Well we live in a very ableist society, those who "care for us" often treat us like we're forever 5 yrs old. Society generally holds us to stereotypes. This mindset is further pushed through the media and such places. Even though asperger isn't really a disability, it's seen as a disability merely because we're different, and NTs are the majority, hence ultimately it's their world.
We're forever stigmatized as being "disabled", and subject to be treated either consciously or sub-consciously as a sub-human species. To this day, disabled people (and aspies since we're lumped in with them) are the only minority it has solidly been considered "ok" to stereotype, scorn, or humilate on a societal-wide basis going back many generations. Hell even during the civil rights coarse of other groups such as women or blacks, the rest of the oppressed minorities considered disability as a "legit" reason to deny someone their suffrage rights.
The attitude isn't that different than how white settlers thought of Native Americans or blacks, some slave owners were even nice to their slaves (sounds familiar?) but they were so stigmatized that they literally had no voice in the system, white slave owners thought of them as "pathetic" for acting out in their desire to be free. Yet, those same slave owners fought a war against the Brittish for THEIR OWN freedom (does this type of attitude also seem familiar?). Institutionalization and intimate starvation are to the disabled what slavery or stealing the land where to blacks or native americans. Yet, in the case of the disabled this still goes on. The intimate starvation, or involuntary celibacy, and further isolation and exclusion of disabled people, began many years ago with forced sterilizations. The oppressors had the mindset that the disabled were a burden on the rest of society, that we were demonic beings or something, although institutionalization has came forward alittle bit, it's still often a very abusive situation in many places around the world, many who are being wrongly confined and are no safety hazard at all. This is especially true of people with mental disorders.
In some modern nations, such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the Netherlands, theyr beginning to push a social model of disability over the stigmatizing medical model. And theyr working to make up for all the wrongs they've done to the disabled over so many generations. Much of this has came about with the sexual rights movement. This movement has reached the liberal agenda here in america, but the disabled have deliberately been excluded while the sexual rights of other minorities such as women, gays, etc are being fulfilled.
04 Sep 2007, 6:50 pm
