Disabled person or person with disability, autistic panellists answered a carer’s question

A carer in the audience at the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium put a direct question to the Melbourne panel on autism and disability. She had noticed that panellists described themselves as disabled people, and she wanted to know why, because in the lived experience settings she had worked in, people had told her they preferred to be called a person with disability.

She began by rejecting an idea that had been raised earlier in the session, the old saying that sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you. She said that was wrong, because “language is very, very powerful” and people construct meaning through it. Ableist language is all around us, she said, and gave a workplace example, the casual question of whether someone is deaf because they did not hear. It reinforces ideas about ability in a negative way, much as that phrases such as white lie and dark humour carry ideas about colour. She said she saw a person with disability rather than a disabled person, a human being whose identity might also involve gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, because identity is more complex than one aspect.