I identify very proudly as a disabled woman. I identify with the crip community. I didn't invent the word 'crip'. It's a political ideology I came to in my late teens and early 20s.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
People get all up in arms when I describe myself as a crip because what they hear is the word 'cripple,' and they hear a word you're not allowed to say anymore.
For me, disability is a physical experience, but it's also a cultural experience and a social experience, and for me, the word 'crip' is the one that best encapsulated all of that.
I use the term 'disabled people' quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.
I love it now that a large minority of people who are handicapped prefer to call themselves crippled. This is all part of the game, like queer theory.
My older brother was born, who was a cripple, then I was born, and my sister was born, the only girl. So I was between the only girl and the crippled guy. I was the middle guy.
For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire.
I don't think of myself as being disabled, or able-bodied.
For me, and for many other people with disabilities, our status as disabled people is one of which we are fiercely proud.
I hate the words 'handicapped' and 'disabled'. They imply that you are less than whole. I don't see myself that way at all.
For me, I never ever felt the ownership or any identity with any community of disabilities. I didn't grow up being told that I was a disabled child.