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There’s a strong tendency to assume that disability-related issues are somehow a separate thing, as though there’s a Disability Silo and things like reproductive justice, racism, heterosexism, anti-immigration, transphobia, classism, and misogyny, etc, don’t actually enter into that silo. As though no one with a disability is interested in reading about these topics, or is affected by them in any way, or is an activist on the topic, or wants to be more of one.
When someone writes something like ‘Wow, those anti-immigrant people are r#tarded idiots!’ [I made this example up] or giggles about seeing Dick Cheney ‘wheelchair bound’ because ‘it couldn’t happen to a more deserving person!’ [I did not make this example up], I bring up the ableism, and my activity in the disability rights movement, as a way of reminding them that we’re here. We’re reading. We’re participating. And it’s more than a little-bit alienating to see social justice bloggers using our experiences and oppressions as their go-to for ‘insulting people we don’t agree with’.
” —Anna, Ableist Word Profile: Why I Write About Ableist Language (FWD/Forward)
