Self esteem and a healthy body image for people with disabilities are so often hard-fought. – Stella Young
Disability doesn’t make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
Physical access is one of the very first issues disability rights activists of the 1960s and ’70s fought for. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
I’m a full-time wheelchair user. And yet, given the right circumstances, I am able to work. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
Doctors are not fortune tellers, and neither am I. Having lived with disability since birth does not afford me immunity from illness. – Stella Young
Paralympic sport and other disability sport can and should be celebrated in its own right. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
I used to think of myself in terms of who I’d be if I didn’t have this pesky old disability. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
People are uncomfortable about disability, and so interactions can become unintentionally uncomfortable. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young
I am repeatedly asked in interviews exactly ‘what’s wrong’ with me, and I always give them the same answer; I don’t identify the name of my condition in an interview unless it’s relevant to the context of the story. – Stella Young
My mother loves to remind me that about the age of four, I made a somewhat formal announcement that I was going to be a plumber when I grew up. – Stella Young
Disability is often framed, in medical terms, as the ultimate disaster and certainly as a deficit. – Stella Young
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. – Stella Young