People use disability metaphors all the time, from complaining about a “disabled bus” to remarking on the barrier to filing a claim due to a “legal disability.” In Disability as Metaphor in American Law, Doron Dorfman disapproves of the use of disability metaphors in general, and specifically challenges what he calls “disability frame advocacy.” Disability frame advocacy is the metaphorical use of the disability discrimination concept to argue that society should address disadvantages not associated with physical or mental impairment, but instead associated with poverty or other experiences or characteristics. Dorfman defines this term as “when scholars and advocates use disability rights frameworks and disability as [a] metaphor to advocate for resources, recognition, and redress for members of oppressed groups who do not live with disabilities.” (P. 1757.)
Examples of disability frame advocacy include invoking disability as a rhetorical device to argue for accommodations to make up for disadvantages imposed by structural racial inequality or discriminatory attitudes toward transgender persons, persons who use opioids, and people who are unhoused. (Pp. 1783-84.) These forms of discrimination may be “disabilities” in a metaphorical sense, but the disadvantages imposed differ from disadvantages that stem from social conditions relating to physical or mental impairment. Dorfman acknowledges that people who are discriminated against on the basis of race, who are impoverished, or who face other disadvantages in society may have claims for positive rights to support or accommodations. He nevertheless opposes using disability frame advocacy in this context to argue for the accommodations and other remedies. He contends that the rhetorical use of disability outside the disability context obscures the unique disadvantages imposed on people who have physical or mental impairments.
Those disadvantages are not the same as those faced by members of other oppressed groups. The disadvantages of disability are unique in that they stem from the impairments themselves – physical or mental conditions – in combination with a physical and attitudinal environment that is not adapted or is outright hostile to people who have impairments. Dorfman identifies what he calls the “missing impairment problem” that occurs when writers contend that the law should regard poverty or some other conditions as disabling. Dorfman does not deny that poverty or other conditions may or do increase the risk of developing an impairment. But he contends that actually having an impairment should matter when claims are made for accommodations as a matter of fundamental social equality.
Dorfman’s exposition is extensive. He observes that disability metaphors pervade ordinary speech as well as legal discourse. Uses of disability metaphors in ordinary speech often work to signify ignorance or ineptitude, as can be seen in the expressions relating to giving a “lame” answer to a question or being “politically tone-deaf.” More important to Dorfman is the use of disability metaphors in law. Regarding legal terminology, think of the inability to file a claim because of a “legal disability” such as youth, or of courts describing the status of nonmarital children as a “disability” for inheritance purposes. Dorfman ties the loose metaphorical use of disability language to the facile adoption of a disability advocacy frame. The frame is then applied to matters other than the disadvantage that is connected to impairment. Dorfman criticizes legal literature that jumps from declaring that a form of discrimination or other harm is a disability to arguments for remedies paralleling disability accommodations. His challenge to disability frame advocacy is that it embraces an outdated approach to disability, one that ignores the impact of impairment, a key term of the definition of disability in laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The omission of impairment so broadens the disability concept that it invites backlash and ultimately threatens the legitimacy of disability rights. The lived experience of people with disabilities is that disability arises from a dynamic between social conditions (the focus of some disability frame advocacy) and impairment (the focus that disability frame advocacy overlooks). Dorfman argues that impairment is also critical to contemporary cultural conceptions of disability and the disability pride movement. Thus, disability frame advocacy, tearing disability away from impairment, works its own form of rhetorical destruction.
Frankly, trying to get people to stop using a metaphor like that of disability strikes me as, well, tilting at windmills. Language has its own logic, or lack of it. But Dorfman’s critically important contribution to the disability rights debate is that the use of the disability advocacy frame for things not connected with impairment devalues the experience of people who have disabilities and leaves out what makes disability different. Measures to remove, reduce, or compensate for social and legal barriers other than disability to further substantive equality under the law and in society need to be evaluated on their own terms, not by an advocacy frame that relies on the metaphorical use of disability language.
