I’ve been frustrated for twenty years in my social work career with the notion that if we change the name of a stigmatized group every five years, the stigma will disappear because people are too stupid to notice the names changed, and not the hated people in the group. Hint: nearly all of the “bad names” for people with Developmental Disabilties are former clinical terms adopted in whole or part to reduce the stigma aimed at them.

We need to change stigma and not names. Changing names just sprays air freshener when the toilet hasn’t been flushed, as far as I can see.

Nobody thinks we need to call “the hockey players” or “the volleyball players” or “the authors” PEOPLE WHO…play hockey, play volleyball, write books. This is because they are neutral groups. Most people don’t revile them, and there’s no world wide moral panic or scape-goating of these groups.

Referring to me as a “person with asthma” or “person with depression” or “person with physical limitations” instead of a physically disabled person, or a depressive or an asthmatic does not make me a different type of person. It doesn’t change the neutrality of asthma, or the stigma associated with both psychiatric and physical disabilities. It just takes longer to say. And I must say that “People with fat” has a ring to it, though I prefer fat person/people myself.

I hasten to add that I just ASK individual people how they like to be referred to, and then refer to them that way. Some of my graduate classmates (whom naturally I usually call by name) prefer African American, some Black, some Women or Men or People of Color, some just don’t care. I had one prof who said he “missed Negro, it had a dignified sound and was ONE word.” (Emphasis his, though I heartily agree with respect to terms applied to me.)

I can tell when somebody intends to insult me, their descriptors of me don’t really matter. “Person with asthma” can be sneered in a disrespectful tone just as easily as “asthmatic” or even “wheeezebag.” My 1970’s report card comments calling me “very creative” were not praises – they were code for “odd.”

And don’t even get me STARTED on the word “persons” replacing “people.” What the FUCK? What’s wrong with the word “people”? Persons seems like fakey business lingo to me – like “utilize” instead of “use.” Or “gifting” instead of “giving.”

Okay, mildly drunk 40-something is heading to bed in a huff of elderly crabbiness. You kids get off my lawn!

Just to make things perfectly clear, I wasn’t pushing for that terminology in this post. I thought that was fairly obvious from the final quote box, but maybe it wasn’t! Sorry.

I don’t think the world at large needs any more encouragement to see ‘obesity’ as a disease, and that’s what that construct does. If we have to settle for using ‘obesity’ at all, let’s at least position it with the adjectives, where there’s a slight hope for neutrality. I’d rather just not use it at all, though. I don’t want my natural body shape labelled as an illness, thanks.

(Person of size…just sounds weird to me. Like, it implies the existence of people without size.)

When it comes to ‘person of size’, you can count me out thanks.

Someone should give those poor folks who think they’re cheating death because they’re not obese a heads up. It doesn’t really work that way.

Bree:
I saw your comment and I thought of this, which made me sad and angry, because usually I like The Onion:

One of the things that has always grated on me is a term I heard after a friend of mine became a high school teacher: “The Behaviourals.” That’s what the teachers call students who are regularly disruptive in class. Students with behavioural issues are not just their behaviour. This type of language really causes teachers to devalue the students and contributes to them being seen as lost causes in the educational system.

In the same vein, I think that calling fat people “the obese” (I prefer “fat people,” as a result of rigorous mental reconditioning by the fatosphere) gives the medical establishment a reason to write us off. The mentality is that fat people are just frickin fat, and just don’t change, goddamnit! Why even bother trying to help them anymore? (If only they would acknowledge the REAL reasons why we continue being fat, despite their lectures, warnings, admonitions, guilt trips, drugs, surgeries, etc., they would stop trying to be so *helpful*.)