Cherry-Picking and Demonizing Abilities

The disabled people’s rights movement coined the term ableism in the 1960’s/1970’s to highlight problematic uses of ability normativity, and they also coined the term disablism to call out the disabling, the discriminatory use of ableism against disabled people. Ability Studies was coined as a lens, a system analysis tool, to engage with the complex and ever-changing societal reality of ableism and disablism. In my discussion article, I will first give some background on the complexity of the ableism and disablism discussions, then link the concepts of cherry-picking and demonization to the discussions of ableism and disablism. I will suggest that there is a need for much better ability expectation and ableism governance, which is about ascertaining and anticipating disabling impacts of ability expectations and ableism on disabled and non-disabled people and the prevention of such impacts.