My brother was born with learning disabilities, and now, in his late 40s, he is still not “out” about LD to anyone but family and extremely close friends, although he now has additional diagnoses (such as ADD). He works in social services, same agency for 25+ years, and says they don’t know because he hasn’t told them. I’m posting with a different avatar because he has asked me never to write publicly about growing up with a sibling with a disability under my own name. He refers to himself as having “overcome” his disability, as do my parents. I can’t imagine my brother or my parents preferring the term “education for the disabled.” They would protest he did/does not have a disability.

Having worked in info/referral about disability education, I heard a lot of parents saying “learning differences” and “special needs” and generally going to pains to use what I perceive as euphemisms. The same was true when my friend/colleague collected writings and art by kids with disabilities. Often the kids or parents backed out because of the “D word,” or referred to them/selves as “not disabled but special,” etc. I don’t know why, but in this realm, it seems like very few want to say “disability.” Am I wrong? Has this changed?

These days, it is pretty much meant as an insult, or is used to dehumanise. I can’t remember the last time I heard it used in a positive context. I don’t think many people consider the ableist undertones to the use of insults like the commonly seen “special little snowflake”, or the historical context of the term “special treatment”. Not to mention the implications of “special treatment” when applied to access/accommodations as getting something more that others get, rather than something that is needed.

I would prefer to see this euphemism go away and be replaced with honest descriptions of the services available. ‘Education for the Disabled’ or Education for Disabled People/Children’ instead of ‘Special Education’. ‘Additional Needs’ rather than ‘Special Needs’. And I could go on.

What really gets my goat about this whole “special” business is how people who would otherwise be allies have internalized the word’s negative social connotations enough to the point where they still use it as an insult. For example, one of my best friends was the first to reach out to me after my diagnosis with AS and OCD, and I’ve been able to talk really frankly about my mental issues with her and she’s never judged me. Yet she still calls people who annoy her “special.” Urgh. I know she’d never use it with someone like me who has mental health issues, but the fact of the matter is that her continuing to use it as an insult hurts people like me. I need to talk to her about this soon, and I just hope she takes me seriously—similar efforts with my parents have sort of crashed and burned.

I try to do a slippery sort of thing with terms like “special ed” and “handicapped parking,” because that is what they are officially called (where I live). So, I say “SpEd,” or if I’m dealing with someone “in the system” or trying to educate or avoid the terms further, I say “IDEA” or “766″ (the relevant federal and state laws, respectively). For my parking placard, if I HAVE to indicate that I want to park THERE, I say “HP parking.” The signs say “HP,” so I say “HP.” What the heck does “handicapped” mean anyway? There’s a word ripe for AWP (unless one has been done and I missed it).

When I see “special treatment,” I can’t stand it for all the reasons everyone above has said. There is such rage, even hatred, when people think someone else is getting something they don’t have. It also reminds me a lot of how successfully anti-GLBT laws have been enacted in so many US states by the bigots simply taking “equal rights” and changing it to “special rights” (or “special treatment”).

And yeah, “special” has become a code word for extremely nasty insults. I watch a lot of stand-up comedy (which is a bastion of ableism, even among comics who are feminist, anti-racist, pro-gay, etc.), and almost every comic has this as a go-to: “She’s very [significant pause, knowing look, whisper into mic] special,” and it gets a huge laugh. Vomitous.

That’s it exactly. It plays to this idea a lot of able people have of accommodations: as some kind of optional extra with which the system kindly indulges some whim or fancy of ours.

I’ve always found ‘special children’ and ‘special needs’ a bit off, but for a long time I couldnt’ articulate why. And I think it’s the isolation factor that you mention. Plus the tendency (and I’ll admit this is a risk with any label) of the label to become bigger, in the eyes of the able observer, than the person – like someone alluded to above, it’s awful when a person, describing someone else, says, ‘He’s special needs.’ Like: He IS special needs. He is a label. He is his needs, his impairment, his disability, rather than being a full, complex individual.

I think another problem is that, the more euphemistic a label is, the more liable it is to be used to ridicule people, and even to ridicule the very idea of choosing our words so as not to cause harm. I remember when we started hearing terms like ‘mentally challenged’ being used to replace the former ‘mentally handicapped’ in the media – the term’s implicit sugar-coating meant that it was very quickly taken up as a weapon both against social justice (we can mark the ‘it’s political correctness gone mad!’ bingo square) and against the people being labelled: ‘mentally-challenged’ gained the playground insult currency that antiquated clinical terms like ‘moron’ and ‘retard’ once had. And I’ve heard ‘special’ used in the same insulting way, even in a children’s cartoon…