Zoë Wundenberg | The language used to describe disabilities can be harmful

Now, for those of you who read this little space on the regular, you will recognise that my having a whinge is, perhaps, not surprising. I do seem to complain a bit. But I won't apologise for it, because my complaints aren't usually about something relating to me (or only me). So, please, indulge me here.

My beef is with language. Granted, as the daughter of a British English teacher - and as a writer, no less - this is likely unexpected. But I don't mean language in general. I mean very specific language.

Particular words even.

I'm talking about sensitivity-training-inducing word changes where facilitators explain to a group of people how, "we don't say 'disabled' anymore, we say 'differently abled'" kind of words.

Now, I can feel the hairs on the back of all of your necks stand up in unison upon reading that, but take a breath, I promise it will be OK if we talk about this.

As a disabled woman myself, I really do roll my eyes at people trying to tell me that I'm "just differently abled, dear." I know it usually comes from a place of kindness, or if not kindness, then perhaps sympathy, but the thing is, thinking about my osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease as "not disabling" but rather "differently abling" is, to be frank, ridiculous.

We live in a world where the assumption made by most shopfloor designers is that their customers have no need of mobility aids. Using disability parking spots (sorry, differently abled parking spots) when you aren't in a wheelchair or immediately demonstrate your disability (oops again, different ability) that warrants your use of it, usually incites someone to wave their arms at you and start yelling about how that parking spot isn't for you.

Worse, inclusivity looks like productivity-based pay rates where a disabled person giving the company the same time as their "abled" colleagues, receives pay that would make a sweatshop worker chuck in the towel. Living in a world where this is the experience of disability, reframing "disability" as "differently abled" seems, well, quite ableist, really.

Let me explain why.

It's OK to not be able to do things that others can.

I can't wander aimlessly around the shops on a Saturday morning (or any morning actually) without all but crippling myself in pain. That's not a "different ability". I cannot stand still and upright for more than a few seconds before pain creeps in. That's not a "different ability" either.

It's a disability. It's a challenge in my life I have to adapt to accommodate and have contingency plans for.

Please stop trying to shape my disability into a body-positive affirmation of ability. Changing how you describe my condition's effect on me doesn't allow me to do anything I couldn't do before.

What it does do, is erase the challenge people with disabilities face and squish our experiences into a box it doesn't fit in to make others feel better about it.

Having a disability should not be a thing of shame. Nor should it be stigmatised, or isolating. Why do we have to call it something different in order to accept it? Why do we have to turn it into something else, something that erases its very nature and with that erasure, our experience of it?

Something that somehow seems less different to "abled" people?

I can't play the violin, sing a note, work out logarithms or wolf-whistle either, and that isn't stigmatised - why? Because it has nothing to do with my spine? That seems absurd.

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Now, I realise there are people with disabilities who hate the term "disabled." In fact, this is a topic of some contention in these circles. And hey, if you prefer to be considered "differently abled" instead of "disabled," then I will of course respect that. It's something we need to talk about more out from under a blanket of fear where others worry they'll offend someone.

But for me, I am disabled. And while it sucks, it doesn't make me less awesome! Just call it what it is.

To do anything else erases my experience of it.

Afterall, if a rose by any other name, still smells sweet, then surely the reverse is true, too.