Curious Incidents of a Flailing Mermaid

Abberley’s (1987) article “The Concept of Oppression and the Development of a Social Theory of Disability” draws upon several aspects of impairment and disability in order to compare the similar experiences of other oppressed groups, such as black people and women. Furthermore, Abberley (1987) explores the economic and social deficits experienced by people with impairments (Abberley, 1987: 7). Whilst doing so, and perhaps controversially, Abberley (1987) argues that impairments themselves are socially created. Such line of reasoning somewhat undermines the social model of disability and enables questions to be raised about the universal experiences of oppression for people with impairments.

Moreover, one of Abberley’s (1987) main contentions is that the body is disabled people’s principal site of oppression, ‘both in form and what is done to it’ (1987: 14). Traditionally, the oppression of women, black people and people with impairments has been rationalised by relating to their biological “weaknesses”. There has, in recent times, been a distinct retreat from such beliefs, however impairment cannot be totally disassociated from biology. Indeed, as Abberley proposed, ‘for disabled people the biological difference… is itself a part of the oppression’ (1987: 8). In other words, popular thinking continues to concern itself with the ‘deficiencies of the disabled body/mind’, relating the cause of disability to individuals, rather than to the inadequate and unequal provisions of society (Barnes and Mercer, 2003: 20). Consequently, the medicalisation of disability, with offerings of corrective surgery and medication, is often accepted as a practical method of “treating” disability (ibid).

In addition, there has been a long and indisputable divide between disabled and “able-bodied” people, whereby ‘able-bodied normalcy is embedded in everyday thinking and behaviour as a privileged and desirable state of being’ (ibid). This able-bodied – disabled dichotomy plays an important role in the development of personal identities and, often, sees all disabled people fused together into a solitary category that denies identity development (Shildrick, 2004: 124). Certainly, the disabled body has been misrepresented by societal norms (normalisation) and, therefore, has been portrayed as a ‘symbol of shame and object of fear’ (Paterson and Hughes, 2000: 32). Moreover, the mass media continues to produce somewhat derogatory representations of disability. However, with the disability movement concentrating its efforts upon the de-medicalisation of disability, asserting that people are disabled by social barrier, it has, somewhat ignored the importance of the body and the experiences of those who live with physical differences (Edwards and Imrie, 2003: 240).