A Random thought on the ADA and disability

I was reading an article that compared social and medical models of disability, advocating for a social model. I have some uninformed instinctive thoughts on the matter.

If we accept things as disabilities that are not medically debilitating (such as being a woman who had an abortion, or being gay, or being black) then in other contexts we risk reinforcing stigmas that we, as progressives and humans, would like to eliminate. I’d personally prefer an approach that required more precise definitions of medical disabilities and a focusing of the scrutiny on the medical establishment.

Perhaps it would be very utilitarian: an addressable disability for the purpose of employment and access is something that prevents you from doing a job, exercising a right, or taking advantage of a service that you are otherwise capable of doing without a change to the fundamental nature of the job, right, or service. The nature of reasonable accommodation would change as technology changes (think of the jobs that a severely dyslexic person could do now, 20 years ago, and 10 years from now) and the assessment of someone as ADA-disabled would not be a stigma-bearing one: it’s an assessment that in a particular context the individual could be fully burden-bearing and benefit-laden but for the nefarious action or lack of action by the denier.

Anyway, I’ve never thought about this before. Which made it perfect for my blog :-)

The Nature of the Problem

So I'm a law student. And one of the people I sit next to in one class is one of the main bloggers at feministe (Hi Jill). She often says what I'm thinking with an eloquence and vividness that I wish I had. Sometimes, of course, we disagree. But she usually gets me thinking. And one of her recent comments reminded me that "the project" has at least two real problems.

The first is that many of our societal norms are simply sexist. These are obvious things, like the ability of men to walk around topless in situations where women can't. Or the availability of toilet facilities relative to the average amount of time it takes a man or a woman to use said facility. And speaking of toilets and bathrooms: the fact that many more women's rooms have baby-changing facilities than do men's rooms. And then we have things like pay disparities, and society's support for professional athletics, etc etc. This is not meant to be a litany of sexist practices :-)

Then there's the notion, I'll go so far as to call it a fact (but maybe that's open to dispute), that so many of our societal norms are sexist that our society is self-perpetuatingly sexist. Consider a non-sexist meme. By presumption, it's non-sexist, so it's not going to rely on stereotyped differences between men and women. Thus, some would argue, it can't affect the current balance of power between and societal conceits about men and women. On the other hand, the fact that it isn't sexist may reinforce the more general meme that non-sexism is good, and that may lead to change, but on the balance I'm going to say that it's a minor plus in the world.

But this meme is going to have to survive in a hostile environment. Power structures are made by the powerful to protect themselves, and we live in a structure that's gotten pretty sophisticated over thousands of years. Think of spousal abuse, or domestic violence, or whatever you want to call it. In the 1700's, and who knows how much earlier, husbands had the right to discipline their wives. To beat them, basically. Over the course of the next two hundred years, we slowly developed norms against that, and it's generally considered deplorable to beat your wife.

But.

Statistics show that battery laws are enforced more often and more vigorously against immigrants, minorities, and economically less well off people. The people that aren't in power. Police and prosecutors exhibit a lot of hesitation to make public crimes out of 'domestic violence'. Husbands can win the sympathy of judges and juries with stories of how the wife cheated on them, or how they simply didn't trust her, or how it was actually a fit of rage and not a coldly calculating power play. Women receive relatively little support from police, are often unsuccessful in citing a history of abuse or philandering by a husband, and generally have a much tougher row to hoe if they, god forbid, should take action to stop the abuse.

This is just one illustrative example. Yes, the meme that spousal abuse is bad has taken hold. But along with it have come memes that enable us to rationalize that abuse, to blame the victim, and to compartmentalize the problem of abuse as one that is confined to 'others'.

So that's the problem we have to deal with -- the fact that society is filled with sexist memes, and the fact that society seems to have an immune system that defends an overall sexist tendency. Another way of saying this is that there's an inertia behind power, a momentum. There may be some friction slowing down that momentum, but those with power tend to stay in power.

How can we make this different?

An Apology and a Plea from a White Satiated Man in a Black Hungry Woman's World

I'm white. I'm a man. I'm male (I definitely cry at sappy and not-so-sappy movies, and can get fairly emotional, so maybe I have some female aspects -- something to blog about later because I'm not sure about 'gender' and how it works). I'd call myself upper middle class because I own my apartment, but I think I have way too much debt to be upper class. Given that I'm incurring more debt and that my career path a public interest attorney does not lead to wealth and luxury, my hold on 'upper middle' may be a tenuous one. Of course, on a global perspective I'm incredibly well off.

On the other hand, I'm Jewish. And I have experience some antisemitism. But at least in America, antisemitism doesn't seem to often manifest itself in professional or economic discrimination.

All of this is to say that I don't have a gut feel for a lot of the implications of racism and sexism and classism. Even though I might be academically attuned to it, and even though I may have some aptitude or instinct for spotting it (perhaps most often after I've committed it), I don't have an inherent or societized sensitivity to it. Of course, I don't think this disqualifies me from theorizing about all sorts of discrimination and the way society works, but I'm curious about how it influences my perspective (I often wish that there was some way we could experiment with humans -- create identical universes, except we'd just change one thing about one person and see what happened).

Also, I'm ignorant of the deep history of a lot of the movements that I support and align myself with. So while I consider myself a feminist, and I oppose racism, and support the GLBT 'agenda', I'm not a scholar of those movements. If I offend, if I use a term of art inaccurately, or if I belabor an issue that's already been addressed, please let me know. I'm want to learn, and I want to help.

Ideal World: Starting My Thoughts

In my head I call it a post-feminist world. But that's probably already a term of art, so I'll need something else. It's also not nearly as broad as what I imagine, which is a world where organizations like the NAACP, NOW, and Lambda Legal Defense and Education are no longer needed, at least not in their current incarnations. It's a world where society, in its broadest sense, does not explicitly or implicitly discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, wealth, race, etc. It's a nirvana, basically.

But only 'a', not 'the'. And I've only described it in the most vague of terms, and only in the negative. I'm not really sure where to start describing what such a world might look like, and I'm afraid I may just delve right in and make many false starts. I welcome feedback and contributions from others, and I'm pleading for references and pointers to people and pieces that may have already done the heavy lifting in this thought exercise.

Over the next few posts I'll lay out some assumptions and thoughts about people and society, and see what develops as I write. I may also contemplate the question of how we could get to such a society from the one we have today, or if such a society is even possible or stable once attained. In a more realistic sense, and perhaps in common with other thinkers in this area, I may occasionally look at today's world and ruminate on ways it could be made 'better' and what 'better' means.

So that's my little project. I welcome your help and your comments. Or I'll just express myself and know that I've done it :-)