No, “disability” is not a bad word.
No, having a disability is not shameful.
No, disability does not mean being “less than”.
No, disability does NOT mean a complete inability to do things. It only means, needing to do things differently from everyone else.
No, it does not mean that your life loses value. Disabled lives are LIVES WORTH LIVING.
Claiming the disability label for yourself or for your children and other loved ones is NOT a form of “giving up”. It doesn’t mean that you stop working toward greater autonomy, improved abilities, integration into society, or a more fulfilled life. It just means, acknowledging that you may need to do things differently. Sometimes accepting a disability can be an important step toward achieving your life goals. You can’t imagine away limitations, but you can imagine how to work around them.
Claiming the disability label can be an act of pride. Many disabled warriors have fought for everything from the right to ride public transportation, to attend school, to have the same access to information and communication as everyone else, and more. Even if you’re not disabled, then you have still benefited from our advocacy. Every curb cut you’ve ever used for your baby stroller, every line of captions that enables you to understand television in a noisy bar, and many more things are there because we fought for them.
If you’re worried about “appropriating” the term from people who need it? If you are worried that your difficulties are too “minor” to “count”? If you think the best way to show respect for disabled people is to disclaim the label? Please relax. Most of us want MORE people, not fewer, to feel entitled to identify with the word “disability”. Even people who experience different degrees of difficulty may still share a common need for accessible environments and respect for our value as human beings. You’re not taking anything away from us by claiming the identity. On the contrary: you are identifying common ground that lets us work together toward common goals.
If you still believe disability isn’t an accurate descriptor for you? Or if you need to think about it more first? You have a right to define your own identity. You do you.
But please, have the courtesy to disclaim the label in a way that doesn’t imply that being a person with talents, autonomy, and value as a human being is somehow a contradiction to being also a person with disabilities.
And, please, learn what the term means before explaining why it doesn’t fit. If you say you’re not disabled because there are so many things you can do, then you haven’t understood what it means. If you say you’re not disabled because you “only need to do things differently,” then you have just given the definition for what “disability” means. Wouldn’t it feel silly to learn that your explanation for disclaiming the label instead explains why you have a right to claim it after all?
Written by Mia Mingus, at her blog “Leaving Evidence”
By blogger “Crippled Scholar”
Image Description: Canadian Flag. A red maple leaf on a white background with red vertical stripes at either end.
Today I came across two conflicting news articles, one of them Canadian, the other American. They both deal with the Canadian immigration system but they come to vastly different conclusions. The American article which appeared in the New York Times entitled Canada’s Ruthlessly Smart Immigration Policy, glorifies the Canadian by the numbers immigration system. Conversely, a Global News report looked at Canadian grown advocacy against that same immigration system. Their primary concern, the fact that the system is discriminatory against disabled people.
I have written previously about how the Canadian immigration system actively discriminates against disabled people and what this means for the status of disabled people within Canada and abroad. When I first wrote that article, it garnered very little attention but since the election of Donald Trump as…
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Guest post by author Lisa Bunker at the blog LGBTQ Reads
Today on the site, we welcome Lisa Bunker, author of the just-released-yesterday Felix Yz! This Middle Grade debut features a gay protagonist, several other characters under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and a whole lot more. Here’s the info:
When Felix Yz was three years old, a hyperintelligent fourth-dimensional being became fused inside him after one of his father’s science experiments went terribly wrong. The creature is friendly, but Felix—now thirteen—won’t be able to grow to adulthood while they’re still melded together. So a risky Procedure is planned to separate them . . . but it may end up killing them both instead.
This book is Felix’s secret blog, a chronicle of the days leading up to the Procedure. Some days it’s business as usual—time with his close-knit family, run-ins with a bully at school, anxiety about his crush. But life becomes more out of the ordinary with the arrival of…
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By Mel Baggs
[I wrote this in response to a Dave Hingsburger post. Andrea Shettle asked me to post it here. Summary of my very long response: Most people don’t have the foggiest clue what’s bad about institutions. What’s bad is something you pretty much never hear about, which is the violence it does to people’s insides at a very deep level. And that can’t be stopped by just removing the things that LOOK bad and throwing a layer of glamour on top.]
Please, please, please everyone who talks about this in the past tense — STOP. This is still going on. Everywhere.
I can’t even explain what it feels like to read things like this. Because I think too many people get the wrong kind of idea.
They will think that this is over. It’s not.
They will think that the awfulness and cruelty of an institution is measured by the size…
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A recent Hiram College (Ohio) study reveals that disability simulations often result in feelings of fear, apprehension and pity toward those with disabilities.
Source: New research shows role-playing disability promotes distress, discomfort and disinterest
[Comment from me — we knew this already from earlier, somewhat similar research, but here is new corroborating evidence. The sad thing is that even people with disabilities ourselves have sometimes encouraged the use of role-playing disability stimulations on the misguided idea that these would be helpful. Including me, when I was growing up. And some disabled adults in more recent years as well. I hope later research will help us find better alternatives, because I think one reason why people keep using disability simulation role plays is because they don’t know anything else that might be more effective.]
Open letter to people writing articles about successful people with disabilities:
Yes, that’s right, [insert disability here] completely failed to stop this person from [insert ordinary accomplishment here].
Do you know why their disability did not stop them from doing well with the thing?
Here, let me help you. The reason why their disability didn’t stop them? Is because there’s no reason why it would! Because having this disability doesn’t have anything to do with the success that you have described!
The negative assumptions that other people make about disabled people? The prejudice and discrimination that people with disabilities have to deal with? The accessibility barriers in our environment? These things can slow us down. Sometimes these things can even stop us altogether. But nine times out of ten, articles about successful people with disabilities aren’t talking about these things when they say, “[disability] did not stop this person from [accomplishment]”!
You may think you are doing a good thing in sharing stories that help bust stereotypes about disability. You are helping show that people with disabilities can be successful!
Yes, this is good. But the way you frame this matters. When you say that the person accomplished X despite having disability Y, you help reinforce the concept that disability Y should normally be a barrier to achieving accomplishment X. These kinds of statements can actually reinforce negative assumptions about disability. This can imply that the person’s success is a rare exception that other disabled people might not achieve. And often that implication is incorrect.
If you really want to help break stereotypes, then please don’t do it like this. Instead, please help your readers understand that,
Help employers and other gatekeepers understand that, very often, the only thing standing in the way of the next successful disabled person is the lack of opportunity. And they’re in a position to offer these opportunities.
Thanks.
Signed, Annoyed Reader with Multiple Disabilities Who Sometimes Gets Tired of Seeing the Same Tropes in News Stories About People with Disabilities
[Note: I originally posted this “open letter” at my Tumblr.]
[Disclaimers: Yes, I recognize that sometimes disabilities are the barrier. I do not intend to erase the experiences of people for whom disability is the primary challenge to meeting conventional definitions of “successful”. However, in a high ratio of media coverage, disability in and of itself is not as much of a barrier as media purveyors seem to assume. Also: Yes, I absolutely agree that people do not have to be employed to have value as people, or to be defined as “successful”. Hence, “and other gatekeepers”.]
Blog post by author of the “Crippled Scholar” blog, who is a doctoral student in disability studies.
A little over a year ago a tweet went viral.
Image Description: tweet with a picture of peeled oranges in plastic containers on a grocery store (whole foods) shelf. Tweet reads “If only nature could find a way to cover these oranges so we didn’t need to waste so much plastic on them”
This tweet had everything it needed to go viral. It featured a picture of a product that was perceived to have no real use and to be extremely wasteful. It was paired with catchy sarcastic commentary. It’s no wonder that not only did the tweet go viral. It sparked many articles condemning the environmental impact of plastic and what was perceived as a particularly egregious example of…
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I represented DREDF in this conversation but it’s stirred up a big case of the feels about “choice” and being a liberal woman writer with a congenital disability, and the context this establishes for storytelling, and resisting and persisting. I continue, after 30 years of adult activism, to feel like I have an early shift of ableism — prepping the world to accept that I exist — while my nondisabled fellow human resisters and persisters get to sleep in. And if I weren’t white, conventionally educated, cis gendered, unthreateningly queer, and had all sorts of middle-class, married advantages, I’d probably never sleep at all. Image courtesy of the Disability Visibility Project.As many people who know me know — all too well — I’ve been writing a novel* for the past 400 years or so. The novel, The Cure for Gretchen Lowe, is the…
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By Silas Beasley
I am another person who is also Deaf/deaf and disabled . Although I respect that some Deaf people don’t want the disability label for themselves, I think sometimes the rejection of that label is rooted in ableism. People, disability is not a bad word. And as Silas Beasley says in this article, “disability” does not mean “lesser than”. It is not a synonym for “helpless”, it simply means you’re living in a society that isn’t designed for you. If you don’t want to identify as a person with disabilities, fine. It’s your identity, and that makes it your choice. But please try to respect those of us who do feel comfortable defining ourselves as people with disabilities while also being deaf/Deaf, whether because we have additional disabilities or because we are comfortable with defining our deafness as being BOTH a cultural identity AND a disability.
How all US immigrants can protect themselves under Trump’s new regulations. This includes US citizens, green card holders, people with student visas or temporary work visas, and undocumented immigrants. The video is in American Sign Language (ASL) with English captions. (You might need to toggle the captions on to see them). Full transcript for the video follows below.
Post by Kim Sauder at her “Crippled Scholar” blog
I have noticed in my online activism that if I call out problematic behaviour or comment on the cultural context of disability being mentioned in particular contexts either by an ally or by someone who is perceived as an ally, I will often be chastened for the nebulous offence of “alienating allies”.
When this happens, allies seem to stop being people who are devoted to the idea of meaningfully improving the lives of disabled people but are in fact thin skinned individuals who will reject the rights of disabled people if they are not rewarded with copious amounts of praise regardless of the impact of their actions.
As Ginny Di puts it,
The thing is, the pushback that I experience has never been from the people I am directly commenting on but either other disabled people who are concerned that the criticism will lead to the loss of allies…
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Written by Rosemary Frazer
A student is looking for autistic AAC users, and also for their parents, to complete a survey about how aac is (or isn’t) used in schools. Or if you are no longer a student, you can complete it based on your memories of school. The student herself is autistic.
For my Research and Writing English class this year I have to write a paper on a topic of my choice that weaves data and data analysis with factually based interpretation of that data. My research question for this paper is: To what extent is it possible to compare the ways in which methods of communication are being taught to autistic students who cannot use spoken language to communicate their complex ideas?
Because many existing communication methods are underrepresented in most schools, I created a survey to find out what methods students use, what they are being taught to use and how successful each is. Additionally I am curious to know whether a student’s school allows the communication method chosen by each student to be the most beneficial, and if not, how the student then communicates their complex thinking and knowledge.
This survey uses a google form and is completely anonymous. You will…
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Rambling Justice 