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10:10pm February 29, 2012

An honest question regarding ableism

rantsquotesandtruth:

Have you ever heard that word off of Tumblr? I can honestly say that i never have unless someone’s referring to something which happened on Tumblr.

Yet on here it’s thrown around, misused and abused within an inch of life.

What’s up with that?

Manning out.

I believe I first heard it in a newspaper or magazine article in the early 1990s. A cursory search on ableism origins shows something that references a 1996 article saying it evolved out of civil rights movements in the sixties and seventies but doesn’t say precisely where it came from. I started hearing it regularly in the late nineties or early 2000s. I remember considerable discussion of ableism vs. ablism vs. disablism etc. That was around when I became more involved with disability rights so I’m sure it predates my involvement. Short answer: Heard it, used it, constantly, before tumblr even existed. But this isn’t the first time I’ve seen people on tumblr suspect a word or concept I’ve been hearing for ages may have originated on tumblr because they personally haven’t heard it elsewhere.