week 9

OVERVIEW
– Valuing the whole person
– Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
– Media representations of disability
– Disability and stereotypes
– An ableist worldview
– Able-bodied privilege
– Mental illness
– Language matters
– Aging processes and gender
– Positive aging
– Age & freedom/constraint, family
– Change is the only “constant” (great news!)

Valuing the whole person
– A person’s value in terms of physical and mental
abilities, talents and skills is not simply located in
degrees of her/his body’s ability to function
– Stigma, ableism, discrimination, bias, stereotypes get
in the way
– 70 million people in the U.S. reported having a
disability CDC, 2024

– s
– x
Americans With
Disabilities Act (ADA)
– Passed in 1990: creates far-reaching social and
workplace changes; protection from
discrimination and requirements for employers
and of public facilities to accommodate people
with a disability
– “a person who has a physical or mental
impairment that substantially limits one or
more major life activities, a person who has a
history or record of such an impairment, or a
person who is perceived by others as having
such an impairment”
– ADA falls short of its promise since employers
have won 86-92% of legal cases (many settled
out of court)
– Ramps, equipment, technology
– Modified duties, flexible scheduling, or
additional assistance in training

Media representations
of disability
“Love on the spectrum” ran 2 seasons
– Small number of shows/films (12) featuring
people with a disability
– 2024 according to Netflix "in honor of" Global
Accessibility Awareness Day
– Symbolic annihilation theory – George Gerbner
– Media prefer the “ideal”
– Paternalistic narratives to help “overcome”
disability
– Representations of persons with disabilities are
scarce, and often serve to reify discourses of
“overcoming” disability
– Desexualized female representations

(DIS)ABILITY &
STEREOTYPES
– Push Girls and hypersexualization
– “Supercrip”

Disability & organizations
– Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C., founded 1856
Amos Kendall (A. Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet – PR links)
– Private university for deaf and hard of hearing students
– University that introduced American Sign Language (ASL)
– 1988 Deaf President Now
– 124-year history, never had a deaf president: campaign
– Self-determination, empowerment case study

– Ableism
– Intersectionalities with age, SES,
ethnicity
Able bodied
privilege

An ableist worldview
– Disability perceived as inherently negative, something that should be
eliminated
– Perception that disability violates a normative social standard for
effective workplaces and behaviors
– Job candidates with a disability may not be questioned about the
disability itself; protected against discrimination in promotions,
training, pay, and social activities
– But, an applicant’s history of a disability usually is stigmatized and if
person with a disability does pass the interview phase and is hired, high
likelihood that they will receive less favorable performance evaluations
than able-bodied counterparts; a finding that also holds for employees
who are obese or experiencing a mental disability
– Employers deny 1 of every 3 requests from employees with a disability
for some sort of accommodation; resistance strategy that promotes
and maintains organizational authority and hierarchy

Mental illness: Last civil rights movement
– Disability issues have been elevated by grassroots groups
coalescing around a quest for equitable and fair treatment for
people with a disability in all aspects of social life, including the
workplace
– People with a psychiatric disability experience the lowest
employment rates and encounter the harshest stigmas at work

Language matters
• Eliminate: cripple, deformed,
gimp, retard, vegetable
wheelchair-bound, victim of
paralysis, impairment,
handicapped
• Use: disabled, disability
• Temporarily able-bodied
(TAB)??

Aging processes & gender
– Age is a social, political, and economic issue rooted in anxieties
about the ever-advancing life course
– Masculinity as an arena of exercise, sports, labor, and sexual
performance
– Men experience “testing oneself and being tested”
– Women and “emphasized femininity,” objectification
– How to avoid stereotypical thinking
– Men experience loneliness, abuse, endure anxiety and depression
without seeking treatment and die earlier -- hair loss, weight gain,
physical disability, low stamina.
– With aging, desire for good health more than physical appearance
– Women no longer objectified as sex object, hair loss, wrinkly skin,
breast cancer

Age & male body image
– Youth-oriented master narrative
– Aging as “unisex problem;” must
compete
– Body sculpting, plastic surgery
– Sex-enhancement drugs
– Media images of May-Dec. relationships

Positive aging
– Target for consumer products
– Battling stereotypes about technology,
adventure seeking
– Mental attitude
– New careers
– Media representations

Age & freedom/constraint, family
– Core Theme: Car use in families is structured
around social axes of class, ethnicity, gender
– “The car serves as cultural object around
which parents and kids negotiate kids’
independence from the world of the family”
– Has bearing on freedom, independence
– Shared cars = scheduling, lower SES limits
mobility and agency

– Gender: Disparities between car privileges
of boys and girls
– Car as symbol of safety for young women
– Differences in car privileges, curfews, and trust
behind the wheel
– Fathers as patriarchal controllers/power figures
in family
– Global Capitalism: Car as site of “cultural
contradictions”
– Capitalist consumption as social determinant of
parental values, according to class
– Car as status-conferring object
– Car privileges as strategy of control

Change is the only “constant”
– From Robert Bly to Lil Nas X
– When “nostalgia” keeps getting in the way
– Femininity and masculinity are relational constructs
– One definition should not have to rely upon the
other
– Embrace all lived experiences
– Respect all voices and expressions
– Continue learning and developing critical thinking
skills
– Question “common sense”

SUMMARY
– Valuing the whole person
– Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
– Media representations of disability
– Disability and stereotypes
– An ableist worldview
– Able-bodied privilege
– Mental illness
– Language matters
– Aging processes and gender
– Positive aging
– Age & freedom/constraint, family