Disability Pride, seeing your disability as a natural and beautiful thing, helps you to be a self-advocate. With an ally’s help and with other self-advocates you can fight common issues such as bullying. You can have pride in our culture and use language with understanding. There is a lot to be proud of in the disabled community. Our history is one example. Disability history can be seen as stories of oppression and resistance. Speaking up for what is right for one another is what allies and self-advocates do. You may have noticed this when I talked about different events in earlier blogs. I will blog about disability history in future blogs. But, until then, you can think about disability history as a record of the actions of self-advocates and allies. Allies and self-advocates are the disabled community.
As a self-advocate you can fight ableism which includes all the forms of prejudice against people with disabilities. You can do this by; speaking up for yourself, making your decisions about your life, learning about things that are important to you, knowing your rights and responsibilities, problem solving and knowing who you can reach out to and reaching out to them.
Disability Pride can also help you to become an effective self-advocate. Becoming a self-advocate is a learning process and needs some communication skills. I am still learning good skills way into adulthood. You learn though practice. There are terms preferred by the disabled community. Understanding how language is used by the disability community is important since language can be considered offensive, such as words that shouldn’t be used because they hurt, or surviving, such as words that are not liked but are being used by law or a group, or thriving, which is the language currently preferred by the community. Knowing the preferred language can give you strength by having a vocabulary to explain what you mean. Be aware that preferences of terms will change over time.
If you have been bullied you may have found communication got harder at those times. At these times allies can help. An ally is a person without a current disability who learns about and fights ableism in order to help people with disabilities. Allies can also help and speak up and let others know when words are offensive. So allies and self-advocates both have roles as disability advocates.
Being bullied isn’t fun. Just know that being a good self-advocate and having allies can help. It will take practice. Just know that understanding Disability Pride leads to self-confidence. This helps you get to a place where bullies seem silly and allies become friends.
As a self-advocate you can fight ableism which includes all the forms of prejudice against people with disabilities. You can do this by; speaking up for yourself, making your decisions about your life, learning about things that are important to you, knowing your rights and responsibilities, problem solving and knowing who you can reach out to and reaching out to them.
Disability Pride can also help you to become an effective self-advocate. Becoming a self-advocate is a learning process and needs some communication skills. I am still learning good skills way into adulthood. You learn though practice. There are terms preferred by the disabled community. Understanding how language is used by the disability community is important since language can be considered offensive, such as words that shouldn’t be used because they hurt, or surviving, such as words that are not liked but are being used by law or a group, or thriving, which is the language currently preferred by the community. Knowing the preferred language can give you strength by having a vocabulary to explain what you mean. Be aware that preferences of terms will change over time.
If you have been bullied you may have found communication got harder at those times. At these times allies can help. An ally is a person without a current disability who learns about and fights ableism in order to help people with disabilities. Allies can also help and speak up and let others know when words are offensive. So allies and self-advocates both have roles as disability advocates.
Being bullied isn’t fun. Just know that being a good self-advocate and having allies can help. It will take practice. Just know that understanding Disability Pride leads to self-confidence. This helps you get to a place where bullies seem silly and allies become friends.
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