When you hear or read the term “disability”, what comes to mind? What does that mean to you? Society has set very clear limits and definitions about what it means to be “able” and anyone who does not fit neatly within those parameters is labelled disabled, less than, or not enough with no consideration to the person themselves. The article “Becoming Dishuman: Thinking About the Human Through Dis/ability challenges the reader “…to find new vocabularies in order to honour the humanness inherent in dis/ability alongside its disruptive potential”.

As someone who has worked with adults in a community living environment as well as with students in the public school system who would be categorized as intellectually disabled, the language used in the article is new to me and somewhat difficult to wrap my head around, but the idea the authors are trying to convey is very familiar. We need to challenge the normatives of what it means to be able, independent, or successful. We need to ask ourselves not only who is excluded from those normatives but also who is served by perpetuating them. Is an intellectually “disabled” adult who has their own apartment that they look after and pay for with money they earn at their job any less independent because someone comes once a week to take them grocery shopping or helps them to pay their bills? What about the student who struggles to complete written tasks and tests but who can demonstrate their understanding and apply their learning verbally, are they any less unsuccessful?

In Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness the author Eli Clare describes how “The dominant paradigms of disability…all turn disability into problems faced by individual people, locate those problems in our bodies, and define those bodies as wrong”. We need to take the focus away from the body and focus on the person, whether it be when we talk about dis/ability, gender, sexuality or anything else that goes against societies normative narratives. “Leave our bodies alone. Stop justifying and explaining your oppressive crap by measuring, comparing, judging, blaming, creating theories about our bodies.”