as small as a world and as large as alone

4:04am June 9, 2014

officialbisexual:

yeah but i’ve NEVER heard an actual disabled person request “person-first language” and of course if someone does then we need to respect that but from what i can tell this is just another example of so-called allies talking when they should be listening

I have heard disabled people request it.  It’s quite common in the developmental disability self-advocacy movement, and therefore also in parts of the autistic community that are more influenced by that movement than they are by the parts of the autistic community that are dominant on tumblr.  And there are also lots of disabled people who just prefer it.

My take on it is, I’ll do it when a disabled person says they prefer it, but not when nondisabled people think they can dictate to me how I talk.  Because nondisabled people doing that is just horrible and condescending and awful, and I’ve found that the nondisabled people most likely to criticize me for the way I use words, are the same ones least likely to treat me with respect in other areas.

But there are absolutely tons and tons of disabled people who prefer person first language and they are not all brainwashed or something and they did not all get the idea from nondisabled people.  (In fact, the reasons they give for preferring it are often totally different in many ways from the reasons that nondisabled people tell us we should use it for.)

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