Happy Monday, my friends! This might sound like a strange and even controversial statement, but disability is a social construct. There are certain physical and mental aspects of a person which make that person different from other people including their anatomy, skin color, and to whom they are physically and romantically attracted. These are real parts of a person. However, culture and society construct classifications around these inherent parts of who we are and how we fit or don’t fit some idealized aspiration. We take skin color and construct race where “white” is the ideal. We take physical and romantic attraction and construct sexual orientation where “heterosexual” is the ideal. We take anatomy, specifically reproductive anatomy, and construct gender where “male” and “cisgender” are the ideals. We take other anatomy, mental states, and the ways in which that anatomy functions and construct disability where “(temporarily) abled bodied” is the ideal. In each of these cases we take something which is part of who people are, we create one or more identities, and then we accept or exclude people based on how closely their identity matches the ideal which we’ve also created. In this way, we can see how disability is a social construct.
But disability has a second dimension of social construction: the built environment. Whereas inclusion and exclusion are defined for most other socially constructed identities by political, religious, and cultural forces alone, the inclusion or exclusion of disabilities is built into our physical environment. Whether a building has ramps, lifts, messaging in Braille or spoken interactions, and other accommodations for people defines who can utilize that building and everything it houses. For instance, at one of the universities I worked at the Dean of Students offices were on the second floor of a building without an elevator. Students who used wheelchairs could not access those offices directly. Imagine if you couldn’t access a governmental building, a medical provider’s office, or your place of worship because the space was not designed to accommodate your body or the bodies of people like you.
Disability scholars distinguish between cures and healing. Amy Kenny says that “We read healing narratives as eradicating disability (curing) without considering the broader social implications (healing).”[1] Kenny discusses how her own medical professionals recommended—sometimes ordered and insisted without listening to her contributions to her own care—increasingly drastic forms of “cures” rather than prescribe methods to better integrate her body into the world. Curing disability rather than accommodating disability is an ongoing debate throughout medical and disabled communities as well as communities at large. Medical models state that disability is an infirmity and a disease and should therefore be cured by any means necessary. Models from the humanities, however, posit that disability is a socially constructed reality and should be equitably treated and accommodated. This response to disability mirrors the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam or repairing the world. We are not meant to repair people, but rather to make the world a place where people can flourish just as they are.
There are people who are born with different abilities who society calls disabled. There are people who become disabled through accidents and injuries. All people will become disabled as they age. Yet disability itself is a social construction based on how one’s community and society choose to accommodate disabilities broadly and individually.
Where do you notice accommodations for disability in your community? Where does your community need to increase its accommodations?
Let us pray: “Creator God, we are your people. We look to the future with optimism and with faith in you, as we pursue our call to provide justice and fullness of life for all people with disabilities.We pray that every person may develop their potential and meet you in themselves and in one another. May we enjoy equitable and affirming communities, with you as our center, joined hand-in-hand with all our siblings. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen”
~Adapted from a prayer written for the National Catholic Partnership on Disability
Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Let me know if there is anything I can do for you.
Faithfully,
Ben
[1] Amy Kenny, My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022).
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