Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
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 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.
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 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.
From time to time, people pat me on the head. It happens on public transport, in the supermarket, in bars. It's a common enough occurrence that it very rarely takes me completely by surprise.
In days gone by, short-statured people were not only labelled as ugly, stupid and freakish, they were often owned by aristocrats and treated, at best, as entertainment and, at worst, as pets.
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.
As a wheelchair user, I am utterly obsessed with toilets, and all my friends know it. A simple invitation to the pub is consistently followed by, 'Do you know if they have an accessible toilet?'
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 dance as a political statement, because disabled bodies are inherently political, but I mostly dance for all the same reasons anyone else does: because it heals my spirit and fills me with joy.
The battle to find a workplace that's wheelchair accessible is a feat in itself, let alone an employer who's going to be cool about employing someone with a disability in a job you actually want to do.
Let me make this clear: my impairment is such that without a wheelchair, I can't do very much for myself. I can't get out of bed. I can't get myself to the toilet. I certainly can't get myself to work.
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.
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 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.
I am repeatedly asked in interviews exactly 'what's wrong' with me, and I always give them the same answer; I don't identify the name of my condition in an interview unless it's relevant to the context of the story.
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.
I don't generally talk about medical terms when I discuss my position as a disabled person. I take a social rather than medical approach to disability, and so long Latin names for congenital conditions are not relevant.
I, like many women, buy into patriarchal standards of beauty every day. I very rarely leave the house without make-up. I dye my hair. I wear clothes that I choose carefully for how they make me look to the outside world.
I really love filling out forms - quite fortuitous, really, given that as one of Australia's 4 million-ish disabled people, ticking boxes and recording my life for other people is what I've spent a fair chunk of my time doing.
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.
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.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that from puberty onwards, the female body is disgusting and unruly and must be tamed, trimmed and tinted to within an inch of its life before it can be allowed to roam freely in the public eye.
Many of us, particularly those of us with disabilities who have faced persistent discrimination throughout our lives, not least when trying to find employment in the first place, take enormous pride in our hard-fought jobs and careers.
Disability informs almost every part of my life. It's as important, if not more so, than my gender and sexuality. It's certainly a great deal more important to me than my religion or whether or not I caught a tram, ferry or bus to work.
In my own home, where I've been able to create an environment that works for me, I'm hardly disabled at all. I still have an impairment, and there are obviously some very restrictive things about that, but the impact of disability is less.
We often hear that people mean well: that so many just don't how to interact with people with disabilities. They're unsure of the 'right' reaction, so they default to condescension that makes them feel better in the face of their discomfort.
I have a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), which has affected my growth and bone strength. In short, people with the kind of OI I have generally experience hundreds of fractures in their lifetime and use wheelchairs for mobility.
In case I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I want to make something clear - 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.
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.
In Australia, a deaf person attending an interview must take their own interpreter at their own expense, or ask the employer to provide one. Believe me, nothing says 'I'm the best person for this job' quite like asking an employer to pay to interview you.
It is nothing short of baffling to me how a city like Melbourne, where I struggle to find accessible facilities on a very regular basis, could be considered the most livable city in the world. I suppose it all depends on what makes a city 'livable' for you.
I let go of the notion of wanting someone to ignore the way I look in order to find me attractive, because really, what kind of relationship would that be? One where someone's only attracted to you because they're ignoring a fundamental part of you? No thanks.
We’ve been sold this lie that disability makes you exceptional and it honestly doesn’t. … I want to live in a world where we don’t have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning.
The sentiment of those suggesting the Olympics and Paralympics be combined is no doubt well intentioned. But it also echoes the myth that disabled people want to be other than what we are - that we'd like nothing more than to be 'allowed in' with the able-bodied competitors.
Even those among us who are lucky enough to love our jobs would have to admit that at least part of the reason we work is to earn money. In between all this work, we like to eat out at restaurants, go on trips, buy nice things, not to mention pay rent and meet the cost of living.
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 quickly learned that asking if an interview space was wheelchair accessible was a bad idea; it gave a potential employer an immediate bad impression. It was either a black mark against my name, or a straight up discussion of why I wouldn't be able to work there because they had no wheelchair access.
We fill our lives with all sorts of things that make it easier for us to get along in the world: wheelchairs, crutches, grabber sticks, hearing aids, canes, guide dogs, modified vehicles, ramps, as well as other kinds of services and supports. Disability does not necessarily mean dependence on other people.