A Disabled Person’s Take on the Social Model of Disability

I recently read a post on Feministing about the social model of disability that infuriated me. For those who are unaware, the social model of disability posits that disability is a social construction arising from society’s failure to meet all people’s needs, and exists primarily because physical and mental differences are not adequately accommodated. Proponents of the social model of disability see it as existing in contrast to the medical model of disability, which is that disabilities are objective medical realities consisting of the inability to perform certain mental or physical tasks that most people can. Activism for the rights of disabled people is often based on the social model of disability.

The problem with this is that the social model of disability is a steaming pile of horseshit. As a disabled person, I know that I am OBJECTIVELY impaired in my ability to do various things, and I objectively require several medications to function as normally as possible. Awareness, accommodations, and treatment, which social model of disability advocates propose as solving the problems of disability, make my life easier and more pleasant. Awareness means that I no longer blame myself for my disability symptoms, and that my family blames me less for them than in years past. Accommodations remove some obstacles that my disabilities would otherwise create in my university career. Medical treatment means that I can do many things I would otherwise be unable to do.

However, my disabilities are still objectively THERE, and not all of their effects can be eliminated. Those effects will not change regardless of how much society changes to accommodate disabled people. Certainly there are barriers to disabled people’s full participation in society, especially employment, that can be removed, but disabilities are always going to cause problems.

To summarize: Disabilities are medical realities, not merely social constructions. The social model of disability honestly pisses me off, because it doesn’t fully acknowledge disability’s impact and because it sees the medical community as part of the problem–the medical system is seen as unnecessarily pathologizing disabilities–rather than the best source of solutions. I suspect, in fact, that the social model of disability did not originate with actual disabled people–it reads to me more like the attempts of non-disabled scholars to fit disability into an anti-oppression framework than an organic movement growing from disabled people themselves.

Disability is not “an ingenious way to live,” as stated in the Feministing article. Describing it that way implies that disability is a choice, which is repugnant and denies the lived reality of almost all disabled people. The social model of disability also denies the ways in which having disabilities can create obstacles in life regardless of accommodations, along with ignoring that disability is by definition the inability to do certain things that other people can. In fact, I would argue that there is a deeply ableist undercurrent to the reluctance among parts of the disability activist community to acknowledge that disabilities are undesirable traits that cause problems rather than just different ways of being: Only if one assumes that having intrinsic difficulties makes one inferior does the desire to deny that disability is objectively disabling make any sense.

Judging by the response to both my comment on the Feministing post and my lengthier, more personal post on my friends-locked blog, I’m not alone in my thoughts on this matter. I would really like to see a new type of disability activism: one that actually acknowledges that being disabled sucks, and that being disabled is going to suck until the medical profession can cure all disabilities. This activism would see the medical profession as allies in our search for better lives, not enemies who are trying to stamp out our way of being. It would be more realistic–and, dare I say it, more reflective of the wants, needs, and lived realities of actual disabled people–than the social model of disability, despite what non-disabled activists may say.