Disability comes from the rejection of political purity

Aff can’t change society’s worldview and only marginalizes material experiences

Further, deconstructing differences will not in and of itself produce respect and equality between all people with various characteristics. Neither will it result in a social order free from a sense of difference. It is simply unrealistic to assume that a society could exist were people would not see some other people as different, and their lives or characteristics as representing a deviation from some norm considered important regarding good human life. This is because some of the individual characteristics that define disabled people are, sometimes with good reason, undesirable, even in a utopia where all differences would have been queered. Disability is not the same as many other group identities and we need to explore both morally and socially disability and difference rather than simply use difference as a concept through which to critique the disability identity. There are no rational reasons to consider homosexuality or gender undesirable characteristics whatever the social context, but there are many impairments that can reasonably be seen as undesirable (Shakespeare 2006). Motor neuron disease, depression or spinal cord injury are the kinds of conditions that we would prefer not to have, and this is not merely because of the cultural representations attached to them but because these conditions are the kinds of predicaments that cause suffering irrespective of one’s cultural environment. In acknowledging that impairments can include an undesirable dimension does not imply devaluing people with impairments nor their positive group identity (Shakespeare and Watson 2010). As long as people are genuinely free to decide for themselves and feel about themselves however they wish to feel, we are pretty close to relational justice, free from hierarchical evils. Imposing on people ableist or disablist assumptions is certainly wrong, but so would be the denial of the personal experiences of fearing the loss of one’s physical and mental capacities, or the fear of dying (Carel 2008). To explain the psychological anguish related to conditions such as motor neurone disease or depression merely in terms of internalized oppression and ableism would be insensitive, disrespectful and simply nonsensical.

We shouldn’t place identity beyond normativity

Shotwell, 16 (Alexis Shotwell is an Associate Professor in Carleton University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology and cross-appointed with the Department of Philosophy. She works in social and political theory, with a current focus on complicity and complexity as a ground for ethical and political action and also engaged in a SSHRC-funded research project on the history of AIDS activism, “Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times”. Dec 06, 2016. University of Minnesota Press, https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/book/48892/)
Framing normativity as always bad is not only rhetorically compelling, it is situated in a context in which oppression does indeed often take the form of forcing people to comply with norms of heterosexuality, whiteness, owning-class practices, and able-bodiedness. However, ceding the terrain of the normative to oppressive forces and defining ourselves as nonnormative has two downfalls: it individualizes our resistance, obscuring the agency and power involved in setting norms, and it makes it hard to talk about the normative claims we queers and feminists want to make. Indeed, imagining that we have a choice between normativity and antinormativity elides the work of normalization.4 In theorizing gender and gender transformation, not to mention all sorts of other social relations, we do actually need the concept of normativity. This concept is more than simply a philosophical term of art, where normativity holds a noncontentious meaning. As Christine M. Korsgaard puts it, ethical standards (for example) are normative in the sense that “they do not merely describe a way in which we in fact regulate our conduct. They make claims on us; they command, oblige, recommend, or guide. Or at least, when we invoke them, we make claims on one another” (Korsgaard 1996, 8, emphasis in original). Here, then, I understand normativity to mean the process by which people claim that a given way of being is good or beautiful, or to be endorsed. Notice that this conception of normativity is nonrestrictive: there may be many recommended ways of being. Endorsing a way of being is distinct from endorsing the idea that everyone ought to be that way; holding some ways of being open may well close down others. In some such cases, we see open normativities, which I discuss more below.

The social model denies development

Farrell 12 (Michael Farrell is a private special education consultant with a Master’s Degree in Education and Psychology from London University and head lecturer at London University, “New Perspectives in Special Education”, Routledge, p. 79-80, https://books.google.com/books?id=3L5AOFMbbXYC&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=Other+criticisms+of+the+social+model+concern+its+limited+application.+Oliver+defines+disabled+people+to+whom&source=bl&ots=Cdjbo0rdxR&sig=_U3h7iXX4fa_y52cqB5OZvwMnLI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIgN7bpKDVAhUBUz4KHbkxCUYQ6AEIKzAB#v=onepage&q=Other%20criticisms%20of%20the%20social%20model%20concern%20its%20limited%20application.%20Oliver%20defines%20disabled%20people%20to%20whom&f=false )

Other criticisms of the social model concern its limited application. Oliver defines disabled people to whom the social model might apply as having an impairment, experiencing oppression as a result, and identifying themselves as disabled persons (p. 83). This is problematic for children with cognitive impairment who may have little understanding of themselves and none of such an abstract concept as ‘disabled person’. The idea that ‘disability as social restriction’ experienced by disabled people is similar for all restrictions - however they arise - fails to address this difficulty. It is hard to equate restrictions occurring owing to ‘inaccessible built environments’ and restrictions arising from ‘questionable notions of intelligence and social competence’ (Oliver, 1990, p. xiv). Indeed it is hard to grasp what Oliver means by ‘questionable notions of intelligence and social competence in relation to children who require lifelong support and care because of profound cognitive impairment related to brain damage, and severe functional limitations. When these notions are ‘questioned’, what is the outcome for these children in terms of the social model? Goodley (2001, p.. 211) maintains that ‘social structures practices and relationships continue to naturalise the subjectivities of people with “learning difficulties”, conceptualizing them in terms of some a-priori notion of “mentally impaired”’. This may have relevance to some children with mild cognitive impairment (Farrell, 2008, ch. 4). However, a teacher and others may be working with a child with profound cognitive impairment who experienced brain damage at birth and who at the age of sixteen is functioning largely at a level of a child under the age of one year. It is difficult to know what the teacher would make of the apparent criticism that she is conceptualising the child in terms of an ‘a-priori notion’. Also, it is not apparent what barriers of ‘social structures, practices and relationships’ society (and the teacher and parents as representatives of it) has put in the way of the child that they should now remove. Similarly, for a child with autism, it is difficult to see what the removal of barriers might mean in daily living (Singer, 1999) or how the community could be changed to enable him(them) to be accommodated with other people. Also, both the social model and the individual (or medical) model, it is suggested, ‘seek to explain disability universally, and end up creating totalizing meta historical narratives that exclude important dimensions of disabled people's lives and of their knowledge' (Corker and Shakespeare (2002b, p. 15). It is argued that work on the social model (because it has given insufficient attention to experiential perspectives) tends to privilege the 'restrictions on doing' dimensions of disability over the 'restrictions on being dimensions (Thomas and Corker, 2002, p. 19). Negative practical consequences The social model can lead to negative practical consequences for special children. Social model arguments for mainstreaming special children can lead to the unhappy placement of children in the mainstream on grounds lacking empirical justification. 'Oppression' and the quest for greater equity' may be cited as the reason why special children should be mainstreamed. But these can become accepted positions from which analysis begins, relegating empirical enquiry to a merely illustrative role (Clarke, Dyson and Millward, 1998). Attempts have been made to relate a socially constructed view of 'learning difficulty' to the supposed oppression of those so labelled and link this to emancipatory resistance, drawing on experiences of special schooling decades previously (Armstrong, 2003). However, it has been pointed out (Warnock, 2005) that special children in mainstream schools can be isolated, unhappy, marginalised and disaffected. The social model is considered 'incompatible with an impairment-specific approach to disabled people' (Oliver, 2004, p. 30). On the other hand, `people with different impairments experience specific issues and problems' (Shakespeare, 2006, p. 32). Also, evidence-based practice suggests that for different types of disabilities and disorders, different types of provision are effective in encouraging educational progress and psychosocial development (Farrell, 2008, passim). A social perspective sees 'difference' as being at the level of the individual. It criticises the construction of categories of pupils because these may ignore individual complexity and lead to arbitrary or oppressive responses. Responses to individual pupils are therefore ad hoc, hindering the development of an explanatory theory of difference and any formalisation of pedagogy. Socially informed attempts at developing pedagogy concentrate on problem solving and adhocracy, from which it is expected structures and practices that will deliver inclusion and equity will emerge. But this overlooks that once a curriculum is determined, some pupils will always learn within it better than others, perpetuating pupil differences whether categories are constructed or not (Clarke, Dyson and Millward, 1998, p. 166).

Interrogating disability as a social construction does nothing – no broad social change.

Donoghue, 10 (Christopher Donoghue is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Montclair State University. He serves as the Program Coordinator for the Graduate Certificate in Data Collection and Management, He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology at Fordham University. His research interests are in social psychological topics in elementary, middle school and high school education such as peer aggression, coping, sexual risk taking, academic motivation and the acquisition of ethnic prejudice. July 1, 2010 “Challenging the Authority of the Medical Definition of Disability: An analysis of the resistance to the social constructionist paradigm”, Disability & Society 18.2, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0968759032000052833 )

In an effort to debunk the entrenched authority of the medical model, a social constructionist paradigm has been adopted by many disability theorists and activists. They have suggested that society normally creates a negative social identity for people with disabilities (Gergen, 1985; Fine & Asch, 1988; Scotch, 1988; Brzuzy, 1997). Through the construction of this identity, which is typically characterised by deviant or abnormal behaviour, the non-disabled majority is granted a legitimate means to exclude and isolate people with disabilities. As removed members of society, their contributions are often discredited and their successes are treated as aberrations. Likewise, the expectations of people with disabilities are chronically low, and there is an ever-present suggestion that their lives are not necessarily worth living. This identity has been argued to derive from the medical model, which defines a disability as a deficiency that restricts one’s ability to perform normal life activities. By adopting the social constructionist viewpoint, theorists and activists have contended that society has created disability by choosing not to remove structural constraints that would enable more people to participate and gain access to social resources. The social constructionist approach was an effective ideological rejoinder to the established medical model. Yet the question of how to convince the non-disabled majority that society has disabled certain individuals has not been adequately resolved. The activists attempted to adopt the social constructionist theory as a basis for a minority group model of disability. They would use this model to support a plea for action to people with disabilities as a mechanism to overcome the oppression being inflicted upon them by the non-disabled majority. While it is clear that such a transformation of the definition of disability among academics and disability activists has clearly taken hold, the disability movement appears to have achieved only limited success in changing the views of the non-disabled majority. By accepting the reward of civil rights protection without insisting that the medical model be publicly dismantled, the hopes of the disability activists to change the views of the broader public may have been sacrificed. The willingness to make this concession may have stemmed from the belief among social constructionist theorists that society will change its perception of disability if it is merely demonstrated that the prior notion has been made unjustly. From a structural point of view, it would seem to take much more to convince a dominant group in society that it needs to redistribute power and access to its treasured resources. The more desirable arrangement to the non-disabled majority is one that maintains the superiority of people with ‘normal’ abilities. As a result, the disabled are typically described as dysfunctional and are often perceived to be incapable of understanding the world in the same way that ‘normal’ people do. Although social constructionists argue that such judgements regarding how people should be able to think or act are subjective notions that stem from dominant social ideologies, they may be said to underestimate the extent to which those ideologies are created and legitimated by the non-disabled majority because they best serve their interests.

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