In A World...

Last night, a friend of mine with a similar learning disability to me and I started talking about learning disabilities. Although there are parts of my disabilities I really don't like and struggle to accept (like my chronic pain and fatigue), I mentioned that I wouldn't change my learning disability even if I could, because of my strengths (like music and verbal skills) and because, well, different people think differently.

That reminded me of the first thing I learned in disability studies class; the social model (which I don't entirely subscribe to) teaches that while impairment is in the individual, the disability in society. Then it occurred to me, in a more accessible world, learning disabilities wouldn't be considered disabilities at all. If everyone got the amount of time on tests that they needed, the ability to use a computer in place of writing by hand, access to audio information if reading is difficult, just where would the "disability" be? Learning disabilities would be a different way to think, quite simply. And different people will always think differently - how boring would the world be if we all thought and processed the same way?

It's important to note that I don't always subscribe to the social model as I find sometimes, disability can be a really concrete experience, one that you can feel inside your own body and mind. Or, to paraphrase Julia Serano when she talks about gender, instead of always talking about disability as a social construct, let's talk (also) about the times where disability feels all too real. The experience of the pain I feel daily is so personal that I know I would still feel every bit of it even if I never had to climb another flight of stairs again. It's hard to just see disability as a social construct when you struggle to get out of bed. (I will blog about this a lot more in a future post.) But even still, some disabilities would become completely unremarkable in a world if we just thought about disability differently. Diversity doesn't only mean age, race, gender, language, culture, and sexuality; disability is a part of that too, even with all the challenges.

Hello World!

Hello everyone!

My name is Lindsay and I'm a queer femme, feminist, disabled Jewnitarian disabled theology student from Canada.I used to blog a while back and kind of fell of the wagon, but I want to start posting again especially since being diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, since it is so rare and people don't really know what it's like to live with it. Stay tuned for more!