Right now I’m a burden. But I hope to be a self-sufficient cripple one day…
disability, really, when you get down to it, is the ultimate unraveling of that ball of individualism — it forces you to look at all these little things that go into the living of a life, and realize that not all of them are yours to do or yours to control — and also to
realize how many of those little things you affect for other people’s lives — and to finally give up, and fall back into the arms of the community. it means you have to stop looking at things as “mine, yours, this person’s, that person’s”. you have to stop keeping the damn tally — and just rush to give, knowing that those around you will rush to give back… so many people are afraid to admit that ultimately, they DO depend on the people around them, and their accomplishments are not solely their own, and the things they do, affect people besides themselves. but it’s all true! and it’s not a bad thing, if you look at it the right way.
Heterosexuality’s partners in this masquerade have been largely identified; an important body of feminist and antiracist work considers how heteronormativity reinforces dominant ideologies of gender and race. However, despite the fact that homosexuality and disability clearly share a pathologized past, and despite a growing awareness of the intersections between queer theory and disability studies, little notice has been taken of the connection between heterosexuality and able-bodied identity, perhaps because able-bodiedness, even more than heterosexuality, masquerades as a nonidentity, as the natural order of things.
PSA:
Breaking or spraining your foot or leg or arm or anything, while being painful, does not make you a cripple. Neither does banging your arms or leg so that it’s ~sore~ or pulling muscles so it’s slightly painful to use them. Or even really painful. You’re going to heal.
If anyone would like to come argue it with me I will gladly cripple you and you can tell me what you think the difference is. Thank you.
There can never be enough PSAs for this.
Amen!
My favorite is when people say to me that they were on crutches after a foot surgery so they know what it’s like to be a cripple/know what my life is like. No, the only similarity between you and I is that we both know how to use crutches. *eye roll*
You broke your leg? Tough. You don’t get to use that word.
just had a realization about “Person First” language
Although part of the problem is that some people do see themselves/their personal identities as inseparable from their disabilities, another issue could be the way ableism works to erase disability.
This might sound weird. You may ask, “how can language that separates out disability in plain view also erase erase it?”
The simple answer is privilege. Privilege subjugates one group beneath another by designating it “Other”. When we use Person First, it is with the intention to treat people as individuals first, separate from their disabilities…the problem is that this in itself implies that having a disability makes you less human to begin with.
By using person first, we imply that there is some sort of “neutral”, or “human” state of being. The problem is that this “neutral” position has always been non-disabled people. Consequently, by using person first, we suggest that to be not of that neutral standpoint is to be less human. By prioritizing the *person* first, we are actually reinscribing the way non-disabled people hold power over disabled people. (And yes, it is, in fact, very possible to completely write off the group you’re trying to help/bring attention to while simultaneously claiming to have the focus on them, as we have seen with groups like Autism Speaks).
The big question is, why can’t people be people and still have their disabilities form an integral part of their self identities? What is wrong with identifying as a disabled person? Maybe we should examine our own internalized ableism and ask why it is so important to separate out our disabilities from ourselves…
From what I’ve read of autism speaks’ writing, they also frequently don’t bother with the person first stuff and go straight to, ie, referring to autistic people as “autism”.
For example, see the organization’s name.
(I’m not sure what their Official stance on person first language is, but in practice they seem to do everything person-first language was designed to combat.)
*applause*
“Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.” – Neil Marcus.
FAVORITE. QUOTE. EVER.
I am pro-choice, but I have a lot of difficulty with people who abort disabled children because they don’t think they could handle parenting a disabled child — or just because they want a “perfect” child. My feeling is that if you don’t think you can handle parenting a disabled child, you shouldn’t become a parent at all, because you might have a typical child who then becomes disabled through illness or injury, and then you’ve got to step up.
One of the things I find so troubling about prenatal testing is this idea that you can protect yourself against having a disabled child — as though we’re not all one illness or injury away from disability. It’s a symptom of our culture’s full-scale denial that difficulty and fragility are the hallmarks of life, not its pitiful exceptions.
Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg (via heartkind)
RCR is awesome.
Image Description: “Cripple Problem #30: When able-bodied people are surprised we have a social life.”
Yup.
Image Description: “Cripple Problem #22: Making cripple jokes and able-bodied people awkwardly don’t know whether to laugh or not.”
All damn day. either they’re debating whether to laugh or not, or they say “don’t make fun of yourself like that.”…and do what instead? Leave it to you to make fun of me? No thanks.
I can count on one hand the number of able-bodied people who respond properly to my attempts at these kinds of jokes. I treasure these people very much.
Can’t y’all others just go “LOL MINORITIES” and then we can move on?
My boyfriend sometimes jokes about my cp. I think he’s the only able-bodied person who does it to me… and I just love him ^^
Note: When I make it, you laugh. When you make it, I yell. That’s how things are supposed to go.
Let me make one thing clear:
I am not going to allow people to shit on my disability. I don’t care if it’s “freedom of speech”, if you think I’m being too sensitive, or if you say Urban Dictionary offends everyone, so it’s okay. Ableism, in any form, is never okay. And I won’t stand for it anymore.
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