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

[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.