Grace Period

How much time do you allow for people to catch up with new developments in disability language and ideas?

When I started out working in Independent Living, "crippled" was inexcusably insulting, unless used in a joking, in-group way among disabled people. "Handicapped" was just barely out date, but still very common; our general approach was to correct it kindly and patiently. "Person with a disability" was the ideal, and using it marked you as someone with a strong, progressive disability consciousness.

Today, 25 or so years later, hearing "handicapped" hurts to hear, and marks a person as hopelessly out of date. "Person with a disability" is in rough parity with "disabled person," but terminology is evolving fast towards "disabled person." Person First Language is in roughly the same position today that "handicapped" was 25 years ago. Some people honestly see it as an improvement over what came before, while others have left it behind. Advocates for Identity First Language give strong, passionate arguments in its favor, but say that they respect disabled people who still prefer to call themselves "person with a disability."

I see the same kind thing in disability-related thinking and practices. 25 years ago, most everyone agreed that large institutions were terrible for disabled people, and all but a few forward-thinkers viewed group homes as a progressive alternative. Sheltered workshops were generally viewed positively in the wider community, and were only beginning to be seriously questioned.

Today, I would view anyone who thinks group homes and sheltered workshops are awesome as well behind the curve, though I'm not sure yet that we are at the place where belief in these models can be fairly called shameful. I guess it depends on who I am talking to ... a random person in the community or someone familiar with disability issues.

On the other hand, people still talk about accessibility standards and the ADA like they are new requirements, even though the ADA just turned 25 and the first accessibility standards were published in the late '60s. And "inclusion" in schools, or, as we used to call it, "mainstreaming," is still often debated as if we are still pondering a new approach, when it's been the standard goal for education since the early to mid '80s ... at least on paper. To me, it's long past time for literally everyone to be on board with these things.

I think 25 years makes a pretty good grace period. If your thinking and practices around disability are older than that, I don't have much sympathy. But if you're still a little behind by, say, 10 years, we can talk.

How long is your grace period for social change?

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Evolution

I’m working on a bunch of things to post about for the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here’s a terrific quote from Ari Ne’eman’s two-part article on the National Council on Disability’s research on Sheltered Workshops:

"Disability policy is full of examples of yesterday’s innovation becoming today’s indignation. As my friend Anne Donnellan once put it, “The mark of anyone good in disability service-provision is that they’re at least a little bit ashamed of what they were doing twenty years ago.” The opposite of this is also true – many of the worst disability services come from becoming too attached to program models that were considered state of the art in previous decades." -- Ari Ne’eman: (Almost) Everything You Need to Know About Sheltered Workshops: [Part 1] [Part 2]

I thought of this earlier this week during a great Twitter conversation I had about “Person First Language” and “Identity First Language” with @greggberatan, @erabrand, @mikeemort and a few others. I switched from PFL to IFL a couple of years ago. Until that time, my understanding was that Person First Language was THE progressive term to use, completely consistent with the Social Model of disability. Anything else, I assumed, was ableist, and any disabled person using IDL had to be misinformed.

As it turned out, I was the one who was misinformed. No, that’s not quite right. I was informed … 25 years ago. And while I am not “ashamed” of having used and encouraged Person First Language, I have no trouble now saying that my thinking has evolved, and so has the thinking of many smart, savvy, self-aware people in the disability community. People who prefer using Identity First Language know what they are doing.

Ideas about disability evolve. Cynical ableists aside, what we did before was the best we could figure out at that time. "People with disabilities" was a huge improvement over "handicapped," and we should have no regrets. However, we do need to take care not to be arrogant about our beliefs, or assume we are always the cuttting-edge thinkers, and remember that sometimes, people who disagree with us may have the better idea.

Note:

I won't try to explain the pros and cons of the two "identification models." I am not very good at parsing out the different justifications for each one. I will say that once I bought into Identity First Language, I did so enthusiastically, mainly because it's easier to say and write. "I'm disabled" just sounds smoother and less cumbersome than "I am a person with a disability."

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Questions About Inspiration Porn

Wright State Student with Cerebral Palsy Welcomed Into Sorority

Kelly May, Fox 45 - September 29, 2015

I am working on a definition of Inspiration Porn to beef up what's in Wikipedia, and maybe add to the Urban Dictionary. It's taking longer than I thought, so until I finish, here are a few questions:

1. How much of the problem with Inspiration Porn is its tone and message, and how much is about how the disabled subjects are included or excluded? Which is more of an issue, the content or the method?

I think we tend to assume that when disabled people are more fully involved in news stories and other media projects about disability, then the messages will be better because of their involvement. I'm not sure that's true. For instance, this article about a college student with Cerebral Palsy joining a sorority seems to have her full cooperation, yet it still feels like Inspiration Porn. If, as everyone in the story says, Lauren's inclusion isn't unusual or subject to any special circumstances, then why is it a news story?

2. Would this story be more newsworthy if the reporter had asked some more probing questions?

For instance, is Ms. Reder's admission to a sorority a first? Is it rare? Or, is it fairly routine at this university? If it's a first or very rare, why is that? If it's quite common, how does that compare with similar houses at other universities? How many disabled students participate in rush, compared with the non-disabled student population? Are certain kinds of houses more or less likely to include disabled students? How do these patterns and practices compare with other kinds of diversity?

Or, if they really wanted to make this a personal story, how about asking why Lauren wanted to join a sorority? Why this one and not another? Did she plan to rush, was she invited, or was it a spur-of-the-moment thing? Will she live in the house, and if so, is it accessible enough?

3. How did this actually become a news story? Did a reporter hear about it and decide it would make a great human interest story? Did the sorority's leadership initiate reach out to the TV station? Was Lauren an enthusiastic or reluctant participant? Does she have any concerns about how her story is being told and interpreted?

4. I am a bit confused about the role of news worthiness in identifying Inspiration Porn. We criticize stories and memes that suggest something a disabled person does is remarkable, because we rightly say that should be unremarkable. At what point do we stop noting a thing that is rarer than it should be, because calling attention to it somehow reinforces that rareness? Or, is this actually part of a different argument over whether to focus on individual moral qualities or on just and unjust policies and practices?

Basically, I'm trying to figure out whether Inspiration Porn ... which let's admit, we are all defining on the fly ... is a binary thing, or is it a blurry continuum? There seem to be a lot of borderline cases that may or may not be fairly termed Inspiration Porn, and since it's a pretty harsh criticism, I feel like maybe we should firm up our definition a little.

More to come ...

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Throwback Thursday

A year ago in Disability Thinking: Normal People Sick. I guess I wasn’t feeling well. Also, “God damn these vampires."

I don’t know where or when I first ran across the phrase, “Normal People Sick.” I suspect it was on Tumblr, but I’m not sure. I do know that when I first read “Normal People Sick” I identified with it immediately. It’s a useful expression for disabled people. We need a way to distinguish between health problems that are an everyday component of our disabilities … like chronic pain … and the kinds of illnesses everyone gets … like colds and flu. The distinction doesn’t always mean much in practical terms, but I like how it helps reinforce the fact that disabilities are not illnesses, and that being sick is a very different experience from being disabled.

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A Must Read on Two Kinds Of Disabled People

On Being "Ugly Disabled"

Cara Liebowitz, That Crazy Crippled Chick - June 17, 2015

This article is way too great to leave for my weekend Weekly Reading List post.

First of all, I am “Ugly Disabled” as Cara defines it here. Which is to say that because of my disabilities, I mostly don't fit mainstream standards of physical attractiveness. Which is not to say that I hate how I look, or that there’s nothing physically attractive about me. It’s just that, like Cara and so many other disabled people, I don’t look “normal except for …” So, I relate to this very personally. I get where she’s coming from.

Second, I wholeheartedly second the part about how people who are “Pretty Disabled” seem to have a bit of a social edge on us, even in a community that’s all about inclusion and equality. When I first started working in Independent Living, and for the first time found myself in rooms filled with fellow disabled people of all kinds, I admired the ones who looked really slick and put-together in their cool, quiet, lightweight manual wheelchairs. And, I am ashamed to say, I felt less than fully comfortable around the disabled people "who rock and flap and whose speech is sometimes not fluent.” I got over both the hero-worship and the internalized ableism ... mostly ... but the distinctions are still there in my mind.

Finally, I would like to point out how beautifully and precisely Cara describes her disability, in a neutral, non-melodramatic tone, and with concrete terms anyone can understand. I don’t know whether it was therapeutic or revelatory for her, but I have sometimes found it helpful to write a description like this of my own disabilities. I wonder if that would be a good exercise for teenagers growing up with disabilities, to help them explore what disability means to them, as opposed to whatever they have been taught to think about it?

Please do follow the link and read the post. It is important and a pleasure to read.

Via the Disability Visibility Project Facebook Page.

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Throwback Thursday

Two years ago in Disability Thinking: About Autism and “Labeling"

I was interested to read something I wrote touching on autism back when I had just started blogging and reading blogs about disability. This was before I had much exposure to the “neurodiversity” view of autism. I don’t think I wrote anything terribly ignorant or shameful.

In any case, I was really talking about labeling, and my feelings on that are pretty much the same today as they were two years ago. One of the articles I linked to in my last Weekly Reading List was about labeling, and I liked it because it said some of the same things I was saying in this blog post.

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Throwback Thursday

A year ago in Disability Thinking: Defined By Our Disabilities?

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Throwback Thursday

A year ago in Disability Thinking … The Mayor Of Swindon.

Discussed the connection between offensive disability language and regressive ideas about disability.

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Two Ways To Improve Disability Journalism

It would be so nice if journalists would stop using weird synonyms for “disabled” … like handicapped, mentally challenged, and wheelchair-bound. We say it all the time, but they keep appearing in news stories. Just say “disabled” and leave it at that.

Now that we have that out of the way, there are two other ways journalists can improve coverage of disabled people and disability issues. These are, I think, a bit more important:

1. Always look into the potential systemic, structural aspects of seemingly individual stories.

Personal stories of adversity, struggle, and triumph are appealing, but a lot of the problems disabled people face have their roots in laws, policies, and practices that affect other disabled people, too. Yet, many stories about disabled people fail to even address ways that individual disability problems might be solved in more permanent, systematic ways. This reinforces the rather lonely and discouraging idea that dealing with a disability is a solo endeavor. It also gives cover to people and institutions that perhaps should be doing more to make life better for all disabled people.

Example: The story of an Austin, TX high school student with Cerebral Palsy who raised over $80,000 to install push-button automatic doors at his high school. It’s a legitimately uplifting human interest story, but a reporter might have asked why the school wasn’t paying for the modifications, since accessibility is part of schools’ responsibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

2. Never print or air a story about disabled people without talking to and quoting disabled people.

The principle here is “Nothing about us without us.” It is a phrase with a long lineage in the disability rights community, but it is just as applicable in journalism. Normally, reporters will at least try to get a direct quote from every individual named in a story, to get their perspective on the issue and not just another person’s impression of their perspective. When it comes to disability stories, however, the standard seems to slip. It’s quite common in stories about disabled people to never hear directly from disabled people. Instead it seems to be considered acceptable to have parents speak for disabled children or youth, and agency staff to speak for “their clients.” It is true that a few disabled people can’t speak for themselves, but that is a very small number if you allow for “speaking” through non-verbal or adaptive means. Most people with intellectual disabilities, too, have meaningful things to say about their lives and experiences. In fact, a reporter at times may be in a unique position to give a public voice to people who are, intentionally or not, often left out of discussions that have a direct impact on their lives.

Example: TV coverage of the Bilodeau brothers, the Canadian Olympic Freestyle skier and his brother, who has an intellectual disability. Frederick, we are told, is a huge fan of his Olympian brother Alex. On camera he seems like he could have meaningful, specific things to say, but he is never interviewed, and none of the reporters even mention any attempt to speak to him directly. This happened the same way over multiple interviews with the athlete and the rest of the family, over two successive Winter Olympics. There is every indication that Frederick absolutely does idolize his brother and loves watching him win. The point is that he has never voiced those feelings to the world, in his own words, and we don’t know why.

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REALLY!?!

Ableism is complex, if you want to dig into it, but maybe our response to it shouldn't be. Instead of tweeting and blogging at length about the roots and subtleties of othering and objectification, maybe we should take a tip from Seth Meyers and Amy Pohler's SNL Weekend Update bit, and just say, “REALLY!?!"

Try it!

We can't afford to put in a ramp. We hardly ever see handicapped people around here anyway. REALLY!?!

I'm sorry, we didn’t have time to make large print copies. REALLY!?!

What will she have to drink? REALLY!?!

I don't think of you as disabled! REALLY!?! 

Complete stranger says, "I just wanted to tell you that you won't be like this when you're in heaven." REALLY!?! 

If I ever become that disabled, I want ‘em to just pull the plug! REALLY!?! 

We should go back to putting people in institutions. It’ll be fine. We’ll make them nicer. REALLY!?!

Note on your windshield: "Hey handicap! … You want pity go to a one leg support group!" REALLY!?!

Complete stranger takes photos of a group of disabled people in a mall food court. REALLY!?!

Seriously, I like this because one of the key questions about ableism is whether or not people know they’re being ableist. Conventional wisdom says that most of the time, people don’t know. I have come to think the opposite. I think most people know on some level that what they are saying is wrong. They may not know exactly how, but they know it.

So “REALLY!?!” can be a powerful wakeup call prompting a moment of self-reflection. When spoken by a disabled person, it also signals, “I noticed,” which is another important thing. People say and do ableist things because they think nobody will notice. At the very least, we should make it clear that we are paying attention, we do notice, and it’s not okay.

Best of all, “REALLY!?!” isn’t so much outraged as baffled. Instead of saying, “You really wounded me”, it says, “Did you actually say that? Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

They’re the ones who should feel embarrassed, not us.

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Disability Or Disease?

This morning I was listening to a “Sawbones” podcast episode on Malaria. Co-host Justin mentioned people who “suffer from Malaria,” and two things instantly went through my mind.

First, I thought, “Don’t say ‘suffer’!” Then I thought, “No, wait, Malaria is a disease, an illness, not a disability. ‘Suffer’ is the right word."

The difference between disease and disability one way of understanding the different ways people approach disability. People who subscribe more to the Medical Model … who focus on treatment, rehabilitation, and finding a cure … think of disability much as we think of Cancer, Leukemia, or Malaria. Most disabilities aren't like that, though. They are social identities, imposed from the outside, and they are more or less permanent conditions that are a part of us.

There are gray area conditions that are a little bit disability, and a little bit disease. Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, and some kinds of Muscular Dystrophy are progressive and can be life-threatening. But they’re not infectious, and on a day to day basis act more like a broken hip than Influenza. See also: Alzheimer's Disease and Down Syndrome.


This helps explain why so many disabled people talk about “fighting,” “beating,” and “overcoming" their disabilities. If you view it as an invading force, it makes sense. And in general, people are more familiar with illness than with disability, so the language and mindset are right there for easy access.

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A Bit Of Word Wonkery

He is disabled, but ... (something positive).

He is disabled, and ... (something positive).

Both are ways that people say and write nice things about disabled people, but it makes a huge difference whether they use “but” or “and."

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Our "Disability Awareness"

Disability Awareness usually refers to making non-disabled people “aware of" disability and disabled people. I’ve been thinking that the label also nicely encapsulates the mindset that comes with actually having disabilities.

It’s the awarenesses we have to develop and maintain, in order to do the stuff we need to do and want to do every day.

It’s always knowing we have an extra layer of planning required for us to do, well, just about anything. Of course, everyone has to plan for some things, but we have to plan for everything, and our layers of planning tend to be thicker.

It’s always having to factor our disabilities into most experiences. Even being sick is more complicated. Sometimes it’s worse, sometimes not. But it’s always just a bit more of a pain.

And yes, it’s the low-grade awareness, that occasionally becomes a high-grade fever, that other people who appear to be just going about their business are aware of your disability. Which not to say they they necessarily understand it, or that they have a problem with it. That’s a whole other issue. The point is they’re aware of it, no matter what we do or think about ourselves.

Again, not necessarily a big deal, but that’s our disability awareness.

Newbie FAQs: "Disabled"

Why do you call yourself “disabled"? Isn’t that a negative term?

This is well covered territory. If you frequent disability blogs, everyone has at least one and probably more posts about disability terminology, including me. Since this FAQ thing is meant for beginners to Disability Culture, I will try to be brief and keep the explanation simple. I will also try to emphasize my own, personal reasons for preferring “disabled”.

I prefer “disabled” because it is short, just “negative” enough to acknowledge that having disabilities isn’t a picnic, but has enough broad un-conflicted acceptance among actual disabled people that despite what the word seems to say, it really is just a convenient label now. Most of us don't hear it as an assessment of our potential as human beings.

The other reason I prefer "Disabled" is that the main alternatives are loathsome to me:

“Special needs” reminds me too much of Al Franken's Stewart Smalley skits on Saturday Night Live … “Isn’t that special?" It is also a term that is overwhelmingly championed by parents and professionals, and not by disabled people themselves.

“Differently-abled” goes too far in trying to assert that disability is no big deal. It is a big deal ... or at least it's a deal. It isn’t the biggest deal, but it has bigger implications than, say, hair color, artistic talent, or math aptitude.

“Challenged”, (physically or mentally), strikes me as too much of a conscious effort to turn disability into some sort of moral quality. It suggests that the barriers we face make us noble. Frankly, I'd rather try to get rid of the barriers than take a bow for facing them. Also, like “Differently-abled” and “Special needs”, it is a euphemism, an effort to make something good out of something really bad. It’s like saying “Number two” or “Bowel movement” instead of “Poop” or “Shit”. Disability ain’t always easy, but it’s not Shit.

“Handicapped” is just too old. To me, it’s the disability equivalent of calling a black person “colored”. It says more about the user than the people it refers to.

And now, a brief digression about “people first” language:

I used “person with a disability” for much longer than I have used “disabled person”. I still, personally, think it is a socially acceptable and appropriate term for people who have a certain kind of relationship with their disabilities. For some people, it really does make sense to think of their disability as something they have, rather than an integral part of who they are. However, I also think there are others who just don’t feel quite right separating their disabilities from themselves. My disability is woven into just about every aspect of my life. It doesn’t make sense for me to think of my disability as an isolated attribute … like a “thing” that I “have”. So, to me, both “disabled person” and “person with a disability” are fine, and I don’t have too much of an issue with people with disabilities who choose “person with a disability”.

I guess it’s hard to be brief about this. But the underlying principle is simple. Don’t try to run away from what disability is by coming up with fancy, euphemistic things to call it.

As always, I welcome comments!

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Just Stop It

I was just visiting a new adaptive product and services website and I noticed some interesting language and branding choices. The website is named “Ethos Disability”. The URL is ethosdisability.com. From context, too, it's clear that the site’s common denominator is disability.

Yet, in the About section and elsewhere on the site, the owners always refer instead to “additional needs” or “additional / changing needs”. I suppose this is yet another effort to solve the non-problem of how horrible the word “disability” is. At least the actual topic is identified elsewhere. Otherwise the site would be really offensively vague … a sort of nudge-wink non-acknowledgement of what we’re really talking about. Which, to me, puts a lot more negative connotation on disability than “disability”.

Just stop it. “Disability” and “disabled" are fine.

By the way, it Ethos Disability really does look like a promising new website.

Tiny Tim

There Once Was a Little Crippled Boy Whose Mother Found a Dog

Smart Ass Cripple - November 19, 2014

I'm sharing yet another Smart Ass Cripple post, mainly because "big time Tiny Tim shit" needs to become official terminology for the kind of thing it's referring to.

I wonder, would people who engage in actual "big time Tiny Time shit", un-ironically, be terribly offended reading Smart Ass Cripple?

More Thoughts On Ableism

Analysing the Characteristics of ‘Hate’: Disability Hate Crime - Part 1

Paul Dodenhoff, Disabled World - November 6, 2014

Analysing the Motivation of 'Hate': Disability Hate Crime - Part 2

Paul Dodenhoff, Disabled World - November 17, 2014

A lot of practical, everyday ableism seem to stem from beliefs about scarcity. Some people believe that everything is a competition, a zero-sum game where one person’s gain is always another person’s loss. That’s what you often hear when people do and say the most horrible things about disabled people, while trying to convince everyone, including themselves, that they are just being honest and realistic. It’s nothing personal, I like cripples just fine. It’s not their fault, but I have to look out for my own kid / family / neighborhood / job, etc.

On the other hand, there really are people who find disabled people just plain irritating, disturbing, disruptive, or distasteful. They really would prefer it if we were all in special programs somewhere, where they wouldn't have to see us or deal with us. Some of this is a sort of grumpy annoyance with anything that stands out ... a loud, restless child in a restaurant, or a customer in a big wheelchair taking up space in the grocery aisle. Sometimes, it comes from that very old part of our brain, down by the stem, where our fear of lizards and spiders resides.

Personally, I find the first type of ableism ... mostly defensive and transactional ... easier to deal with, and more common. The second, more instinctive ableism I find hard to believe, and becuse of that even harder to handle on the rare occasions when I do see it firsthand.

"Gaslighting"

Gaslighting - Wikipedia

Yesterday, I finally looked up the precise meaning of a term I’d heard dozens of times before, but never really understood. The term was “gaslighting”, as in, “to gaslight someone”. It describes a type of psychological abuse, and according to Wikipedia, it is named after a film that depicts the practice.

As I understand it, “gaslighting” is when one person deliberately makes another person question his or her own perceptions and sanity, by repeatedly telling the person he or she is crazy, stupid, or irrational, or by engineering situations so that they actually seem so bizarre to the person, that it reinforces the idea that they have lost their minds or can’t trust their own thoughts. Reading about it in exact terms, I realize that I have seen it happen to disabled people, though I don’t think it has ever happened to me personally, and I desperately hope that I’ve never done anything like it to anyone else.

I was prompted to look up “gaslighting” by a Tweet from Heather Ure, @heatherurehere, who frequently writes about how people with various forms of autism are often victimized in this way. If you stop and think a moment, it makes a terrible kind of sense that people who actually have cognitive impairments or differences, who have already internalized doubts about their own mental reliability, would be vulnerable to someone deliberately encouraging them to doubt themselves.

The main thing I wonder now is whether we should use the same term, “gaslighting”, for both deliberate and unconscious forms of this phenomenon. The effects are awful and corrosive either way, but I can imagine people doing this to others, not out of malice or desire to deceive, but maybe out of an over-active sense of responsibility to govern other peoples’ rationality and self-awareness.

I think we all need to be alert to this risk ... not just of being the victim, but of being the perpetrator. There is a difference between giving someone we perceive to be struggling a “reality check”, and destructively undermining their self-confidence. It’s even worse if the person really does have difficulty understanding things as they are. If it's hard to keep your head together, more self-doubt doesn't help, and reminding someone for the umpteenth time that there's something "wrong" with them isn't truth-telling. Usually, it's just thinly veiled cruelty.

Two Disability Cultures - Followup

Another reason why there are different disability cultures is a fundamental difference in how we see our disabilities.

Some of us see our disability as a disease. Others of us see it as something like an identity.

Put another way:

Some of us fight our disabilities like others fight cancer, or leukemia.

Others of us incorporate or add our disabilities to our personalities, like an ethnicity, or a subculture, like being a Hipster or a Geek.

This is almost the same thing as the Medical Model vs. the Social Model, but not quite. The Medical and Social Models of disability are attempts to define and locate the problems with disability. What I’m talking about his how disabled people live day to day with disabilities, and how they relate to them … as an enemy, or as part of our personalities.

Even though I usually approach disability as an integrated part of myself, I often have to deal with it as I would deal with a serious “normal people illness”. No matter how well I have integrated my disability into my life, and adapted to it, and no matter how well my community accepts and accommodates it, sometimes, it just plain hurts. Sometimes, it absolutely interferes with my plans, and there is nothing I can do about it. It’s times like these I do wish I could fix it … or at least shave off some of my disability’s sharper corners.

At the same time, it really does break my heart to see other disabled people treat their impairments like diseases. I don’t have a problem with organized efforts to improve treatment and, with some ethical reservations, prevention. But I hate to see what it does to disabled individuals, especially children and youth. Most disabilities are simply not aptly compared to diseases. They aren’t invaders. Most of them don’t kill you. And in most cases, you don’t “beat” disabilities, you adapt, which calls for a very different attitude and approach.

Maybe this isn’t such a big deal. Maybe the language of fighting disease is just more familiar to people, so it’s a handy metaphor misapplied to disability for want of an alternative. When people with disabilities, and their supporters, talk about “overcoming” or “beating” their disabilities, maybe they really mean adapting, succeeding, or finding happiness. But I think language shapes our thinking, as well as the other way around.

That’s why I think it makes a difference how we talk about our disabilities. It’s why how we talk about our disabilities does tend to sort us into distinctly different disability cultures.

Lexicon: "Normal People Sick"

An informal way of differentiating between acute illness, and chronic illness or disability. As in, “This isn't the usual fatigue, I'm normal people sick!” Short-term illness that anyone can experience, not illness that is chronic or a side effect of a long-term condition or disability. The term also helps to underscore the idea that disability is not the same thing as illness or sickness. One can be disabled and healthy, or disabled and temporarily sick. A paraplegic (disabled) can, for a short period of time, have the flu (normal people sick). It can be especially helpful and clarifying for people with chronic pain or chronic illness, by identifying symptoms that can be readily cured or relieved, (like appendicitis or a cold), as opposed to symptoms that are chronic, incurable, or that can at best be managed, (like asthma, or joint pain from arthritis) ... a.k.a. “Regular People Sick”.

Comments? Clarifications? Corrections? Click below and have at it!