They Can Do Many Things - Getting Off The Euphemism Treadmill
I aspire to speak up and advocates for people of disabilities, various disabilities. To achieve our goal, we have members representing the sensory, physical and developmental disability communities.
For most disability groups, I know I am able to have a term to describe the disability. I met members who describe themselves as 'blind', 'deaf','autistic', 'physically disabled' and so on. In most cases, I am able to ask what is the disability that they identify with.
Then there is one situation, where no matter what is the name I call, it just does not seem right. It sounds somewhat inappropriate. It is the group with, the lack of a more appropriate term I can think of right now, should I say, 'intellectual disability?'
From an oft-quoted part from the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, 'a rose by any other name will smell as sweet'. Surely the intellectual disabled community is a beautiful and capable one. They can certainly do many things they are capable of; especially the daily activities of living, forming meaningful relationships with everyday people, and in their unique ways, bringing their family and social groups together through their unique, charming ways. In my personal encounters with people with disability, from the days I volunteered in a special needs school as an assistant to students with intellectual disability to my recent encounters in the recent research study DPA has on employment for people with disabilities that I took part in, I feel fortunate to experience their strengths - their zest in life, their positive outlook in life, and their dreams and hopes for the future. Oh, they even have cool interests in the same pop stars or dances that we enjoy, too!
Intellectual disability is indeed lovely, if society is more accommodating and accepting of differences. Sadly, it is not the case in real life.
True, for people with intellectual disabilities, they have their challenges. They have a low IQ score, they are defined to be in lacking in conceptual, social and practical skills in life by medical diagnoses. For most people in the 'intellectual disability' community, practically, I acknowledge it is more difficult to communicate with them. There is always a need to communicate with them slowly, clearly and patiently.
However, given the strengths of these people, why is it so that I feel so reluctant to call them intellectually disabled?
Intellectual disability is one of the few areas where it is just off putting to term anything. It is one of the few disabilities where, as our Association's director Dr Marissa Lee Medjeral-Mills remarked, we are merely 'moving the marker (of) stigma'.
Take, for example, the most prominent British society for intellectual disabilities, The Royal Mencap Society. Mencap was formed as 'The National Association of Parents of Backward Children', later renamed as 'The National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and Adults', before receiving royal patronage and, in 2002, changing their name to their present one.
Despite the renaming, intellectual disability is still regarded as an insult. Very often, 'Retard' (or the 'R' word) is an insult schoolchildren use as a derogatory term for a person they dislike. In the Story of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon wrote about children make fun people on the bus for the protagonist Christopher's school 'special needs'. To children, if untrained and unchecked, people with intellectual disabilities are perhaps, in the words of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, 'less than nothing'. The marker of stigma remains, and society is not ready to move on and accept people with intellectual disabilities.
If we are not careful, the next playground or workplace gossip insult could be 'ID', given Singaporeans' propensity to use Initiatisms. It will be just part of Steven Pinker's 'euphemism treadmill' where taboo words were once coined for polite terms to describe negative subjects, and begin to gain negative meaning from negative use. Like a treadmill, this term will be discarded and another new term will emerge, gaining a negative connotation, and the process repeats itself back to square one.
When we still see people with intellectual disabilities in deficit terms, they will be treated as a negative term. It could have the effect of lower expectations and less fulfilment of potentials in these differently capable people, as a whole.
What makes it worse to give the disability an appropriate 'label'; as the people with disability know they are different from other people: their non-disabled peers and most likely, their family members too, yet they may not seem to express them the extent most people without intellectual disabilities take for granted. Right now, I am still finding a good feedback about their feelings on what they feel about their conditions.
My solution for the conundrum of naming people with intellectual disabilities is what I always do for everyone else: I will ask for their names and try to call them by their names. I do not want to define them by their condition. I speak to them in a friendly, with perhaps a little slower pacing. More important of all, I try to communicate with them in the perspective of learning from them and trying to listen to their thoughts, like what I do with everyone else.
Above all, I look at people with intellectual disabilities as people with potentials and possibilities. They can certainly do many things. To me, it is worthwhile talking to them and knowing more about them and their selves, in a more anticipative, exciting manner.
For most disability groups, I know I am able to have a term to describe the disability. I met members who describe themselves as 'blind', 'deaf','autistic', 'physically disabled' and so on. In most cases, I am able to ask what is the disability that they identify with.
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| Dots of Pumpkins |
Then there is one situation, where no matter what is the name I call, it just does not seem right. It sounds somewhat inappropriate. It is the group with, the lack of a more appropriate term I can think of right now, should I say, 'intellectual disability?'
From an oft-quoted part from the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, 'a rose by any other name will smell as sweet'. Surely the intellectual disabled community is a beautiful and capable one. They can certainly do many things they are capable of; especially the daily activities of living, forming meaningful relationships with everyday people, and in their unique ways, bringing their family and social groups together through their unique, charming ways. In my personal encounters with people with disability, from the days I volunteered in a special needs school as an assistant to students with intellectual disability to my recent encounters in the recent research study DPA has on employment for people with disabilities that I took part in, I feel fortunate to experience their strengths - their zest in life, their positive outlook in life, and their dreams and hopes for the future. Oh, they even have cool interests in the same pop stars or dances that we enjoy, too!
Intellectual disability is indeed lovely, if society is more accommodating and accepting of differences. Sadly, it is not the case in real life.
True, for people with intellectual disabilities, they have their challenges. They have a low IQ score, they are defined to be in lacking in conceptual, social and practical skills in life by medical diagnoses. For most people in the 'intellectual disability' community, practically, I acknowledge it is more difficult to communicate with them. There is always a need to communicate with them slowly, clearly and patiently.
However, given the strengths of these people, why is it so that I feel so reluctant to call them intellectually disabled?
Intellectual disability is one of the few areas where it is just off putting to term anything. It is one of the few disabilities where, as our Association's director Dr Marissa Lee Medjeral-Mills remarked, we are merely 'moving the marker (of) stigma'.
Take, for example, the most prominent British society for intellectual disabilities, The Royal Mencap Society. Mencap was formed as 'The National Association of Parents of Backward Children', later renamed as 'The National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and Adults', before receiving royal patronage and, in 2002, changing their name to their present one.
Despite the renaming, intellectual disability is still regarded as an insult. Very often, 'Retard' (or the 'R' word) is an insult schoolchildren use as a derogatory term for a person they dislike. In the Story of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon wrote about children make fun people on the bus for the protagonist Christopher's school 'special needs'. To children, if untrained and unchecked, people with intellectual disabilities are perhaps, in the words of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, 'less than nothing'. The marker of stigma remains, and society is not ready to move on and accept people with intellectual disabilities.
If we are not careful, the next playground or workplace gossip insult could be 'ID', given Singaporeans' propensity to use Initiatisms. It will be just part of Steven Pinker's 'euphemism treadmill' where taboo words were once coined for polite terms to describe negative subjects, and begin to gain negative meaning from negative use. Like a treadmill, this term will be discarded and another new term will emerge, gaining a negative connotation, and the process repeats itself back to square one.
When we still see people with intellectual disabilities in deficit terms, they will be treated as a negative term. It could have the effect of lower expectations and less fulfilment of potentials in these differently capable people, as a whole.
What makes it worse to give the disability an appropriate 'label'; as the people with disability know they are different from other people: their non-disabled peers and most likely, their family members too, yet they may not seem to express them the extent most people without intellectual disabilities take for granted. Right now, I am still finding a good feedback about their feelings on what they feel about their conditions.
My solution for the conundrum of naming people with intellectual disabilities is what I always do for everyone else: I will ask for their names and try to call them by their names. I do not want to define them by their condition. I speak to them in a friendly, with perhaps a little slower pacing. More important of all, I try to communicate with them in the perspective of learning from them and trying to listen to their thoughts, like what I do with everyone else.
Above all, I look at people with intellectual disabilities as people with potentials and possibilities. They can certainly do many things. To me, it is worthwhile talking to them and knowing more about them and their selves, in a more anticipative, exciting manner.
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