We choose not to “dis” our abilities.

Spinergy - Roll with me.

Was up! What an AWESOME site and person you are. :~)

KEEP UP THE AWESOME WORK~

Well time to show them how we roll.

Spinergy
I want to do a Spotlight video of this site. :~)

Also, the Pope was identifying specifically as a disabled/chronically ill person, as St Thérèse was. I didn’t necessarily call this “disability culture”–but now you are making me wonder about that, and if it indeed would have been an example!

(As soon as I write something, I think “damn, why didn’t I remember to say that?”)

On the language note of disabled inherently meaning unable to do stuff, I would echo Stacey’s comments as well as adding a few of my own. I’m not a linguist at all. I’m sure you already have heard this argument, but to me words identifying a person or group are always in flux and it is how they are used, who uses them, and for what purposes that makes them good or bad.

Disabled can be seen the same way as the word “black” can in relation to people of color. Historically, the words black, dark, or other synonyms have been used to designate something that is scary, bad, immoral, etc. Obviously Black People have tried to reclaimed the meaning of that word in relation to themselves. Disabled people, I think, are trying to do the same thing.

http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~ronald/HandicapDefinition.htm

there have been efforts to find other words to use than disability or disabled and these efforts have particularly been led by nondisabled people. you have words like disABILITY, special needs, “challenged,” people first language (that puts the person in front of the disability.)

the problem is rather than reducing stigma [taking away people's bad thoughts] shying away or censoring the word disability makes it even more of a bad thing, even though it’s not. a good example of this is when hearing people created the term “hearing impaired” because they didn’t want to call people deaf or hard of hearing. a lot of people hate the word hearing impaired because it implies that not having the ability to hear is essentially negative and that being deaf/hh is bad.

i guess you could call using disabled as a reclamation tactic like using queer or crip but it seems like it’s so much more than that at the same time.

I know that’s a pretty fundamental, probably mundane question, but it’s something I’ve wondered (as an ignorant, yet open-minded person).

Thank you for mentioning that one. You can adore people of other races, but living in America makes it impossible to not see color.

Just a suggestion here… you might consider submitting a lot of these thoughts ans ideas to BITCH and VENUS magazines.