100 college things 76

[alexseanchai]

I am interested in people's reactions to this quote from Eli Clare's Exile & Pride, essay entitled "Freaks and Queers":

I think about language. I often call nondisabled people able-bodied, or when I'm feeling confrontational, temporarily able-bodied. But if I call myself disabled in order to describe how the ableist world treats me as a person with cerebral palsy, then shouldn't I call nondisabled people enabled? That word locates the condition of being disabled, not in the nondisabled body, but in the world's reaction to that body. This is not a semantic game.

(PSA for anyone who wants to read the essay: ableist language left right and center. For purposes of critiquing same—like, the R word is followed by the sentence "I learned early that words could bruise a body"—but still present.)

Comments

[davidgillon]

Really relevant article for that quote from my friend Lisa: I'm Not A "Person With a Disability": I'm a Disabled Person Her analysis that disabled really means 'prevented from functioning' is brilliant.

[alexseanchai]

Excellent article, thanks for the rec!

[pretty_panther]

This is interesting. I personally, feel enabled is for the highly privileged. I feel it is a step up from abled. Abled gives a chance for most things but enabled suggests, to me personally, help to achieve those things. Things like money, tutors, advice, internet, knowledge ect. I think there are many rungs to life and they blur. I'm not sure of me thoughts. I am giving them as they come because I think that makes me more honest?

Saying as a disabled person~ Visibly able, reality disabled.

[alexseanchai]

That makes a lot of sense, actually. Because being nondisabled in all ways but being poor/queer/trans/woman/of color, you're still SOL in a lot of ways, and the more of those descriptors describe one, the more SOL one tends to be.

[nenya_kanadka]

Mostly (as an almost-deaf but not Deaf (culturally) person) I find that most of the arguments and discussions about what to call disability end up leaving me with a headache rather than with enlightenment. :P

It's both true that I feel fucked over by my body sometimes (my ears don't work--I wish they did--all the understanding and help in the world won't make them work like I wish they did) and that accessibility stuff like subtitling your vids/having an email address as well as a phone number to contact you with/the province of BC subsidizing my hearing aid when I was broke and unemployed/my union helping me get a job that wasn't customer service/etc makes a huge huge huge difference and lets me live my life on something of an even keel with people who aren't deaf. So I get the distinction he's trying to make (and the author of the other article linked here) even while it kind of does seem like a semantic game to me a lot of the time.

Call it what you want, basically, but don't shut me out of life if you can help it and don't tell me I can't be grudgy about the fact that my body's broken, either.

(But I'm not an academic. Lots of people are doing good conceptual work even if it doesn't always click for me.)

[alexseanchai]

Heh, fair enough. On all points.

[silveradept]

Perhaps it's pop-culture reactions to addiction, but my first blush at the idea of enabled requires other people helping out. Which may be exactly what they're shooting for - that able-bodied people more easily get help that is useful to them in whatever they want to do, because the culture of the able-bodied is vast and seen as the default.

[alexseanchai]

Yeah, that makes sense. Think about eyeglasses. I'd have a vision disability if I didn't have access to vision correction (the book needs to be about four and a half inches from my nose for me to read it with my glasses off; I checked with a ruler), but vision correction is a thing and therefore I am enabled in this respect.

It has been pointed out to me elsewebs that "able-bodied" is problematic language: it reinforces the hierarchy of disability (wherein physically disabled people are lesser-than abled people, and cognitively and developmentally disabled people and mentally ill people are lesser-than physically but not mentally disabled people) and suggests that physical disability is the only kind worth worrying about fixing ableism against it.

[silveradept]

True. Main culture generally has trouble fixing and realizing discrimination related to things that don't have a physical component.