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Just a word or two on word choices (because it's something I've been thinking about, these past few weeks, and that's what these journal thingies are for, right?):
There are those (many, most, nearly all, maybe I'm the odd one out...) who see words like "crippled" and "lame" to refer to people with physical (especially mobility-related) disabilities as unequivocally derogatory, like the N# word, or the R# word.
A year and a bit ago, when I started collecting folktales and other pre-modern literature featuring disabilities, I knew I was going to come across these two particular words a lot. And I had a decision to make: do I reproduce these words faithfully, as they appear in the original (or translations of the original)? Or should I bowlderize them, and replace the offending words with "Mobility impaired," "couldn't/can't walk," etc.
Now, as an English Major, and lover of the Humanities, I can't abide bowlderization. ...after all, the words are part of the history, and the history is part of the understanding, and understanding is crucial to finding justice.
So I made a conscious decision to keep those words in each story as I find them.
And after that, I found I was no longer offended by the words themselves, but only as they've ended up being used in the generations through which I've lived (yes, by now, I've lived through multiple generations -- I'm surprised by this, too).
Used as a simple descriptive word for human being who crawls more easily than s/he/ou walks upright, "crippled" (from the same root as "creep," and "crawl") is no more derogatory than "Wheelchair-" or "Crutch-User") --
Except this same word has been used extensively (or even mostly) to refer to things that aren't even human -- an example:
"The wide-spread power outage on the East Coast today crippled Internet trading, and the Stock Market fell seventy points."
So, then, the word, which once was used as a simple descriptor (even self-descriptor) in literature of the past, has become "Dehumanizing" because it's been used to describe every thing that's ever been broken. And people are not things, and people don't break (in the same way cars do).
So -- in light of that, I've decided to refer to myself as "crippled" and/or "lame," because, by their first meanings, that's what I am. I will, however, take a ten-mile word detour (if I have to) to avoid applying either of these words to any abstract thing (like the stock market, or Government) or inanimate object.
Does this make any sense?
There are those (many, most, nearly all, maybe I'm the odd one out...) who see words like "crippled" and "lame" to refer to people with physical (especially mobility-related) disabilities as unequivocally derogatory, like the N# word, or the R# word.
A year and a bit ago, when I started collecting folktales and other pre-modern literature featuring disabilities, I knew I was going to come across these two particular words a lot. And I had a decision to make: do I reproduce these words faithfully, as they appear in the original (or translations of the original)? Or should I bowlderize them, and replace the offending words with "Mobility impaired," "couldn't/can't walk," etc.
Now, as an English Major, and lover of the Humanities, I can't abide bowlderization. ...after all, the words are part of the history, and the history is part of the understanding, and understanding is crucial to finding justice.
So I made a conscious decision to keep those words in each story as I find them.
And after that, I found I was no longer offended by the words themselves, but only as they've ended up being used in the generations through which I've lived (yes, by now, I've lived through multiple generations -- I'm surprised by this, too).
Used as a simple descriptive word for human being who crawls more easily than s/he/ou walks upright, "crippled" (from the same root as "creep," and "crawl") is no more derogatory than "Wheelchair-" or "Crutch-User") --
Except this same word has been used extensively (or even mostly) to refer to things that aren't even human -- an example:
"The wide-spread power outage on the East Coast today crippled Internet trading, and the Stock Market fell seventy points."
So, then, the word, which once was used as a simple descriptor (even self-descriptor) in literature of the past, has become "Dehumanizing" because it's been used to describe every thing that's ever been broken. And people are not things, and people don't break (in the same way cars do).
So -- in light of that, I've decided to refer to myself as "crippled" and/or "lame," because, by their first meanings, that's what I am. I will, however, take a ten-mile word detour (if I have to) to avoid applying either of these words to any abstract thing (like the stock market, or Government) or inanimate object.
Does this make any sense?
