Thanks to a comment from Trisha in my Welcome post, I have a fun topic to address today.  She asked why I use the term “gimp” to describe myself in the text to the left of the page when explaining the name of my website.  There are seemingly countless opinions and discussions on this topic, and I cannot recapitulate them here, but I will give you my reasoning, thoughts, and feelings.

There are so many words used to describe people with disabilities.  The two I use most often are disabled and people with disabilities.  They are formal and describe a large and heterogeneous population.  For many years I used “people with disabilities” (or any appropriate variation) only because it identifies the person first and the disability second.  As I read, learned more and had more varied experiences in my own life as a disabled woman, I began to understand what it means to be “disabled” in society, to be a member of a minority group and how it affected and affects my life in negative and positive ways.

I use the word gimp, or kid-gimp, as a term of identity, pride, empowerment, and hopefully, community. It is very easy to feel marginalized, to be shy, to apologize for accommodations one needs, and I felt and did these things for many years.  I am choosing to embrace my diversity, my disability, and how they make me who I am, to take pride in my disability and not allow fear to dictate my self-concept and behaviors, an important piece of thriving with disability.  Gimp, crip, etc. are not politically correct.  They force nondisabled people to confront disability in a powerful way because they are politically incorrect.  I might question the meaning behind it if someone I do not know used the term to describe me (depending on their use, of course) because these words can be used negatively, but my usage is only meant in a positive manner, reclaiming a word that has been used in negative ways.

Thanks again, Trisha!  This is a great topic!