The use of the word "disabled"

Okay, first, before we go on, let me say this:

After I posted my last blog post (so recently it's kind of embarrassing, I'm doing the Scholarship aspect of this, being on Supplemental Security Income, whose very name is a joke, so you guys will see me quite a bit in my quest to create domestic insurrection and hopefully get some money for it) Progressive U showed me a similar (and very good) blog post on the use use of the word "disabled" to describe people with disability. This poster said she felt that "disabled" was the wrong word to use, and in some ways, I fully agree. However, the objection to the word "disabled" that people have stems both from an important rejection of the medical model of disability (discussed in my last post)
and an incomplete view of the Social Model of Disability. I am very, very happy there are
people who see disability discrimination and it thrills me, because the generation reading this blog can do tremendous things to end it, but, paradoxically, I worry about our
reluctance to use the word "disabled."
How can this be, right? Didn't I just get through saying the medical model was pretty bad?

Well, yes, but if we truly see disability as a Social issue, the periodic use of the word "disabled" really should stop bothering us. I mean, if we see parallels between racism and ableism (discrimination against people with disabilities on the basis of their
disabilities) then this gets easier. We don't look at a black person and call them "a person with blackness" or a Mexican person and call them "a person with Mexicanness," right? And why? Because a person's skin color and racial identity is rightfully not considered a weakness, but a strength and a form of (*drum roll, please*) DIVERSITY.
So, while there are differences (as the poster I read says, -dis means "lack" and "apart from") I honestly am quite frustrated when other people with disabilities tell me "disabled" is the wrong word to use to describe myself while simultaneously saying disability is diversity. Often, I alterate between "disabled" and "people with disabilities" but honestly, disabled is ok with me.
I don't see it as weakness, and while there's probably a better word, the many words I grew up with in the early 80's (Handicapable, differently-abled and the like) just are not it at all. The disability community is still defining itself, and, as one of the last great Social movements, the disability movement is a continuing one. The issue of language is a
huge one, and rightfully so, but for now, all I ask is that when you, enlightened people all, see me use the word disabled, don't comment that it means I've bought into subjugation, because that, my friends, is a subject for later.

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