{"id":5385,"date":"2019-02-18T08:08:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T13:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=5385"},"modified":"2019-04-11T06:54:32","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T10:54:32","slug":"shared-stigma-separate-silos-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2019\/02\/shared-stigma-separate-silos-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Shared Stigma, Separate Silos, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

People with disabilities come in all ages, and almost all of us encounter some change in physical or mental capacity as we grow old. Yet, as I wrote in an earlier blog, \u201cWe act as though old people never become disabled and disabled people never grow old.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Academics and policymakers approach disability and aging as separate fields, as Ann Leahy observed in a post for the International Network for Critical Gerontology (daunting name, terrific resource). Why? Because people in the aging field are understandably leery of seeming to equate aging and disability, and because, as Leahy notes, disability activists tend to be younger and mainly focused on issues that affect people of working age. And because we\u2019re short-sighted and we\u2019re all prejudiced.<\/span><\/p>\n

This does none of us any favors, something I want to address in a talk. Here\u2019s the passage-in-progress: <\/span><\/p>\n

Ageism feeds ableism (prejudice against people with disabilities) and vice versa.<\/b><\/p>\n

Disability and aging are different. They also overlap in important ways. Both olders and people with disabilities encounter discrimination and prejudice<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>And both groups face stigma. <\/span><\/p>\n

Many olders refuse to use wheelchairs or walkers, even when it means never leaving home. My uncle wouldn\u2019t use a white cane even when he grew completely blind, preferring to rely on the kindness of strangers and taxi drivers. As for the ageism stigma, a not-yet-40-year-old friend, who had trouble walking, likewise refused to use a cane, preferring to rely on crutches because they signal \u201cinjured,\u201d not \u201cold.\u201d Cognitive impairment is even more stigmatized. <\/span><\/p>\n

Being older or having a disability doesn\u2019t keep us from being ageist or ableist. Age cooties! Or \u201cHandicapped people make me uncomfortable!\u201d That\u2019s how prejudice works: it frames the other group\u2014what we think of as the other group, that is\u2014as alien and lesser than ourselves. Healthy aging can, and does, involve disability. Ignoring the overlap leaves the stigma unchallenged and rules out collective activism.<\/span><\/p>\n

We have a lot to learn from the activists who, in the 1970s and \u203280s, reframed the way we see disability. They changed it from an individual medical problem into a social problem\u2014bingo!\u2014and then demanded integration, access and equal rights. Olders and people with disabilities share the same goals: a culture that rejects narrow definitions of \u201cproductivity\u201d and \u201cattractiveness,\u201d finds meaning within limitations and takes a realistic and inclusive view of what it means to be human. <\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s join forces. <\/span><\/p>\n

More about that to come in <\/span><\/i>Part 2<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People with disabilities come in all ages, and almost all of us encounter some change in physical or mental capacity as we grow old. Yet, as I wrote in an earlier blog, \u201cWe act as though old people never become disabled and…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Shared Stigma, Separate Silos, Part 1<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":null,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":null,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5385"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5473,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385\/revisions\/5473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}