Language. And Its Impact.

In a post Yes, It Is Offensive to the Target Group people speak out about terms like retarded, crazy, lame and others.

I have to admit that I originally wasn’t ready to purge lame from my vocabulary as I saw it as a temporal kind of disability that wasn’t necessarily a reflection simply on the human body. But just as “gay” became synomous with “stupid” or “lame” in the late 80s, it should be clear that if “gay” = “lame” then neither term is acceptable. It is a primarily physical term that has morphed its use so that now anything can be considered “lame” without reference to the body.

How about “stupid”? Should that be avoided as well?

A New Format and Blog Title: Mental Illness in the Offing

Meeting face-to-face has turned out to be incredibly difficult, so I am going to continue on disability topics, but I’m warning you now that I’ll be focusing pretty heavily on mental disability, particularly mental illness. I’ll review articles, link to interesting discussions, and, of course take suggestions, but for now this journal is going to reflect my personal experiences navigating the world with a disorder that can be frustrating, uplifting, paralyzing, inspiring, and submersible (even though it still bubbles up sometimes) with medication.