The Rejected Body

Before reading Wendell's article I had never considered disabilities as being socially constructed. However, I was convinced of this idea when she raised the point concerning how the environment is constructed from a healthy, non-disabled, male, perspective. These inaccessible surroundings contribute to how culture views disabilities and how we define a disability. Anyone who has trouble maneuvering in society is considered to be disabled, therefore is society were made accessible to a wider range of people then there would be fewer "disabled."  In an idealized society I believe that every space should be accessible to the disabled, but should this be a law that every workplace, school, and other facilities should be handicap accessible? In order to make a building fully handicap accessible this costs thousands of dollars. If small businesses were forced by law to make their space accessible many would have to go out of business. I believe that every new space and building should be built with accessibility for all in mind, but this does not answer the tougher question of how to deal with the older, inaccessible buildings. 

This problem of cost and benefit was one that we addressed in my biomedical ethics class that I took last semester. I believe that one of the biggest problems facing our modern day society is the rapidly increasing numbers of the uninsured. The cost of health care in America has become outrageous and as a result many employers can no longer afford to offer insurance and hardly an individuals can afford to pay for it on their own. This is contributing to the numbers of disabilities in society because many easily preventable problems are not being treated and are therefore developing into disabilities. One of the more widely circulated arguments about why a nationalized health care system can't work is based on the idea that health care and insurance for the majority of people could be handled relatively easily by the government, but it is the extreme that is bringing the cost of health care up so dramatically. According to this idea the 10% of the population that requires extensive medical care is raising the costs of insurance dramatically for everyone. I believe that this argument is just another way to marginalize the disabled and attempt to normalize society. Basically, this argument is implying that the government should cover insurance for everyone except the people who really need it. This is especially wrong if we believe Wendell's argument that the majority of disabilities are created by society to begin with. Throughout this course we have seen the  terrible mistreatment of groups who had no voice or power in our society. I believe that society is continuing this terrible treatment by how it is dealing with disabilities in our culture. Society is mistreating the disabled by ignoring the problem of maneuvering in an inaccessible environment and the difficultly in affording treatment in a culture that makes few allowances.