Comparing Wendell's Essay: Impairments And Disabilities

In Wendell’s essay, she explains her thoughts on what society calls “impairments and disabilities.” She claims that one that is deemed disabled is not just medically impaired, but impaired by society. While an individual can be born with an “imperfection,” society helps create a social stigma surrounding the disabled. It is society, in addition to the medical imperfection, that labels one as disabled. Wendell calls this interaction “the social construction of disability” (35).
Wendell goes on to explain that even professionals “have been asserting for at least two decades that disability is socially constructed” (35). She pinpoints the socially created disabilities to a few different factors. She blames social conditions for causing physical
harm and culture for setting standards of what is normal. In her essay, she also states that “none of the resulting physical conditions is necessarily disabling, many in fact cause disability given the demand and lack of support in the environments” (Wendell, 36). Her theory of constructing a disability is based on the fact that society automatically assumes the entire world is fully functioning and able-bodied, which prevents those with disabilities to function in a “standard” society.