12:18pm March 17, 2014

There was a conversation going on about the word able-bodied.

Note that I’m not telling anyone else how to think about this, and I don’t really care what word you use or don’t use.  To me it’s more important what you mean.

I’ve heard some disabled people people argue that even cognitive and psychiatric disabilities are taking place in the brain, so they’re physical, so it’s okay to say people with these disabilities are not able-bodied.

I’ve sometimes used the term able-minded for people without cognitive disabilities.

I tend to have a hard time changing the words I use, so even when I’m uncomfortable using able-bodied to mean nondisabled, I do sometimes use it.

I don’t know, I guess I’m kind of ambivalent.  And to me it matters what the person means.

Like…

Three different disabled people will be saying the word ‘able-bodied’ to mean 'nondisabled’.

One of them uses it because to them, even cognitive impairments are physical at root.  That’s fine with me.

One of them uses it and means the same thing as nondisabled, they just aren’t able to pull out all the 'right’ words all the time.  That’s fine with me.

One of them uses it because they’re really not thinking much about cognitive disability when they think of disability.  Like they just see disability as meaning physical disability only.  And that’s not fine with me.  (It also wouldn’t be fine with me if they started using all the right words but retained that bias.  Again, what’s behind stuff is more important to me than the stuff itself.)

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