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

[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.