Serres, D. (n.d.). Think Everything’s “Normal?” Then It’s Time To Reconsider And Promote A New Narrative Of Disability. Retrieved January 30, 2017, from http://organizingchange.org/think-everythings-normal-then-its-time-to-reconsider-and-promote-a-new-narrative-of-disability/
Overall for me, I found this article very difficult to get through. The issue is just so complex, it was hard for me to get a grip on what my opinion on the topic was since there are just so many grey areas. The article talks about the term "ableism" which is a term used to describe what is possible for a person to achieve in life despite a disability, insinuating that people with disabilities somehow live a "lesser" life than those who are not disabled. I think though that the main idea of the article was to discuss how disabilities should be treated in a "culture of normalcy". For the most part, I understand what they mean. Anyone who isn't considered "normal" is therefore "different". But what exactly is "normal"? What society considers a norm is heavily dependant on the society. What was considered normal in the 1917 would be starkly different from whatever is normal now in 2017. No matter what "normal" is, one thing is for sure: people are afraid of difference. No one wants to be seen as strange or different, and the article really encapsulates this well, saying, "If our society didn’t have such a fear of difference, then it wouldn’t matter whether someone used a wheelchair, communicated differently, etc. or not." And because of this, we always want to make people with disabilities strive to be "normal". They feel as though they need to "overcome their disability" which is not the kind of thing I ever want people to think. I hadn't ever really thought about what it must feel like to want to be "normal". Ever since I was a kid, all I saw on TV was people trying to stand out and be different. But I wonder what it must feel like to constantly have attention on you because you are different, but not in that "desirable" way, like they show on TV. Not only that, but the way society functions makes it harder for people with disabilities to just be a part of society without having their disability completely define who they are. The article listed a lot of solutions to how we can start to break down this barrier between people with disabilities and those without. For the most part, I agreed with them, but there were some things that I thought were a bit unrealistic. I definitely agreed with the power of language in this issue. Using words with negative connotations like "suffering" and "afflicting" makes it seem like having a disability is somehow a bad thing. Even the word "disability" to me is a problematic word. The word literally means "not having the ability to do", and the article makes a big deal out of not making people feel like they can't live a full life with their disability, but even the word itself insinuates that. Personally, this article really opened my eyes to thinking about the words I use when speaking about these issues. On the other hand, I thought there were a few "solutions" to the problem that were a bit naive. The article talks about stopping the corporatization of medicine and funding schools in order to help support those with disabilities, but I think that those are such big topics, that it's not that easy to just have these things done. While it would be really nice to have all these things, I think that there are so many issues surrounding just those two things alone, they can't so easily suggest that we just do these things. In all, the article did provide a lot of food for thought and with such a large topic, there's just so many things to unpack in it that I couldn't possibly talk about all of it in this bibliography.
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Carole PalattaoI'm an 18 year old studying classical voice at Western University. I'm also a hardcore mental health advocate, and I do creative writing on the side for fun!
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