User:Flamerune567/Internalized Ableism/Bibliography

You will be compiling your bibliography and creating an outline of the changes you will make in this sandbox.

Outline of proposed changes
Hoping to create a new article on Internalized Ableism:

What is currently stated in the wikipedia page for ableism:

“Internalised ableism is a disabled person discriminating against themself and other disabled people by holding the view that disability is something to be ashamed of or something to hide or by refusing accessibility or support. Internalised ableism may be a result of mistreatment of disabled individuals.”

On the wikipedia page for internalized oppression:

“internalized ableism is often a result of relentless pathologization and lack of or inadequate support disabled people face on a daily basis. The fact the medical establishment is a significant factor that causes and contributes to internalized ableism with frameworks such as the pathology paradigm mean that disabled people trying to enact emancipatory change and self-identify are often deemed as "anti-science" by individuals and institutions which subscribe to scientism.[citation needed]”

This article on Internalized Ableism does a great job at explaining internalized ableism.

“So, what is “internalized ableism”?

Internalized ableism is the way that an individual absorbs and applies the beliefs and moral judgments of the dominant ableist culture, at a subconscious level. In other words, it’s how we absorb and apply the beliefs our society has about disability to ourselves and others we see ourselves in.

The dominant culture teaches us that people are judged according to their perceived abilities: if you don’t meet someone else’s expectations of what they deem as “normal,” then they will judge you accordingly. This is internalized by those who are made disabled by institutionalized ableism rooted in anti-blackness (as well as by those who are not), who then pass these judgments onto others made disabled.

This is still a form of oppression, because the dominant culture has set up standards for “normal” that are impossible for people to achieve–including the dominant culture themselves. For example, it’s not possible for everyone to never become ill or need care. Still, many disabled people who need care are considered “abnormal” and unfit for society. We consistently see this in our everyday lives. And, if it wasn’t apparent before, we even saw how disabled people were not considered in the response to Covid-19, or its aftermath as ableds and neuro-conforming people wanted to go back to being comfortable.

This is an example of internalized ableism: the idea that ableds and neuro-conforming people are better than disabled people who are in need of care and accommodations. This is how society covertly treats disabled people as less important and less valuable human beings than ableds, which is a form of dehumanization.

This dehumanization is further perpetuated by neuro-conforming people. They are considered to be more valuable in our society since they at least try to be ‘normal’, enabling ableds to have the power to make decisions about what’s right or wrong based on neurotypical experiences.

“Often, internalized ableism leads to self-blame for having disability-related needs, or for making other people “work too hard” in order to accommodate those needs.”

If you are disabled and need help with something that others without disabilities don’t need help with, it can be easy to feel like your disability is the problem. You might think people are reacting negatively to you because of your disability rather than their own biases and assumptions about what it means to be disabled; this can lead you to blame yourself and try harder not to “bother” anyone else by asking for accommodations or support.

This type of thinking is harmful not only because it reinforces negative stereotypes about what it means to be disabled (e.g., that we should never ask anyone else for anything, or that we’re undeserving of care) but also because it puts unnecessary pressure on people with disabilities. We are forced to believe that we should always be able to take care of ourselves without asking anyone else for assistance. But, the truth is that we are all interdependent. We have always needed each other, while simultaneously needing our autonomy. Maybe when we’re allowed to be seen as complex human beings instead of being forced to be completely independent without the ability or access to care, or completely infantilized where we cannot do anything for ourselves–maybe we will remember that unpacking ableism is everyone’s responsibility.

Campbell’s definition of internalized ableism: (from this article)

Campbell (2008, 2009) argues that the internalization of ableism consists of a two pronged strategy: “the distancing of disabled people from each other and the emulation by disabled people of ableist norms” (2008, p. 155). We find this distinction overlapping when used with empirical examples, as distancing from the disabled identity often entails emulating the norm. We therefore use them interchangeably.

The distancing of disabled people from one another is what Campbell (2009, p. 22) calls “tactics of dispersal”. The individualisation of disability makes it difficult to form a common identity where the shared histories of disabled people, negative ontologies and the absence of strong oppositional role models are not easily available to disabled people. Thus, disabled people have had very few opportunities to “develop a collective conscious, identity or culture” (Campbell, 2009, p. 22).

When emulating the norm, the disabled person is required to embrace an identity that is not one's own. As stated by Campbell (2009, p. 25), “one must constantly participate in the processes of disability disavowal, aspire towards the norm, reach a state of near‐ablebodiness, or at the very least to affect a state of ‘passing’”. According to Leary (1999, p. 85), “passing occurs when there is perceived danger in disclosure (…). It represents a form of self‐protection that nevertheless usually disables, and sometimes destroys, the self it is meant to safeguard”.

This research paper does a great job at explaining internalized ableism in general.

This paper: Internalized ableism: Of the political and the personal