I’ve noticed that more and more people seem to be defining themselves as disabled these days. The online forums are filling up with all kinds of people with all kinds of mental and physical conditions, many of which I’ve never heard of. The disability community is becoming increasingly crowded as more and more people self define as disabled. Some could have a problem with this: this morning, for instance, I came across a post by a deaf guy on the Disability Politics Discussion Group on facebook asking whether some people really were disabled, and positing that some people were putting it on to get perks like better parking spaces. I responded that making such assumptions and generalisations is dangerous given that some peoples’ disabilities are not obvious, and that ”if we’re going to start using disability hierarchies, I could just pull rank an say that you’re not a real crip unless you went to a special school or spent your childhood in an institution, making most of the people reading this ‘norms’.” Such talk is folly as it divides us. As soon as we start questioning one another, as soon as we start saying ”I’m more of a crip than you”, our community looses all cohesion. We would start to compete with eachother, begrudging eachother support. That is exactly what the Tories want: united we can oppose them, but as soon as we start questioning other people’s right to say ”I’m a disabled person”, we adopt their individualist worldview. After all, given, as I wrote here, in a way everyone has a disability and nobody has the authority to decide who is and is not disabled, ours should be the most welcoming, supportive subculture around. Even if I had experiences others escaped, it does not mean I’m further up the hierarchy or more disabled than anyone else. Nor does it entitle me to more support: support should be based on need, and that requires us to work together to ensure eachothers needs are met.