I want to comment on the article written by Barbara Wheeler - Our Language and Our Attitudes - which I found very thought provoking. I am a music therapist with a disability which severely affects my mobility. I agree that language can be very important in conveying attitudes towards disability. However I have often felt that people can become very preoccupied with language and terminology and that focusing on a set of rules can sometimes prevent people from gaining a true insight and understanding of disability and its effect on an individual.
What Barbara describes in the article goes further than looking at language. Through her personal experience of using crutches, she was able to gain an insight into the world of disability and gain a new perspective. Her insights into parking problems really struck a chord with me (if you'll excuse the music therapy pun!). In the last few years, legislation relating to disability discrimination has come in to force but I don't feel that it has helped further understanding about disability at all. Now society has a set of rules and laws that tell them what should be done in order not to discriminate against disabled people. The rules enable them to do the "right thing" without ever having to think about why not providing proper access/employment/equal opportunities is wrong. Now people appear to enforce disabled parking bays, to use but one example, because they have to by law. What I would prefer is that there was a true understanding about why people with disabilities need them! To give an example: a medical consultant in my workplace once asked me why I should have my own disabled bay when he wasn't allowed a consultants bay! To him, the concept of a disabled parking bay was perceived as a privilege and there was no understanding why, as a disabled person, it was the only way I could access my place of work.
I have many disabled friends and we all have our own pet hates as far as terminology goes. Most of those hates stem from our own individual experiences and backgrounds and apart from a few very offensive phrases I don't think there is a globally agreed set of terms we would agree on. Indeed, its interesting to note that in all the years of debating and revising terminology to describe disability we have never come up with an effective term to describe someone who classes themselves as not having a disability. A man with a learning disability may accurately call himself "able-bodied" and "disabled" and I don't think anyone has ever been comfortable with using the word "normal" to describe someone without a disability. Maybe if we could find a way of adequately describing nondisability we would have the answer, if such a state exists.....but that's another debate!
Barbara Wheeler's article, Our Language and Our Attitudes, is a very important commentary on today's state of affairs in political correctness. As someone who has always tried to be wary of hurtful language and stereotyping tendencies with regard to individuals with disabilities, I identified with her dismay at the general public's lack of awareness to such sensitivities. Barbara cites the issue as a topic of 'national discussion,' but I certainly feel that this discussion is taking place in forums in which physical and especially mental disabilities are a professional reality, ie among music therapists. It is not being addressed in a way such that the great majority of the population has access to it.
While the guidelines that Barbara cited from Darrow and White's 1998 article seem to be a solid basic foundation for writing and talking about people with disabilities, I was struck by a thought after having read through all of them. The political correctness seems, to an extent, to take a bit of the humanness out of working with a person with a disability. Particularly as therapists, we are supposed to exude empathy. Empathy and pity are clearly two very different constructs, but when we take ALL of the 'feeling' language out of the discussion of people with disabilities, aren't we denying a reality that we are specifically supposed to acknowledge as therapists? Isn't it our professional duty?
"Suffering through depression" is a phrase that I have heard countless times, and as someone who has, indeed, suffered through depression, I find the phrase accurate and, in fact, comforting. It is a relief to believe that people acknowledge the pain that accompanies it. While I admit that I can't identify with those who may have life-long disabilities, my guess is that- while they might not seek pity- some might just want acknowledgement that some aspects of life are more challenging for them, many times insurmountably so. Yet they are stronger individuals for having come up against, and/or overcome those challenges. This might be a personal, individual distinction, or a more general one within certain categories of disability.
So while I will again stress the importance of being sensitive with our language, I simply want to be wary of the possibility for political correctness to get out of hand. It has the potential to deny or distort reality, and, especially as therapists, this isn't something we can afford to allow happen.