Briefly describe society's current reactions to disabilities

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Society places a high value on having a beautiful body. Beauty is erroneously identified with goodness and ugliness with evil. Children are erroneously taught that being physically attractive will lead to the good life, whereas having unattractive features is a sign of being inferior. Unfortunately, this emphasis on the body beautiful has caused people with a disability to be the objects of cruel jokes and has occasionally led them to be either shunned or treated as inferior. Our society needs to reassess its values about the perfect physique. Beatrice A. Wright has noted that the emphasis on beautiful bodies has also led society to believe that people with a disability "ought" to feel inferior. A person who spends a great deal of time, money, and effort to be physically attractive psychologically wants a person with a disability to mourn the disability because the "body beautiful" person needs feedback that it is worthwhile and important to strive to have an attractive physique. Another consequence of this misplaced emphasis is that people with a disability are sometimes pitied as being less fortunate and given sympathy. Many people with a disability decry receiving pity and being patronized.
There is also a tendency in our society to conclude that a person with one kind of disability will have other kinds of disabilities. Individuals with a physical disability are also erroneously assumed at times to have a cognitive disability. Receiving such responses from others may lead those with a physical disability to believe they are less intelligent and less effective in social interactions.

Studies have found that many people cut short their interactions with people who have a disability. They are uncomfortable when a person with a disability is near because they are uncertain about what is appropriate and inappropriate to say and they fear offending the person. People show their discomfort in a variety of ways-through abrupt and superficial conversations, fixed stares away from the person with a disability, compulsive talking, or an artificial seriousness. Individuals with a disability are sensitive to such insincere interactions.?