Week 10 - Disability and movement cultures Flashcards
Terminology - First Person Language vs Identity First Language
First person:
Foregrounds the personhood of the
individual
* “person with a disability”
* The current standard (especially in
North America)
Identity first: The person’s impairment (or disability) comes first
* “disabled person”
* More commonly used by people
within the disability community to
describe themselves
Sports and ability
Sports are often at the centre of inclusion battles for people with disabilities
This is because sports are:
-culturally visible and significant
-believed to be important socializing experiences
-hampered by finite resources
Socially constructing ability
Here is an ability continuum from low to high
Low ability to High ability
-Where do we draw the line to separate “disabled” from “able-bodied”?
-Who should draw such a line? What criteria should be used to draw it? What are the implications of the line after it’s drawn?
Point: very subjective
what counts as ability
- Definitions of ability are
influenced by ideology
-Ablism: Interrelated ideas and beliefs
that are widely used to identify people as physically or intellectually disabled
Can justify treating persons with disabilities as inferior
* Rejects that physical & intellectual
variation is natural and normal
Non-disabled vs disabled
- Who decides which impairments count when classifying people as disabled?
- Who makes that decision and for what reason?
These are political and social questions.
How are they political?
How are they social?
Conceptual frame-works:
- Medical model of disability
Disability is an individualized condition, and responsibility is on the person to “overcome” their disability
* Sharp distinction between “disabled” and “normal” (as opposed to a spectrum)
* Medical interventions focus on making disabled person as close
to “normal” as possible
Conceptual frame-works:
-Social model of disability
Preferred by disability rights advocates and community
* Enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
* Non-accessible environment is the problem, not the person who
has an impairment.
* Move away from “putting most of the responsibility on the
individual for both having and overcoming a disability” (p. 157,
Pitter et al. 2024)
Non disabled vs disabled
Who decides which impairments count when classifying people as disabled?
Who makes that decision and for what reason?
Examples of disabling barriers
Physical/environmental: Lack of elevators, ramps
Political: The way it is defined by society, ex: gov classification and the ways it supports disability
Social/ attitudinal: the way society society thinks about disability. the way it is taught
Universal design
Products, building features, and elements which can be used by everyone to the greatest extent possible
Aims to minimize need for add-on products or devices that can be expensive and stigmatizing
“altering the environment to support all individuals at all levels of ability” (p. 160, Pitter et al. 2024) Universal Design
Hand dryers, lowest barriers can serve people across all communities. Larger doorways
Living in the empire of normal
Mainstream society that emphasizes “normalcy”
Visible impairments in the Empire of the Normal require polite responses to questions like…
What happened to you?
Why are you this way?
- Competitive, high-performance sports are given high priority in the Empire of the Normal
Bodies of athletes with disabilities will challenge exceptions in said empire. expected to have a why my body is different
Paralympics history
Ludwig Guttman of the Stoke Mandeville Hospital- WWII era, England
Sport as rehabilitation for injured veterans. Served as the father of the Paralympics movement
other efforts:
Deaf games (1888 Berlin)
Blind games (1909)
In Canada, earliest parasport was also sports completion for war veterans (late 1960, early 1970)
largely white men with spinal cord injury, amputation, and/or visual impairments
* movement to include athletes with cerebral palsy, intellectual disabilities, and other disabilities in Paralympics
- Guttman’s opposition
-ptsd/shell shock
Paralympics
Modern Paralympics:
* emphasis on competition,
sponsorship and spectator
interest = cutting out events
Consequences?
* Women, those with more
significant impairments, and
those with congenital disabilities:
* participation decreased
celebrated vs marginalized
(low level amputations, visual impairments, spinal cord injuries vs congenital and development disabilities)
There has been and continues to be a tense relationship between the IOC and the IPC:
- The IOC had not wanted to share resources, publicity,
media coverage, or sponsors with the IPC - 2016: New agreement signed between both parties
- Current media contracts for covering the Olympic Games now also cover the rights to cover the Paralympic Games
Inspiration Porn
Presents disabled people as
“extraordinary” or ”heroic”, often
for accomplishing ordinary things.
Disability is portrayed as a
terrible tragedy to overcome
Disabled people’s struggles or
successes serve a purpose for
the able-bodied
-so heart warming
or
-provokes shame: if they can do it why cant I?
Paralympic athlete perspective: we are not just insparation, we are elite athletes
More positive than viewing persons with disabilities as subjects of pity or abnormal
* But it still presents them as fundamentally different from people without disabilities
Some people in the disability community do find that the term resonates with them and even empowers them under the right circumstances
