let me hear your voice tonight (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexseanchai) wrote2014-11-22 10:45 am
alexseanchai) wrote2014-11-22 10:45 am
Entry tags:
100 college things 76
I am interested in people's reactions to this quote from Eli Clare's Exile & Pride, essay entitled "Freaks and Queers":
(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.)
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.)