The other is that disabled people are naturally inferior, disagreeable, and at the same time beneficiaries of unfair and unjustified generosity and social protection. One is that disabled people are unfortunate but innocent victims of circumstance who should be loved, cared for, and shielded from harm. It’s interesting to note that there seem to be two main schools of ableist belief. Disabled people don’t have to work and get government benefits for life.Unlike other “minorities,” everyone likes and supports disabled people.Disabled people get good parking spaces, discounts, and all kinds of other little unearned favors.It’s driven by a combination of petty everyday resentments and false, dark, and quasi-political convictions, such as: This is one of the main flip sides of condescension and sentimentality towards disabled people. Resenting disabled people for advantages or privileges you think they have as a group. A prime example of this is the widely held belief, even among disabled people, that physical disability isn’t so bad because at least there’s “nothing wrong with your mind.”ģ. Placing different disabilities in a hierarchy of “severity” or relative value.For example, that people with Down Syndrome are happy, friendly, and naive, mentally ill people are unpredictable and dangerous, or autistic people are cold, tactless, and unknowable. Associating specific stereotypes with particular conditions.Assuming that disabled people’s personalities fit into just a few main categories, like sad and pitiful, cheerful and innocent, or bitter and complaining.Holding stereotypical views about disabled people in general, or about certain sub-groups of disabled people. ![]() Avoiding talking to disabled people in order to avoid some kind of feared embarrassment.Ģ.Being viscerally disgusted by people whose bodies appear to be very different or “deformed.”.Being nervous, clumsy, and awkward around people in wheelchairs. ![]() This manifests in hundreds of ways, and can include: Feeling instinctively uncomfortable around disabled people, or anyone who seems “strange” in ways that might be connected to a disability of some kind. It’s important to explore the essential components both.ġ. ![]() In one sense it is about individual behavior, but it is also about social structures and institutions. These two definitions point towards an important dual nature for ableism. Social habits, practices, regulations, laws, and institutions that operate under the assumption that disabled people are inherently less capable overall, less valuable in society, and / or should have less personal autonomy than is ordinarily granted to people of the same age.
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