Disability

I was not happy while reading The Social Construction of Disability because it combined feminist ideas to the argument of the social construction of the disabled. I assumed that this article would be (strictly?) about the disabled and how they are marginalized in the world because they are different from 'normal' men and women...

Why is she relating women as disabled individuals? Because I don't see that.

"Feminists talk about how the world has been designed for the bodies and activities of men." Really? Are there NO female architects in the world? Because the majority of architects are able-bodied individuals , who assume that the people who will be using/living/working in the buildings are also able-bodied, of course there will be stairs and doors. That supermarket argument is just absolutely ludicrous. "Where can you rest for a few minutes in a supermarket if you needed to?" There are electric carts offered to people who can't walk. There are seats by the play pens for children (Wegman's), there are seat at the entrance of Tops, there are seats by the food courts at both Wegman's and Tops. Last time I checked, people go to supermarkets to shop, not to sit down.

I was offended when she wrote "poor architectural planning". Is she a certified architect herself? How can she tell if a building is ill-equipped? She makes it sound as if disabled people, as a whole, are offended at the constructed buildings. If she's asking a complete overhaul of how architects design buildings, I ask that they put in moving sidewalks along with the ramps and elevators. I'm going to ask for a golf cart to take me to the next class while I'm at it.

I'm wondering where her argument for obese men and women are. Aren't they disabled too (based on her definition of the physically disabled)?

When she wrote (basically) that sickness is given paid leave, but for pregnancies, women aren't, I recalled an article written by a female Polish political scientist who compared the capitalist and communist laws of maternity leave. She wrote, during communism, women were granted paid maternity leave for up to 6 months, and now, in Poland, as an industrialized, capitalist society, women are forced to leave when they become pregnant. Women are now hired last and the first to get fired in present day Poland, but before the Solidarity movement and the collapse of the Soviet Union, women had more rights, more liberties at the working place than now.

There are more women than men at universities in Poland right now - I don't think that's a disability. If anything, I can argue that men are intellectually disabled in Poland now.

I think that the author needs to recognize that it's not society that creates this notion of a disability. It's the market. There is no profit if companies create products dedicated to the minority population (the disabled) when they can exploit the majority (who are generally "able-bodied). The market creates the society. The perpetuation of the market only embellishes the marginalization of the disabled. That's what I just thought of without thinking too much about it.