Observations From Below: Call Me Bryan

What do the words idiot, moron and imbecile have in common other than their use as minor insults? Most people don’t realize that these words began as medical terms to refer to people that we would refer to today as having intellectual disabilities. They were used to refer to various levels of IQ. The word idiot was used to refer to the most severe intellectually impaired, followed by imbecile and then moron, in the early 19th century. Later, these three groups were referred to as “feebleminded.” I’m grateful not to have been born back then. I wonder which category I would have been placed in. I have a high IQ, but it can be masked by my speech disability.

The reason I bring these earlier examples is to begin a column on the language around disability. Like African Americans embrace and or reject the “n” word, people with disabilities are accused of having a double standard around the word “crippled,” which is often shortened to the slang word “crip.” For example, as a person with a disability, I can refer to myself as a cripple, but if someone who doesn’t have a disability uses cripple, that would be offensive. I stopped using cripple to avoid the double standard. Some advocates embrace the word because, in their opinion, they are reclaiming a word that was once negative and embracing their disability as a positive part of themselves. I find myself in agreement with this group. Many times, in fact, I have played with the idea of calling this column “Tales from the Crip” or “The Gleeful Gimp.” The only reason I didn’t was because I want the freedom to write about non-disability and I don’t want to unnecessarily offend anyone.

The most politically correct terminology today, in most of the disability community, is called person first language, which came out of the Person First Movement. The Person First Movement, led by those with intellectual disabilities, urged society to recognize them as people first and stop referring to them as retards. Person first language was adopted by most advocates in the disability rights movement following their example. The strength of this approach is that it emphasizes the focus on the individual and not on his or her disability. For example, if I were to describe myself in person first language, I would say, “Byran, a young man with Cerebral Palsy” rather than, “Cerebral Palsy victim, Bryan.” Another important brief example is to use the phrase “wheelchair user” instead of “wheelchair-bound.” I am not bound to anything, nor do I suffer from.

There is a NC state law, 2009-264, that says that every law must be written in person first language, but most media outlets don’t follow the example that our government set. I wish more media outlets would catch up with the language and more importantly, the philosophy behind it. A quick search for “handicap” on the WXII website yielded seven results, including, “Questions in Death of Handicap Man” and WXII is not alone in their backward language. WFMY yielded similar results with “NC Teacher Charged With Assault Of Autistic Boys.” Fox 8 lists “Mom: Airline humiliated family over disabled 3-year-old daughter’s seat.”

I acknowledge that changing language takes a long time and accept that people will struggle with it. We all have a lot of work to do. Think of all the columns I can write with words like: blind, crazy, crank, cripple, cretin, daft, deaf, dumb, deformed, derp, differently abled, disabled, dumb, epileptic, feeble, fit, freak, gimp, handicap, hare lip, hysterical, incapacitated, invalid, lame, looney, lunatic, mad, maniac, mentally deficient, mental, midget, mongol, moron, nuts, patient, psychotic, psycho, retarded, schizo, simpleton, slow, spastic, spaz, special, stupid, sperg, sufferer, tard, victim and whacko. You get the idea.

To summarize. The best way to address people is by their name. Call me Bryan. That’s how I roll.