R I C H

I don't believe it's used anywhere within health services in Canada, though the public may still use it.

BristolUK

Fair point. Although I did just find use of the word on The Star.com and a government of canada site - strategis.ic.gc.ca

Reassuring to see it barely comes up on a google search though. I see 'Handicap parking' signs but maybe that's just behind the times NB.

dbd33

Well, I'm asking. What's wrong with using "handicapped"? The woman on crutches certainly has a handicap compared with someone not on crutches (though not obviously one related to the need to pee).

R I C H

"Handicap began to be applied to physical and mental differences in the early 1900s, when the new fields of sociology and social work started looking at people in terms of their place in society as a whole. What had been seen before as individual failings or flaws were recast as disadvantages with respect to larger contexts. If life was a horse race, a person with a physical disability couldn’t compete as well because of the burden they had been handed, not because they were defective by nature. Over the next decades, old words that cast disabilities as personal flaws—crippled, lame, imbecile, invalid etc.—became increasingly offensive sounding, and by the 1970s, handicapped had become the term of choice in social services and legislation.

Things started to change at just that time with the birth of the disability rights movement. A community of people fighting for more independence and self-determination rejected the term handicapped in favor of disabled. This seems counterintuitive, since, at first glance, handicapped looks like the more enlightened choice. It replaced other terms that had accumulated centuries’ worth of terrible connotations. And disabled might appear to be one of those terrible terms. Its etymological form means “rendered incapable,” not a very liberating sentiment, and it had a history of being used to describe disabled people going back 200 years before handicapped came on the scene. But for activists looking for a way to refer to their new campaigns and organizations, disability seemed the better choice.

For some, the word handicapped evoked the idea of a beggar with cap in hand, though this was not the original source of the word. And disabled at that time was attractive for its rather cold, clinical connotation, meaning that it lacked euphemism or patronizing attitude, things that were also a problem for terms like special or differently-abled. The main problem with handicapped, though, was simply that it had not been chosen by the people it was supposed to describe.

As journalist and disability scholar Jack A. Nelson wrote, though handicapped appeared to be “in keeping with the disability rights movement’s analysis of the situation—that the individual is okay but society has put him or her at a disadvantage—the term was nonetheless rejected when disabled people began wresting the power of the programs that controlled their lives from social workers and began to run their own programs…if for no other reason that it was a term imposed on them by agencies.”

By the time the American with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, the term handicapped had already become fusty and awkward. It was the activists who had fought for the act, and decided for themselves what language to use, who ushered it off the stage as the century drew to a close."

Why Did ‘Disabled’ Replace ‘Handicapped’ As the Preferred Term? | Mental Floss

Almost Canadian

It wasn't hyphenated, nor did it have a space. If people wish to insert one, that is their issue.

Almost Canadian

I don't care what the President of another country says. It shouldn't affect things in this country. The taxi driver was acquitted and, one assumes, he was acquitted for the other incident too. I appreciate you may not like the result, but the result is the result, whether you like it or not.

I am, frankly, appalled at how the Robin Camp (why couldn't you keep your knees together) trial was reported. The actual facts are so far removed from what the media reported that I have no faith in the media's ability to report basic facts accurately.

It's his name and is not pronounced Grab Her. It people wish to pronounce it that way, that is their issue, not his.

dbd33

Interesting, thanks. Nonsensical but interesting nonetheless.

R I C H

The key point is identification (or not) with a label someone else has given you: The main problem with handicapped, though, was simply that it had not been chosen by the people it was supposed to describe.

Terminology seems to be an ongoing discussion. The latest is the term 'diversability', rather than disability.

dbd33

Perhaps it should not but it plainly does. It's difficult to think of anyone more socially influential in Canada, even the great Canadian figures of today, Bieber or Dion or Don Cherry, aren't mentioned in conversation every single day the way Trump is.

dbd33

As a yiddo, I understand this but, as the parent of a handicapped person, I find it somewhat precious. It's of questionable merit as an idea as the term refers to all people not of some standard configuration; why is someone with a wooden leg better able to decide what someone with Down's syndrome wants to be called than someone with an ordinary body - all handicaps are not equal and the people with the disabilities are no more the same as each other than the neurologically typical are all the same.

That, like "differently abled" implies an equivalence of abilities which is untrue and invites one to doubt the need for support; handicapped people obviously deserve funding, diversibilated people less so. Besides, it's insulting to think that people with physical failings cannot express
themselves in English and have to babble neologisms together.

Alan2005

This guy knew what he was doing. Maybe it's in his rights, but he's still an arsehole.

The euphemism treadmill will corrupt anything anyone can come up with, regardless of how positive it seems at first.

R I C H

I'm not sure that diversability implies any equivalence, it merely suggests the spectrum is diverse. The business I work for has 400+ clients who have disabilities requiring 24x7 care, to individuals that can hold down some basic employment. I think it's a reasonable catch-all description, and the reality is that some clients certainly cannot express themselves in English, so without wishing to have multiple terms, babbling neologisms are the best compromise.

BristolUK

However, in the real world it does. It got enormous publicity that the Prez thought that behaviour was okay.

The Prez thought it okay to ban Muslims from entering the US. The courts in the US said otherwise but there were countless reports of Muslims being wrongly barred from the US.

Just as Brexit was nothing to do with kicking foreigners out of the UK but the reality was that after the Brexit vote there was an increase in attacks and harrassment of foreign people.

You may not want to see a link but you're surely not so blind to see that there is one.

Whether I like the result is irrelevant. Again there was enormous publicity and outrage in the area where it happened. The impression was given that if a woman was drunk she could be taken advantage of without the male having to ascertain she gave consent.

Displaying a personalized number plate - something that is often cheeky, rude, humorous - that could be read as Grab Her might be considered somewhat inappropriate in the very same area that the court case happened.

Does that make a difference? Most people will say it that way, perhaps without the H.

What if my name was ACISATHIEF and it was pronounced A-C Sateff but everyone said AC is a thief?

Oink

This strikes me as a very Canadian thing to be concerned about.

Alan2005

You know when you see a proper media outlet do a story about something Canadian and the local media just can't help themselves but report on it. This is like the opposite of that. When I saw it reported on telly the other day, you could tell that it was creating just the right level of indignation to be picked up elsewhere.