Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones: Why What You Call Disabled People Matters
CW: ableist terminology, one reclaimed homophobic slur
I’m going to start with three disclaimers. One: this piece is not calling anyone on the carpet specifically. These terms are incredibly common, because we live in an ableist society. If you have used any of the terms I bring up, consider this a gentle nudge to inform you and shift your language, not a scolding. Two: As I said above, we live in an ableist society. Like the fight against climate change, one person changing the way they handle their garbage is not going to singlehandedly solve the systemic problem. But it helps.
Three, and this is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS to everyone except the three people who always come out of the woodwork to fingerwag at me any time I talk about language: disabled people are not a monolith. There is, out there, at least one person who prefers to be called handicapped, or lame (which boggles my mind, but hey), or some weird euphemistic abomination. When speaking to an individual, you should always respect what that individual wants to be called.
I’m talking about when you’re talking to your coworkers, or writing SOPs, or teaching your kids — speaking about a group of people whose preferences you don’t or can’t know. It is physically impossible to poll the 26% of the world’s population (and rising, thanks to COVID) who are disabled to find out what each would like to be called.
If you’re disabled and reading this, it is also important to recognize that your personal preferences do not necessarily apply to the wider group of people to whom you belong. Consider, for instance, my gay friend who tells everyone to call him a f*g. That word is hateful to most (as evidenced by the fact that I did not type it out in full), used as an in-group by some, and for a vanishingly small number of people, the preferred term. My friend understands full well that he is never going to get that used in demography, and that some people will be rubbed very much the wrong way.
For the purposes of this piece, I will be drawing on my experience as a disability justice advocate and the National Center on Disability and Journalism’s Disability Language Style Guide. The Style Guide’s purpose is not a prescriptive “this is how to never offend anyone ever again”, but a look at why people do and don’t prefer certain terms and a general best practices guide for people looking to speak about disabled people without speaking over us.
Okay. Very long disclaimer over.
So without further ado, some types of language people use on disabled people, why it doesn’t help the way they think it might, and what the net effect is overall.
Euphemism
This is by far the most common form of ableist language. It may not be intentional! In fact, I find that many times, it’s perpetrated by people who want to find some sort of “kinder” way to refer to disabled people. Before we continue, I want to make it abundantly clear: disabled/disability is not a bad word. In fact, by and large, it is the term preferred by the community. It is neutral. And for some reason, people always want to shine it up and spin it positively. Why is that?
(It’s ableism.)
The assumption that disability is a bad thing rather than a descriptor is flat out ableism. The attempt to gussy it up suggests that its original form is somehow offensive. It is not. And far from being beneficial, the act of dressing it up serves ableism very well.
Let’s look at one that’s been cropping up a lot lately: differently abled. Not only is it inaccurate — to my knowledge, disabled people do not receive the ability to bend spoons with our minds or shapeshift or use telekinesis — it sets up the term abled as default. It suggests that there is a prescribed form of existence — the nondisabled person — and that we are deviating from that. If that sounds familiar, check out the dictionary definition of eugenics (which is in of itself ableist; thanks, MW).
There are entire comic book sagas about whether “mutants” are the next step of evolution, unacceptable deviants, or just a natural part of existence. It’s probably not a shock that X-Men’s themes hover around eugenics, and not a shock that queer folks and disabled folks heavily identify with the outcast characters. But disabilities are not in of themselves superpowers. Although some may have unsung benefits — neurodivergence and creativity go hand in hand, for instance — the superhero framing just sets up the idea that there is a normal and an abnormal, when the truth is this: human existence is a spectrum. All disability means is that we exist along one end of the spectrum. That is not inherently negative; it just is.
That is just one example of euphemism, and one way that that one is harmful. Euphemism in general posterizes that spectrum, sets up an other and makes sure that we are on the negative side of that divide by sheer nature of considering our existence such a bad thing we can’t even talk about it directly. Other examples include handicapable, (dis)abled or dis/abled, special needs (more later).
Person First/Identity First
This gets its own section. You have likely come across someone, very likely someone who is not disabled, who insists that we “focus on the person, not the disability,” that the construction should be “person with a disability”. This is an example of person first language versus identity first — “disabled person.” There are definitely people within the community who prefer this — enough that the DLSG above does not specify which to use and instead suggests that an author defer to the person or community about whom they’re writing.
However, my experience is this: I can’t be separated from my disabilities. I can’t stick my autism in a hatbox and put it on a shelf, and I don’t leave my spinal injury at the door. As much as I wish I could mail my long COVID to a COVID denier, it’s not detachable. So when people rush to tell me my disabilities don’t define me, I retch a bit internally, because my disabilities are an inextricable part of me. I have been autistic my whole life — it’s woven throughout my personality, and I like it that way. My spinal injury came along later in my life, but it had an enormous impact on the way I view the world. So I am a proud disabled person, not a person hefting around a disability in a suitcase. And I am far from the only person who feels this way. At least in my area, the community largely agrees: disabled person is our preferred method of address.
Once again, you should always defer to what the person you’re speaking to or about prefers, and note that that can change in different company. If that seems complicated to you, I’ll offer the example my mother came to understand for herself. Her name is legally Susan, but no one calls her that. To the world at large, she is Sue. My father and her immediate family call her Susie. Her boss calling her Susie in college made her want to fling inventory at him. It’s about consent and respect. If I’m chatting with disabled colleagues about “the crip tax”, for example, that does not mean it is acceptable for a nondisabled person to address my community as crips (more on that below as well).
I should point out that the people who are quick to tell me that disability doesn’t have a role in my personality are not disabled themselves. I would encourage anyone whose first response is to assure me that they don’t even think about my disability at all to consider why they think that’s a good thing.
Outdated Terminology
This one gets tricky. Language shifts over time. What was once not only acceptable but polite becomes outmoded and hurtful, and what was once considered rude becomes preferred at times. I’ll point again at one of my other communities — the LGBTQ+ community. Queer was once a widely derogatory term, and when flung from certain lips, is very much still. I and a lot of other Millennial and Gen Z folks prefer it as a matter of course because of its utility as an umbrella term (the way disabled covers a wide variety of people).
That said, there are two examples that can absolutely be jettisoned when speaking of the community at large: handicapped and special needs. Handicapped was absolutely the term for many years, but over time the disability community has found the association with sport, particularly horse racing, offensive. The -ed ending is also frustrating — it implies that something has been done to us to make us less effective as livestock.
But what about parking and bathrooms and stuff? Somebody always asks, because yes, the terminology around these things often still uses handicapped. When you can, replace the term with accessible. It’s a better descriptor anyway (what makes the parking effective for disabled people? Proximity and curb cuts that make a building accessible for us). It’s yet to really catch on, unfortunately, but you can be part of the linguistic shift!
Nixing special needs always gets somebody fed up, usually a parent or caregiver of someone with a disability. Here’s the thing. Our needs aren’t special. We need food, water, shelter, clean air, access, healthcare, and on occasion, like everyone, assistance. The order of magnitude of that assistance is different from person to person — and indeed, over the course of someone’s lifetime! It’s become very in-vogue for disability justice advocates to point out that most people will experience some form of disability over the course of their lives and that if you are currently nondisabled, considering yourself predisabled may help you picture what we want in terms of dignity and access.
For me personally, I would hope that people can use their imaginations to relate to disabled people instead of conjuring visions of misery or piles of unsurmountable challenges. Please note that this is not incompatible with what I expressed above — I’m not asking you to say “I don’t see disability”. It’s actually the opposite. I’m asking you to take our disabilities into account as part of our humanity, part of our basic needs, part of who we are as whole people.
On the R Word and Other Eugenicist Language
This is an outdated term that yes, used to be applied medically. In the old days (not that long ago), it was expected that if you had a disabled kid, they would be institutionalized or kept at home, hidden away from the public. Attitudes toward disabled people verged typically on disgust and horror. If you don’t believe me, I invite you to dive into the world of Ugly Laws. There is a reason FDR was not frequently pictured with his wheelchair.
Institutions were horrid, squalid places, often understaffed, where people with disabilities were experimented on without permission, exposed to communicable diseases, left untreated for physical ailments, kept without clothes, punished physically. The most famous example of this was Willowbrook, which Geraldo Rivera toured in 1972. Warning: video is extremely disturbing, but historically and unfortunately, currently relevant.
Why currently? Well, the Willowbrook expose absolutely changed the way the American public viewed institutions — but they were still considered necessary evils. Are. Willowbrook itself was not closed until the late eighties. People in crisis are still subject to psychiatric holds in which some of their rights are suspended. Crises are still considered matters for untrained police officers. About half of deaths within police custody are disabled people, with all the intersections that entails. And state-run institutions still operate under substandard conditions despite the federally-granted right of disabled people to live in their community.
That is to say: the history of institutionalizing disability is not gone. And words like r*t*rd(ed), lame, moron, stupid, insane, imbecile, idiot, crazy, lunatic, psycho, etc, all hammer home and normalize several ideas: disability is wrong, bad, disgusting, something to be segregated or exterminated, a threat to “normal” people. It is a searingly painful reminder for us, and a reinforcement for society.
Why This All Matters
In Buck v Bell, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in support of forcibly sterilizing disabled people, stating, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” That decision was never overturned, meaning disabled people can still be subjected to this. Donald Trump is famous for mocking a disabled reporter, and has been cited as musing that disabled people “should just die”. JD Vance is buddies with Curtis Yarvin, a eugenicist who believes “nonproductive” people should be turned into biodiesel.
But lest you think I’m taking sides, please note that the Biden Administration’s COVID response has absolutely left my community abandoned. Head of that response is a eugenicist who wrote for the Atlantic that he hopes to be dead before 75, as elders tend to have disabilities and that’s no bueno for society and families. Some irony, then, that his boss is critically panned for being old and disabled.
A little ray of hope is VP candidate Tim Walz, who speaks lovingly about his disabled son, Gus. Of course, he uses the problematic superhero framing, but hey, better than “dump him off a cliff, he’s useless”. But when Gus displayed profound emotion at the DNC last night, pundits lunged. The responses absolutely showed that we are not anywhere near societal acceptance.
Nobody knows that better than disabled people. We have a whole Day of Mourning to memorialize victims of filicide — instances of murder in which a family member decided their disabled victim was better off dead, or that they the caregiver would be, as Trump suggests. Spend some time in the entries and you’ll see a heinous amount of sympathy for the murderers in the news articles, and not much for the victims.
Every time I speak about language around disability, someone comes out of the weeds to scoff and tell me that “differently abled” isn’t a slur, that it’s not harming people. But you know what is? A society that accepts that disability is foreign, different, other, ugly, something that requires undue resources, a burden. And language absolutely reinforces that.
We are not going to solve eugenics and filicide and bullying and ableism by changing our language. But what we can do, if individuals make a commitment to respecting disabled folks as people worthy of dignity, worthy of naming and speaking for ourselves, is put a dent in the idea of disability as inhuman. We can stop the infantilizing use of euphemism, stop avoiding looking directly at disability the way we avoid staring into the sun. We can stop viewing it as a tragedy and start treating it like the fact of life that it it is.
And that responsibility lies with all of us.