I work in the field of disability services, particularly working with disabled students in a college setting.

In that sentence, in some people’s eyes, I made one big error.  I listed “disability” before the person (“student”) and therefore, I’m placing the label before the person, when the person should come first.  According to some of my colleagues, I should be saying “a student with a disability.”  With this same logic, I should never say “the tall student” or “the black student” or any other number of signifiers we use as humans to label the world around us.  Humans label because it helps them figure out how to deal with people and situations.  Labels, in and of themselves, are not negative or positive.  They just are.  They are descriptions.

As in, “she’s fat,” or “she’s got brown hair.”

There are movements afoot all over the country, both by disabled persons and by the people who serve them, to eliminate the word “disabled” from our lists of labels.  Just as in previous times we removed the word “cripple,” “handicapped,” “lame,” “retarded,” “imbecile,” and “deaf-mute” from our lists of labels.  Those old labels became pejorative, negative, associated with the wrong ideas somehow, and needed to be eliminated.  We’ve eliminated other words used as labels over the years; words that labeled skin color or country of origin or sexual orientation.  Labels somehow become “non-politically-correct” at some point, so a new word has to be invented.

But words are just words.  Words mean what we want them to mean.  Coming up with new words to replace old words, with the hope that the new word will somehow be held positively, with rainbows and butterflies and tolerance and understanding, is disingenuous at best.  Changing the word does not change the purpose of the label, nor does it change the bigoted or misinformed or ignorant or arrogant assumptions of the person using the label.  In other words, it doesn’t matter what word is used.  What matters is how we change our perception of the word, and how we take ownership of the word.  It is about how we educate and inform and take on a word and its meaning as a label, and make it our own.

The LGBTQ population has done this with several of the word labels for them.  Instead of reacting negatively to the word “queer,” they’ve taken it on as their own, as a label that suits them just fine, and they don’t see it or perceive it as negative or pejorative.  Some people still use the word pejoratively, but since the person being labeled by the word doesn’t accept it as negative, it can no longer harm them.  That word is just a descriptor, a way to identify and label someone so that we know how to deal with the person or the situation we encounter.  The LGBTQ population has not pushed away the label that had become pejorative; they instead embraced the word.  They reclaimed it.  They actually never lost it.  Their reclaimed pride in the word as a label has changed its negative value into a positive value.

And I posit that reclaiming the word “disabled” can be the same.  There is no reason to allow the word to turn into a pejorative, a negative, a word that doesn’t fit the label it is intended to fit.  To say that the word is “bad” now is simply matter of semantics, unless the legion of disabled persons in this world want to turn it into something negative.  Why wouldn’t they instead want to reclaim the word; to make it mean what they want it to mean.  Take back that label, use it positively and refuse to believe or allow it to be used negatively.  A new word does not need to be invented or assigned.  The word that exists is just fine the way it is.  Own it.  Embrace it.  Do not fear it.

I did the same with the word “fat.”  Yes, plenty of people have, and can, try to use that word against me.  They can use it as a negative, as a pejorative.  They can use it to try to wound me, to cut me, to make me feel bad about myself.  But the truth is, it’s just a word.  It’s just a label.  It’s a descriptor.  It is nothing more and nothing less.  If the word no longer offends me because I choose not to be offended by it, then the pejorative loses its power.  It no longer has the right or ability to hurt me.

Changing the name of the label does not change the label.  Not allowing that word-label to have the power over us that others would like?  That is the only way to control how the label is used, and how it affects you. We don’t need new words to identify old labels.  We need to stop allowing words to make us feel bad.  We alone have control over how a word will be received by ourselves.  We, ourselves, have the power.  The word is just a word.  Nothing more.

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