[QUOTE=tallyho392;5037895]
but if the disability , and how it affects your riding, is the issue, why is it offensive to mention in the non-PC manner?[/QUOTE]
It isn’t offensive to me, I mean unless someone knows I live in chair some of what I say wouldn’t make sense… So, yes, I refer to myself as that gal in the chair with the dog… But 20 years in a chair makes me much less sensitive. I just try to treat everyone with respect regardless of disability or not.
Diane Kastama
[QUOTE=AnotherRound;5037791]
I didn’t understand it either. And I’m a health care professional who deals with many disabled people in my daily work. I’m not sure what the OP thinks we are saying and what she thinks we should be saying. Just put the work “person” before you use the diagnosis or syndrome? How does that change anything about the content, meaning or sense of the sentence, or how the person is being referred to? I don’t see the difference between “autistic child” and “child with autism”. Its the same thing. Both are children, both have the disorder. Just not sure what she is adressing. 
tend to agree am also a care worker
I can understand not always qualifying an individualy by his diagnosis or disability. That’s important many times, but not the same thing as what the OP seems to be saying. Just too picky and “PC” for my taste.[/QUOTE]
agree
and i to have a disability
op evyerone has something, ok if we go by your terms then we are not treating others as equals
and we are not treating others with dignity and respect
able bodied or not we are all equals in our own rights
and its people or person as indivuals as we all are
it freedom of choice and allowing other individuals to be able to chose
quote
I have Crohn’s disease, am a cancer survivor (wait, should
that be person who survived cancer?), have a genetic clotting
disorder and care absolutely nothing about the order of the
words describing my conditions.
I am thoroughly sick of political correctness. If a person feels
defined by the words a person uses, then it says more about
them than the writer.
echo you mate
We are just people and 99% of the time we don’t have to let our disabilities define who we are, why do others need to do it? Stop it. Just stop it. My name is Colleen, that’s all you need to know.
Thank you Colleen, but I really NEED to know if you also run around your backyard in your nightgown!
[QUOTE=CatOnLap;5039071]
Thank you Colleen, but I really NEED to know if you also run around your backyard in your nightgown![/QUOTE]
Oh gosh yes…almost nightly! lol!
People are people…I have my issues, or tendencies, or disabilities. We all do to a certain degree.
I have a joint disorder. Born with it, can’t help it. I am hard of hearing now, HuH, what? could you repeat that for me! I wear contact lenses. Can’t see well otherwise. I love animals and have many. Call me that crazy animal lady.
I am a nurse in surgery. Yes, I refer to my pts as the lap chole in room 3. The pt always comes first. That is why I am more concerned about the case we are doing, the doctor, and the team I am working with. So I can provide the best care possible for that pt.
Sometimes speaking in a more general sense gives others a better idea of what I am doing. Pt confidentiality has always been an issue. I intentionally forget names. The surgery is more private and confidential. It protects the pts privacy, in my opinion.
As far as referring to me as the crazy horse, dog, cat, chicken, guinea, donkey loving nurse that is nearly blind and deaf, and don’t forget, her joints sublux easily, just refer to me as a crazy animal loving nurse!
If you call me the person with Ehler Danlos or the ED pt, I don’t care. I am just happy you are talking to me!
This is pretty much how I feel, also - I’ve had a very visible skin condition (actually a symptom of an autoimmune condition which now causes me other problems too) for many years and I get really tired of people trying to ask AROUND questions that they have or how to mention something. I mean, I appreciate it if you try to be tactful or polite about asking, but honestly that’s much more about the situation in which the question is asked and the tone of voice and that sort of thing - I’m not going to get upset about getting the exact phrasing.
Life is too short and I’d really rather someone just ASK if they want to know if it’s contagious or whatever. Or if I can do something or if I need help, now that I have arthritis.
We are just people and 99% of the time we don’t have to let our disabilities define who we are, why do others need to do it? Stop it. Just stop it. My name is Colleen, that’s all you need to know.
well how do you do colleen i am jenny commonly known as goeslikestink
yeah and thats not going at it like a rabbit haha
it means quick of the mark,
old banger car goes like stink hahaha
haha i had someone pm me and say to me my log in name is offensive hahaha
depends how you read it haha
yeah and i also fart haha but then so do most people so some times i do goa round like stink
see different intrepretations of pc haha pc to is public covenince
haha goes with me log in name all i need is loo paper hahaha then i am well away haha
anyways my motto is pooh belongs where pooh belongs either on the muck heap or down the loo
thats where i put them as then i have the last laugh and i smile big time
and smiling is a contagoius habit
bet your all laughing now haha
Interesting to hear people’s point of view. In our city, if you are in the position of being a teacher, service provider, in health care, or basically any role that puts you in contact with people with disabilities or their family members, you’d better use people first language or you’ll be in trouble with your boss, your coworkers, and judged as incompetent by the families you work with.
That said, when we do staff training or volunteer training, we tell people to listen to the way a person talks about themselves. If they say “I’m deaf” or “I’m autistic” then it’s ok to follow their lead. In the absence of that, default to people first language. Maybe some families don’t care, but you don’t know who they are until after you’ve offended them or not.
It’s interesting to hear what adults think w/r/t talking about themselves. Parents of young kids with disabilities have a very different perspective!
I’ve read all this thread and though I agree with the OP I think this can also be too PC, splitting hairs, etc. Talk to me with a warm heart and you can acknowledge my disabilities however you want.
Kinda reminds me of the “she is Dave’s wife” or “she is Tasha’s mom” introductions.
Where I live PC has become, IMO, a bit too rigid and stodgy. Terms and use go in and out of PC style. I.E. I referred once to one of my friends as “a black person” and was corrected that “these days black people don’t like to be called black, they prefer African American.” I told my black friend this and she said,
" I don’t give a sh…, that is just some white person PC sh…"
My quadriplegic housemate calls himself a crip. Warmly.
But thanks, OP for bringing this up, very interesting.
Talk to me with a warm heart and you can call me what you want.
I just start to wonder at what point will we not be allowed to describe a person at all. If a group of people including Joe and Bob are standing across the room and the person I’m with does not know either I’m at a loss for how I can describe these people without offending someone. Can’t describe them by their race or skin color or any visible ability/disability which at this point is just that, a descriptor. They’re all people so the “people first” is more or less moot. The person I’m with doesn’t know their names so that particular descriptor is of no help. Perhaps they are both wearing khaki pants and blue polo shirts. Maybe they are the same height, oh wait that’s a physical descriptor. It seems that at some point people might need to grow a thicker skin and see that most folks are simply using these descriptors as a method for identifying and just that.
Clearly I do not visit this forum enough, I had no idea you guys would have an entire discussion about this (but I guess that is how things are around here:) )
I can see everyone’s point of view regarding first person language. Especially for adults with disabilities, they are the ones who should let people know how they want to be addressed and so forth. I can also see people thinking it is too PC. I understand where you are coming from but at the same time you need to consider it on an individual basis or the context of the situation. From a therapist viewpoint we are trying to promote this first person language so people are not viewed just as a patient or their disability, but you treat each person as an individual so you can tailor sessions toward them, their desires, and goals (I will cut it short here, basically just the essence of occupational therapy).
However, where I think first person language needs consistent use is with children. As one poster said, it really impacts parents who have a child with a disability. Many of these children can’t express how they would like to be addressed, so we can’t assume. All these children want is to be like their peers. Yes I understand that they need to accept or work with their disability but children cannot grow unless they are offered the same opportunities as all other children.
You guys are all educated adults who understand the value of treating a person correctly and this is why it may seem overdone to talk about person first language. My point is just to make a difference, even if involves just thinking and and discussing this point.
In a forum that specifically deals with disabilities, it doesn’t make sense to say “My name is Coanteen, that’s all you need to know”. That’s all my mailman needs to know maybe, if he even knows my name, but depending on the situation different people need to know different things about me or any discussion becomes pointless.
As a health care worker who isn’t the greatest with names and never has been, yeah, I do refer to people as diagnosis when discussing them with colleagues. As a bonus it removes identifiability, but mostly I just suck at names.
I don’t refer to them as “hey there, diabetic foot ulcer” when I talk <i>to</i> the person obviously, but about them out of their presence, sure. So do all the people I trained/worked with, in 2 different provinces and one US state, and many different hospitals/clinics. Nobody gets in trouble with the boss about it in my experience.
one would hope one treats people with respect regardless of there disabilties as alll people are equal
here there are plenty of views but none have the view of
lt them be who they are – as respect to the person or persons
i am also a care worker and deal with alsorts from demtuira to disabled and able bodied people
but they are people my 1st language is to take them for who they are
and treat everyone the same with dignity and respect
as you would like to be treated yourself
But why do I (and I work with those with special needs, have several issues of my own and am the parent of a child with Asperger’s, so I am involved in just about all ends of the discussion lol!) have to refer to myself that way if I don’t choose to. That is my point…unless there is a real good reason why anyone needs to know anything about my disability then please, refer to me by my name and leave my needs out of it. Call me what I wish to be called, not what PC tells you to call me. If I want to bring my disability into it I will, and I am entitled to refer to myself in any way I see fit.
I’m taking this in context, equineartworks. The OP spoke of browsing threads and seeing thst first-person language isn’t always used; I assume this was mostly in this subforum here, where health conditions are obviously relevant to the discussion, and the only issue is how to mention them, not if they should be mentioned.
Some conditions lend themselves easily to the kind of…idk, nouning that the OP described. “I’m a diabetic”, for example, is common and pretty accepted. MS, not so much. Can’t say I’ve seen many people call themselves Autists, but a whole crapload on the spectrum do call themselves Aspies.
Nobody is making you refer to yourself in a way you dislike, and if there’s a specific manner in which you prefer to be addressed in regards to your health issues when those health issues are relevant to the topic, people should follow that. It’s just courtesy.
I think first-person language is a good concept in general, but it can actually get ungainly in some cases. Universal application of it is unlikely to be accepted by people with the conditions, nevermind the general public. The “stroke survivor” v “person who survived a stroke” mentioned somewhere upthread - every post-CVA person I’ve ever spoken to self-identified by some version of the former, not the latter, and that’s how I’d refer to them as well. The Deaf community is another example, although many in the community don’t see it as a disability. Still, usually a person will indicate “I’m Deaf”, not “I’m a person with Deafness”. None of my vision-impaired patients ever identified as “person with blindness/visual impairment” to me, just “I’m blind” or “blind person”.
ok, I got you now Coanteen. I feel exactly the same way and just like you said in your last paragraph, I just don’t see it being the solution for most disabilities.
Take my MS, where do I start and stop? Should I state "I am a person with MS. But since there are so many manifestations of MS, should I say it is Secondary Progressive? Do they need to know that it started as Relapsing Remitting? What about the resulting autoimmune liver dysfunction? The visual impairments and the spot of RA thrown in for good measure?
It gets a little…lengthy. :lol:
[QUOTE=Coanteen;5048777]
I think first-person language is a good concept in general, but it can actually get ungainly in some cases. Universal application of it is unlikely to be accepted by people with the conditions, nevermind the general public. The “stroke survivor” v “person who survived a stroke” mentioned somewhere upthread - every post-CVA person I’ve ever spoken to self-identified by some version of the former, not the latter, and that’s how I’d refer to them as well. The Deaf community is another example, although many in the community don’t see it as a disability. Still, usually a person will indicate “I’m Deaf”, not “I’m a person with Deafness”. None of my vision-impaired patients ever identified as “person with blindness/visual impairment” to me, just “I’m blind” or “blind person”.[/QUOTE]
This is where first-person language is important. I know it is a forum and many individuals work in the health related field and/or have some form of disability but how are things going to change if we never take the step forward ourselves. I should have made myself clearer, but when I refer to person-first language I am talking on a broader context. I know this is not what most people think of, instead they just think of PC terminology.
But the quote above just demonstrates it. To the poster I am quoting I promise I am not picking on you, I am only making a point. But why does a person that had a stroke referred to as someone that SUFFERED a stroke? What has our society done to make it a form of suffering for these individuals but not other disabilities? Yes, it is a horrific situation (I work with this population a lot with my research and clinical work) but again how can you say that everyone with a stroke suffered? This terminology has become so overused that I think this is where we need to really consider the individual (even if you don’t want to refer to it as person-first language).
Then there is the issue of referring to individuals with hearing or visual impairments. The deaf community is an entire different ballpark, this hearing loss defines them, who they are, and so forth. So yes, they are deaf. Again blindness can fall into this category but it is such a big scale on what visual impairments are and what is considered legally blind.
The point is for us to go out to the rest of the population and try to reduce disability discrimination. I cannot tell you how many times I go out with a good friend of mine who is a quadraplegic and how he is not seen but his chair. Even without talking, who he is as an individual is ignored. Every time I am baffled when people say well he is “wheelchair bound” so he can’t do it. Well I am sorry, but he is a paralympian and he sure as hell can do it himself, why don’t you ask him. I feel that if we just accept the use of person-first language or if this is too PC for you, at least other terms to kindly acknowledge an individual, we can change people’s minds.
I think that insistence on person-first language, even in cases where many if not most people with the condition don’t use it because it’s awkward (the I’m blind/visually impaired vs I’m a person with visual impairment), makes it just a band-aid solution. I could refer to the friend in your example as “a person who is quadriplegic” because I know that is how one “should” refer to people with disabilities, and still ignore him and dismiss his as a person. The language change, especially when imposed, is superficial.
The context must be looked at. When I discuss Donna with diabetes, and say “well, as a diabetic she blah blah blah”, look at what I’m saying. If the “blah blah blah” is respectful, addresses whatever concerns Donna raised and happens in a discussion where her health condition is actually relevant, for crying out loud don’t jump on me just because I didn’t use “as a person with diabetes she blah blah blah”.
(This is a general ‘you’, nobody has actually jumped on me 
)
And I have no clue what the thing about stroke was. I never said “suffer”, but if you asked me then yes, I think strokes are suffered. They suck. Even if the person recovers to their previous level, they tend to remain at higher risk of a repeat. Many conditions suck. Cancer sucks too, even if you beat it. Why is it wrong to say that something like that is “suffered”?
Person-first language is at times important and at times unduly cumbersome. Context counts for a lot.
But to hold the OP to the same standard, it seems a bit odd … condescending, maybe? … to post a lecture about person-first language on a board you rarely visit. While you worry that people are unfairly defined by their disabilities, why do you assume that people with disabilities need you to speak for them? Spend a little time on this or any other COTH board and you’ll quickly learn that posters here generally aren’t shy about sharing their feelings or letting another poster know when he or she has stepped out of line. Anonymity, if anything, seems to make people braver online than they are in person.
On its good days, that COTH self-policing can be an educational experience (and on its bad ones, it turns into an ugly mob). Cheers.
“Person first language” was generalized a few years ago in the autistic community, when many were complaining that autism was branding them in the minds of the health care professionals that were handling patients to a point where they were not treated as the individuals they were.
It was a way to say, slow down, there is more there than a handful of syndromes, there is so much more to that person than their autism.
At the time that phrase started being used by the general public, it was just a well intentioned reminder for counselors, aides and those managing the lives and school activities of special education kids.
Yes, you can take that phrase to silly PC extremes.:yes:
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