#blog-entry

On why you shouldn’t use that term

Word count: 245 words

There still are people that use the term Aspergers and aren't aware where it comes from. Especially for those individuals, I want to explain what the origin is.

But first, what is "Asperger's"? Aspergers is now part of the Autism spectrum. Generally, it was considered some sort of "mild autism". Basically "you are sorta autistic but you can function in our opinion so it's 'just' Aspergers". Where that division stems from and why it's highly problematic is something I'll mention later in this entry.

The name origin stems fron Hans Asperger, who was a Nazi doctor that did horrible experiments on and with autistic children. So we're off to a bad start.

The division into autism and asperger's stems from that time as well.

Essentially, it seperates into those that are still useful for the Nazis (those get labelled with "asperger's"), and those that are "truly disabled" and are to be killed (those labelled with Autism).

But even medically it isn't really accurate. The autism spectrum isn't a line and people are "more autistic" or "less autistic". It's more a chart of indicidual difficultis with different things. People got diagnosed with asperger's when someone from outside deemed them not needing of support.

So the overview looks like this:

- medically inaccurate

- named after a Nazi

- division to decide who gets killed during the holocaust

A text about why disability is the right term

Word count: 415 words

Many people try to avoid using the term disabled and instead come up with all sorts of interesting things. In this text I want to reflect why you should indeed say disabled and why the implications of some of these other things aren't great at all.

The first term I want to talk about is "differently abled". This implies that your worth is depending on what you can provide for society. You being unable to do so "normally" takes something from your worth, so you get called differently abled to show that you can indeed be useful and therefore are worth something. It also implies that you'd get something good with your disability, and that's just not true for most disabled people. The things you "get" are trainable, so everyone could achieve them.

Secondly, let's talk about "special needs". Special needs is an euphimism for disabled. Euphimisms are words supposed to soften the meaning of the original, considered "too harsh" word, or to avoid an unpleasant and offensive word. We for example say "pass away" instead of die or use "Special military mission" instead of Invasion to wash away the harsh reality. Using an euphemism for disabled implies that there is something negative, shameful or embarrasing to cover up, which there isn't.

The term next up is "handicapped". This word stems from old war veterans being considered unable to hold down a job so they had to go beg for money with their "cap in hand". It referred to beggars and people useless to society. And disabled people aren't useless. They're far from it. Additionally, putting handicapped in front of words like "parking spot" implies that there is something wrong with the parking spot. But it isn't. It's "accessible".

"Handicapable" is an even worse euphemistic description of disabled, once again highlighting how they have something making them useless so we have to underline that they totally aren't in our perception. Because if you were disabled, you'd be useless. So we don't want to call you that.

Word count: 327 words

Since we already talked about how you should say disabled yesterday, I now want to further talk about what to call disabled people/how to adress them.

I want to both discuss specific examples as well as the concept of person first language.

Things to not say include a few things, and this is by no means an exhaustive list.

- Don‘t say „the (name of group of people)“, like the disabled or the deaf. Rather say deaf people or disabled people.

- Saying „suffers from xyz“ isnt nice either. Just say has. Works just as well and doesn‘t paint something in a way.

- Don‘t use any of the slurs or slur-like words. You can just use the proper name for it.

- Also don‘t say dwarf or midget. Rather say person with dwarfism or little person.

- don‘t say someone is „confined to a wheelchair“. Just call them a wheelchair-user. For many people, using a wheelchair is a very freeing experience. It enables them to do things they otherwise couldn‘t. Painting this in a bad light can be seen as inconsiderate

These weren’t many, but maybe it helps you get a picture on how to think and reflect about the language you use.

Onto the second part. The concept of person first language. Putting the person first is supposed to underline how the disability is just an aspect of the person, and the person is so much more than that.

Examples are the previosly mentioned „person with dwarfism“, „person with cerebral palsy“ or „person with adhd“.

However, not all groups wish person first language to be used. A big part of the autistic community are an example for that. They say that being autistic is such an integral part of their being that it cannot be seperated from who they are as a person. So they often prefer saying „autistic“ or „autistic person“.