Yes!
A “stigma” does not come with a disability.
The “stigma” comes with the DEVALUATION of someone with a disability.
Love this from Diary of a Mom
Years ago (and thankfully long before Brooke had been identified as intellectually disabled) I wrote the following:
What I inadvertently said so many times boiled down to this: While my daughter is autistic,
she is not intellectually disabled, and *therefore* you should not discount her worth.What I did not see was that I was lifting her on the backs of others.
It is now so painfully clear that it was an unconscionable and indefensible argument, but it’s one into which many of us have been conditioned. We thrive on comparison. And we trade in its marketplace with the currency of human dignity.
There is no hierarchy of humanity, no test that one must pass to be worthy of recognition as a… More