One person, one fare.
The Canadian Transport Agency has declared a “One Person, One Fare” policy to apply to Canadian airlines. Unfortunately, it only applies to the disabled, including those who are “functionally disabled by obesity.”
While I am glad they have taken this step (obviously. There’s no way disabled people should be charged more for airfare if their accommodations require an extra seat. I have long said that airlines never explicitly entered the business of selling cc’s of space or kilos of weight on their planes — they have always presented themselves as service-providers to the public, and I’ll be damned if that doesn’t mean they need to provide that service fairly, since we do live in, you know, a civilization and everything), there is still a long way to go. And I think the way might include a stop off at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and the commissions of all provinces, to get body size protected status under the Canadian Human Rights Act and the provincial Human Rights Codes, which already include “race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.”
There can be many arguments made for including body size under the umbrella of disability, especially from the perspective that disabilities are not God-given restrictions on functioning and human worth, but are effectually created by a society’s refusal to provide universal access to all of its members. And I am not a scholar of disability by any means, so be please feel free to enlighten me, but I think that even though body size (height, weight, shape, etc.) often intersects with disability in a society that refuses to recognize physical diversity, its main function seems to be as a class identifier. While this can certainly be disabling, it springs from a somewhat different source than functional disability.
Anyhow. Closer…maybe we’re getting closer.
Filed under: Canada, disability, fat acceptance, human rights, policy | 4 Comments
I think your last paragraph there hit on the complexity of disability in general. It is never a static thing. A disability is not a disability in all situations. A little person whose house is completely functional for them is not disabled in that house. And the prejudice and discrimination they face elsewhere doesn’t have much to do with their ability to reach tall objects. It has a lot to do with being treated as children, which isn’t quite the same as a functional limitation and has more to do with stereotypes and ageism. I think fatness can be handled similarly. We can acknowledge how it serves as a class identifier in many circumstances while simultaneously acknowledging situations where a disability lens is needed to address functional limitations of the built environment. It isn’t either/or.
I’m glad to see you’re still posting about this stuff- I was really bummed when you just disappeared from LJ. :)
Hey, Sarah! Nice to see you again :)