Disability Pride Month

Did you know that the month of July is Disability Pride Month? If you didn’t, I will be very insulted.

…

Lol, just kidding. It’s not like we have a parade, or companies changing their logos to showcase our flag (yeah, we have a flag too!). It’s not like disabled people get pushed to the forefront of campaigns for a while, or their achievements get highlighted more than usual. It’s not like anyone who is not disabled cares, basically. I mean, I didn’t even know we had a disability pride month until I saw disability activists mention it on Twitter. So why would I expect anyone else to know about it?

The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed in July 1990 by President Bush. In 2015, for the ADA’s 25^th anniversary, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio declared the whole month of July to be Disability Pride Month. So it is by no means an official or international celebration, but activists around the world grabbed it and are running (or rolling) with it. Why shouldn’t we be allowed to celebrate who we are for a while too?

What does Pride mean to me, in the context of my disability? Let’s look at what the Antidote dictionary says about pride, shall we?

Words for Someone Newly Diagnosed

Today, another question from the September Photo Challenge which, let’s face it, we all knew I wasn’t going to finish in any reasonable time. But this question I found interesting, and had an answer for all ready, before procrastinating for months and never writing it.

So, what would I say to someone newly diagnosed (with any disability, not just ataxia)?

Surround yourself with other disabled people.

Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

Unless disability and animal justice are incorporated into our other movements for liberation, ableism and anthropocentrism will be left unchallenged, available for use by systems of domination and oppression.

Sunaura Taylor is an American painter, writer and activist, both in the fields of disability and of animal rights. She was born with arthrogryposis, a disability that affects her articulations (and doesn’t keep her from being a painter, writer and activist, quite the contrary!)

In this book, she shows us readers the parallels between speciesism and ableism, the similarities to be found between humans who consider animals to be worthless and able-bodied people who consider disabled people the same way. She argues that the two movements, animal liberation and disability rights, are intrinsically connected and have to move forward together. One cannot ignore the other to make its own advances, and vice versa.

While I am also an animal lover (to a lesser extent than her though—for one thing, I’m not a vegan) as well as disabled, I was not entirely sold on the idea that the two movements are, in the way she describes it, one and the same. However, I did enjoy the book (although it was difficult to read at times, as someone who does not enjoy seeing or reading about animal suffering) and learned many interesting things. Would I recommend it to others? If you’re interested in the topics, go ahead, but I won’t say it’s an essential read.

The Power of Words

I am an avid reader and a prolific writer of (fan)fiction, a professional translator and an enthusiastic editor. I am fluent in two languages, and working on learning three others. I guess you could say, then, that I like words, their meanings and their histories. I understand that a single word can have different meanings depending on its context, and that this meaning can change through time.

The words to speak of the disabled community are no exception to this rule. There were times where calling someone a cripple, a retard or a moron was completely acceptable. Today, not so much.

I have also seen, however, people pushing for the abolition of words such as idiot, deaf or dumb, calling them ableist slurs, and while I see where this classification comes from, I do not agree with it. The definitions of words evolve, as I said above, and, in my opinion, the ableist definitions are old and have been replaced by new meanings through common mainstream use, making those words, used in most contexts, quite innocuous.

Note: As I say, this article is only my personal opinion! Just because I think some words are harmless does not mean you need to think so too. In fact, knowing that these words bother some people, I try not to use them in public.

A Short Glossary of Disability

When I started working for a tour operator, I had a whole new lingo to learn, that of travel, tourism and airplanes. Each one of my areas of study – biology, translation and publishing – came with a vocabulary I had to master. For each of my interests, I have a set of words to get to know.

And the same goes for when I joined the online disabled community, there were lots of terms that were new to me that I had to learn to be able to join conversations without sounding like a total newbie. Some of them I now use a lot, and you’ll probably come across them on this blog, if you haven’t already, so I thought I’d write up a quick glossary of all these new terms!