It's not my body that oppresses me, it's society that does

Patty Berne and Stacey Milbern present a social model of disability, explaining how universal design, adaptive devices, and meeting people's access needs can limit the social, economic, and physical barriers that make physical impairments disabling in an ableist society . Milbern notes that focusing on individual deficiencies “allows society to extricate itself” from the structural oppression that makes some bodies and lives more valuable than others. Berne asserts that “we are seen as disposable,” emphasizing that the oppression that society attributes to individual bodies and disability is in fact a violent social construct.

This video is part of the No Body is Disposable series, produced by Sins Invalid and the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Video of Dean Spade and Hope Dector. Learn more about the series at http://bit.ly/nobodyisdisposable

To learn more about the intersections between ableism, white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy, as well as disability justice tools and tactics that target disabled people of color and queer disabled people, trans and gender non-conforming, visit http://sinsinvalid. org or download “Skin, Tooth, and Bone: A Disability Justice Primer” by Sins Invalid at http://bit.ly/djprimer.

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