Non-disabled responses to visible impairment embody either social invisibility or over-attentiveness. The subjective and inter-subjective experiences of impaired bodies and intersubjective encounters within society are important aspects of disablement and the construction of a disabled identity. Impairment is read by and influences the social structure of ableism. This paper attempts to understand how ableist discourses about impaired bodies have impacted on and been resisted
by disabled people and how embodiment is related to identity. In pursuit of these aims, a qualitative study was conducted with seven people who have visible physical impairments. The results indicate that disabled embodiment is produced and experienced within an ableist context that mobilizes the charitable gaze and the medical model to signify impaired bodies at the expense of the recognition of disabled identity. In order to deconstruct ableism and to recognize and respect the value of the disabled identity, a politics of recognition is required.

Expanding our knowledge of attitudes helps us to understand social interactions,socialization, and prejudice formation. Attitudes operate on two levels – explicit attitudes areconscious ones, while implicit attitudes are unconscious ones. People’s explicit and implicitattitudes do not always align because of the ways explicit and implicit attitudes operate. Forthis reason, Son Hing et al. (2008) devised a method to categorize diff erent types of explicitand implicit attitudes related to race into four categories; in
this study