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Bridget Redmond DST 272 November 14, 2018 A Reflection of My Body Politic : Identity Within Disability Simi Linton’s memoir, My Body Politic, abbreviated “MBP”, highlights one person’s experience with growing into a disability. In her book, Simi powerfully shows the reader how others treated her after she developed a mobility disability. My Body Politic dives into the issues that are present in American society regarding disability rights, stigma, and activism. Julie Smart’s textbook Disability, Society, and the Individual puts names to the feelings and experiences that Simi felt throughout her life experiences in her novel. Finally, after reading about Simi’s experiences with a very visible disability, MBP made me wonder if people with invisible disabilities received the same treatment from society as Simi did. Simi’s life shifted when she was just twenty-four years old. A car accident left her with a permanent mobility impairment, as well as left her husband John and best friend Carol dead. Simi was immediately admitted to a rehabilitation center where she got her first look at what struggles come with living with a disability in the 1970s. She felt alone, in denial, and helpless, especially when one of the male workers at the rehab center sexually assaulted Simi when she was being fitted for her back brace (Linton, 2007, p. 20). After rehab, Simi moved to an apartment in New York City but realized living with a wheelchair in a city is more difficult than it looked. Simi’s mother also began to paternalize her by following her everywhere even though Simi was 24 and could take care of herself (Linton, 2007, p. 38). According to Smart, paternalism is when someone acts as if they know what is a PWD’s best interest, either without asking the PWD or forcing beliefs upon them (Smart, 2016, p. 204). Simi’s parents thought that because she was in a wheelchair, she could not make her own decisions anymore.

Simi moved to Berkeley, California and realized the entire world was not inaccessible like New York. Berkeley was also populated with PWDs so having a disability was not considered a form of deviance. Simi also got her first look into disability advocacy in Berkeley. After going to school and meeting her new husband, David, Simi began attending disability conferences. The conferences were extremely important to Simi because the people she met (who are now her closest friends) shared her same longing for disability rights and an equitable society. The dancing scene that Simi described at the SDS conference in chapter eleven stood out to me because it stripped away peoples’ “abnormalities” and focused on who they were inside, good people with families and others who love them (Linton, 2007, p. 149) For years after her accident, Simi did not feel like she fit into her body. However, she adopted her new identity with every new life experience she went through. For example, Simi quickly learned that street corners were not accessible in New York but that did not stop her from leaving her apartment. Even though most of the colleges Simi attended did not have accessible classrooms, it did not stop her from eventually getting her PhD. Simi also repeatedly mentions the stigma that PWDs cannot have romantic relationships. She overcame that stigma by having multiple healthy relationships throughout the course of the book (Linton, 2007). Julie Smart explains the stage model of adaptation to disability and the idea of Transcendence. According to Smart, the Stage Theory of Adaptation to Disability includes initial shock, denial, depression, regression, anger, and finally, acceptance (Smart, 2016, p. 239). A person may go through all of the stages or skip through them. Simi went through initial shock when she was in the rehab facility, denial when she couldn’t fathom never walking again, personal questioning when she kept moving back and forth to New York for school, and finally integration once she found valuable people and experiences within the disability community

(Linton, 2007). Transcendence occurs in an individual learning to accept that their disability is a meaningful and purposeful part of their self-identity. The stages of transcendence are finding meaning and purpose, reevaluating goals and priorities, discovering strengths, and finally, assisting other PWDs (Smart, 2016, p. 251). Simi found meaning and purpose in her disability through the friends she met at the disability conferences, such as Corbett, Meecha, and Devva (Linton, 2007, p. 139) She realizes that those people would not be the same if they did not have their disability. Their disability was an important part of their identity. My Body Politic focused on people with visible disabilities, but by the end of the book I began to wonder how much more emotionally and even physically taxing daily life is for people with invisible disabilities. Simi advocated for people with any form of disability, especially when she wanted to improve public transportation and stop physician assisted suicide. I related the knowledge and appreciation I gained from Simi to topics that were not specifically spoken about in MBP, like invisible disabilities. Chapter 24 of the Disability Studies Reader compares having an invisible disability with being able to come out as an LGBTQ person. One quote from this article stuck out to me: “Coming out, then, for disabled people, is a process of redefinition of one’s personal identity, through rejecting the tyranny of the normate, positive recognition of impairment and embracing disability as a valid social identity” (Samuels, 2017, p. 319). This article relates to MBP because the events that Simi went through are universal to many people with a variety of disabilities, even ones that are considered invisible to PWODs. Reading MBP has inspired me to learn more about disability rights, especially rights that people with invisible disabilities have compared to people with visible ones. I am interested to see what disability scholars will advocate for next with the rise of invisible disabilities associated with the rise of chronic disease.

I feel honored to read about Simi’s experience with disability and by the end of the memoir I was amazed to see how far she had come emotionally and physically. I did not enjoy Simi’s story because I felt bad for her. I enjoyed reading about her life because it taught me to watch how I treat other people. Books like MBP are important for any person to read, not just Disability Studies students because there are so many issues that “abled” society chooses to cover for the sake of PWODs. For example, I live in a suburb of New York City and was not aware that, until previously, public transportation was inaccessible to a lot of PWDs. Simi crafted her book to make the reader feel ashamed that, as a society, we have ignored disability rights for so long. She also lets the reader know that the biomedical model of disability is somewhat outdated and PWODs should think more about the sociological model of disability. Overall, I agree with most of the Simi presented in her memoir and I believe that any PWOD can learn valuable lessons from engaging with Simi’s memoir.

References Linton, S. (2007). My body politic: A memoir. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Smart, J. (2016). Disability, Society, and the Individual(Third ed.). Austin, TX: PRO-ED. Samuels, E. (2017). My Body, My Closet: Invisible Disability and the Limits of Coming Out. In The Disability Studies Reader(pp. 316-332). New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group....