>> Now, I assume Marta *does* implicitly include brain disorders within her
> definition of the disabled but by allowing the almost universal
> assumptions to go unchallenged by so much as a parenthesis she implicitly
> commits herself to what she calls "physicalist" assumptions.
Yes, I do include mental disabilities, and sensory disabilities. The models you use - "soft and "hard symptoms" - are medical model constructs which disability rights activists consider inadequate to address their socio/economic predicament and have largely rejected in favor of a social model of disability which defines disability in terms of social and functional criteria.
Disability, for purposes of explaining oppression, is a social construct. I use ablism or physicalism to describe the functional hierarchy imposed on disabled people. When people don't run, jump, see, hear, or mentally perform to the medical model "norm" they are considered less than those who do. Ablism or physicalism is viewing difference as a superior(nondisabled)/inferior(disabled) paradigm and this is strongly reinforced by the medical model (which views these differences as "defects").
> For a number of years now whenever I read material on the disabled, I do
> so with a preliminary focus on the *explicit* definition given of "the
> disabled" (implicit here will not do any more than does the implicit
> reference of "mankind" to women). A subdivision (which also contains its
> own *vital* subdivisions) is between those whose symptoms are "hard" and
> those whose symptoms are "soft." "Soft symptoms" is nearly a technical
> term in political discussions of the issue: those symptoms that are not
> visible (to the eye, to the x-ray camera, to pet, etc). *Then*, within
> "soft symptoms" one must (always, without fail) note those "soft" symptoms
> one must divide those that are *generally* neurological, immunological,
> etc. (e.g., migraine, which will show up on an eeg) from those which are
> strictly *brain* disorders: Depression or Unipolar Affective Disorder (my
> malady), bipolar, bpd, schizophrenia, etc. and have no direct physical
> manifestations whatever. > While many writers include both hard and soft symptoms, *most* (and Marta did this) *fail* to include brain disorders.
> And yet almost all efforts (see numerous WSJ editorials) to downplay the
> disabled play on this last distinction (their goal seems to be to make all
> "soft" symptoms "mental illness, then define mental illness as (to reverse
> the slogan of NAMI) character defects. Hence the political weakness of so
> many efforts to call attention to the condition of the disabled: by
> failing to *explicitly* include brain disorders, they continue to allow
> the *implicit* assumption of almost everyone that the disabled are always
> visible.
To address your medical model also, the visable/invisable disability analysis may be proved not to have much of a foundation on which to rest. For instance, depression and schizophrenia can be treated with chemical substances that either minimize or eliminate symptoms which would indicate that there IS a physical connection. If seratonin or dopamine can make depression disappear it stands to reason that there is a chemical component missing in the brain, a physical chemical deficiency - like a diabetic who takes insulin to replace what the body does not produce, the depressive can pop Prozac.
Also, there is no "hard" test for fibromyalgia, a condition which has very specific physical symptoms but cannot be shown by MRI, xray, bood test, etc., and is not in the mental category of a "brain disorder." Relying on "hard" and "soft" medical symptoms to define disability is constricted and incomplete.
Marta Russell
> Marta Russell writes:
> >
> > Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> > > I stick by "mutual ruin of the contending classes" (Marx/Engels) and
> > > "socialism or barbarianism" (Luxemburg), and think that the more positive
> > > of these outcomes in the U.S. depends on the creation of a left that is,
> > > substantially, neither racist nor sexist: and that such a change will at
> > > some point come quickly or it will not come at all.
> >
> > I agee and would add that the creation of an effective left must not be
> > ablist or physicalist. The battles that women and racial minorities have
> > had to fight to gain some recognition of their specific issues within
> > the left, disabled people, it seems, are having to fight as well.
> >