tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10557263.post2523536849828405700..comments2024-01-26T10:20:37.836+00:00Comments on Diary of a Goldfish: The Language of Disability (2013)The Goldfishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15213378454070776331noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10557263.post-84185392348142074742014-04-22T21:10:33.444+01:002014-04-22T21:10:33.444+01:00Just a quick line to say thank you and well done f...Just a quick line to say thank you and well done for a brilliant piece on language of disability. I think your piece is both well balanced and well written. However, I suggest you put the paragraphs from the North American section in quotation marks e.g. "Because disability is something that belongs entirely to the individual, it is correct to use this "people first" language." As it stands, without the quotation marks, it appears as if you agree with the "people first" stance!<br /><br />When visiting the USA I'm always struck by the "hierachy" of impairment, which appears to be led by the battle-injured veterans. I wonder if this is why the Charity Model, Medical Model and Individual Model feature so prominently? Unfortunately, most Americans I meet have little or no understanding of the Social Model of Disability.<br /><br />I am utterly blown away by your comment:<br /> <i>"I always think of the Serenity Prayer:</i> <b>God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.</b> <br /><i>To me, the Social Model is that wisdom. Disability is the thing I can change. Illness is something I largely have to accept and live with - but that's personal and medical, and not political."</i><br /><br />I'm going to swap "impairment" for "illness", print out a couple of copies of that comment, one for the wall, one for my wallet. Magic! Keep up the good work.<br /><br />PS I'm not sure I am capable of abiding by the Linguistic Amnesty and may have to "stay away" until the amnesty is over. I find it hard to respect the self-oppressive language some disabled people use, by virtue of the fact that they are using such disrespectful language about themselves and us, and undermining the Social Model and its proponents. But then ... I was apopolectic when all these trendy young things first started reclaiming "Queer" and I've grown a little more tolerant, I hope! JLThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17897134202782013542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10557263.post-41497921672732820352013-10-17T21:23:15.847+01:002013-10-17T21:23:15.847+01:00Found your piece really useful. As an early member...Found your piece really useful. As an early member of UPIAS I was convinced to use 'disabled person/people' rather then PWD which we always associated with social workers & the like. However, in the history group I organise in Manchester, UK I was challenged in this by a Canadian woman. I didn't realise the US/UK split on this before. <br /><br />Anyway. good to brush up on terminology before a talk I am giving on the history of the disabled people's movement in Manchester in a couple of weeks time. Many thanks, Bernardbernardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09748337567879788203noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10557263.post-12859021002673827532013-04-17T13:12:47.213+01:002013-04-17T13:12:47.213+01:00Liam - I'd not seen that, that's great. :-...Liam - I'd not seen that, that's great. :-)<br /><br />You both might enjoy Ira Socol's 2008 BADD post <a href="http://speedchange.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/may-day-retard-theory.html" rel="nofollow">Retard Theory</a> - some of the commentators missed the idea of Linguistic Amnesty and the point of Ira's post by insisting that Ira couldn't use the word "retard" because he clearly wasn't one. Ira's point was that who gets classified as a "retard", or special or whatever else in education, is arbitrary - and as a child, that was his label. The Goldfishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213378454070776331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10557263.post-56219576306939052592013-04-16T11:03:07.784+01:002013-04-16T11:03:07.784+01:00They called me a "special needs" kid at ...They called me a "special needs" kid at mainstream school (though they arranged a minder to follow me around and make a nuisance of herself). At the "special school" they called me a little shit. So, it's not a term I'm that fond of. Matthew Smithhttp://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10557263.post-22479338956861724142013-04-16T00:24:24.548+01:002013-04-16T00:24:24.548+01:00On "Special" - Heavy Load did this amazi...On "Special" - Heavy Load did this amazing song. Warning: uses lots of disability-related slurs, punk rock.<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiEfkNtpYCM Liamhttp://yetanotherlefty.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10557263.post-45345150699253040062013-04-15T15:39:39.660+01:002013-04-15T15:39:39.660+01:00Hi Matthew,
I disagree with you about the Social ...Hi Matthew,<br /><br />I disagree with you about the Social Model, although this is a common misunderstanding. <br /><br />This stuff is about how we are to understand and use <i>language</i>, and asks, "What is disability?" rather than "What is the most limiting factor in your life?"<br /><br />If the word <i>disability</i> is going to be useful to us, then it has to describe something that all disabled people have in common. It has to something social and political, as opposed to something individual, or else it is open to endless interpretation. <br /><br />Saying that I am disabled by society is not to say that those limitations - which include social attitudes, even internalised attitudes, as well as obvious stuff like physical access - have a greater impact on my life than my illness. In my case, they probably don't.<br /><br />But disability, as in, what society does is something that (a) I can talk about with others using a common language and (b) we can do something about together, to make the world a better place. <br /><br />I always think of the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference. <br /><br />To me, the Social Model is that wisdom. Disability is the thing I can change. Illness is something I largely have to accept and live with - but that's personal and medical, and not political. The Goldfishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213378454070776331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10557263.post-24697103825586877492013-04-15T15:23:28.566+01:002013-04-15T15:23:28.566+01:00The insistence on "disabled person/people&quo...The insistence on "disabled person/people" in the UK seems to be quite a recent phenomenon; when I was at college (Aberystwyth) in the mid-90s the student officer responsible was called the Students With Disabilities (SWD) officer (the same was true at Cambridge in the 1990s according to Victoria Brignell, who held the position). However, I just checked their website and somewhere along the line it's been changed to "disabled students". I'm not happy with the change or with referring to everyone with a disability as "disabled", for two reasons: one is that it requires everyone, including those with a hidden disability, to identify with the most obviously disabled people, i.e. those with obvious mobility impairments that use wheelchairs. It is rather like referring to everyone from a visible ethnic minority as "black", regardless of how they identify themselves. The fact that the physically disabled were, at one point, able to shout the loudest because they had no cognitive impairment and were not housebound (before social media allowed "spoonies" to engage more) is, I suspect, no coincidence.<br /><br />Second, the so-called social model is a theory which is only valid for people with uncomplicated physical impairments. If you have a condition like a spinal cord injury which does not cause terrible chronic pain (they often do) but limits your physical mobility, but would not prevent you doing any sitting-down job you can physically get to, you could say that you are disabled by society. If you have a severe cognitive impairment or a severe chronic illness like severe ME, you are definitely not disabled by society (although society may make it worse) but by your condition. Obviously there are people in between whose disability is a combination of both factors, but the social model as an absolute doesn't apply to most disabled people. The notion of the "social and medical models" of disability is a false either/or.<br /><br />Personally I have Asperger's syndrome, and have a "disabled person's" Freedom Pass. I don't mind the support with travelling as I have had extreme difficulty finding meaningful employment. However, I would be more comfortable with it being called something like "Disability Freedom Pass" because people are more likely to accept that a disability is something they can't see than that someone who is able to walk, talk coherently, see and hear is "disabled". So far, I've never been challenged, so obviously Transport for London has trained its staff pretty well, but there's always the possibility that someone won't have got the message. I've heard of a young woman with epilepsy being turned off a bus in Bath because the driver refused to accept that epilepsy constituted a disability.Matthew Smithhttp://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/noreply@blogger.com