(I'm actually in the middle of writing a fantasy project where the protagonist starts out with the handicap of being an intersexed slave in 800BC. I've had to bring myself up to speed on both the physiology, including things like the increased risk of cancer, and the societal implications throughout the ages in different cultures.)
I think we can agree that treatment of disability is a projection of societal attitudes - current US society, for example, is ablist in a significant degree, which informed your experience. I could well see a society with, say, telepathy, where those who cannot speak mind-to-mind are considered the disabled ones - the definition of disability, and 'normal', has changed over time and there is no reason to think this evolution of attitudes will reach the perfect non-ablist state within our lifetime and then stop forever.
I don't know if you've read the Vorkosigan books, but two things I'll always love about them is not disappearing Slavic people (a whole culture with my kind of social crazy!), and addressing all kinds of disabilities from very severe traumatic brain injuries to congenital defects to the impact of temporary disability on someone even after it's treated.
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Date: 2010-06-14 06:47 am (UTC)I think we can agree that treatment of disability is a projection of societal attitudes - current US society, for example, is ablist in a significant degree, which informed your experience. I could well see a society with, say, telepathy, where those who cannot speak mind-to-mind are considered the disabled ones - the definition of disability, and 'normal', has changed over time and there is no reason to think this evolution of attitudes will reach the perfect non-ablist state within our lifetime and then stop forever.
I don't know if you've read the Vorkosigan books, but two things I'll always love about them is not disappearing Slavic people (a whole culture with my kind of social crazy!), and addressing all kinds of disabilities from very severe traumatic brain injuries to congenital defects to the impact of temporary disability on someone even after it's treated.