People with disabilities are simply part of diverse communities in the U.S.
— Stella Young
Disability simulation fails to capture the nuance and complexity of living in a disabled body. And it certainly fails to give a deep understanding of systemic discrimination and abuse faced by disabled people.
It's undeniable that what we are taught as a culture to believe about disability is at odds with traditional notions of masculinity.
Disability is often framed, in medical terms, as the ultimate disaster and certainly as a deficit.
It became very clear to me that Yooralla was not as interested in media coverage that explored issues faced by people with disability as it was in giving a pat on the back to journalists who maintained the status quo by giving readers the warm and fuzzies over their morning paper.
I used to think of myself in terms of who I'd be if I didn't have this pesky old disability.
The magnitude of discrimination and stigma faced by people with disability in Australia cannot be underestimated. People do not understand disability, and people fear what they don't understand.
I'm a full-time wheelchair user. And yet, given the right circumstances, I am able to work.
If everyone's looking at me, I might as well say something interesting.
I've got the best job in the world; I love it. I get to meet so many interesting people, and I get to make sure that other people with disabilities can tell their own stories as well.
I identify very proudly as a disabled woman. I identify with the crip community. I didn't invent the word 'crip'. It's a political ideology I came to in my late teens and early 20s.
I've lost count of the number of times that I've been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I'm brave or inspirational, and this was long before my work had any kind of public profile.
Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.
From my first days in Washington D.C., where I rolled a whole four downtown blocks without seeing a single shop, cafe, bar or restaurant I could not access, to the beautifully accessible buses in New York City, I was in heaven.
The mere suggestion that not speaking for a day can give you an appreciation of the social isolation that comes with the experience of disability, particularly those whose impairments prohibit them from communicating verbally, is insensitive at best.
Doctors are not fortune tellers, and neither am I. Having lived with disability since birth does not afford me immunity from illness.
People are uncomfortable about disability, and so interactions can become unintentionally uncomfortable.
Yooralla, like most disability service organisations, is full of good people who are passionate about the rights of people with disabilities.
Most disability charity hinges on that notion - that you need to send your money in quick before all these poor, pitiful people die. Peddling pity brings in the bucks, yo.
Believe me, people with disabilities are just as concerned about benefit fraud as anyone else. Money spent on those who are not in need is money that isn't being spent on vital services to support us in the community.
My parents didn't know what to do with me, so they just pretended I was normal, and that worked out quite well for me.
I once choked on a chip at a friend's birthday when I was seven and had to be sent home, as I'd broken my collarbone coughing.
For me, in some ways, my whole life is a bit performative and always has been - because I'm stared at and looked at everywhere I go.
I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilising symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death.
For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire.
The thing about living with any disability is that you adapt; you do what works for you.
From pink water bottles for breast cancer to dumping a bucket of ice water on your head for neuromuscular conditions, it seems we're bombarded by requests to be 'aware' of one thing or another.
Death is not treatment, even if it's medically facilitated.
Yooralla is a people pleaser with a very powerful PR machine.
When I was seven and watched an episode of 'Beyond 2000' that featured a floating armchair, I thought we'd definitely have one of those by 15, at the latest.
I tend not to think about living to some grand old age. Then again, I don't think about dying, either.
In many ways, I'm incredibly lucky to have been born with my impairment and that it's visible. It means my path has been predictable.
For me, disability is a physical experience, but it's also a cultural experience and a social experience, and for me, the word 'crip' is the one that best encapsulated all of that.
People get all up in arms when I describe myself as a crip because what they hear is the word 'cripple,' and they hear a word you're not allowed to say anymore.
We think we know what it's all about; we think that disability is a really simple thing, and we don't expect to see disabled people in our daily lives.
I use the term 'disabled people' quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.
I grew up in a very small country town in Victoria. I had a very normal, low-key kind of upbringing. I went to school, I hung out with my friends, I fought with my younger sisters. It was all very normal.
