‘Handicap’ began as a term referencing a 1600s bettor’s game and horse-racing provisions and culminated in describing those with cognitive and physical disabilities. The word has experienced many changes over the years. Rhetoric surrounding disability has become increasingly focused on differences rather than disabilities. A large part of this is due to the civil rights movements emerging in the 1970s that refused to acknowledge some people as disabled or defective to others. The following paper will trace the etymology and development of ‘handicap’ and provide future directions of its conception.
The word, ‘handicap,’ has various meanings depending on which dictionary or source is used to derive them. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary,
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Okrent suggests that while in the 1900s the word ‘handicapped’ was used to describe mental and physical differences and applied in social work and sociology, this soon failed. ‘Handicapped’ meant there was a flaw in someone. This idea of flaw came from the horse-racing and sports handicaps from the late 1700s because athletes and horses had to be endowed or imposed upon by artificial ‘flaws’ to level the playing field. There was obviously a negative connotation to the word at this point. With the advancement of human rights, people began to see the word ‘handicap’ as acceptable because having a cognitive or physical disability was more than a flaw or failing; it had to be related to disadvantages connected to broader social contexts. ‘Handicap,’ left in its original meaning, meant precisely a disadvantage faced by someone within a competitive context (i.e. world) (Okrent). By the 1970s, some had suggested using the word ‘disability’ to replace ‘handicap.’ On the one hand, ‘handicap’ seemed like an intuitively correct choice because those with mental and / or physical differences are disadvantaged, often in terms of education, career choice and even social life. On the other hand, Okrent notes, disability rights movement activists fought curiously for the term ‘disability’ to describe those with mental or physical differences. Because ‘disability’ refers to being in some way defective, it was an odd choice for replacement. However, it was viewed as more attractive because of its clinical value (i.e. describing literal defects) and its lack of patronization. Words like ‘special’ or ‘differently-abled could be patronizing and the term, ‘handicap,’ simply began to describe something entirely different from what it meant within a contemporary social
The two essays “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs and “A Plague of Tics” by David Sedaris are excellent pieces of work that share many similarities. This paper would reflect on these similarities particularly in terms of the author, message and the targeted audience. On an everyday basis, people view those with disabilities in a different light and make them conscious at every step. This may be done without a conscious realisation but then it is probably human nature to observe and notice things that deviate from the normal in a society. In a way people are conditioned to look negatively at those individuals who are different in the conventional
Handicaps can be defined as a hinderance that gives a disadvantage. In the story Harrison Bergeron, handicaps are given to anyone considered to be pretty, smart, and out of the ordinary. Masks are worn so beauty is hidden, an ear piece prevents intelligent thought, and the extraordinary are chained up.
Moreover, within the text, the significance of symbolism is apparent as there are indications of the presence of different handicaps. Notably, those with above average physical attributes and above average intelligence are required by law to wear handicaps. Thus, the application and enforcement of handicaps are metaphors for sameness, because individuals with advantageous traits are limited and refrained from using their bodies and brains to their maximum abilities, for that is considered to be unfair to those who does not possess the same level of capability. Several main examples of handicaps includes “...47 pounds of birdshot… ear radios… spectacles intended to make [one] not only half blind but to [provide] whanging headaches”. Therefore, the intensity of the handicaps is a sign of the government’s seriousness in the field of administering disabilities onto their own citizens. Unfortunately, in order to maintain the sickly “equality”, the people are stripped off of their freedom. When announcers are unable to speak properly, and ballerinas are unable to dance properly, and musicians unable to perform properly, and people are unable to formulate thoughts properly — it is not a matter of equality, but a matter how low society
Baynton, Douglas. "Disability and Justification of Inequality in American History." The New Disability History. New York: New York University Press, 2001. 285-294. Print.
Gender has been broadly used within the humanities and social sciences as both a means to categories dissimilarities, and as a logical concept to give details differences. In both the humanities and social sciences. Disability studies has appeared partly as a result of challenges to give details gendered experience of disability and partly as a challenge to contemporary feminist theory on gender which fails to take description of disability. Disabled people have frequently been standing for as without gender, as asexual creatures, as freaks of nature, hideous, the ‘Other’ to the social norm. In this way it may be taking for granted that for disabled people gender has little bearing. However, the image of disability may be make physically powerful by gender - for women a sense of intensified passivity and helplessness, for men a dishonesties masculinity make by put into effected dependence. Moreover these images have real consequences in terms of
In “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs. She hates to call her handicapped because she believes that hold her back. The author writes, “I certainly don’t like “handicapped,” which implies that I have deliberately been put at a disadvantage, by whom I can’t imagine (my god is not a handicapper general), in order to equalize chances in the great race of life” (21). In other words, she doesn’t want to call her handicapped, because she wants to live her life with equal chances even she’s not. Her positive attitude makes her more active. She’s trying to live a normal life with her disability. She hates being crippled, but she’s trying to get over it. If she had a negative attitude, she wouldn’t write about her own story. She wouldn’t do anything. I believe her positive mindset affects somehow to get rid of something that hold her back. She overcame the effects of her illness through positive attitude. Mairs and Jamison’s thoughts they have shaped their lives either positive way or negative
Physical handicaps, for instance, does not lower the worth of that person compared to anyone else. For example, it is not fully revealed that Edna Poppy is blind until well into The Bean Trees. There are hints here and there presented throughout the novel, but Taylor Greer and Lou Ann Ruiz have no idea of her disability. Mind you, they weren’t assessing her to find out if there was anything wrong with her either. It isn’t exposed until Edna is alone at the grocery store without Virgie, who usually assists her around.
It was believed by members of society; people with learning difficulties should not be a part of the wider community or have the same rights. This opinion was reinforced when the government began to have large institutions built to house all the people described as ‘mental deficiency’: ‘idiots’, ‘imbeciles’, ‘feeble-minded persons’ and ‘moral imbeciles’. (The Open University (2011) DVD Unit 7, Lennox Castle timeline).
"Disability the facts." New Internationalist Nov. 2013: 20+. Advanced Placement Government and Social Studies Collection. Web. 27 May 2014.
Mairs is a “lover of words” and understands the difference between crippled, disabled and handicapped. She is knowledgeable about words. The word cripple “made its first appearance in the Lindisfarne Gospel in the tenth century”. Her knowledge explains her reason for not calling herself disabled or handicapped. Disable can mean a “mental” disability and she doesn’t think she has been put at a disadvantage like handicapped implies. “My God is not a Handicapper General”. Mairs continues to write in a straightforward tone stating, “I like the accuracy in which it (crippled) describes my condition”. Mairs knows who she is and doesn’t sugar coat her condition by calling herself a name that is more
It could be said that in modern industrial society, Disability is still widely regarded as tragic individual failing, in which its “victims” require care, sympathy and medical diagnosis. Whilst medical science has served to improve and enhance the quality of life for many it could be argued that it has also led to further segregation and separation of many individuals. This could be caused by its insistence on labelling one as “sick”, “abnormal” or “mental”. Consequently, what this act of labelling and diagnosing has done, is enforce the societal view that a disability is an abnormality that requires treatment and that any of its “victims” should do what is required to be able to function in society as an able bodied individual.
The World Health Organisation, WHO, (1980) defines disability in the medical model as a physical or mental impairment that restricts participation in an activity that a ‘normal’ human being would partake, due to a lack of ability to perform the task . Michigan Disability Rights Coalition (n.d.) states that the medical model emphasizes that there is a problem regarding the abilities of the individual. They argue that the condition of the disabled persons is solely ‘medical’ and as a result the focus is to cure and provide treatment to disabled people (Michigan Disability Rights Coalition, 2014). In the medical model, issues of disability are dealt with according to defined government structures and policies and are seen as a separate issue from ordinary communal concerns (Emmet, 2005: 69). According to Enabling Teachers and Trainers to Improve the Accessibility of Adult Education (2008) people with disabilities largely disa...
The essay will firstly review the early depictions of disability. It will continue by examining the historic records of disability from a Western Civilization perspective and will finally conclude with evaluating the recent disability history. Early Historic Depictions of Disability Early accounts of impaired
Disability: Any person who has a mental or physical deterioration that initially limits one or more major everyday life activities. Millions of people all over the world, are faced with discrimination, the con of being unprotected by the law, and are not able to participate in the human rights everyone is meant to have. For hundreds of years, humans with disabilities are constantly referred to as different, retarded, or weird. They have been stripped of their basic human rights; born free and are equal in dignity and rights, have the right to life, shall not be a victim of torture or cruelty, right to own property, free in opinion and expression, freedom of taking part in government, right in general education, and right of employment opportunities. Once the 20th century
...eglected social issues in recent history (Barlow). People with disabilities often face societal barriers and disability evokes negative perceptions and discrimination in society. As a result of the stigma associated with disability, persons with disabilities are generally excluded from education, employment, and community life which deprives them of opportunities essential to their social development, health and well-being (Stefan). It is such barriers and discrimination that actually set people apart from society, in many cases making them a burden to the community. The ideas and concepts of equality and full participation for persons with disabilities have been developed very far on paper, but not in reality (Wallace). The government can make numerous laws against discrimination, but this does not change the way that people with disabilities are judged in society.