are stupid.

The Wessely School rejects the significant body of biomedical evidence demonstrating that chronic “fatigue” or “tiredness” is not the same as the physiological exhaustion seen in ME/CFS and persists in believing that they have the right to demand a level of “evidence‐based” definitive proof that ME/CFS is not an “aberrant belief” as they assert, when their biopsychosocial model of “CFS/ME” that perpetuates their own aberrant belief about the nature of ME/CFS has been exposed by other psychiatrists as being nothing but a myth.

How much more would I have longed for and needed to see myself in my books if I’d been disabled, gay, black, non-Christian or something else outside the mainstream message? By this time – the mid-1980s – writers’ and publishers’ consciousnesses of matters of sex, race and representation had started to be raised. The first wave of concern had come in the 1960s and 70s, mainly – or perhaps just most successfully – over the matter of heroines. There were some. But not many. And certainly not enough of the right – feisty, non-domestic, un-Meg Marchish – sort. Efforts needed to be made to overcome the teeny imbalance caused by 300 years of unreflecting patriarchal history. It’s this memory that convinces me of the importance of role models and the rightness of including (or as critics of the practice call it, ‘crowbarring in’) a wide variety of characters with different backgrounds, orientations and everything else into children’s books. If it seems – hell, even if it IS – slightly effortful at times, I suspect that the benefits (even though by their very nature as explosions of inward delight, wordless recognition, relief, succour, sustenance, those benefits are largely hidden) vastly outweigh the alleged cons. And I’m never quite sure what the cons are supposed to be anyway. Criticisms usually boil down to some variant of ‘I am used to A! B makes me uncomfortable! O, take the nasty B away!’ Which really isn’t good enough.

In the logic of ableism, anyone who can handle such an (allegedly) horrible life must be strong; a lesser man would have given up in despair years ago. Indeed, Reeve's refusal to “give up” is precisely why the FBL selected Reeve for their model of strength; in the “billboard backstories” section of their website, they praise Reeve for trying to “beat paralysis and the spinal cord injuries” rather than “giv[ing] up.” Asserting that Goldberg is successful because of her hard work suggests that other people with dyslexia and learning disabilities who have not met with similar success have simply failed to engage in hard work; unlike Whoopi Goldberg, they are apparently unwilling to devote themselves to success. Similarly, by positioning Weihenmayer's ascent of Everest as a matter of vision, the FBL implies that most blind people, who have not ascended Everest or accomplished equivalently astounding feats, are lacking not only eyesight but vision. The disabled people populating these billboards epitomize the paradoxical figure of the supercrip: supercrips are those disabled figures favored in the media, products of either extremely low expectations (disability by definition means incompetence, so anything a disabled person does, no matter how mundane or banal, merits exaggerated praise) or extremely high expectations (disabled people must accomplish incredibly difficult, and therefore inspiring, tasks to be worthy of nondisabled attention).

Neo-Darwinism and Mutations In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the "Modern Synthetic Theory," or as it is more commonly known, Neo-Darwinism, at the end of the 1930s. Neo- Darwinism added mutations, which are distortions formed in the genes of living beings due to such external factors as radiation or replication errors, as the "cause of favorable variations" in addition to natural mutation. Today, the model that stands for evolution in the world is Neo-Darwinism. The theory maintains that millions of living beings formed as a result of a process whereby numerous complex organs of these organisms (e.g., ears, eyes, lungs, and wings) underwent "mutations," that is, genetic disorders. Yet, there is an outright scientific fact that totally undermines this theory: Mutations do not cause living beings to develop; on the contrary, they are always harmful. The reason for this is very simple: DNA has a very complex structure, and random effects can only harm it. The American geneticist B. G. Ranganathan explains this as follows: First, genuine mutations are very rare in nature. Secondly, most mutations are harmful since they are random, rather than orderly changes in the structure of genes; any random change in a highly ordered system will be for the worse, not for the better. For example, if an earthquake were to shake a highly ordered structure such as a building, there would be a random change in the framework of the building which, in all probability, would not be an improvement. Not surprisingly, no mutation example, which is useful, that is, which is observed to develop the genetic code, has been observed so far. All mutations have proved to be harmful. It was understood that mutation, which is presented as an "evolutionary mechanism," is actually a genetic occurrence that harms living things, and leaves them disabled. (The most common effect of mutation on human beings is cancer.) Of course, a destructive mechanism cannot be an "evolutionary mechanism." Natural selection, on the other hand, "can do nothing by itself," as Darwin also accepted. This fact shows us that there is no "evolutionary mechanism" in nature. Since no evolutionary mechanism exists, no such any imaginary process called "evolution" could have taken place.

Indeed, in the medical model, the person with disability is placed under an obligation to want to get well, his or her multiple social roles of parent, worker, spouse, and so on being suspended temporarily in exchange for a sign of strenuous effort toward improvement.

The book follows the social model of disability, a tool developed by disabled people as a guide for social action. It draws a distinction between impairment and disability. Disability consists of the barriers that a person with impairment experiences as a result of the way in which society is organised that excludes or devalues them. According to this analysis, preferred terminology in Britain is to describe people as disabled - because they are disabled by society - not people with disabilities, which makes no sense from a social model perspective.

The M1A3 Abrams was a man-killer. Colonel J. “Lonesome” Jones thanked the good Lord that he had never had to face anything like it. The models that preceded it, the A1 and A2, were primarily designed to engage huge fleets of Soviet tanks on the plains of Europe. They were magnificent tank busters, but proved to be less adept at the sort of close urban combat that was the bread and butter of the U.S. Army in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. In the alleyways of Damascus and Algiers, along the ancient cobbled lanes of Samara, Al Hudaydah, and Aden, the armored behemoths often found themselves penned in, unable to maneuver or even to see what they were supposed to kill. They fell victim to car bombs and Molotovs and homemade mines. Jones had won his Medal of Honor rescuing the crew of one that had been disabled by a jihadi suicide squad in the Syrian capital. The A3 was developed in response to attacks just like that one, which had become increasingly more succesful. It was still capable of killing a Chinese battle tank, but it was fitted out with a very different enemy in mind. Anyone, like Jones, who was familiar with the clean, classic lines of the earlier Abrams would have found the A3 less aesthetically pleasing. The low-profile turret now bristled with 40 mm grenade launchers, an M134 7.62 mm minigun, and either a small secondary turret for twin 50s, or a single Tenix-ADI 30 mm chain gun. The 120 mm canon remained, but it was now rifled like the British Challenger’s gun. But anyone, like Jones, who’d ever had to fight in a high-intensity urban scenario couldn’t give a shit about the A3’s aesthetics. They just said their prayers in thanks to the designers. The tanks typically loaded out with a heavy emphasis on high-impact, soft-kill ammunition such as the canistered “beehive” rounds, Improved Conventional Bomblets, White Phos’, thermobaric, and flame-gel capsules. Reduced propellant charges meant that they could be fired near friendly troops without danger of having a gun blast disable or even kill them. An augmented long-range laser-guided kinetic spike could engage hard targets out to six thousand meters. The A3 boasted dozens of tweaks, many of them suggested by crew members who had gained their knowledge the hard way. So the tank commander now enjoyed an independent thermal and LLAMPS viewer. Three-hundred-sixty-degree visibility came via a network of hardened battle-cams. A secondary fuel cell generator allowed the tank to idle without guzzling JP-8 jet fuel. Wafered armor incorporated monobonded carbon sheathing and reactive matrix skirts, as well as the traditional mix of depleted uranium and Chobam ceramics. Unlike the tank crew that Jones had rescued from a screaming mob in a Damascus marketplace, the men and women inside the A3 could fight off hordes of foot soldiers armed with RPGs, satchel charges, and rusty knives—for the “finishing work” when the tank had been stopped and cracked open to give access to its occupants.

Inclusion is an intention or policy of including people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as those who are disabled or non-neurotypical, or racial and sexual minorities. Inclusion, like diversity, is a step in a better direction, but often is problematic. Though well-intentioned, inclusion presumes there is a group that is in power that has the ability to “bring in” others with less power. This is often a white normative group, so this approach becomes white centering. It uplifts the white power-holders and power-brokers as the ones at the center of the narrative who get to pick and choose who they “include,” while they get rewarded for being “inclusive.” An analogy for why inclusion is problematic is when we say, “Invite us to the table.” Who owns the table? Who sets the rules, manner and way things happen at the table? Contrast this to a model where the disadvantaged people create, set and furnish their own table.

of menopause—not to mention a potentially increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, as we’ll see in chapter 9. Medicine 2.0 would rather throw out this therapy entirely, on the basis of one clinical trial, than try to understand and address the nuances involved. Medicine 3.0 would take this study into account, while recognizing its inevitable limitations and built-in biases. The key question that Medicine 3.0 asks is whether this intervention, hormone replacement therapy, with its relatively small increase in average risk in a large group of women older than sixty-five, might still be net beneficial for our individual patient, with her own unique mix of symptoms and risk factors. How is she similar to or different from the population in the study? One huge difference: none of the women selected for the study were actually symptomatic, and most were many years out of menopause. So how applicable are the findings of this study to women who are in or just entering menopause (and are presumably younger)? Finally, is there some other possible explanation for the slight observed increase in risk with this specific HRT protocol?[*3] My broader point is that at the level of the individual patient, we should be willing to ask deeper questions of risk versus reward versus cost for this therapy—and for almost anything else we might do. The fourth and perhaps largest shift is that where Medicine 2.0 focuses largely on lifespan, and is almost entirely geared toward staving off death, Medicine 3.0 pays far more attention to maintaining healthspan, the quality of life. Healthspan was a concept that barely even existed when I went to medical school. My professors said little to nothing about how to help our patients maintain their physical and cognitive capacity as they aged. The word exercise was almost never uttered. Sleep was totally ignored, both in class and in residency, as we routinely worked twenty-four hours at a stretch. Our instruction in nutrition was also minimal to nonexistent. Today, Medicine 2.0 at least acknowledges the importance of healthspan, but the standard definition—the period of life free of disease or disability—is totally insufficient, in my view. We want more out of life than simply the absence of sickness or disability. We want to be thriving, in every way, throughout the latter half of our lives. Another, related issue is that longevity itself, and healthspan in particular, doesn’t really fit into the business model of our current

The FBL's attention to individual virtue obscures the ableist attitudes inherent in these billboards. Reeve appears strong and “super” to many Americans, and Ali “courageous,” simply by virtue of their living with a disability. In the logic of ableism, anyone who can handle such an (allegedly) horrible life must be strong; a lesser man would have given up in despair years ago. Indeed, Reeve's refusal to “give up” is precisely why the FBL selected Reeve for their model of strength; in the “billboard backstories” section of their website, they praise Reeve for trying to “beat paralysis and the spinal cord injuries” rather than “giv[ing] up.

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We help all children learn healthy ways of relating when we create environments that reflect real life. In contrast, we re doing the child with disability as well as the typically developing peer a disservice if we aren't looking for opportunities to facilitate their interaction. And as Christians, I would add that the church is naturally set up to adopt an inclusion mindset, because we follow Jesus and know He modeled love and value for all children.

Why would he dream about his poor, driven, sad mother now? That was easy. His mother was the only one he loved in his family. And he loved her because she was tormented by her psychological disabilities but was not undone by them. She made him think of a moth inside a windstorm. There was a deep-seated fear that never left her eyes, and a suppressed tension wrapped so tight inside her that she constantly knotted her hands and squeezed her fingernails into the heels. People who claimed to be her friends openly admitted they could not be around her for more than two hours. She in turn told Francis he was the only friend she had in the whole world, and that he should not trust others and that he should model himself on the virtues of his gunfighter ancestors. But she never defined those virtues

By contrast, the social model of disability argues that the biggest obstacle to disability is a world around disabled people that does not accommodate them.

There’s a model of understanding the disabled community uses that I think can also be applied to other situations, including this one. It’s called the Social Model of Disability, and it states that it is not a person’s condition that disables them, but rather society through inaccessibility and stigma. So it is not PCOS that makes someone less of a woman, it’s society’s definition of ‘woman’ that might make someone feel that way.

The bathroom and the laundry room may be humble, utilitarian spaces, but let me point out a simple fact you may have overlooked: they can also be noble places. If you're cleaning yourself and attending to your own grooming regularly, you're making an effort to present yourself well to the world. If you're taking the time to relax in a bubble bath periodically, you're recognizing that life is not all about activity and achievement and that there are suitable times to de-stress and meditate. If you're monitoring your weight on a scale or taking vitamin supplements kept in your bathroom, you're pursuing the value of health. If you're storing medical supplies that you can grab when a child wakes up sick in the night, you're prepared to bring relief. If you're bathing an infant, or perhaps a disabled spouse or elderly parent, you're giving comfort while serving a basic human need. If you're teaching and modeling a simple approach to health and beauty for your kids, you're helping to start them out well in life. If you're going through the routine of washing your family's clothes week in and week out, they may not thank you but they owe you. Let me say it: thank you for caring and thank you for making the most of these spaces in your house by keeping them tidy and uncluttered.

Steven shook his head frantically. What kind of accident? His eyes jerked from side to side, trying to see past his limited field of vision. Where are Mom and Dad?

Robots will never take sick days, never need a pay increase or employee benefits, never go on strike, and will work long hours without a break. Remember, the word means “forced labor.” There will be no need for employers to hire and fire employees. If a robot is injured while performing a dangerous job, it can easily be repaired or replaced by a new robot, without the need for disability payments or potential lawsuit awards. Computer intelligence is expected to outwork and outlast a mere flesh and blood human. The superior will overtake the lesser. What a perfect business model; robots will work, while wealthy humans hop on a spaceship to visit Mars.

There's nothing wrong with wanting less pain or a different experience of it. There is nothing wrong with wanting to transform generations of passed down trauma. But, what gets more complicated is when those desires bleed into the ableist model of cure that's the only model most of us have for having more ease and less pain. That model and its harsh binary of successful and fixed or broken and fucked, is part of what contributes to suicidality and struggle in long-term survivors.

What to Do Tonight Spend private time with your child, ideally without electronics. Take turns with each child if you have more than one, so that the ratio is one-on-one. It is remarkably healing for kids and will help you to enjoy them. It also makes them feel like they are your number one priority. If you’re highly anxious, do something about it. Treating anxiety is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your family. Consider participating in cognitive behavioral therapy: you can learn very effective strategies for identifying and “talking back to” the distorted and unproductive thoughts that contribute to high anxiety. Learn to meditate. Take a yoga class. Be very regular in your exercise routine. Spend time in nature. Get more sleep. Socialize more with friends if it helps you feel calm. Avoid making decisions for your child based on fear. If you find yourself thinking, “I’m afraid if I don’t do this now, then—” stop. Do what you feel is right now, not what you feel you have to because of what you’re afraid will happen if you don’t. If your child is struggling, schedule a short time every day for you to worry about his or her problems. Literally write it into your planner. This will let your brain know that it is safe not to worry all day long. Remember who’s responsible for what. It cannot be your responsibility to see that everything goes well for your children at all times. If you are very worried about your teenager and have talked through the issues together many times, write your child a short letter summarizing your concerns and offering any help the child might need. Then promise that you will not bring the issue up again for a month. When you break your promise (because you will) apologize and recommit to it. Get out a piece of paper and draw a vertical line in the middle. In the left-hand column, write statements such as the following: “It’s okay for Jeremy to have a learning disability,” “It’s okay that Sarah doesn’t have any friends right now,” “It’s okay for Ben to be depressed right now.” In the right-hand column, write down the automatic thoughts that come to your mind in response (likely rebuttal) to these statements. Then question these automatic thoughts. Ask questions such as, “Can I be absolutely sure that this thought is true?” “Who would I be if I didn’t believe this?” This kind of self-questioning exercise, developed by author and speaker Byron Katie and others, can serve as a useful tool for discovering the thoughts that trap you into negative judgments.18 Create a stress-reduction plan for yourself. Can you get more exercise? More sleep? What calms you down and how can you do more of it? Don’t make yourself available to your kids at the expense of your own well-being. Wall off some “me” time. Model self-acceptance and tell your kids what you’re doing.

Sometimes I feel like you've given up. It's like you just accept this as your fate. Don't you want to get better?" "Don't you see?" Acceptance is the opposite of defeat!

Steven said, hoarsely, "Please tell Aunt Sophie I love her." "We'll be right here, son. We'll see you soon." Logan emphasized the words, as if his pledge would make it so. He squeezed his nephew's hand and leaned down, placing a kiss on his forehead. "I love you. Please come back to us.

The Bellevue program is modeled on the “social model” of disability, a response to the “medical model” that sees disability as something that needs to be fixed. By contrast, the social model of disability argues that the biggest obstacle to disability is a world around disabled people that does not accommodate them.

The government follows a business model of enriching healthy workers and depletion of assets from the sick and disabled.

The profoundly negationist character of information, the demand for which has no concern for any historical reality or any moral meaning. Shoah or no Shoah, if Hitler were alive he would be on all the screens. Might Network Man be the model for the disabled person of the future? It is perhaps to him, rather than to the paralytic, that we shall have forcibly to restore the use of his body. An illness that breaks out opportunely just before the departure date and ends exactly on the day the trip was scheduled to end.

if a “disability” really only becomes a problem in one setting—our factory-model K–12 system—I’d challenge that label.

Loree’s care collective model is a deep possibility model, not a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone who needs care. Her collective working relies on her having access to a broad network of friends and acquaintances, a social and activist life where people know her and are interested in helping her out, something many people, especially sick, disabled, and mad people, are too socially isolated to be able to access.

I also think about the people I know who want and need the distance of having someone they don’t know care for them. As a wheelchair-using, physically disabled Black femme friend of mine remarked to me, “I’m glad Loree’s model works for her, but if someone drops me, if someone doesn’t show up for a shift, I can die. I don’t ever want to depend on being liked or loved by the community for the right to shit in my toilet when I want to.

To cure the disabilities that cripple our organizations, we need to be equally radical in reimagining the bureaucratic management model. Building organizations that are endlessly malleable, ridiculously creative, and brimming with passion requires entirely new approaches to mobilizing and coordinating human effort. We must try to imagine new management models that are as radically different from the bureaucratic template as FaceTime is from a landline phone call, or Alipay is from a wad of banknotes.

The medical model of disability frames atypical bodies and minds as deviant, pathological, and defective, best understood and addressed in medical terms. In this framework, the proper approach to disability is to “‘treat’ the condition and the person with the condition rather than ‘treating' the social processes and policies that constrict disabled people's lives.” Although this framing of disability is called the “medical” model, it's important to note that its use isn't limited to doctors and other service providers; what characterizes the medical model isn't the position of the person (or institution) using it, but the positioning of disability as an exclusively medical problem and, especially, the conceptualization of such positioning as both objective fact and common sense.

[T]he definitional shift away from the medical/individual model makes room for new understandings of how best to solve the “problem” of disability. In the alternative perspective, which I call the political/relational model, the problem of disability no longer resides in the minds or bodies of individuals but in built environments and social patterns that exclude or stigmatize particular kinds of bodies, minds, and ways of being. For example, under the medical/individual model, wheelchair users suffer from impairments that restrict their mobility. These impairments are best addressed through medical interventions and cures; failing that, individuals must make the best of a bad situation, relying on friends and family members to negotiate inaccessible spaces for them. Under a political/relational model of disability, however, the problem of disability is located in inaccessible buildings, discriminatory attitudes, and ideological systems that attribute normalcy and deviance to particular minds and bodies. The problem of disability is solved not through medical intervention or surgical normalization but through social change and political transformation.

A political/relational model of disability, on the other hand, makes room for more activist responses, seeing “disability” as a potential site for collective reimagining. Under this kind of framework, “disability awareness” simulations can be reframed to focus less on the individual experience of disability—or imagined experience of disability—and more on the political experience of disablement. For example, rather than placing nondisabled students in wheelchairs, the Santa Barbara-based organization People in Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms (PISSAR) places them in bathrooms, armed with measuring tapes and clipboards, to track the failures and omissions of the built environment. As my fellow restroom revolutionaries explain in our manifesto, “This switch in focus from the inability of the body to the inaccessibility of the space makes room for activism and change in ways that ‘awareness exercises’ may not.” In creating and disseminating a “restroom checklist,” PISSAR imagines a future of disability activism, one with disability rights activists demanding accessible spaces; contrast that approach with the simulation exercises, in which “awareness” is the future goal, rather than structural or systemic change.

[A] political/relational framework recognizes the difficulty in determining who is included in the term “disabled,” refusing any assumption that it refers to a discrete group of particular people with certain similar essential qualities. On the contrary, the political/relational model of disability sees disability as a site of questions rather than firm definitions: Can it encompass all kinds of impairments—cognitive, psychiatric, sensory, and physical? Do people with chronic illnesses fit under the rubric of disability? Is someone who had cancer years ago but is now in remission disabled? What about people with some forms of multiple sclerosis (MS) who experience different temporary impairments—from vision loss to mobility difficulties—during each recurrence of the disease, but are without functional limitations once the MS moves back into remission? What about people with large birthmarks or other visible differences that have no bearing on their physical capabilities, but that often prompt discriminatory treatment?

A non-ableist cyborg politics refuses to isolate those of us cyborged through illness or disability from other cyborgs. Disabled people, in other words, can no longer be cast as modeling a cyborged existence that nondisabled people have yet to achieve. Such a move only strengthens the abled/disabled binary, suggesting that disabled people are fundamentally and essentially different from nondisabled people. If, as Haraway and others argue, technoculture is pervasive, then disabled people are not alone in the cyborgian realm. Cyborg theory could then turn itself to interrogations, for example, of why the very same technology is alternately described as “assistive” or “time-saving” depending on whether a disabled or nondisabled person is using it. In this framework, “cyborg” becomes an opportunity for exploring or interrogating the abled/disabled binary.

It would’ve been really easy to blow off the question. I could’ve said that the neurodiverse crowd simply hadn’t shown up. Or I could’ve cited my own limited knowledge of such disabilities as the reason for a lack of diversity, and that likely would’ve ended the conversation. It also would have ended my blog’s premise of being a resource devoted to offering a platform for the underrepresented. Instead, I took a different tack. I posted the reader’s question publicly and asked for help. Soon after I did this, I received messages from other readers who had more experience with, and knowledge of, disabilities than I had. Through this influx of new information, I was able to reach out to a polyamorous blogger with Asperger’s syndrome. I got some letter-writing assistance from a partner who has some familiarity with Asperger’s, and I communicated the needs of the blog, and let this blogger do their thing. What I received from this blogger, was one of the most personal and informative entries in the blog’s history. Not only was the profile amazing, the author immediately followed up its publishing with a second entry that drove even deeper into the intersection of autism and polyamory. Had the self-identities questions been available then, the follow-up might not have been needed. Instead, that follow-up became the signpost that such a question was necessary. It would be added to the submission form the very next week. So, what happened in this situation, is that I gave up control of my platform, and opened it up to ideas outside of my own. As far as representation goes, the goals of my blog are clear, but I understand that I don’t have the tools to manage them. Not completely and not by myself. Had I kept my hands on the steering wheel, this bit of magic would never have occurred. Furthermore, I’d have lost the idea that my platform was welcoming to neurodiverse people or people with disabilities. I didn’t want to be the kind of privileged person who tells oppressed people what their version of diversity should look like. It’s the reason why I readily accept nominations for blog contributors. Everyone can have a hand in the creative process, in as much as it pertains to them. So, instead of trying to control the narrative, the pen was passed to those with lived experience to express themselves in the way that felt most authentic to them. In response, Poly Role Models became a more honest and welcoming resource, especially with the newly inspired question.

In a social model [of disability], the interaction between the conditions of the body and the shapes of the world that makes disability into a lived experience, and therefore a matter not only for individuals but also for societies.

But as I hear my friends talking about how they’re sure they’ll die young, I wonder if changing the narratives around care might change their expectations of dying young. I think about what it would take to continue to build communities of care, where caring for each other is something we actually practice and build the structures to hold. I think of Loree Erickson’s mutual aid care collective and how it is both a model of being cared for when the state fails and a place so many people in Toronto get brought into disabled community that is deeply joyful, sexy, and fun in a way that many people don’t think of when they think of care. When I try to explain the care collective to folks outside Toronto, there’s a silence—it’s because they can’t quite imagine someone asking for and receiving help, including help that sees you naked and helps you with intimate acts, without shame and with joy. And I wonder—how would our belief that we could live rich, long disabled lives worth living change if we created more mutual aid collectives?

Prospector Theater in Ridgefield, Connecticut. From the Prospector’s website: The Prospector Theater is a new model of social enterprise. It pairs a first-run, commercial movie theater with the mission of training and employing adults with disabilities.

critical race Theory as a model to insist that disabilities are ultimately social constructions is particularly unhelpful, given that—unlike social categories of race—physical and mental impairments are objectively real and people often dislike having them because of the way they materially affect their lives (and not because they have been socialized to believe they should dislike them).

We do have better models and evidence of the superiority of these alternative models to nursing homes and other institutionalized living arrangements. People with severe disabilities who are living at home with personal assistance have demonstrated that living in an environment they control is far superior to institutionalized care. But according to the World Institute on Disability, “9.6 million people with disabilities live in the U.S. who need help with daily activities like washing, dressing and household chores. Less than 2 million receive paid assistance. Most rely on family and friends” (WID 1995). All of the 7.6 million people dependent on family or friends for personal assistance are thus vulnerable to future institutionalization.

For guardians of the status quo, there is nothing genuinely or fundamentally wrong with the prevailing order and its dominant institutions, which are viewed as just. Therefore, anyone claiming otherwise—especially someone sufficiently motivated by that belief to take radical action—must, by definition, be emotionally unstable and psychologically disabled. Put another way, there are, broadly speaking, two choices: obedience to institutional authority or radical dissent from it. The first is a sane and valid choice only if the second is crazy and illegitimate. . . . Radical dissent is evidence, even proof, of a severe personality disorder.” —Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, 2014

The inattention to disability within this topic area can be traced to a view dominated by the medical model in which disability is seen as a condition inherent in the individual.

Public health historically has used a linear model focusing exclusively on the body functions or dysfunctions of the person and that assumes the person's body dysfunctions and activity limitations are totally responsible for the individual's lack of involvement in the society

It’s one thing to battle oppression from the outside, but what do you do when the ideas that are attacking you are your own? As with all forms of oppression, sizeism doesn't exist in a vacuum. It interacts with and impacts other forms of oppression, including ableism. For those of us with disabilities where extra weight can make moving around that much harder, the threat of losing what mobility we have can loom over our heads. Ableism tells us that we must walk and become as “independent” as possible; sizeism blackmails us into making sure we stay that way. They both reinforce the man-made idea of an ideal body, one that everyone should aspire to have. Both feed into the capitalist idea that we must pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, that we must fend for ourselves, that we must not be a burden on anyone else. The two work in tandem with sexism as well – a female body should be Barbie doll skinny, sleek and sophisticated, and anything else is just gross. Our culture's standard definition of beautiful depends on preconceived notions about how the perfect body should be, notions that rely on various forms of oppression to legitimize them. A model body should ideally be white or white-passing, slim and nondisabled. Is it any wonder we don’t see fat, visibly disabled people of color posing on the covers of fashion magazines?" -Cara Liebowitz, "Palsy Skinny: A Mixed Up, Muddled Journey into Size and Disability," Criptiques, 2014.

Instead of fixating on disability as The Problem, the social model focuses on the experience of disability, the context of disability, the environments creating disabling moments. The social model looks at this image and says, ‘Let’s shift our focus from the woman in the wheelchair to the building with only one point of access. How limiting!’ The social model says, ‘Let’s build a ramp! An elevator! Let’s redesign this building with fewer stairs, and while we’re at it, let’s open up this floor plan!

And that quote, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude,” the reason that that’s bullshit is because it’s just not true, because of the social model of disability. No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. Smiling at a television screen isn’t going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille. It’s just not going to happen.

Through the neurodiversity lens I began to wonder, for instance, whether since the very start, I had been disabled by a neuronormative society. This, I came to see, had hindered my learning, my development, and my prospects right from the beginning of life. I also began to understand my trauma and mental illness as stemming from not just relative poverty and parental neglect but also a structurally ableist world.