大象传媒

I was thinking about this before I saw Nicola's run-down of Bad Language, but it fits in nicely. Esteemed blogger Wheelchair Dancer has found herself accused of being for using the acronym TAB (Temporarily Able Bodied) to refer to those of her fellow dancers who are not disabled. Now that Nicola has addressed the different ways in which disabled people are described, what about them others? Are you not disabled? What's that like? And how would you prefer to be referred to?

AB or Able-bodied people
I must say I strongly object to able-bodied simply because it is inaccurate. People who have non-physical impairments of all variety are too frequently excluded from discussions about disability and such a phrase compounds this. Many people also assume they can assess abled-bodiedness by appearance alone; harking on about people on disability benefits or using disabled parking etc., being perfectly able-bodied when really they mean, "This person isn't in a wheelchair and my imagination cannot stretch beyond that fact."

It wouldn't be so problematic if this word was only used to refer to people without physical impairments, but whilst it is used to still create a false dichotomy between disability and the ability to walk unaided, I prefer to avoid it completely.

Temporarily Abled Bodied (TAB), Temporarily Non-Disabled, Disabled-In-Waiting, Not Yet Disabled etc.
Penny at the Disabled Studies, Temple U. blog wrote a , which is well worth a read. Obviously I don't like it because I don't like the able-bodied bit, but the suggestion that received when she used this term was that the temporary status was a curse; the time will come when you're just like me. As far as I am concerned, one can only see this as a curse if one accepts that impairment is inevitably a cause for suffering.

Of course, acquiring an impairment is not inevitable for anyone, but many people believe it couldn't happen to them. Very few people progress far into old age without having some degree of restricted mobility and some deterioration in sight, hearing, short-term memory and sometimes cognition. Once again, one can see this as a tragedy or just another phase of life - a phase which one might even feel privileged to have made it to.

I know that prefers the term not yet disabled, which somehow makes disability sound less inevitable. I'm not yet rich; nothing is guaranteed. Perhaps this is preferable?

People without disabilities, People without a disability (Pw/oD)

This only makes sense if you think that disability is a problem a person has, the same as a medical label or functional impairment, as opposed to something that a person experiences within society. Personally, the only thing I have in common with other disabled people is experience; things which happen to us as opposed to any similarities in our medical records. So people without disabilities doesn't mean a lot to me.

Normals, Normies, Norms etc..
I like the use of these words when informally addressing prejudice. The whole nature of prejudice is that one person perceives themselves to be normal and whichever group they're mistreating to be abnormal. In order to have prejudice, they must consider their normality to be a good thing, so why not let them have the label they consider so precious?

But for our allies, it does make them sound rather boring. And once again, it's inaccurate; I know lots of people who aren't disabled who are really quite extraordinary. Arguably they have to try a little harder at it...

A not dissimilar word used in a formal context is neurotypical or NT used to refer to people who are not on the autistic spectrum in clinical, social and political discussions about autism, autistic people and the particular social barriers they face. This has lead to the parody website of or ISNT, which challenges the stereotype of people with autism not having a sense of humour (or indeed, a mean streak), and even provides , to see if you too might suffer from this tragic affliction (the website claims that it effects as many as 9625 people in every 10,000!).

Walkie Talkies or Walkie Talkie Types
This is kind of cool and can cover a massive range of impairments that effect mobility or communication in some way, even those that don't impair one in the specific tasks of walking and talking. Unfortunately, whilst I have heard it used very inclusively, it is subject to interpretation in a similar way to able-bodied. I did a quick Google to try to gage how commonplace this phrase was and found this essay; by Sarah Triana and Laura Obara. It demonstrates how a phrase like Walkie Talkie can be used by disabled people to exercise prejudice against other disabled people. Which is sad, because I kind of like the phrase.

Non-disabled people
Is a simple opposite to disabled people. Strictly speaking, it's a double negative, but merely abled is a bit meaningless. The same construction used in other contexts has sparked controversy; it was felt to be inappropriate to refer to people as being non-white when talking about ethnicity because this implied that white was the default or even superior, when only a small minority of the world's population are white. Disabled people are also a minority, but this phrase is only ever used in the limited context of talking about disability; in most conversations about society, non-disabled is assumed to be the default status and therefore not even mentioned.

It's a rather boring one, but it is my own personal preference. So what do you reckon?