Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >Eliminating impairment does nothing for our liberation.
>
> I agree. Only a social movement against the oppression of the
> disabled, in the context of a socialist movement, can bring about the
> kind of liberation we need to work for.
>
> By the same token, eliminating some impairments, via prevention or
> treatment, in itself does nothing to make the oppression of the
> disabled worse than it is. Impairment is one thing; disablement
> another. It is not against the interest of Thalidomide victims &
> other disabled to try to prevent the same or similar impairment from
> being caused in the future. It is not against the interest of polio
> survivors & other disabled to seek to eradicate polio.
Some with such impairments would beg to differ with you. Dr. Gregor Wolbring of Calgary U who is a Thalidomide baby, for instance, does not consider himself a "victim." Further he sees nothing tragic about bringing more impaired persons into the world and is active in carving out a place for disabled persons to sit at the table with bioethicists and at world wide conferences on issues which have direct bearing on us.
"Impairment is the material substratum upon which the oppressive social structures of disablement are erected." Abberley
What you seem to have absorbed is the wider disabling ideology that disabled people' s lives are not worth living. It assumes that a non disabled life is better than living a disabled life. That is the whole crux of our argument with Peter Singer.
Mike Oliver writes:
"this ideology of able-bodied normality underpins the profession approach to the issue of dsability from pre-birth until death. Thus, the Abortion Act (1967) makes termination possible if 'there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.' No strict criteria are laid down to specify abnormality , nor is a definition of lf seriously handicapped provided so the termination decision is left in the hands of two doctors. given the earlier discussion of the difficulties of defining disability and hiandicap, this decision will ultimately be based on personal judgements of individuals, who, whatever their training, are not immune from the fetters of the ideology of the able-bodied and able-minded individual.
'this ideology underpinning abortion has implications for disabled people: The general concensus is that if a disabled person admits that eugenic abortion is jutifiable, he is thereby undermining the value of his own life.' (Graham Monteith, 1987)
and for society:
'if able bodied society were to accept that those with disabilities are equal human beings with rights, they would also have to abandon the notion that screening and abortion are benefits to society, and that the earlier a handicaped person is killed off the better for all concerned. (Davis, 1987, p. 287)
This ideology is not only relevant to the life-and-death issues but to other areas as well. The current popularity of "conductive education" is a product of this ideology of the able-bodied individual, for its aim is to teach children with cerebral palsy to walk, talk and engage in all other activities in as near normal a way as possible. No consideration is given to the ideology of 'normality' nor to the idea that the environment could be changed rather than the individual." (Oliver, Politics of Disablement, 1990, p. 55. )
Impairment is biological but we do not accept that it is biological inferiority.
Kill us or cure us are the two social solutions to believing our lives are not as good as non impaired persons.
Yoshie: That many people, soldiers as well as civilians, get killed, maimed, diseased, psychologically traumatized, etc. in & after any war is a good reason to work to bring about a socialist world in which war is unnecessary, if not the only reason. It's one thing to have an impairment because of aging, i.e., that which cannot be abolished; it's entirely another thing to be impaired due to acts of oppressions like imperialist war, racist brutality, gay bashing, rape, etc.!
Marta I don't see it this way at all. Once one is impaired it is how one is allowed to live in the world that matters. Whining on and on and drinking oneself into a stupor everynight as Ron Kovic still does AFTER ALL THESE YEARS is not the way to go. Impairment being equated with victimhood does not do anyone much good.
What I have noticed from the left is an over bearing need to feel pity and put us out of our "misery" -- but not much effort to eliminate barriers or accept us as equals. See Jim Charton's piece "The Disability Rights Movement" in Monthly Review, July-August 1984.
I have come to the conclusion that most people DO feel that the world would be better off without disabled persons but they cloak this behind the idea that we really want to get rid of ourselves. Please, don't do us any favors.
Marta