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About lauredhel

Lauredhel is an Australian woman with a disability. View all posts by lauredhel →

Reclamation: thoughts from a fat hairy uppity lame bitch

3 November, 2009language, resistancelauredhel

This article was originally posted at Hoyden About Town on June 23, 2007, but has been substantially edited and updated for FWD/Forward.

This post started with me suggesting a FAQ on reclamation for the “Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog” blog: “But there’s a whole feminist magazine called Bitch and a book called The Ethical Slut, so why can’t I call you a slutty bitch?” I tried to write a one-paragraph answer, but things snowballed a little. Here’s my attempt at answering; I welcome yours, and have put in a few questions at the end.

I’ll open with a quote from Robin Brontsema’s “A Queer Revolution: Reconceptualizing the Debate Over Linguistic Reclamation”:

Laying claim to the forbidden, the word as weapon is taken up and taken back by those it seeks to shackle, a self-emancipation that defies hegemonic linguistic ownership and the (ab)use of power. Linguistic reclamation, also known as linguistic resignification or reappropriation, refers to the appropriation of a pejorative epithet by its target(s).

As with just about any topic in feminism, when stripped to the bone, reclamation is about power. The kyriarchal position is that people with power get to set the agenda, control the discourse, define people in pejorative terms, and decide what is or isn’t offensive – not only to themselves, but to others. They place themselves firmly in the subject position, and unilaterally assume the role of making decisions for less powerful people – the objects.

Feminism and disability activism are about turning that dominance model on its head in every realm, including language. One recurring feature of feminist discussion about pejorative speech is that the person with the lesser power gets to decide what is offensive to them, and that we should be listening to their voices, not those of the dominant group. In the case of sexist language, women have the voices that count, the voices that all need to listen to. For racist speech, women of colour. For classist speech, poor women. For ableist speech, disabled women. For anti-lesbian speech, lesbian women. Fattist speech, fat women. And so on, and so on.

Linguistic reclamation is the re-appropriation of a term used by those in power to demean and disparage those in a less powerful group. One way in which women refuse the object position and reclaim their subjectivity is to take back control of pejorative terms such as “bitch”, “slut”, “crip”, “gimp”, “chick”, “crone”, and “harridan”. Defused, a reclaimed word can become an in-group identifier, with a positive, powerful spin. It’s all about who gets to define “us” – “them” or “us”? Reclamation is about refusing to let others define your group, set the parameters, or establish the meanings. In some instances, reclamation is about reclaiming not just an arbitrarily-defined pejorative word, but about proudly reclaiming the pejorative meaning, when it is based in the fear of women speaking their minds, defending themselves, not letting their personal value be defined by their sexual worth to patriarchy.

EXAMPLES

Here’s a smorgasbord of examples of reclamatory language. Going by the principle of “In their own words”, I’ve pulled out snippets of discussion about or explanation of the specific reclaimed terms in a few cases.

Crip, Gimp, Mad, and Retard

When talking about reclamation and disability, “Crip” is the word that springs most readily to mind. Not only are individuals with all sorts of disabilities referring to themselves proudly and defiantly as crips, but an entire academic field is springing into being, dubbed Crip Theory.

Crip theory takes the social model further and critiques disability theory. Rather than aiming to normalise disability and help disabled people to “fit in” to society as disability theory and neoliberalism do, this theory argues that society itself needs to be radically changed. Crip theory argues that disabled people are transforming our world into a more democratic, diverse, flexible place — by resisting oppressive social structures and calls for normalisation and assimilation, by living with pride and self-esteem, by speaking about their experiences of pain and pleasure, by expressing their sexuality, and by forming communities of support, love, activism and interdependence.

(Women, Disabled, Queer: Working together for our sexuality and rights, AWID International Forum 2008, via Creaworld.)

In “How dare I say ‘crip’?”, Victoria Brignell writes of her use of the word “crip:”

The crucial difference now is that it’s disabled people themselves who are using the word.

It’s part of a trend towards “reclaiming” language for our own purposes. We know full well that when we say the word crip, it will shock and startle – or at least raise eyebrows. It will grab able-bodied people’s attention and make them take notice of us. It forces able-bodied people to confront our disability. Whereas in the past able-bodied people used the word against us, we are now using it against able-bodied people. […] it’s when disabled people themselves use the word that it has the most desirable impact. When it comes from our lips, it becomes a linguistic tool in the struggle for the social inclusion of disabled people.

Eli muses about the etymology of the word “crip” in “Thinking about the word crip”:

I know where crip comes from in disability communities—the long histories of folks who have had cripple used against us. We have taken the word into our own mouths, rolled it around, shortened it, spoken it with fondness, humor, irony, recognition. And yet I can’t remember the first moment I heard the shortened, reclaimed version (nor, for that matter, the longer pain-infused original), when I adopted it as my own, started calling myself a queer crip. What are the specifics to this history and etymology? Who said it first in which spaces; how did it catch on; when was it first written down as a way of inscribing pride and resistance; how did it come to be passed from person to person over the years so that now I find myself thinking, “But didn’t crip just arise organically from disability communities, movements, cultures?” These are the questions to map out personal and communal etymologies that have very little to do with the Oxford English Dictionary, often thought of as the final authority on the history and etymology of English words.

Various crip pride buttons: Gimpgirl Community, Lame Is Sexy, Lame Is Good, Fuck Pity/Crip Pride, Crips & Trannies Need to Pee Too Confluere carries a series of buttons declaring “Lame is Sexy”, “Lame is Good”, “Fuck Pity/Crip Pride”, and “Crips & Trannies Need to Pee Too”. Gimpgirl markets a variety of merchandise at: No Pity City, where those at the intersection of feminism and disability activism can assert their pride. There are many reclamatory blogs, from Bad Cripple, Crip Chronicles, and and Cripchick to Crip College and Crip Critic. And it doesn’t stop there – check out The Gimp Parade, the gimp_vent community at Livejournal, Gimp on the Go travel magazine, and the very active GimpGirl community.

Continue reading Reclamation: thoughts from a fat hairy uppity lame bitch →

Quiz: Representations of Disabled Bodies in Logos

3 November, 2009bodies, representationslauredhel

disabledlogo

Most disability logos just consist of the usual stick-figure-in-the-wheelchair logo, or a derivation thereof.

After spotting this logo for No Barriers No Borders, I went looking for others. And I got to thinking about the representations of disabled bodies in logos.

row of variously-dressed smiling cartoon people under NBNB banner, standing, sitting in wheelchair, with cane or crutches

I set aside those images dealing with sport, and those not including any representation of a PWD’s whole body. Here are a few typical samples of what I was left with. I haven’t cherry-picked; I mostly just grabbed from the first few pages of a Google Images search.

My question to you is:

What do all of these logos have in common?

Continue reading Quiz: Representations of Disabled Bodies in Logos →

Chatterday! Open Thread.

31 October, 2009chatterdaylauredhel

This is our weekly Chatterday! open thread. Use this open thread to talk amongst yourselves: feel free to share a link, have a vent, or spread some joy.

What have you been reading or watching lately (remembering spoiler warnings)? What are you proud of this week? What’s made your teeth itch? What’s going on in your part of the world?

Today’s Halloween candied chatterday backcloth comes via Epicute, a treasure trove of photographs of gorgeous cupcakes, candy, and other goodies. The accompanying text reads:

Why don’t they make medicines that look like this? Why?

three soup spoons are filled with brightly coloured Japanese rock candy.

Law & Order: “Dignity”, Worth, and the Medical Model of Disability

29 October, 2009bodies, feminism, i'm right here, intersectionality, justice, medical practice, reproductive justice, social attitudes, televisionlauredhel

As a feminist, I am pro-choice. Abortion should be safe, legal, and accessible.

As a feminist, I look at more than whether single, individual women have access to abortion. There is a much broader reproductive justice framework that must be scrutinised, critiqued and repaired so that all women have access to informed, supported reproductive choices.

Women who have been denied informed, supported reproductive choices in the past include more than the wealthy, non-disabled white women who dominate pro-choice conversations. Marginalised groups are as likely to be fighting for their right to reproduce as their right not to – people of colour, trans people, lesbians, and of course women with disabilities, who have been denied sex education and forcibly subjected to contraception and sterilisation for centuries.

To that list of marginalised groups, of people who are often denied truly informed and supported choices, we can perhaps add – people pregnant with fetuses who may have a prenatal diagnosis of a disability.

As a feminist, I believe that we can have the abortion-rights conversation without marginalising, othering, and disparaging people with disabilities. I believe we can talk about abortion within that broader framework of reproductive justice, and that we can confront the ableism that creeps into some abortion-rights conversations head-on. This takes effort; we must think clearly, write carefully, read closely.

Yes, some forced-birthers will try to appropriate our words for their own ends. We need to remember that they are responsible for their own misreadings and misrepresentations, not us. We need to not let their twisted, misogynist agendas control what we say. They must not stop us from speaking out.

Law & Order, “Dignity”

So, guess what I did today? I swallowed my intense dislike of popular TV crimeporn show Law & Order, and watched episode 20×05, “Dignity”, in which a bloke murders a doctor who provides abortion services, to “save” his daughter’s fetus, diagnosed prenatally with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.

Before we start, a little background on Ehlers Danlos syndrome (EDS). EDS is not one condition; it is a heterogeneous group of conditions caused by differences in genes coding for collagen proteins. Collagen is a key ingredient in all connective tissue, including skin and ligaments. The commonest EDS types manifest primarily as joint hypermobility or as very elastic skin. EDS often goes undiagnosed until adulthood, or completely undiagnosed throughout life.

There is a very, very rare variety of EDS called dermatosparaxis which involvs fragile, floppy skin and easy bruising; there have been ten published case reports of this variety worldwide. Within that group, the severity is still heterogeneous – check out this blog Sense and Disability, by a woman with dermatosparaxis who has studied at Oxford and backpacked through Europe.

Let’s have a look at the episode. I’m not going to go into a detailed recap; you can check one out here at All Things Law & Order: “Law & Order “Dignity” Recap & Review”. The case is a ripped-from-the-headlines story with many details closely resembling the terroristic murder of Dr George Tiller, one of a half-handful of late term abortion providers in the USA. The show adds a number of details that appear designed to showcase forced-birther ideas, such as the invented detail that the slain doctor had in the past murdered a live newborn. The murderer’s defence argument centres around the idea that he is trying to save a fetus from the abortion that his daughter has scheduled.

The fetus in question has apparently been diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos syndrome (EDS). At first, oddly, we’re told that it has “Fragile Skin Disease”, which typically refers to a completely different set of keratin-related conditions, epidermolysis bullosa. The show does not elaborate on how the EDS was supposedly detected (prenatal gene testing is not routine), or the fact that EDS is heterogeneous and that people with EDS vary widely in phenotype, or, well, any other facts, really. We just get this:

[clips, transcripts and a lot more discussion are below the cut]

Continue reading Law & Order: “Dignity”, Worth, and the Medical Model of Disability →

Chatterday! Open Thread

24 October, 2009chatterdaylauredhel

This is our weekly Chatterday! open thread. Use this open thread to talk amongst yourselves: feel free to share a link, have a vent, or spread some joy. About the only content-related rule is to keep this thread for things not covered in other threads over the past few weeks.

What have you been reading or watching lately (remembering spoiler warnings)? What are you proud of this week? What’s made your teeth itch? What’s going on in your part of the world?

Today’s chatterday backcloth, a premature baby deer, comes via The Daily Squee.

babydeer

CFS/ME and “faulty illness beliefs”: The incredible hubris of the psychiatro-patriarchal complex

22 October, 2009blaming, medical practicecfids, cfs, cfs/me, disability, fibromyalgia, gulf war syndrome, illness beliefs, irritable bowel syndrome, me, psychological, psychologisation, psychologization, symptoms, wesselylauredhel

This post was originally posted on March 19, 2009 at Hoyden About Town.

New Scientist this week published an interview with infamous psychiatrist Simon Wessely. Wessely persists in believing, in the face of all the evidence, that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalitis (CFS/ME)* is a uniquely UK/American psychological condition caused by internet-triggered “faulty illness beliefs”.

Here’s a bit. Read the rest at the link.

Mind over body?

Can people think themselves sick? This is what psychiatrist Simon Wessely explores. His research into the causes of conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome and Gulf war syndrome has led to hate mail, yet far from dismissing these illnesses as imaginary, Wessely has spent his career developing treatments for them. Clare Wilson asks what it’s like to be disliked by people you’re trying to help.

How might most of us experience the effects of the mind on the body?

In an average week you probably experience numerous examples of how what’s going on around you affects your subjective health. Most people instinctively know that when bad things happen, they affect your body. You can’t sleep, you feel anxious, you’ve got butterflies in your stomach… you feel awful.

When does that turn into an illness?

Such symptoms only become a problem when people get trapped in excessively narrow explanations for illness – when they exclude any broader consideration of the many reasons why we feel the way we do. This is where the internet can do real harm. And sometimes people fall into the hands of charlatans who give them bogus explanations. […]

Continue reading CFS/ME and “faulty illness beliefs”: The incredible hubris of the psychiatro-patriarchal complex →

Barbara Moore: Feminist, Lawyer, Writer & Grad Student of the U of Melb. 1953-2009

22 October, 2009biographylauredhel

This is cross-posted with permission from the original guest author. It was first posted as a Friday Hoyden feature at Hoyden About Town on September 4, 2009.]

This obituary has been provided by Marion May Campbell, who supervised Barbara Moore’s thesis, The Art of Being a Tortoise: Life in the Slow Lane. The thesis is being edited for submission for a Master of Arts by Research in Creative Writing at the School of Culture & Communication, University of Melbourne. Many thanks to Marion for sharing Barbara’s life with us. Three excerpts from Barbara’s memoir have been included at the foot of the post, with the permission of her family and supervisor.

Image: Barbara Moore and her sister, Anne. [with permission]

Early Life

Born to an Irish-Australian family in the northern Melbourne suburb of Reservoir, Barbara Moore contracted in early infancy a virulent form of infantile rheumatoid arthritis, which went undiagnosed until she was nine. At this stage she was immobilised for ten weeks in a plaster cast, which effectively stole from her much of her remaining mobility. Despite shocking chronic pain, Barbara completed high school and began studies in law at RMIT in the early 1970s, performing well enough there to gain entry to study Law at the University of Melbourne. She persisted with her application, responding with a fiercely defiant stare to the interviewing professor’s question as to whether she thought she had a right to deprive a fine young man of a place. She loved those student years, especially revelling in the companionship and conviviality she found as a resident at St Mary’s College.

After Graduation

After graduation, having gained solid to good honours grades in many subjects, Barbara worked in the Auditor General’s office and later in the Freedom of Information office. While she could still manage limited walking, she drove a car to her city-based work and began to pay off her own town house, her courage and persistence having brought down barriers like her bank manager’s reluctance to offer a loan to a single disabled woman.

In the early 1990s, as her mobility became further reduced through the chronic rheumatoid arthritis, Barbara decided to retire from the Law to devote herself to writing. She enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Professional Writing at RMIT, where she received an award for her outstanding work. One of her stories about her friendship with an old German priest was made into a superb short documentary film by a graduate filmmaking student. Barbara completed her graduate diploma amassing lots of distinctions for work produced across the genres.

Book cover - The Case of the Disappearing Seals Barbara began writing educational children’s books. Four of these were published by Pearsons, and translated into many languages. She told me, her eyes sparkling with mirth, that her children’s books sold well in Korea and that she was ‘hot in Siberia’.

During this time her condition had worsened to the degree that she had to give up independent living and move into a select retirement home, in which she had her own apartment and wheelchair access to a beautiful neighbouring park. She also was an inveterate poet, ranging from witty, light and nonsense verse to metaphysical conceits of considerable accomplishment. She loved the haiku form, and held workshops for fellow residents.

Master of Arts

It was from here that she enquired about the possibility of doing a Master of Arts by Research in Creative Writing with us at the University of Melbourne in the then Department of English. Initially Barbara didn’t proceed at first, because she was no longer able to type for herself. When the Disability Services Unit offered accommodations in the form of technical and carer’s support, she was delighted to embark on the Master’s the following year. After two years of study, Barbara was awarded the Fay Marle Scholarship, which helped her enormously and gave her a great boost of encouragement.

I agreed to drive out to Balwyn for Barbara’s supervisory sessions once a month, when Barbara’s health made this possible. I was shocked and moved to meet this diminutive woman whose body was severely affected by chronic rheumatoid arthritis. Visible joints were fiercely red, swollen, and twisted. Despite pain always 8/10 and often at 9/10, she was never was able to take painkillers, due to her severe allergies. Yet, here she was, in her cropped auburn hair, brightly dressed in funky earrings and striped stockings, brimming with intelligence and wit, ready to get the maximum out of our 2-3 hour sessions, which always began with a cappuccino and cake for Barbara.

Her project for her Masters thesis, entitled ‘The Art of Being a Tortoise: Life in the Slow Lane’, is an episodic, acutely vivid, at times heart-breaking, but often hilarious disability memoir. Although Barbara did not think the memoir was as polished as she might have liked, I know that what I read was pretty much ready to go, and I believe that Barbara has written at least another 10,000 words since then. The pace was frustratingly slow for both of us, and held up by Barbara’s frequent hospital stays due to accident and infection; however, I thoroughly enjoyed working with her, because of the sheer courage, tenacity and wickedly irreverent sense of humour she always exhibited. It would be hard to find a more fiercely funny feminist socialist than this incredibly spirited woman.

Fighting to Finish the Thesis

A week before Barbara passed away, when she mouthed to me that she was in fact dying, I promised her that I would do this in consultation with her sister Anne Duggan, herself a graduate of Melbourne. Barbara nodded her consent and thanks. It also meant a lot to her niece, Frances Overton, an undergraduate in the School of Education, who has worked devotedly at Barbara’s side every weekend, typing to Barbara’s dictation.

It was only in May that Barbara went into rapid deterioration necessitating what we thought would be respite care for a while, to try to deal with her nausea, reactive depression and acute discomfort. Tragically, it became apparent that something more radical was wrong; the wheelchair was not even an occasional option any more and she lost weight rapidly, alarming for one already so fragile.

Immobilised and isolated over these weeks, Barbara’s great hope was to receive the contract for her book of poetry from Pan Macmillan, that her publisher, Jenny Zimmer, had promised back in March. I assured Barbara that I would telephone Jenny to see what was happening. It was quickly apparent that while Jenny was serious about wanting to publish the work, the global economic downturn had put question marks over the budget. Jenny suggested that a possible subsidy from the University of Melbourne might help. I promised to enquire, knowing that in theory this was only available for staff. Nevertheless Allison Dutke was wonderful making enquiries and paving the way for a possible extenuating-circumstances application. However, I received no reply to phone calls and emails from Pan Macmillan over these weeks and was reluctant to return to the Arcadia nursing home in Essendon with such a bleak tidings. I eventually steeled myself to do so, feeling that I had let Barbara down dreadfully.

It was immediately evident on my last visit that Barbara, who could no longer eat or speak, had little time remaining. I left her bedside vowing to her that I’d do my best to see her poetry published, her Master’s submitted and if possible published as well. On receipt of my urgent email Jenny Zimmer was fantastic and flew into action, despite the budget problems, expediting a contract. Barbara received the news with a smile of great relief and was able to hear congratulations from all the nursing staff. The book, illustrated by Barbara’s Concierge artist friend, Roma McLaughlin, will be launched here in Melbourne before Christmas.

I have just been re-reading some of Barbara’s thesis and her voice is utterly alive across these pages. I am grateful to have had the friendship and inspiration from this extraordinarily courageous, funny and highly creative woman. I am also deeply grateful for the way everyone at the University of Melbourne, from Jessica Rose of the School of C&C, Mathilde Lochert the Manager of C&C, to Matthew Brett of the DSU, and Allison Dutka, who all showed extraordinary patience and sensitivity to Barbara’s predicaments and her ‘life in the slow lane’. I dearly hope that her published work will be an enduring testimony not just to this woman’s brilliance, but also to the immense support that her efforts attracted at the University of Melbourne.

Excerpts from Barbara Moore’s memoir, The Art of Being a Tortoise: Life in the Slow Lane

[Click through to read the excerpts.]
Continue reading Barbara Moore: Feminist, Lawyer, Writer & Grad Student of the U of Melb. 1953-2009 →

Barriers to justice when rapists attack women with disabilities: Australian report

19 October, 2009justice, violenceabuse, australia, communication, justice, law, rape, report, sexual assault, sexual violencelauredhel

[This post was originally published on October 3, 2008 at Hoyden About Town.]

*trigger warnings apply to this post: descriptions of abuse and sexual assault against women with disabilities**

“This young woman [“Caroline”] has cerebral palsy, is wheelchair bound, totally dependent on carers for her personal and daily living activities, and non-verbal. Cognitively very aware, she depends on assisted communication to enable her to communicate … Caroline was sexually assaulted by the taxi driver who picked her up from home and drove her to school …

Caroline uses a communication book to communicate, but her communication book did not have the vocabulary she needed to describe what had happened to her. Her communication book did not include words such as “penis” or “rape”, and police would not allow these words to be added after the incident, because as the police explained, in court this would be seen as leading the witness. (Excerpt from an interview with a support worker cited in Federation of Community Legal Centres, 2006, pp. 7–8).”

Suellen Murray and Anastasia Powell of the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault have just released a new report: “Sexual assault and adults with a disability enabling recognition, disclosure and a just response” [PDF].

This report starts to fill a huge gap in our knowledge of sexual violence in Australia. Although data in North America has shown that women with disabilities (WWD) are far more likely to experience sexual violence than those without, up until now there has been little or no systematic research into what is happening with WWD in Australia:

Despite being the major national data collection regarding the status and experiences of adults with a disability, the ABS Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers, does not invite participants to report on their experiences of violence or abuse.

Similarly, the ABS (2006) Personal Safety Survey report, which specifically investigates experiences of violence, does not identify the disability status of participants, and the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) specifically excluded women with an illness or disability from the sample for the survey (Mouzos & Makkai, 2004).

Therefore, despite evidence that approximately 20% of Australian women, and 6% of men, will experience sexual violence in their lifetime (ABS, 2006), there is no standard national data collection that includes the experiences of sexual violence amongst adults with a disability, or more specifically, the experiences of women with a disability.

There is one smallish South Australian study showing that adults with intellectual disabilities are over ten times more likely to have been sexually assaulted.

Continue reading Barriers to justice when rapists attack women with disabilities: Australian report →

“But what do we CAAAALL them?”: The language of shackling

19 October, 2009language, media and pop culture, social attitudeslauredhel

[This has been cross-posted at Hoyden About Town.]

I don’t know who David Southwell is when he’s at home, but he’s showing his arse big-time over at his “Sub in the Pub” blog at news.com.au, a large Australia news organisation that is part of News Limited (Rupert Murdoch).

Following up on the story about the man abandoned to cool his heels on Mount Snowdon, Southwell agonises about the “Language of disability“. He mentions that someone in comments requested that journalists stop using the term “wheelchair bound” – a simple and common request any experienced writer should be well aware of. (Read more at Accessibility NZ if you’re unaware of this issue.)

But Southwell seems to decide that this is all a bit scary and difficult to understand, and drops this:

While avoiding pejorative terms is certainly desirable, I also think euphemisms such as “differently-abled” aren’t that helpful and open the whole subject to ridicule.

However if we (I mean the cliche-recyclers) take on board Paul’s point, a better term would be “wheelchair-restricted”?

Fwooooosh!

He’s completely missed the point. He’s very, very stuck in this idea that only terms referring to restriction and binding could possibly be appropriate when referring to a person with a disability. His go-to idea is one of passivity, of shackling. And when he’s told that one term is problematic, he just – looks for a synonym with the same problem, instead of addressing the problem itself.

In comments, I reply simply:

You don’t need to use terms relating to binding or restriction at all. “Person who uses a wheelchair”. “Wheelchair user” for short.

And I figured that would be the end of it. A wheelchair is a tool. A PWD with certain mobility deficits may use one to get around. The term is non-pejorative and descriptive. What’s to argue?

But no, apparently it’s not that simple in the mind of someone whose mind relentlessly associates “disability” with negative ideas. He comes back:

I might go with this, although I think it suggests there is a choice involved and it almost sounds recreational.

Unfortunately in journalese, “user” normally follows after “drug”.

What?

“Wheelchair user” no more connotes a recreational choice than “hammer user” or “computer user” does. You need to bang in a nail, you don’t happen to have a large iron hand, so you use a hammer to achieve your goal. You want to send an email, you don’t happen to have a computer chip and meatwires installed, so you use a computer to achieve your goal. You need to get around, you don’t happen to have legs that hold you up and propel you (or you have other issues like orthostatic hypotension, etc), so you use a wheelchair to achieve your goal. Why is this so difficult for some people to grok?

And why on earth, seeing the term “wheelchair user”, does someone feel the need to leap to the idea of drug abuse?

My reply:

David, your own news organisation uses “user” far more often to talk about people who use software, computers, and gadgets than to talk about drug users. There are also quite a few hits on “wheelchair user” on a news.com.au search, and no one seems to have panicked yet about your particular, and frankly rather bizarre, concern.

You don’t need to hair-tear publicly about this. Just look up a style guide. There are plenty; your own org probably has one. Here’s one option dealing specifically with disability [RTF download].

Have you had this conversation recently? Did your interlocutor(s) fail to understand the difference between tool use and restriction, hindrance, and hobbling? What’s your journalistic bugbear when it comes to reporting about people with disabilities?