Hi! Thanks for taking some time to click over to the comments policy page! I encourage all thoughtful and respectful comments. Even if your comment displays a dissenting point of view, as long as you do it respectfully, you’re cool. However, I do moderate comments for a few reasons. Primarily, I hate spam. Secondly, and more to the point, because this is a disability-focused blog, I reserve the right to edit or delete comments with outdated, offensive, restrictive, or harmful language. I am aware that not everyone agrees on appropriate language for disability, much as we do not all agree on appropriate language for other individuals and groups who are marginalized and/or minorities. But on this blog, I use both People First Language and Disability First Language, and I struggle between which I find most appropriate on a regular basis. But I allow both because I use both, and if I get readers from the United Kingdom (where Disability First Language is the preferred manner of speaking, writing, and therefore identifying), I would like for them to feel welcome also. I also use words that were once used (and are sometimes still used) in a derogatory manner but now reclaimed by some members of the disability community such as: gimp, c/krip, etc.
I am aware that not everyone knows the most appropriate language preferred by people with disabilities, and I am also aware that in using inappropriate language, not everyone intends to be offensive or hurtful. Consider this an opportunity to learn from someone willing to give you a little insight and help you become better prepared to communicate in the world of disability!
Examples of outdated, offensive, restrictive, and harmful – not to mention ableist – language are as follows: wheelchair bound, confined to a wheelchair, mental disability, the R-word (retarded), home bound, bed bound, etc. These words, while used in the past, are no longer appropriate. I reserve the right to edit your comment to reflect more disability inclusive language. Unless your comment is obviously mean-spirited, I will not delete it as the goal of my blog and the comments I hope to generate from it, is to facilitate engaged conversation and reflection upon issues of surviving, thriving, and being real with disability.
What more appropriate and inclusive words can I use instead, you ask? Instead of wheelchair bound or confined to a wheelchair, I happen to like the term wheelchair user, or for the People Firsters out there, person who uses a wheelchair. Instead of the R-word, use intellectual disability, cognitive disability, developmental disability. People First Language is pretty simple, in case you haven’t guessed by now or Googled it, use words like person with a disability, hence focusing on the person first and the disability as just one facet of us as people with disabilities. The outdate language limits people with disabilities. In most minority cultures, identity is at least in some small way, bound up with language. As a long-term wheelchair user, I consider myself freed and mobilized by my wheelchair, not bound or confined to it. I would be a lot more bound or confined without it.
I am always, well – almost always, up for discussion about disability language and identity – so send me a message, hit me up on twitter or facebook! It’s good to keep the conversation going!
