Stella Young Quotes

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.

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.

By far, the most disabling thing in my life is the physical environment. It dictates what I can and can't do every day.

Yooralla, like most disability service organisations, is full of good people who are passionate about the rights of people with disabilities.

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.

As disabled people, we are taught from a young age that those who are attracted to us are to be regarded with suspicion.

No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp,

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.

Personally, I like a generous side of wheelchair access with my cities.

In Australia, a deaf person attending an interview must take their own interpreter at their own expense, or ask the employer to provide one. Believe me, nothing says 'I'm the best person for this job' quite like asking an employer to pay to interview you.

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.

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.

I'm a full-time wheelchair user. And yet, given the right circumstances, I am able to work.

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.

My everyday life in which I do exactly the same things as everyone else should not inspire people, and yet I am constantly congratulated by strangers for simply existing.

For me, and for many other people with disabilities, our status as disabled people is one of which we are fiercely proud.

Apologies are great, but they don't really change anything. You know what does? Action.

The thing about living with any disability is that you adapt; you do what works for you.

We've been sold this lie that disability makes you exceptional and it honestly doesn't. ... I want to live in a world where we don't have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning.

People with disabilities are simply part of diverse communities in the U.S.

The word 'special', as it is applied to disability, too often means 'a bit shit'.

From time to time, people pat me on the head. It happens on public transport, in the supermarket, in bars. It's a common enough occurrence that it very rarely takes me completely by surprise.

If everyone's looking at me, I might as well say something interesting.

Let's not forget that the Paralympics, just like the Olympics, are built on a rich history.

As a wheelchair user, I am utterly obsessed with toilets, and all my friends know it. A simple invitation to the pub is consistently followed by, 'Do you know if they have an accessible toilet?'

The Paralympics have for too long been considered the poor cousin of the Olympics. It's always run after the main games and rarely gets anything like the media coverage.

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.

Paralympic sport and other disability sport can and should be celebrated in its own right.

It's undeniable that what we are taught as a culture to believe about disability is at odds with traditional notions of masculinity.

We often hear that people mean well: that so many just don't how to interact with people with disabilities. They're unsure of the 'right' reaction, so they default to condescension that makes them feel better in the face of their discomfort.

The killing of a disabled person is not 'compassionate'. It is not 'euthanasia'. It is murder.

When patronised, I'm unfortunately more flight than fight. Perhaps it's because I actually feel quite wounded.

I used to think of myself in terms of who I'd be if I didn't have this pesky old disability.

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.

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.

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.

I tend not to think about living to some grand old age. Then again, I don't think about dying, either.

On the whole, my life is and has been wonderful.

Self esteem and a healthy body image for people with disabilities are so often hard-fought.

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.

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.

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.

I, like many women, buy into patriarchal standards of beauty every day. I very rarely leave the house without make-up. I dye my hair. I wear clothes that I choose carefully for how they make me look to the outside world.

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.

Doctors are not fortune tellers, and neither am I. Having lived with disability since birth does not afford me immunity from illness.

Death is not treatment, even if it's medically facilitated.

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.

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.

The battle to find a workplace that's wheelchair accessible is a feat in itself, let alone an employer who's going to be cool about employing someone with a disability in a job you actually want to do.

I let go of the notion of wanting someone to ignore the way I look in order to find me attractive, because really, what kind of relationship would that be? One where someone's only attracted to you because they're ignoring a fundamental part of you? No thanks.

I dance as a political statement, because disabled bodies are inherently political, but I mostly dance for all the same reasons anyone else does: because it heals my spirit and fills me with joy.

I am not here to inspire you. I am here to tell you that we have been lied to about disability. Yeah, we've been sold the lie that disability is a Bad Thing, capital B, capital T. It's a bad thing, and to live with a disability makes you exceptional. It's not a bad thing, and it doesn't make you exceptional.

My disability exists not because I use a wheelchair, but because the broader environment isn't accessible.

In my own home, where I've been able to create an environment that works for me, I'm hardly disabled at all. I still have an impairment, and there are obviously some very restrictive things about that, but the impact of disability is less.

Many of us, particularly those of us with disabilities who have faced persistent discrimination throughout our lives, not least when trying to find employment in the first place, take enormous pride in our hard-fought jobs and careers.

03:11
And in the past few years, we've been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You may have seen images like this one: "The only disability in life is a bad attitude." Or this one: "Your excuse is invalid." Indeed. Or this one: "Before you quit, try!" These are just a couple of examples, but there are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one, the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. (Laughter) And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, "Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person."

But what if you are that person?

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.

Physical access is one of the very first issues disability rights activists of the 1960s and '70s fought for.

I have always felt like a loved, valued and equal member of my family.