I thought Asperger’s Syndrome disappeared with the DSM-V, and that everyone (who is autistic/has autism, whatever) is merely “on the spectrum.” Is this correct? Should we all banish the word “Asperger’s” from our vocabs? What is the correct way to speak of people who have been diagnosed with an autistic disorder?
Right, but my point is, if it can be night-universally-agreed-upon that “cripple” is offensive, then it’s at least theoretically possible that “disabled person” might also be offensive. I was responding to the implication that there’s no point in even discussing whether or not words are offensive due to the fact that everyone has their own opinions.
I see what you’re saying, except that in both cases, if you use the “wrong” version, it still communicates the information just fine.
Q: Does Sally need any particular accomodations?"
A: Sally is a person with paraplegia, and therefore will need a wheelchair-accessible room
Q: What can you tell me about Sally?
A: Sally is a brilliant engineer and poet who loves the Chicago Cubs. She’s also a vegetarian, a Capricorn and a paraplegic
In fact, the parallel construction in the second answer makes it flow better than “a vegetarian, a Capricorn, and a person with paraplegia”.
Do you hear a difference between “a gay just asked me a question” and “a gay person just asked me a question”? Or “a black just knocked on my door” and “a black person just knocked on my door”? I know that I hear them as very different connotatively.
I suppose we’ll all have to change all those “Disabled Persons Only” parking signs.
Speaking from experience as the parent (and therefore advocate with the school system and other governmental entities) of a kid with Asperger’s: I still say Asperger’s most of the time. Even if it’s no longer an official term, it’s an easy one-word distinction between my son, who definitely has trouble with ADLs and social cues yet goes to mainstream schools, and someone further down the spectrum who may be nonverbal and require serious accommodations for his or her whole life.
The people I know who are in or around the Aspergian demographic have not banished the term at all.
Sure. But I do NOT hear much of a difference between “a gay person just asked me a question” and “a person who is gay just asked me a question”. Granted, if the question was absolutely unrelated to that person being gay, then it would be weird that I mentioned they were gay. But that would be true for either sentence.
In the frequent SDMB cliche where one person says “this stupid fat guy just cut me off in traffic” and someone else says “hey, why was it relevant that he was fat?”, I don’t think it’s particularly more or less gratuitous if you phrase it as “this stupid guy, who was fat, just cut me off in traffic”.
I’m still just not clear on why or when that verbal distinction would be useful. I’m not trying to be flip, here, but…
So I know a guy who is in a wheelchair. And we’re walking (and rolling) down a sidewalk. And I say to him “hey, Fred, I just read an interesting article about the new addition to the Americans with Disabilities act… I’m curious what you think of it, as a disabled person?”. Would that in some sense be inaccurate, but it would NOT be inaccurate if I said that at the precise moment that he was having to deal with some jerk having taken the only handicapped parking space?
Also, what’s the context in which people are saying or implying that disabled people are “broken and worthless”?
Okay. This is the quote I was responding to:
But as I showed with my examples, communicating the information just fine isn’t always all that is going on. For good or ill, some things just sound better or worse or more or less respectful to some segments of the population.
Here’s a real life example:
As I said in either this thread or the first one, I work mostly in the elder community. In my area, saying someone is “wheelchair bound” is pretty common. Someone who is now frail and requires a wheelchair where they used not to require one.
But in the disability community that we work with, “wheelchair bound” is not a preferred phrase. “Wheelchair user” is. Why? Because while the formerly-active senior citizen might view the wheelchair as what they are stuck with after a life of not having to use one, a person with a mobility disability might view the wheelchair as a tool that enables them to lead a more complete and fulfilling life. The senior citizen might feel trapped in the wheelchair while the person with the disability might feel liberated by it.
So, while “wheelchair bound” is perfectly acceptable in my field, we use “wheelchair user” because it doesn’t have that negative slant.
Not claiming to speak for the Deaf community, but IME many people in that community are happy (sometimes proud) to identify as Deaf. The term ‘hearing impaired’ is seen as negative. I think they would also mostly agree that that they are only ‘disabled’ in certain situations, such as when trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t sign. Even then, they don’t have a disability as much as a communication problem.
There is a difference between a ‘disabled person’ and a ‘person with a disability’. If you disable something, it doesn’t work any more. People with disabilities still function as people.
There’s almost never a consensus on words that’s going to please everyone. For instance the late Stella Young, disability activist, called herself a “crip”. So does Liz Carr. I wouldn’t recommend that to mainstream society though…
In the Autism community, I’ve found that the people most likely to get on your case that you MUST say “person with Autism” are parents of people with Autism, and the people most likely to say you MUST say “Autistic” are Autistic people themselves.
So I lean towards not using person-first language - and in any case, it’s always sounded to me like tiptoeing round a negative, and therefore slightly less accepting. To take an example from upthread, if people started saying “person with homosexuality”, I think the gay community would find that a bit weird and possibly insulting.
In any case, a combination of asking politely when a particular term is a big issue for you, responding politely to polite requests, and recognising that the people closest to the issue should get to set the tone, will cover 99% of cases pretty happily.
Both “wheelchair bound” and “wheelchair user” are problematic. The correct words are “person who is wheelchair mobile” (Bias-Free Language Guide claims the word ‘American’ is ‘problematic’)
I’ll go with the people I work with. Thanks, though. I’m sure you’re trying to be helpful.
I’m figting problematic words. It’s taking longer than I thought.
(a) The point is that like any traditionally marginalized group, their distinquishing characteristic has been used for derision. Similarly, why would a person prefer “African-American” over “black” or “colored”? Because like “handicapped” or “disabled” the focus is on their characteristic and often was used in a negative way.
(b) The only disabled community I am aware of is the deaf community. That is a whole thread in of itself.
(c) How offensive is “retarded” although it is the term used for people of a certain IQ? Like my answer for (a), the terms retarded, crippled and handicapped have a negative connotation. When something is almost non-functioning it is crippled like a ship or a hand in a game of cards. If you are put at a disadvantaged you are handicapped. Why do you want those words associated with you? In fact I know some in the special education community who consider calling a person with a developmental disorder “retarded” as equivalent as calling an African-American a nigger simply because of the connotation involved.
Personal note: I find it offensive when people refer to me as “special ed” when referring to my occupation. No I am a special ed teacher just like you are an English teacher or history teacher.
What I do not understand is why the change was made from HANDCAPPED to DISABLED. In ordinary speech disabled means totally helpless, and I’m sure this is not intended. Why take an ordinary word and try to give it a new and different meaning?
Also, why can’t I use italics or underline without {U}/{} etc.?
This is known as the “social model of disability”, which simply states that a disability originates in how society places barriers against certain people. The other major model, the so-called “medical model of disability”, defines disability by hypothesizing the existence of a “fully functional” human being and then defining any divergence from that as a “disability”.
Do you feel that your personal life experience is sufficient to represent the entirety of all people with disabilities?
Interesting enough, both models have validity.
So maybe there are times when one should clarify whether one is speaking of the social or medical form of disability.
You can never go wrong if you think before you speak and try to be decent. Political correctness may have a bad name but everyone is all up in arms about it if they personally get insulted. So expand that to other people. Don’t insult them and if they ask you to call them by something else, do it. Don’t intentionally be a dick, is what I’m saying. Some people don’t care how you refer to them, some do. Err on the side of not being a dick