In America it’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities, but this is a good opportunity to talk about language around disability. Not all disabled communities use the people with (disability) format — for example, Blind & HoH, d/Deaf and Autistic communities.

Taking the autism example as that’s one I can speak to personally, there is a preference for “autistic” over “person with autism” because autism is quite literally how we process & experience life — there is no with, it’s core to our experience.

Most people are told that “person with a disability” is better language and more respectful than “disabled person”, but it’s complicated. There are no hard and fast rules with a community so large, but as ever take the lead from the disabled people themselves. Thank you

Also, “disabled” is not a bad word. Many people will refer to themselves as disabled. It is perfectly okay to talk about “disabled people” (and from a editorial point of view I think it just works better). Again there’s a personal choice element for describing a specific person.

And finally, I think an important aspect of allyship for disabled people is to suspend your judgement. You will never know the ins and outs of every persons experience and to be a good ally you should trust, defer and listen to the person or people you want to support.

Their experiences may surprise you or be something you might not have considered before, but if you feel that little buzz of judgement, sit with it. Remember our view of disability has been informed by mostly abled media your whole life, so we all have unpacking to do.

Talking about allyship might seem like a tangent, but language is an important component that many disabled people feel strongly about, as historically we’ve not been in control of how people have described us, or have had language weaponised against us.

This is also why I think it’s good to examine the language we use. So many words we use to describe other people in a negative connotation come from disability at some point. Moron, idiot, psycho, spaz, lunatic, the R-word. Take a second to read the words you write about someone.

That’s your brief missive from your local disabled author/editor. But as it’s December and everyone’s probably slacking off a bit anyway, why not take a few minutes to read about disability. I’m positive there will be great stuff about today, and I’ll RT what I can.

LOL I just realised I started this thread with “in America” about an International day. In my defence, I’ve got brain fog from a combined endo & hEDS flare so allow me this one glaring error, I promise the rest is ok.

also I promise I’m a good editor when I’m not having an endo flare, but if you enjoyed this thread or learned something, please consider picking up our book Stim! #IDPWD2020
https://twitter.com/littlehux/status/1271098644327006209