Like many minority groups, people with disabilities have developed a dialog that is readily understood by our own community but may be misunderstood by society at large. For example, a person without a disability is a TAB (temporarily able-bodied), a term which implicitly recognizes the fragile divide of circumstance and\/or age that separates disability from so-called normalcy. Some of our terms are co-opted from those that society once freely used to describe us. “Cripple” is a good example. I use “cripple” frequently when talking about myself, i.e. “kiss my crippled ass” or “where’s the cripple parking?” or “Not this cripple!” I may use it around other people with disabilities who I know are down with that term. “Yo, cripple, ‘sup?” I never use it in polite conversation, particularly with TABs. If a TAB used that word with me, I’d most likely throttle them. I once had a nurse ask me during her orientation, “What’s it like being a cripple?” Needless to say, she didn’t last long. I know colleagues who will toss the term casually like a Frisbee around TABs in an effort to shock or provoke. I don’t entirely agree with that approach; I think it just confuses the poor things and it distracts them from whatever the rest of our message is. I suspect that I regard the word “cripple” and the rules for its usage in much the same way that many African-Americans regard the N-word. In fact, I see the potential for a true meshing of our cultures. I think “cripple” could be used quite effectively in rap lyrics. Maybe that’s where my calling lies. Ladies and gentlemen, MC Cripple and the Gimp Posse!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like many minority groups, people with disabilities have developed a dialog that is readily understood by our own community but may be misunderstood by society at large. For example, a person without a disability is a TAB (temporarily able-bodied), a term which implicitly recognizes the fragile divide of circumstance and\/or age that separates disability from […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-4R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}