Vol. 5, Issue 2, Part A (2023)

In the modern day, after a long history of reform, social exclusion seems to have decreased in certain areas, while in some areas, it is still rampant. Women, children, LGBTQ members, chronically ill as well as differently-abled people face social exclusion in various aspects. In this paper, I would like to focus on chronically ill or differently-abled people, and then further look into how gender inequalities play a role among chronically ill and differently abled people. In documents, as well as in appearance, these people are included in society, and in various social and institutional situations. However, reality is a bit different. Starting from schools to workplace to society to even certain family situations, they are excluded in many ways. Exclusions especially those on women, LGBTQ members, and other similarly marginalized people are irrational besides being problematic. Though some of the exclusions might be reasonable for certain groups of people like children or people with certain health conditions, but it seems that by excluding them from certain situations, and by doing it repeatedly, society develops a habit of excluding them from a lot of things, which are not only unnecessary, but also problematic. Society encourages this form of exclusion because it provides a false sense of superiority to the select ones included. These images of social exclusion, not only from certain activities, but from the status of an equal human reflect on the literature and the movies too. This exclusion is not only problematic in itself, but also has profound psychological effects on the excluded person or persons. Society, being phobic of differences, does not allow those people to be included in their core, who might threaten their homogeneity, or prove their existing habits, capabilities, and functions inadequate. The Covid-19 pandemic, affecting the whole world, without discrimination might have made it necessary to rethink inclusiveness and exclusiveness and their impacts on people. As social isolation became the norm, and the Covid-affected patients, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, were looked upon as taboos and were cornered besides being quarantined, it seemed fit to rethink what those people might go through who spend their entire lives feeling the same way covid patients felt in the early months of the pandemic.