I've thought about this thread for some time now. I think I know how I feel about the issue now. I'm agin' it.

I'm against feel good songs about disabilities. Disabilities don't feel good.

I'm against euphamisms in any context. I'm not Challenged or Other Abled or any of those things. Maybe I'm handicapped. I have less then the usual number of skills & muscles the average person has. I'm certainly crippled.   On the other hand anyone demeaning me on that account might wind up with a baseball bat shapped dent in his/her skull.

I don't want disabled kids conned into thinking "they're just as good as anyone else."   I can tell you a monobrachius will rarely become a good basketball player or speed typist. That's it. No matter how good s/he feels or is encouraged or loved it won't happen. A paraplegic will always be an out and out dud at track and mountain climbing. I'm just not as good as most people when it comes to brachialness. I'm a damn sight better than most in a bunch of other ways. So what?

Take what you have and learn to live with it! Don't feel good about it, feel BAD. Then get on with life and hope to get trained to do work in which the particular problem is irrelevant. A paraplegic can be a lawyer, a blind person a translator, etc.

No one has ever actually called me a cripple. I doubt anyone would dare today. (Actually, my disability hardly shows so most don't even notice.) I don't know how I'd have taken it as a child...I hope I'd have responded "and you're a fucking asshole."

So my take to teach kids? Don't be gratuitously cruel to anyone for any reason. Including crips, Moslems, retards or even folkies.   If I hear this near me I tell them. And their friends and parents. My duty is to not walk on by when I come across hate crimes (and this is just another form of hate crime). I stop and protest as firmly as it takes.

When I do that the talk stops.

There's another side, of course. Those whose problem is so great that they cannot get on in life without help. Each case is different but for those that need my help, I help them. Without qualms. And without sympathy. AND I expect them to help ME when I need it and they can.