Change Is A Sound

In reading a post on Comics Bulletin today, I stumbled across something that reminded me of a subject percolating pretty far back in the recesses of my dusty cerebral cortex. Yeah, it’s not the sort of place to let a pot of coffee sit - it could start a fire and what not, and it’s dangerous, but perhaps something lighting a fire in my brain isn’t a terrible thing.

At any rate, Kyrax2, the Batgirl of San Diego, wrote a piece about sexuality, disability and the public’s perception of both.

It seems like I’ve talked more lately about disabilities and being disabled than I have in a very long time; the subject keeps popping up and apparently this morning is no different.

And I need to preface these comments by noting that this is my own musing and my own thoughts and that I am in no way criticizing Kyrax2 for her thoughtful column.

My problem is with the PWD acronym.

PWD is an acronym for People With Disabilities. It’s a shorthand for an idea which emphasizes humanity first and disability second, instead of using a term like disabled people, which emphasizes the condition and not the person.

There’s a reason for this, and the Whorfian hypothesis (which I spent a lot of time studying back when I was aiming for a minor in linguistics) sums it up nicely. Briefly summarized, the language people use shapes how they see the world. Linguists have supported and tried to discredit this idea, but even now, it appears that some form of the Whorfian hypothesis is still true to some degree.

Viewed through the Whorfian hypothesis, the term disabled people emphasizes the disability since it’s the first concept in the phrase. People with disabilities emphasizes humanity since that is the first concept in the phrase.

There’s a brief history of the Whorfian hypothesis and the idea of people-first language, but there’s a virtually endless amount of reading you can do on the subject.

I spent a long time doing communications of one sort of another. I did journalism. I did advertising. I did marketing. I did corporate communications and all sorts of things in between and beyond. I started writing professionally - meaning I was getting paid for it - before I started high school.

My frustration with the PWD acronym and the idea it represents is that it’s terribly awkward wording. I am not a person with a disability. That’s a lot of words and awkward phrasing to describe a very simple concept - I’m disabled. I use a cane. I don’t get around well.

I may be disabled, but goddammit, I will not be pandered to by some linguistically prescriptive asshats who think that calling me a person with a disability somehow humanizes me in some way, because that implies that I am somehow NOT HUMAN RIGHT NOW.

William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White gave us “The Elements Of Style,” a fantastic book which leads to exceptionally clear communication from people who have read and apply it (remember: theory minus practice or application equals bullshit). Although I can’t remember the exact wording at the moment, one of the most useful rules in Strunk and White’s guide was either “Omit needless words” or “Omit unnecessary words.” I forget which was in the middle, and I can’t find my copy at the moment, but the concept is the same. Use as few words as possible to convey the idea.

Paul Fussell later wrote a book called “Bad,” a brilliant collection of brief essays which assaulted culture for dozens of bad ideas. Fussell’s definition of bad language did not include words like fuck or shit, because - as he put it - they didn’t try to deceive people by using big words and bad phrasing to make something seem more significant than it is.

Strunk and White would likely object to the PWD idea because it’s wordy and awkward. Fussell would likely object to it because - even as the idea behind it is to emphasize a person’s humanity - it effectively conceals a truth.

If you read the criticism section of Wikipedia’s People-First Language entry, you’ll see that others have the same or similar concerns. That section quotes the U.S. National Federation Of The Blind as saying “it is overly defensive, implies shame instead of true equality, and portrays the blind as touchy and belligerent” in rejecting people-first language.

And yet I know that the people who use such terms mean well; they’re obviously trying to be respectful. It’s just that such respect all too often feels worse than rudeness. It feels like, as John Steinbeck once wrote (in “Travels With Charley,” I think), “everyone was protecting me and it was horrible.”

That level of sensitivity - to me - is more offensive than adults staring or asking questions or making assumptions about me or anything else (kids always get a pass; they’re kids and if a kid asking me about my cane helps them be less afraid or worried or more understanding of differences, I’ll happily spend 10 or 15 minutes talking with them as long as their parents don’t mind). It doesn’t matter that people mean well; good intentions don’t always result in good outcomes.

What matters here is that I’m a self-identified old-ass cripple. I call myself that. I own it. I use that language and say such things to strip these words of any power they may have. I’m not reclaiming them. I’m eviscerating them. I’m cutting their throats and letting them bleed out onto the slaughterhouse floor.

My friends - and they know who they are - can say any damn thing they want about my conditions. They’ve earned that right by being my friend, and a lot of them have driven me to doctors, hospitals, other cities for examinations and so on. If they want to call me a cranky old cripple, they’ve earned that right and they’d be telling the truth. I have a lot of gray hair and I’ve earned every last one of them.

Anyone else calling me that will find out exactly how cranky I am. To people who aren’t my friends, I’m a disabled person. And calling me a person with a disability and couching my conditions in such half-assed awkward and deceptive language will REALLY piss me off.