Coming to terms

Disability language has always been a quagmire. Betsy Valnes asks if there’s a way out

Personally, I’m flexible about the terms that people use about me – to a degree. As long as those calling me a “crip” realise the necessity of inclusive education. As long as those calling me a “person with a disability” realise that I, too, deserve equal employment and career opportunities. As long as those calling me “disabled” know that I need health-care coverage that doesn’t penalise me for having a brain tumour removed in my teens or selecting holistic medicine rather than the chemicals most doctors prescribe.

But when really thinking about terminology, I have to ask myself whether any of us is in a position to define right and wrong when it comes to disability. A range of language is used within our community: might accepting a variance in terminology itself be a form of diversity that should be respected?

A few months ago, I participated in a publication focused on young people with disabilities. Submissions came from parents, community members, medical professionals, siblings and friends. A few came from people with disabilities but most came from people without disabilities serving as “allies”. Although the essays were well meant, I was surprised by the negative referrals to disabled people as “deranged” and “one with a sterile future”. While I thought myself to be flexible in the terminology department, I realised that everything has its limits. So, I had to write about it.

But I sat at my computer and watched resentment appear on my screen as I scolded these people who claimed to know so much about the disabilities about which they wrote but, for for the most part, had never experienced.

Granted, some words make me ill. If I heard them spoken, some words would force me to note the offence taken, while providing alternative, “socially appropriate” language in reply. But I am also posing the challenge, to myself as well, to look at the bigger picture: to bypass terminology and focus on larger goals. You can call me virtually anything you want, as long as your perception of me deems my insight to be valuable, my forethought to be worth listening to and my visions of change valid (and that may include updating terminology).

Vocabulary won’t change overnight. But the disability community (as well as our interaction with “allies”) needs to look past internal separations that stem from self-adhered name tags, and focus, instead, on larger platforms in our lives: education, employment and healthcare, to name just a few. Right now, we are missing opportunities to fuse people together because of first impressions that come from as little as one-word phrases.

Admittedly, one of the simplest things in life is recognising that something needs to be changed and one of the most difficult things in life is actually changing it. In this particular case, my goal is to prioritise our quest to improve social justice rather than worrying so much about what we call those of us working to improve it.