Friday Five: Definitions of 'Ableism'

[capri0mni]

So -- over on Tumblr, someone made the comment that you can't call out people for their ableism if they don't know what 'ableism' means. So when we in the disability community talk about it, we're basically preaching to the choir.

So I've decided to post a definition of 'Ableism' with slightly different phrasing each time every couple of days. ...Most of the definitions are my own words (or will be). One is from Merriam-Webster Online, and one is from Disability Rhetoric by Jay Timothy Dolmage.

Here are the ones I've got, so far:

1) Ableism is when you discount someone's humanity because they do not have all the 'standard' abilities we're taught to expect.

2) Ableism is when you accept a culturally contrived 'standard' of human ability, and measure the value of a human life against that standard.

3) Ableism renders disability as abject, invisible, disposable, less than human, while able-bodiedness is represented as at once ideal, normal, and the mean or default. [That's Dolmage's)

4) 'Ableism' is the idealization of ability.

It is a bias that credits anyone who has abilities we admire with good moral character, while discrediting the moral character of disabled people.

5) 'Ableism' is a subconscious filter in our perception; it only lets those with a 'full set of abilities' into the category of 'human.' Those with less than a 'full set' are often treated as inconsequential, or even invisible.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Oohhh, these are all good. I particularly like the "good moral character" one, since current dis-rights discourse mainly discusses the medical and social models. The "moral model" may not be displayed as much, but the underlying belief that disability is proximate to bad morals supports the political attacks on disability income, insurance, and services.

[capri0mni]

Thank you!

Yeah... I'm particularly proud of that one, 'cause it shows how ableism cuts both ways -- and how pervasive it is, and harmful to everyone in society. Because once you're aware of how "idealization of ability" works, than that explains why a judge is willing to sentence a young man convicted of violent rape to just six months in prison because of his athletic promise, but we're willing to publicly shame a wheelchair user for standing up in the supermarket to reach a can of soup.

And yeah -- the social model of disability is often built on the moral model, as you point out.

Not to mention the trend in our fiction of making the villains in stories disabled/disfigured as a matter of course.