"Learning to Listen"

In reading, "The Rejected Body" by Susan Wendell, the first statement that I found to really stand out was, "Disability activists and some scholars of disability have been asserting for at least two decades that disability is socially constructed." I thought to myself, what does that mean? Through further reading of her text I began to answer my own question. Social factors or social conditions construct many forms of disability. For example, many forms of physical disabilities or even mental disabilities are a result of wars, civil wars, terrorism, the spread of diseases, or even the deprivation of basic needs and the chaos that such deprivation causes. Other social factors such damaging the environment, creating a toleration of high-risk working conditions, and allowing low public safety standards also promote environments for disabilities to be constructed.

So why then if disability is something that is socially constructed, is it not something that is socially accessible? The best answer that I could come up with is the fact that we do not live in a Utopian Society. We live in a Capitalistic society that is built upon the strong getting stronger and the weak getting weaker, which is a terrible structure, but I feel like that is just the way it is. I mean our society does give help to people with disabilities; however, I think what we need to remember is the many of the people who are receiving help for disabilities are people who have been damaged by social condition, or because they cannot meet the social expectations of performance, or because they have simply been placed at a disadvantage by society. People with a disability will tend to move at a slower pace, and I would like to think the world would move at a slower pace to accommodate them probably because some of them are moving slower because the world has caused their problems, but our world just doesn't function that way. I think the best thing that we can do is not to feel sorry for those who are disabled, but rather to help when we can, but not to pity those who aren't moving as "fast" as we are. I really was able to see this and understand this idea of not pitying those with a disability during out guest speaker in class today, who shocked me more ways than one.

Our guest speaker today, Rosemarie Garland Thomson spoke to us about the T-4 Medical Genocide of persons with disabilities done in Germany by the Nazis. The first part of her speech that caught my attention was the fact that the house where the T-4 project was launched was located on the German street in English meaning, "Animal Park St". For some reason that stuck in my head during the presentation because through the Holocaust and through much of what we have discussed in class regarding the Eugenics movement I have felt that individuals who have believed themselves to be superior have treated groups of people almost as though they were animals. They have performed experiments on them, tested them, and have deemed a life with a disability a life not worth living. I feel as though those people were treated as animals. I think it was at this point in the presentation that Ms. Thomson removed her sweater and I noticed for the first time that her arm was deformed. At that moment I stopped listening, and I don't know why. I just was thinking about her arm. I then proceeded to count her fingers on her other hand and realized that she was missing one. After this continued for about five minutes I realized that I was doing exactly what people with disabilities do not want done to them. I was starring, thinking, pitying. I needed to learn to listen to her story again as the person that began because the fact that her arm was disfigured did not make her any less of a person than when she had began speaking. Once I realized that and refocused I was able to listen to the rest of her speech and listen to her story as opposed to focusing on her appearance, but rather I listened and attained her message.