Stella Young
Disability is often framed, in medical terms, as the ultimate disaster and certainly as a deficit.Collection: Medical
I've lost count of the number of times that I've been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I'm brave or inspirational, and this was long before my work had any kind of public profile.Collection: Inspirational
I don't generally talk about medical terms when I discuss my position as a disabled person. I take a social rather than medical approach to disability, and so long Latin names for congenital conditions are not relevant.Collection: Medical
I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilising symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death.Collection: Death
I once choked on a chip at a friend's birthday when I was seven and had to be sent home, as I'd broken my collarbone coughing.Collection: Birthday
Too often, we fall into the trap of thinking 'equal' means 'the same' and that we achieve equality by treating everyone identically.Collection: Equality
Disability informs almost every part of my life. It's as important, if not more so, than my gender and sexuality. It's certainly a great deal more important to me than my religion or whether or not I caught a tram, ferry or bus to work.Collection: Religion
Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.
The killing of a disabled person is not 'compassionate'. It is not 'euthanasia'. It is murder.
My disability exists not because I use a wheelchair, but because the broader environment isn't accessible.
Apologies are great, but they don't really change anything. You know what does? Action.
I identify very proudly as a disabled woman. I identify with the crip community. I didn't invent the word 'crip'. It's a political ideology I came to in my late teens and early 20s.
My parents didn't know what to do with me, so they just pretended I was normal, and that worked out quite well for me.
The mere suggestion that not speaking for a day can give you an appreciation of the social isolation that comes with the experience of disability, particularly those whose impairments prohibit them from communicating verbally, is insensitive at best.
Physical access is one of the very first issues disability rights activists of the 1960s and '70s fought for.
I have a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), which has affected my growth and bone strength. In short, people with the kind of OI I have generally experience hundreds of fractures in their lifetime and use wheelchairs for mobility.
The problem for many people with disabilities is not that we are not able to work a certain number of hours a week. It's that no-one will let us.
I do not identify as a person with a disability. I'm a disabled person. And I'll be a monkey's disabled uncle if I'm going to apologise for that.
In days gone by, short-statured people were not only labelled as ugly, stupid and freakish, they were often owned by aristocrats and treated, at best, as entertainment and, at worst, as pets.
The thing about living with any disability is that you adapt; you do what works for you.
It is nothing short of baffling to me how a city like Melbourne, where I struggle to find accessible facilities on a very regular basis, could be considered the most livable city in the world. I suppose it all depends on what makes a city 'livable' for you.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that from puberty onwards, the female body is disgusting and unruly and must be tamed, trimmed and tinted to within an inch of its life before it can be allowed to roam freely in the public eye.
There are real-world, devastating consequences for disabled women marginalised by the kinds of attitudes that deny them full agency over what happens to their bodies.
We all learn how to use the bodies we're born with, or learn to use them in an adjusted state, whether those bodies are considered disabled or not.
I've got the best job in the world; I love it. I get to meet so many interesting people, and I get to make sure that other people with disabilities can tell their own stories as well.
I grew up in a very small country town in Victoria. I had a very normal, low-key kind of upbringing. I went to school, I hung out with my friends, I fought with my younger sisters. It was all very normal.
For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire.
I use the term 'disabled people' quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.
We think we know what it's all about; we think that disability is a really simple thing, and we don't expect to see disabled people in our daily lives.
For me, in some ways, my whole life is a bit performative and always has been - because I'm stared at and looked at everywhere I go.
People get all up in arms when I describe myself as a crip because what they hear is the word 'cripple,' and they hear a word you're not allowed to say anymore.
If everyone's looking at me, I might as well say something interesting.
For me, disability is a physical experience, but it's also a cultural experience and a social experience, and for me, the word 'crip' is the one that best encapsulated all of that.
I'm a full-time wheelchair user. And yet, given the right circumstances, I am able to work.
In many ways, I'm incredibly lucky to have been born with my impairment and that it's visible. It means my path has been predictable.
Believe me, people with disabilities are just as concerned about benefit fraud as anyone else. Money spent on those who are not in need is money that isn't being spent on vital services to support us in the community.
The magnitude of discrimination and stigma faced by people with disability in Australia cannot be underestimated. People do not understand disability, and people fear what they don't understand.
I tend not to think about living to some grand old age. Then again, I don't think about dying, either.
Most disability charity hinges on that notion - that you need to send your money in quick before all these poor, pitiful people die. Peddling pity brings in the bucks, yo.
I used to think of myself in terms of who I'd be if I didn't have this pesky old disability.
When I was seven and watched an episode of 'Beyond 2000' that featured a floating armchair, I thought we'd definitely have one of those by 15, at the latest.
Yooralla, like most disability service organisations, is full of good people who are passionate about the rights of people with disabilities.
It became very clear to me that Yooralla was not as interested in media coverage that explored issues faced by people with disability as it was in giving a pat on the back to journalists who maintained the status quo by giving readers the warm and fuzzies over their morning paper.
Yooralla is a people pleaser with a very powerful PR machine.
People are uncomfortable about disability, and so interactions can become unintentionally uncomfortable.
Death is not treatment, even if it's medically facilitated.
Doctors are not fortune tellers, and neither am I. Having lived with disability since birth does not afford me immunity from illness.
It's undeniable that what we are taught as a culture to believe about disability is at odds with traditional notions of masculinity.
From pink water bottles for breast cancer to dumping a bucket of ice water on your head for neuromuscular conditions, it seems we're bombarded by requests to be 'aware' of one thing or another.
Disability simulation fails to capture the nuance and complexity of living in a disabled body. And it certainly fails to give a deep understanding of systemic discrimination and abuse faced by disabled people.